Live internet broadcasts from a moving ship were in their infancy in August 1999 when The Irish Times set out to capture a total eclipse of the sun.
The optimum place to see it was deemed to be from the deck of an Irish Ferries vessel as it approached the coast of France, near the island of Alderney.
And it nearly did not happen.
“From early morning the weather threatened to scupper any chance of witnessing the last total eclipse of the millennium. A thick layer of cloud greeted the 1,400 passengers of the Irish Ferries ship Normandy, many of whom had travelled on the scheduled ferry just to view the eclipse”, wrote reporter Patrick Logue.
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But all was not lost. Shortly after 11.11am as the car ferry drew to a halt, “temperatures dropped significantly, a strong wind came up and the light of the sun faded in a matter of seconds,” Logue wrote.
“The shadow of the moon was visible racing across the calm water as darkness descended.” . A full 126 seconds of total eclipse ensued as promised before the sun began to reappear from behind the moon, and the world, or at least that part of it, resumed its business.
The big difference between the 1999 eclipse and Wednesday’s is that in 1999 the path where total darkness occurred was across Cornwall in the UK, northern France, Germany and onward into Asia. Today’s path is expected to bring total darkness passing over Ireland, Iceland, the UK, France, Spain and Portugal.
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In 1999, the maximum coverage of the sun visible from Irish soil was about 95 per cent in the southwest of the country.
Wednesday’s eclipse offers slightly deeper coverage, reaching up to 98 per cent in the extreme southwest (such as parts of Kerry) and roughly 93 per cent to 94 per cent in the north and east. It is the deepest solar eclipse visible from Ireland since 1999.
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While millions of people are expected to watch today’s event online, 27 years ago the broadcast was very new. Reporting on technicalities in the next day’s newspaper, reporter William Hederman said “the internet was swamped” with people watching on the The Irish Times website, then known as The Irish Times on the Web.
“In what is believed to be only the second internet broadcast from a moving ship,” Hederman wrote, “the Dublin-based Internet Broadcast Company filmed the eclipse from the Normandy ferry and relayed it via satellite for live broadcast on the The Irish Times on the Web”.
