A Donegal man has got more than he bargained for from his Sunday walk along the beach - by finding a time capsule filled with memories from North Pole explorers.
Conor McClory was walking along the beach in Bloody Foreland when he came across a metal canister that initially thought had come off a ship - or was a bomb. Instead, it turned out to be a time capsule that was jettisoned from a Russian nuclear icebreaker thousands and thousands of miles away. It is thought that it washed up on the beach in Donegal after the recent storms that have battered the west coast.
"When I saw it first I thought it was a steel pipe of a ship, then I lifted it and saw there was engraving on it," said Mr McClory to Donegal Daily of the small metal canister. "I thought it was a bomb then."
"When I saw the date on it I thought it could be somebody's ashes so I didn't open it. I rang a mate who has a Russian friend and he translated it for me. He said it was a time capsule and I should get it open."
When McClory, from Gweedore, managed to prise open the canister he found it to be filled with reminisces from sailors and scientists abroad the icebreaker. It includes everything from letters to photos and poems, mostly in Russian but some in English.
"One family onboard wrote a piece about when they think the letter is found there will be no more ice on the North Pole. We need to take care of the planet, it said," said McClory of a letter found in the time capsule that was written in English. He is now working to get the rest translated from Russian.
The nuclear icebreaker in question is the "50 Let Pobedy" ship - in English, the name means "50 years of victory" and refers to its original planned date of completion, which was scheduled to be in 1995, 50 years after the end of the Second World War, known as a the Great Patriotic War in Russia. However, in 1995, the ship was abandoned: it had been commissioned in 1989, but the collapse of the Soviet Union saw funds run out. It was eventually completed in 2003.
"It's just crazy that it washed up on the Foreland, it could have been anywhere else in the world," concluded Conor McClory.
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