The London Companies became the cornerstone of the Ulster Plantation, but there’s an interesting story from 1609 which in fact implies that the London Companies may never have got involved. This resulted from the fact that a group of agents from London had been visiting O’Cahan’s country (present-day County Londonderry) with a view to planting these lands. It was a PR exercise by the Crown Authorities in Ireland who showed them only the up-side of planting in Ulster - you know, the great rivers of the Bann and the Foyle, and the salmon fisheries and eel fisheries.

So everything had been going really well during this visit, when the Londoners themselves were on their way back to London, having had a tremendous visit and a very worthwhile visit. On their way back to London, the ship was sailing down the Irish Sea, happened to be blown in by a storm into Carlingford Lough and, lo and behold, at the very moment that they are blown into Carlingford Lough, they come upon a mutiny of some couple of hundred native Irish transportees who are being shipped to Protestant Sweden. The native Irish transportees had been given drink to numb their sense perhaps of disappointment at leaving their native land, but instead of actually numbing their senses, it seems to have inflamed them, and they seized control of the ship, they locked the captain below deck, and were making a dramatic bid for freedom - and suddenly the Londoners’ ship came upon this. Indeed the Londoners’ ship, it was said (not without some danger), took part in the subjugation of the mutiny. So it’s an interesting little story which could have resulted in the Londoners not becoming involved, but obviously the enticement of all the riches that they had seen in O’Cahan’s country had obviously proven more alluring.