Buoys keep swinging (across the Atlantic)

(This is a little piece what I writ for Lamp 140 a few months ago, and they somehow agreed to publish it. Lamp is the journal of the Association of Lighthouse Keepers and you don't have to be a keeper to join.)

The girl from Ipanema may well go walking but, it appears, the buoy from Louisiana may well give her a run for her money. I am well aware that that sentence will not work as well in America due to their different pronunciations.
The saga began in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina rampaged through the Gulf of Mexico and caused major devastation to the southern US states. One of its victims was an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, whose location needed to be marked. A company called Wet Tech Energy, then based in Lafayette LA, were contracted to manufacture a buoy to mark the spot. This they did and, in 2006, the buoy, affectionately named 3372899399, was placed in position and moored.

According to Todd Carl, operations manager with Wet Tech, the company realised it was missing on a regular tour of inspection in 2007. Evidently, it broke its moorings and began its wanderings on the ocean blue. One could say that the story started with Katrina and the waves.

For seventeen years, nothing more was learned of the fate of their beloved 399. Todd doubtless managed to pick up his life and continue as best he could. The old place in Lafayette evidently held too many memories, so the company relocated to Youngsville.

But then, in early April 2024, he was contacted by a man called Owen J Dunbar of Ballymoney, county Wexford on the southeastern shoreline of Ireland. 3372899399 had washed up on the beach there after seventeen years adrift.

I heard about the buoy being washed ashore here at Seafield beach in Ballymoney, said Owen, and I managed to see a serial number on it and the name of the company, Wet Tech, who are from Youngsville, Louisiana. Ever since 2007, the buoy has been on the Gulf Stream, or the North Atlantic Drift, as it is called. So its probably not the first time that it passed the Irish coast because the Gulf Stream is like a washing machine that keeps going round and round. As one might expect from spending seventeen years in a washing machine, the buoy is very clean but all the colour has been washed out of it.

The artist formerly located at Sub-sea well, Block 195

Owen got in touch with Todd and told him the joyous news. He also contacted the local news group, Broussard-Youngsville Local News (BYLN) who relayed the tidings to the  population of Louisiana

Owen, though, was worried. Storm Kathleen was about to break on the Wexford shoreline and it was entirely possible that the sea might try to reclaim what it regarded as rightfully her’s. Prayers were said and a candlelight vigil took place, though it didn’t work too well in the gale-force winds. As it happened, the storm only succeeded in pushing 399 further up the beach.

On Aprill 11^th, according to their website, BYLN met with Todd Carl, operations manager, and Paul Anderson, vice president of operations at Wet Tech. Anderson informs BYLN that this morning, he received a request from Aidan Bates, a dedicated marine officer with the Wexford coastline, who is working to move the buoy. Bates has requested a drawing of the buoy to know where the lifting eyes are, a crucial detail for the removal process.

At time of writing, the buoy is still there on the beach, although some lovely person or persons has already removed the solar light from its top. Its fate seems to be that it will be removed from the beach, whether by land or by sea. Todd is apparently too emotionally drained to want it back and locals have been speculating about its future. A feature on a local roundabout, perhaps? A beachside pedestal with an information plaque? Maybe it could even be used as a buoy?

Or, as one local remarked, if there was another one, it would make a nice pair of earrings.

All photos of the Ballymoney buoy courtesy Owen J. Dunbar

Since that article was published, I have learnt that the Ballymoney buoy was not the first transatlantic visitor to our shores. I came across this article in an old Beam magazine about a similar buoy that quit America at around the same time as Owen Dunbar's baby. It washed ashore from the eastern seaboard of the US at Furbo, co. Galway.

And, prior to that, around 1991, a US Coastguard Buoy washed up in Killala. For some reason, the Americans didn't feel like sending out a boat to bring it back so it lay in a field for nearly twenty years, warning cows of the dangerous rocks. Then, in 2010, Mayo County Council took it in, gave it a bath and some clean clothes and installed it in position near the Black Rocks at the entrance to Killary Harbour.

The Killala Buoy tried working on land but the sea was always in his blood (photo Tim Ryan)

In 2016, an eco-houseboat from Newfoundland washed up on the Mullet peninsula in Mayo, having apparently broke her moorings in Canada. Inside they found a handwritten note from the owner donating it to a homeless person. It was, however, in not quite the same condition as the picture below.

And in 2019, a US Coastguard boat made a sudden appearance between Doolin, co. Clare, and Inis Oirr, co. Galway, looking rather the worse the wear after being in the washing machine for some time. Judging by the length of the goose barnacles on it, it had been several years adrift.

Life on the Fastnet, 1956 style

The Fastnet and the little Fastnet (aw, isn't he cute?)

A blast from the past from the Irish Examiner 7th January 1956. The author of the piece is Youghal attendant Andrew Coughlan. There were Coughlans on the Fastnet almost from the very start in 1854.

 

1906 Accessing the Fastnet (NLI)

Like a Roundstone cowboy

 

The old cowboy in the corner of the Roundstone saloon spat in the vague direction of the spittoon and drained his whuskey.

"The round stone?" he asked. "What would a feller like you be wanting with the round stone?"

I explained that I researched lighthouses and navigational beacons and I had heard legends about an old round stone in this part of Connemara.

"Ah, I could tell you all about the round stone," my newly-found friend whispered hoarsely, "but my throat is desperate dry."

After I had replenished his beverage, he began his tale.

"Here in Roundstone, we talk about Before Nimmo and After Nimmo. Alexander Nimmo, came over from Scotland. Couldn't understand a word he said and he had no Gaelic, not even Scot's Gaelic. Before he came, there was only a few houses dotted up and down the coast and a bit of a harbour for the boys to fish out of..."

"He built the lighthouse at Dunmore East too," I interjected.

"That he did, and a lot of roads and piers and bridges around the country too, though mainly in Galway and Mayo. Didn't build a lighthouse here, though. Could've done with one. Fierce hardworking man. I remember passing him by and he digging out foundations for the pier here, all on his lonesome, and the sweat dripping off him."

"That would have been around 1822 to 1824," I said, somewhat doubtfully. 

"Aye, you could be right, about that time. Great man he was too."

"And the round stone?"

"I'm coming to that. Before Nimmo, you see, there was nothing except rocks and islands and inlets. The lads'd go out fishing and when they were coming in again, they couldn't tell one place from another, so they'd end up in Glynsk or Letterfrack or anywhere. One lad ended up with three different families all along the coast. Every time he put out to sea, he couldn't find his way back and ended up settling in another spot..."

"That's all by the way until in 1678, a man by the name of Roderic O'Flaherty came here. He was a bit like you, baldy-headed and not very good-looking but he could read and write like the duvvle."

"You remember him, I suppose?" I asked, somewhat sarcastically.

"Little Roddy? Yes, course I do. Fierce nice chap except when you needed a drink. Anyway, Roddy noticed there was a big round stone at the entrance to Roundstone Bay. Not on the Inishnee side, mind, on the western end. And he was in this very saloon one night and he says out loud, 'Boys, when yous are coming back from fishing, why don't you look for the big round stone at the entrance of the harbour? That way, you'd know where you were.' He said it in Irish, mind - Cuan na cloiche runta, the bay of the round stone. And the boys looked at him like he was Elijah coming down from the mountain. And that's how the town got its name."

"I thought it was Cloch na Rón, the rock of the seal?"    

"Ah, so they say, but they weren't there at the time."

"And what happened to this round stone?" I enquired.

"Ah, its still there. Sure, who's going to move it? Go down to the monastery and on the right you'll see a gate. Follow the monastery wall until you come out in a field with a herd of cows in it ready to be driven up to Wyoming and you'll see the round stone just offshore. Now there was talk of another drink but sure ..."

1st edition OS Map

Last edition OS map

Cape Clear light and some of its keepers

On far Cape Clear did George Halpin a copper dome erect,

but frequent mischt and dreary cloud ensured its beam was fecked.

So began the first draft of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epic poem Xanadu, which eventually deteriorated into some tat about Kubla Khan and his summer palace.

The lighthouse was established here in 1818 to ensure that transatlantic ships knew where the southwestern corner of Ireland was and didn't attempt to continue their voyages overland. It was very much a twin of the lighthouse on Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands in Galway Bay. Both were built in the same year; they look remarkably similar; both had a keeper called Richard Wilson for many years; both were built too high; and both were eventually extinguished in 1854 when a light was established on a nearby offshore island.

With such an early demise, we don't really know very much about the light, except that the outside still looks in remarkably good condition after 170 years. Thankfully, we have a description of it written in 1835, or halfway through its lifespan, by the son of the keeper, also called Richard Wilson.

It is a circular tower of cut granite, he wrote, in the Dublin Penny Journal of 7th March 1835, the workmanship of which is remarkably well executed. It is about 36 feet high from the base to the balcony which surrounds the lantern and, from high-water mark, 448 feet. On the inside are three flights of winding stone steps. The floors are very curiously constructed, being formed of large stones - the centre one, which is circular, supported by those adjacent, into which it is grooved and lead in the interstices.

In the upper part, or lantern, are 64 panes of the best plane glass, of near a quarter of an inch in thickness; the frame in which the glass is placed, is metal, with copper screwed over. The cupola, or roof, is copper, painted white and ornamented with a weather-cock.

The light is produced by 21 lamps, which are placed in the foci (focuses) of large parabolic reflectors. They are of copper with silver fronts, the whole of which are supported by a branch which revolves by machinery, much resembling a clock but on a large scale. This is enclosed in a brass-pannelled case and put in motion by a metal of three hundredweight.

The light appears once in every two minutes and is seen at a distance of six or seven leagues. From its brightest point, it gradually becomes less luminous until it is eclipsed.. On average 750 gallons of spermaceti oil are consumed.

Annexed to the tower by a corridor, or hall, is a square tower which was formerly occupied by a naval lieutenant and a midshipman with a party of soldiers. The assistant lightkeeper resides in it at present and the principal is in a dwellings built by the Ballast Board convenient to the tower. There are out-houses and yards  and the whole is enclosed by a perimeter wall with a gate opening to the road that leads to South Harbour.

From the description above, I would suggest that the lighthouse in Cape Clear, before its lantern was removed, looked remarkably like the lighthouse above. The only difference is possibly that Wicklow Head High lighthouse (also established in 1818) might have an extra storey - four winding staircases, rather than the three mentioned above. It even seems to have a corridor joining the tower to the dwellings, like Cape Clear.

As for the keepers promised in the title, well, records for keepers get scarcer and scarcer the further back in time you go and the first half of the nineteenth century is a veritable desert of blank squares on my XL spreadsheet. But we have a couple!

I have written about the aforementioned Robert Wilson in two posts, the second of which describes his time on Cape Clear. He was there in 1828 and was still there in 1854 when the light was extinguished and also in 1858 when he died. As I have no keepers listed for the first ten years of the light, every other keeper must have been his assistant.

This naturally includes poor Carty who, it seems from the reports, appears to have been bullied by Wilson into changing from catholic to protestant. He was definitely there in 1845 and probably there in 1843. I wonder if he ever found his first name.

Anthony Hicks was stationed there in the first half of the 1830s. In his early years, he had been a printer in Dublin. By 1858, he was coming to an end and would retire if he could, he said. He was probably one of the first keepers on Eagle Island when it opened in 1835, though he was transferred to Inishowen in 1837, where he spent 25 years.

The Calwell lists - the lists that keep on giving - indicate that John Butler's first posting was to Cape Clear around 1834 or 1835. Quite possibly, he took over when Anthony Hicks left for Eagle. Born with the century, Cape Clear was his first posting and then went to Inis Mor on the Aran Islands, possibly in 1840 when the two keepers there were drowned. He later served at Ferris Point before moving to Greenore in late 1861. He retired in March 1867, aged about 67.

George Brownell was also at Cape Clear some time early on in his lighthouse career. He started a dynasty of lightkeepers that continued well into the twentieth century. He would later serve at Duncannon, Haulbowline, the Maidens, Kinsale, Roancarrig, Poolbeg, Beeves and South Rock.

Many thanks to Elizabeth Doyle for maintaining and protecting this historic building in the face of enormous apathy from the council, government and Irish Lights down through the years. It is eight years since I was there last. Time for another visit, I reckon.

Rotten Island Rotten Horse

 

Rotten Island lighthouse (photo John Hamilton)

Back in the dim and distant past, it was a problem for lighthouse families at certain stations to access services such as shops and church because of their remoteness from anywhere remotely civilised. If you lived at Mine Head or Ballyglass or Mizen Head, for example, it was quite a trek to do the messages of a Saturday or attend Mass on a Sunday, so a local contractor was hired, on contract, to bring them here and there. This was often the same contractor who ferried the keepers out to the lighthouse at offshore stations.

I admit I don't know what the story was for Rotten Island in Donegal regarding dwellings and tenders. Maybe somebody can enlighten me. There were obviously dwellings on the rock in the 1800s and they were inhabited at least up to 1910, as Florence Connell, daughter of keeper JF Connell was born on the island then. But I'm assuming that some time shortly thereafter, the family moved ashore and obviously, from the letter below, not into Killybegs itself.

My own photo, as can be guessed by the greyness of the sky

The letter is written by the Secretary of Irish Lights in Dublin to one Mrs. McGill. It is dated 7th January 1926.

Mrs. McGill,

With reference to your contract to supply a suitable horse and outside car for conveying Keepers to the nearest place of worship every 3rd Sunday for the sum of 7/6 - 

You are informed that the keepers have, for some time past, complained of the unsuitability of your horse for this work. The following extract from a report dated 24/11/25 is forwarded for your information and explanation please:

A lovely blue-sky Rotten Island (photo Helen Gallagher)

The horse provided by the Contractor is in such a state of emaciation that it is unfit to travel the distance without any passengers on the car at all. It took the animal 4 hours to perform the return journey (a distance of about 7 miles) on Sunday, and then the passengers were compelled to alight when about half way home and wait until the horse was rested before attempting the latter portion of the journey. This is a great hardship on women, some of whom had been fasting from the previous night.The whole journey took from 9.30am until 4.15pm with an interval of about 45 minutes in Church.

More grey sky but, as it was taken in 1905, the sky was always grey then (NLI)

In reply to an enquiry as to whether an improvement has taken place, the Principal Keeper states, under date 5/1/26, that there is no improvement in either horse or car, except on the 2nd last trip, a borrowed horse was used, but on the occasion of the last trip, the usual difficulty was experienced.

You may remember that in June last when you were asked whether you would supply a motor car? You replied that 'you were not in fitting circumstances to do so at present.'

In replying to this letter, you will please bear in mind that if you are unable to provide a horse and car to suit the requirements of the keepers, the question of motor attendance will again have to be taken into consideration.

Looks like a young lightkeeper in the making in the gateway. John Hamilton photo in the still-grey 1950s. Who says the weather was better in the old days?

Unfortunately, I don't have Mrs. McGill's reply, nor indeed, the horse's.

More Beer

Following on from a recent post about coming across Fanad Farmyard Beer in Lidl, I idly wondered if any other Irish lighthouses were used in the advertisement of beers. And sure enough, Mr. Google was able to provide a few examples.

Detroit Liquid Ventures is a company in Detroit who produce three different varieties of their Old Head range - a Red (above), an Extra Pale, and a Milk Chocolate Stout. I'm loving the representation of the Old Head lighthouse with dwellings and perimeter wall on the cans.

According to their website, the range is in tribute to those who came to settle in the Old Head of Kinsale 6000 years ago, our traditional style Celtic ales are inspired by recipes from the Emerald Isle, and those who integrated themselves into Detroit’s rich Irish culture.

The Dungarvan Brewing Company have produced a Mine Head American Pale Ale and it features the top half of the lighthouse (or maybe a little less) on all its products. Other products from this company, who are obviously proud of their local heritage, include Helvick Gold Blonde Ale, Copper Coast Red Ale, Black Rock Irish Stout etc.

As there is nothing else on the Fastnet except the lighthouse, I'll include this draught craft ale here. It is to be found in the Fastnet pub, a 'traditional Irish pub' in Newport, Rhode Island. The connection to the lighthouse is unclear but the website does feature a representation of the lighthouse : 

The Fastnet Force Ten is of course a reference to the terrible sailing tragedy of 1979.

Much in the same vein as Dungarvan, the Bridewell Brewery in Clifden has a range of local beers named after local landmarks. Pilot and Navigator are named for Alcock and Brown, who crash landed nearby after their famous transatlantic flight; Mullarkey's is named after a local hotel and the Light Keeper Pilsner, well, it is explained  above. I reckon the lighthouse is a pretty good representation of Slyne Head too.

I'm intrigued though how a local brewery might use the Spit lighthouses at Cobh and Passage East in their marketing. Or indeed Rotten Island. I'll have a pint of Spit, please, innkeeper? Two pints of Rotten lager please?

The very shy Achillbeg lighthouse

 

All photos by Joe McCabe

To all intents and purposes, there are only two real differences between the lighthouse on Achillbeg and the one on the Sheep's Head in Cork.

The Sheeps Head has a red handrail leading up the steps to its door, whereas Achillbeg appears to be quite handrail-less.

Most people of moderate walking abilities can walk right up to the Sheeps Head and give it a hug. With Achillbeg, people may have seen it as a small dot from Clare Island but not many have got much nearer. Naturally, the reason for the first lies in the second.

All photos except the top one are by Joe McCabe 

A light was established on the western point of Clare Island in 1806 to mark the entrance to Clew Bay and Westport but, unfortunately, like many of those old lights - Wicklow, Inis Mor, Cape Clear etc - they thought that the higher they put them, the further the light could be seen. Which was true on a clear day but hills attract the mischt and Clare Islaned light was often rendered useless. Now, the Irish lighthouse authorities were regarded as the ultimate procrastinators but they excelled themselves in this instance. 155 years to rectify the blunder and establish the light on Achillbeg instead!

To paraphrase Father Ted, this lighthouse is small but this lighthouse is far away. Achillbeg's tower is 9m tall, though it doesn't really look that big. Work started in 1964 with the raw materials being landed by boat and then donkeys and a tractor were used to haul them up to the precarious spot on whch she now sits.

Another difference between Achillbeg and Sheeps Head (actually, now I think about it, they're not very similar at all) is that the Mayo light has three red sectors. And one of them is a high intensity light to warn of the dangers of the Bills Rocks, nine miles to the west.

The light was powered by electricity, though there was always a back-up generator in case of power cuts.

Clare Island was finally turned off on the 28th September 1965 and, at sunset that evening, the new light on Achillbeg shone forth for the first time. In attendance were Ernest Benson, the Chair of Irish Lights, Michael Keane of Blacksod who had been in charge of construction and Patrick Kilbane from Cloghmore, the first attendant of the new station. In those early days, the attendant monitored the lighthouse via a UHF link to his home, but in 1991, it was hooked up to Dun Laoghaire instead.

Boatbuilder John O'Malley of Currane, Achill, spent forty years as the attendant of the lighthouse, making frequent trips out from his mainland home to the island. Sometimes, when the Commissioners were in town, he would have to don his lightkeeping uniform when making sure that everything ran smoothly.

In the 1841 Census, 178 people were resident on the island. The last people left just a few days after the lighthouse was established. The lights of the twenty five cottages were replaced by the red and white lights of the beacon.

Achillbeg doesn't really go in for self-publicity. Undoubtedly, it has issues in that regard, sitting as it does under the frowning gaze of the lighthouse it replaced. Its like breaking into the County team but the old guy you've replaced with seven All-Irelands still thinks he can cut the mustard. And he's there all the time, glaring at you.

Except when the mischt is down, of course.