Pete's Irish Lighthouses

  "When the Light Goes Out"   - the book wot I wrote - is finally out. It was, to all intents and purposes, finished last August but with typical arrogance I thought publishers would be queuing up to print it, but sadly they weren't, possibly because its not very good. After realisation dawned that nobody was going to bite, I decided to publish it myself but Lulu has recently revamped their self-publishing site and it took me ages to figure out the formatting etc. But anyway, it's out now, thank God. It is a lighthouse book with a difference. It tells the story of lightkeeping in Ireland from 1786 to 1972 through the fatalities that occurred to Irish Lights personnel and their families while on duty. In case that sounds like 'unrelenting gloom' as one publisher mentioned to me, I have tried to write the book in an entertaining manner, as much as the subject matter allows. All of the cases in the book - which are presented chronologically - are the ancestors o...

  For the Day After National Poetry Day, a poem from D.J. O'Sullivan, lightkeeper, field-naturalist, ornithologist, scientist, contributor of articles to national newspapers and poet. It is simply called Arranmore and is taken from his 1947 anthology entitled Lightkeeper's Lyrics. It is not about a lighthouse at all, more of a political discourse from a nature expert. Having just returned from a week on Arranmore, I can confirm that the nature still abounds on the island, though I wouldn't know a cushat from a Jew's-harp beetle. Bright sunbeams gleam 'twixt flouncing waves, The Jew's-harp beetle sparkles blue: Where gnarl éd gorse shows armour'd leaves A spider's web is dinked with dew. The mist-bow o'er the stream glints red, A brassy, brazen, brilliant tone That flickers ochreous to lead, Becomes nimbused, then nimbly gone. Roan heifer noses through the hedge Sweet honeysuckle bordering near; The sunning ass, upon the hedge, Half wakes to twitch fl...

Beautiful mid-twentieth century watercolour by Ursula Spry of Lighthouse Island and Mew Island. Not sure if this was painted from the large Copeland Island or the mainland For a bit of light reading recently, I picked up a book called Proceedings 1888 by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Weighing in at nearly 600 pages, it is basically the story of what the IME did during that year and appears to be an annual publication. Chapters have titles like "Irrigating Machinery on the Pacific Coast," "Experiments on the Friction of a Collar Bearing" and "Riveted Joints Series XIV," the last of which seems particularly riveting. But, in amongst these nuggets, the IME seem to have held their July meeting in Dublin and William Douglass, who gave us so many fin-de-siecle lighthouses, including the Fastnet, contributes a piece on "Mew Island Lighthouse," four short years since it was first established. Now, although I love lighthouses, I'm not t...

1835 drawing of the first Fanad Head lighthouse taken from the Ordnance Survey memoir to accompany the 1st edition OS map I wrote a short piece on the original Fanad Head (aka Fannet Point aka Lough Swilly) lighthouse three years ago. My total sum of knowledge consisted of a short paragraph on the CIL website and a rather charming pre-1886 charcoal drawing of the lighthouse that adorns the office space at the base of the current tower. However, I recently was able to pick up a copy of Sean Beattie's wonderful " The Book of Inishtrahull" and it really is the book that keeps on giving. In it, Sean quotes from some of the Ordnance Survey reports about the island and, emboldened by the detail therein, I managed to get a hold of a copy of "The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland - Parishes of county Donegal Part 1 1833-35." Basically, when the 1st Edition OS mapping was taking place, the Duke of Wellington - whom I always picture as Stephen Fry in Blackadder III - ...

This is the final instalment of Irish lighthouses on which construction began but never finished, unless of course somebody comes up with one that I have overlooked. As we have seen so far, the Capel Island lighthouse was well under construction when Ballycotton and Mine Head got the nod. And the Kish pile light was also nearing completion when a fierce storm put paid to all their efforts.  CIL map showing the location of the Coningbeg Rock, basically the outermost of a nasty little group of rocks lying south of the Saltees, which themselves lie south of Kilmore Quay on the south Wexford coast. Basically, a simplification of the first map. This area of the coast was known as the graveyard of a thousand ships and these rocks were known as the headstones. Mor and Beg in English are of course Big and Little. The Big Coning is constantly above the high water mark but Little Coning isn't. The Coningbeg lighthouse didn't get anywhere near the level of completion of the first two me...

  Lying in bed with the Covid, not really relishing pulling all the information for Wannabe lighthouse No 3, I thought I'd post up here an anonymous poem I found in the Tralee Chronicle of 16th February 1875. I appreciate it is not really lighthouse-related but, having written about lighthouse deaths, it strikes a chord with the lonely boatmen going out at night to look for victims of known shipwrecks, a very common practice considering the amount of drownings suffered off our coasts for many years. Drowned The flashing lighthouse beacon pales before The ruddy harvest moon's intenser ray That bathes, and changes into sparkling ore Its stones of granite grey. A single boat steals down the moonlit track. Through the still night, its oar-strokes echo far; Fringed with cleft light, the outline sharply black Heaves on the harbour bar. What strange freight fills it? Yonder heavy sail Covers some form of blurred and shapeless dread; Rude is the pall, but fitted well to veil The ocean...