Pete's Irish Lighthouses

  A rather worrying report from a newspaper called the Cumberland Pacquet 4th October 1786. It is worrying in that the name of the unfortunate keeper is not mentioned, nor can I find out if indeed the keeper, evidently a male, was executed for his negligence.

  As part of the ALK'S AGM weekend in Belfast in October, we got the opportunity to visit Black Head lighthouse in county Antrim and access the lantern and balcony, courtesy of the good people in CIL. Black Head marks the northern entrance to Belfast Lough. Because of this important location, it is surprising that it was only established in 1902, although a short-lived cottage-style light was built on top of the hill above it in the 1660s. The reason for this is probably the presence of the two Maidens lights several miles north east, which were probably deemed adequate enough to signify where a ship was in relation to Belfast. It is obviously not a coincidence that when one of the Maidens was discontinued, Black Head was established. The lighthouse is accessed by way of a narrow 'high' road from the town of Whitehead (I kid you not) or by way of a path along the bottom of the cliffs from the same place. The path is great fun and probably better in rough weather, due to th...

  A navigation buoy, probably Foyle or Tuns, being brought ashore at the bottom of Clarendon Street, Derry for maintenance & cleaning around the 1960s. Photograph courtesy John McCarron I can cheerfully admit that I know very little about buoys. David Bowie once told me that they keep swinging and always work it out but that's about the extent of my knowledge. Buoy maintenance is so far from my sphere of understanding that those employed in the field would probably regard me with scorn and / or pity. However, I know enough to know that if you got a belt from the buoy in the wonderful picture above, you'd know about it. Actually, you probably wouldn't know about it. The point is, those things look pretty managable when they're in water but gigantic out of it. The series of photographs below were sent to me by Chris Kates, a descendant of both the Fortune and the Jeffers dynasty of lightkeepers. The photographs show how buoys were rounded up, lassooed and broken in ba...

Goats at Ballycotton August 2022 "In view of the difficulty experienced at many lighthouse stations in obtaining supplies of fresh milk for young children, the Commissioners desire to draw the attention of their Lightkeepers to the desirability of keeping goats wherever practical." So begins an Irish Lights memo to staff, dated 25th September 1918. It goes on to recommend the Anglo-Nunian and the Toggenberg breed to keepers, rather than the 'ordinary Irish goat' because the milk yield is higher and they give milk for ten months of the year. However, the excited keeper is warned, goats of the better class (I kid you not) aren't nearly as hardy as the 'ordinary Irish goat' and at the first sign of a chill wind they start complaining that they want to be stall-fed. Keepers, said the memo, who are finding it difficult finding a good stud goat in the vicinity, should write to the Honorary Secretary of the Irish Goat Society in Trillick, county Tyrone, who presu...

  The above painting is entitled "The Irish brigantine Sligo and other vessels in rough weather below Eagle Island, county Mayo," which is not quite as snappy as The Kiss or The Scream. He may have been a decent enough painter (he had to have been to have painted that picture with the boat bobbing up and down like it was on a spring) but Admiral Richard Brydges Beechey - the artist - had a lot of work to do on title length. RBB was an artist of note, as was his father, Sir William Beechey who was a celebrated portrait painter and also fathered eighteen children, not necessarily at the same time. Followers of Arctic maritime history will know that Beechey Island was the last resting place of two of the crew of the ill-fated Franklin expedition to discover the North West passage. The island was named for Sir William by another of his many sons who was a lieutenant on one of Parry's Arctic voyages. Junior Beechey entered Naval College in 1825 and was part of the maritime sur...