The intelligent Henry Thomas Murphy and his French-speaking wife

Mine Head lighthouse, county Waterford, Ireland's highest lighthouse. The lantern is 285 feet above sea level

Henry Thomas Murphy (Service no 97) was a Donegal man from Falcarragh, born to a coastguard on 15th July 1868. He joined Irish Lights in April 1892 and, after 2 years at the Baily, he was off on his travels. He was in Slyne Head in 1899 and on the Spit Bank in Queenstown (Cobh) in 1901 and 1903. He was made PK in August 1905 and was in Rockabill for the 1911 Census. Shortly thereafter he was in Mine Head and was moved to Haulbowline in December 1916. He was still there in mid-1918 but was back at Queenstown by February 1919.

In 1903 he had married Susan Gertrude Crowley, daughter of a shopkeeper from Kilrush in county Clare. According to the 1911 Census, they had three children together before 1911, all of whom died. One Irish Lights record from 1918 indicates that he was married with no children.

Keeper's cottage, Mine Head

On the night of 14th January 1913, while Henry was at Mine Head lighthouse on the west  Waterford coast, the French barque, Marechal de Nouailles, got into trouble just off the coast. Henry immediately telephoned the lifeboat crew at Helvick Head and the rocket apparatus guys at Ardmore to tell them that their services would probably be needed and he would keep them up to date. Shortly after, the vessel dropped her anchor, the cable parted and she struck the rocks beneath the lighthouse. Henry immediately phoned the lifeboat crew at Helvick Head to tell them not to come out, as they would surely be capsized, the vessel being on the rocks.

The sea below the lighthouse

He then phoned Ardmore and told them to come to the lighthouse immediately as there was a good chance the crew could be saved. While waiting for them, he went down the cliff and 'burned lights' so the men on the boat knew that they had been seen and help was at hand. When the rocket guys arrived, they set to work but unfortunately the ropes fouled and they had to wait for morning to break to use the breeches apparatus. Eventually, all the men were rescued, including two with broken legs and they were conveyed to the lighthouse where every care and attention was given to the men by Henry and Susan, who seem to have been the only lighthouse personnel on duty, even though it was a three-keeper station in the wintertime. Two doctors had also arrived from Dungarvan and the French crew were soon patched up and despatched to hospital.

Tour of inspection 1905

The following year, Henry was presented with an oxidised silver medal and brevet of the First Class by a French Consular Official on behalf of the President of the French Republic. The consul was at pains to point out that the award was not for bravery or heroism but for the intelligence and devotion he displayed on the occasion of the wreck. He also thanked  the rocket guys and the doctors and the hospital, before singling out Mrs. Murphy for particular praise.

One would not expect, he said, at an isolated lighthouse like Mine Head, that a person would be got who could speak French but it so happened that, when the injured men were there, the doctors were able to find out what was wrong as, curious to relate, Mrs Murphy had a first-class knowledge of French and was able to interpret for the doctors to give first-class aid in consequence.

Some time between mid-1918 and February 1919, Henry took charge of the Spit Bank lighthouse in Cork Harbour, moving into 22, Roche's Row, Queenstown, behind the cathedral. Unfortunately, here he contracted the so-called Spanish flu (influenza), and, five days later, became the last of the four Irish lightkeepers to die of the epidemic. He was fifty years of age.

Childless and husbandless, the French-speaking Susan returned back home to Kilrush, where she died in 1937, aged 66.