The Kish lightship in the first decade of the twentieth century. To me this looks like the Cormorant but, hard to believe, I have been wrong in the past. Lightships were painted black until the 1950s, when red got the contract.
Back to 1902, the lightship on the Kish Bank, just outside the entrance to Dublin harbour, gained headlines worldwide when, on 8th
September of that year, she was sunk by the Royal Mail Steamer Leinster in
dense fog. Neither party saw the other until a collision was unavoidable and
the lightship – The Albatross – was practically split in two by the
force of the collision.
The seven men aboard the stricken lightship – William Daly (Master),
seamen William Duff, Patrick Langan, Michael Crowe, George Warren and Joseph
Pluck and the carpenter, John Day – had been on board about a week and calmly
and quickly lowered the lifeboat and rowed away. They were picked up by the
Leinster and brought to Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire), seemingly none the worse for
their experience. The lightship sank within minutes. It was eventually salvaged
and sold off.
One of the rescued men was William Duff. He lived in 4, Northumberland
Place, Kingstown and his main role on board he lightship – now the Shearwater,
as the Albatross was otherwise engaged in submarine activities – was as a lamp trimmer. He had
been on the Kish for twenty of his fifty years.
The Shearwater was a relatively new addition to the fleet having
been built in 1894 at a cost of £3,900.
According
to his wife, Margaret, William’s nerves had got the better of him since the contretemps
with the Leinster. He had told her that he never would get the better of
the shock, although on Sunday morning 12th October, he seemed to be
in perfect health as he left Kingstown to rejoin the lightship. He and the rest
of his shift had actually been due to relieve the other crew on the Saturday
but the weather had been too bad.
His shipmate, Michael Crowe, who had also been on the Albatross
agreed that William appeared to be in very good health on that Sunday and
certainly made no reference to anything ailing him. The two men were winding up
the weights of the revolving light at around 9.45pm when suddenly William cried
out and fell down dead. Michael called the officer in charge and the two of
them attempted resuscitation, to no avail. The body was subsequently brought ashore
and taken to St. Michael’s Hospital, Kingstown.
A post mortem examination found that the deceased had an enormous
enlargement of the liver coupled with ‘a flabby heart.’ Liver disease was
entered as the cause of death. It was an unremarkable death, now long-forgotten, for an unremarkable seaman who had given his life to the lightships.
As
for the R.M.S. Leinster, she continued to ply her trade between Holyhead
and Kingstown until a few short weeks before the Armistice in 1918, when she
was sunk by two torpedoes from a German U-boat. There was no passenger list but, thanks to the efforts of Philip Lecane, we know that there were 567 named
people killed, making it by far Ireland’s worst maritime disaster.
The tragedy happened as the Leinster was passing the Kish lightship.
Hi Peter, just wanted to thank you for telling me about this, and I have passed the information on to the rest of the family. William and Margaret were my great grandparents, so it means a lot to us all to know what happened to him. Thank you, Marie.
ReplyDelete