Pete's Irish Lighthouses

  A short film of the ILV Granuaile by the brilliant Nick fro Holywood who produces the Irelandscapes series of films. Film shot August 2021 off the coast of coast of Antrim. A beautiful short film, many thanks to Nick, for the above video, taken off the Antrim coast of the Granuaile which has been in the service of Irish Lights since 2000, the latest in a long line of ILTs, stretching back to the 1860s, when Irish Lights stopped getting a lend of the Trinity House tender and got their very own one. The Granuaile is the third such tender of that name. A very academic search of Wikipaedia reveals a list of previous tenders: - Princess Alexandra  (1863–1904) Tearaght  (1892–1928)         Moya  (1893–1905)      Ierne  (1898–1954)          Alexandra  (1904–1955)          Deirdre  (1919–1927)         Nabro  (1926–1949)         Is...

  Nine years since I passed this little phallic beauty on a murky evening on my way to the Fastnet, I viewed it again from the western end of Long Island on a gloriously bright morning in late May. No, it isn't a lighthouse but oh, there were many calls for it to be lit back in the day, led by the Skibbereen Eagle and the Cork Constitution . Due to the incredible amount of shipwrecks in Roaringwater Bay due to the too-high placement of the 1818 light on Cape Clear, the Ballast Board finally got off their collective arses and decided to do something about it. What they did was to place a light, not on the Alderman Rocks at the entrance of Crookhaven Harbour, but on the north side of the harbour on Rock Island, where it neither lit the Alderman Rocks, nor could be seen by transatlantic vessels heading east or west. At least, according to the papers, who were scathing in their criticism of the siting of the light. So vitriolic was the criticism, that it only took the Board a mere 14...

The original lighthouse at Fannet Head in Donegal, serving from St. Patricks Day 1817 to 1886 when the tower was knocked and the new, current tower erected. It was a twin of the lighthouse on Mutton Island in Galway Okay, this post is not really lighthouse related but its a good story and it made me laugh, despite myself. And there's no harm reiterating the Health and Safety lesson. On 23rd September 1848, the Hampshire Telegraph reported: - A few days ago, as William McCall was fishing near Fannet lighthouse , he caught a small sole fish and, finding it troublesome, put its head into his mouth for the purpose of killing it when, singular to relate, the fish extricated itself from its hold and leaped into his throat. His brother, happening to be near, endeavoured to relieve him but without success. Death from suffocation put an end to his sufferings in a few minutes.

The Tuskar Rock lighthouse c.1906 from the Commissioner of Irish Lights archive in the National Library of Ireland   A few days ago I posted this snippet up on Facebook from the Wexford Conservative 1835 You see, this is my interpretation of the story and it differs very much from the author of the article, not that I'm in the habit of arguing with people who are long dead. There is no way that Mr. Lynn would have used his own boat to row from Tuskar to Rosslare and back to fetch provisions. Every offshore lighthouse had a tender "belonging to the lighthouse" paid for by the lighthouse service and tendered out to one particular individual, invariably a local boatman. This boatman would row over to the lighthouse with a hand-picked crew - normally between two and six - on a pre-arranged day, once, maybe twice a week to hand over provisions, mail etc. Occasionally, there would be adhoc requests - if clothes were needed on the rock, say, the keeper's wife might ask to g...

I'm the sort of person who lives a holiday before they actually go on it. I like to prepare for the unforeseen. It all stems from driving five hours up to Lisbon from the Algarve one time, to do something different, and I'd done no research and the internet was only accessed from the pc, and we got to Lisbon and didn't know what to do or what the sights were. So we had our lunch in a bus station and drove back again, much to my wife and kids' disgust. Ever since then, I have researched thoroughly my destinations, in case I miss something dead interesting and kick myself later. So, at the end of May, just prior to our annual walking break - this year it was based in Ballydehob in West Cork - I was looking at an Old Ordnance Survey map of the area (the Last Edition 1888 - 1913) and what should I come across, barely a half a mile from where we were staying? -  To be fair, not only had I never heard of a lighthouse in Ballydehob, I'd never even suspected that the very p...

Before he retired, lightkeeper Tux Tweedy, the last of his profession to serve at the famous Hook Head lighthouse, did a great deal of research into the history of that ancient edifice. Among other things, and with the help of CIL archivist, Frank Pelly, he compiled a list of keepers that served there, the earliest of which was a man called Daniel Kirwan, whom Tux dated to c.1810. The Commissioner of Irish Lights has a comprehensive list of keepers dating from the early part of the twentieth century but the further back one goes in lighthouse history, the scarcer the names become. The names of keepers from the early part of the nineteenth century are rare indeed - I have only come across a handful  - and so Tux's list is extremely important in the annals of our maritime beacons.  Hook Tower c.1830 I recently came across a two-part article entitled "A Visit to the Tower of Hook" in the Wexford Independent from the 8th and the 12th April 1865. It is a very engaging (and ve...