Oh my Glosh! Signalling Black Rock Mayo.

I always thought this building looked very angry when viewed from certain angles, as if practising for when Napoleon's army/navy hove around Achill, hoping to make land in the calm waters of Blacksod Bay.

It is of course one of the 82 Napoleonic signal towers erected around the south-east, south, west and north coasts of Ireland after the French landed at Bantry Bay and at Kilcummin near Killala, county Mayo in 1798. The northeast of Ireland obviously didn't really matter much. Or maybe the money ran out. 

The towers were built within sight of each other so that each tower could signal with a flag and ball to the next one. Fires would be lit in case His Emperorship was sighted. Badly paid members of the militia were detailed to man the towers and keep their eagle eyes out to sea. Of course, these places were, as was their nature, completely remote and located at the top of a long steep hill. It is said that, after a week or so, the badly-paid militiamen said, Sod this for a game of soldiers and didn't bother looking out. Napoleon never came. The towers, because of their exposed position, quickly fell into disrepair and they are now in varying stages of ruination.

The tower at Glosh in county Mayo is one of the better ones. It is a highly des res and is fully air-conditioned with views to die for. It is located at the southwestern end of the Mullet peninsula, looking out to Achill and the Inishkeas and the Duvillauns and you're probably guessing that the reason that I'm featuring it in a lighthouse blog is that it once served as a lighthouse.

Sadly, no, though it could easily, with a lantern on top, have marked the northern entrance to Blacksod Bay. However, another of the islands it looks out over is Blackrock, county Mayo, one of Ireland's remotest lighthouses and famed for its record-breaking marooning of keepers, especially in the 1940s and 1950s. The little triangle on the horizon in the photo above is Blackrock (or Black Rock) - Irish Lights varies from one to the other - around eight miles off the coast.

In the days before radio-telephone, which came very late to Irish Lights, semaphore was the only means of communicating messages from remote rock islands. Flares would be lit and fires sometimes burnt to indicate emergencies and certain flags would be hoisted to transmit generic messages such as 'Running short of cigarettes' or 'Where's the bleedin' boat?' but for the ordinary day to day messages ('Tell Jim his wife has run off' or 'Bill's dog got run over,') semaphore was the norm.
 

At a prearranged time, the lightkeepers would stand in front of the white-painted lighthouse on Blackrock and signal to the keeper ashore who would be in front of the tower at Glosh. You needed a bright background, so I'm presuming the gaping holes in the Glosh tower are relatively recent, or the paddles held by the signaller wouldn't have stood out. Then the man in Glosh would signal, his paddles going like the table-tennis bats of the World number one, 'Did you hear the one about the hoor in the Vatican?' This would be read by one of the keepers on the rock through a telescope and written down by another. Then the reply would come and the keeper (or maybe a temp) at Glosh would read the expectant reply. 'Yes.'

It was of course very useful to the authorities during WW1 where keepers were instructed to take note of any real or imagined German activity and report it immediately to both Head Office in Dublin (via telegram) or to the local Coastguard office or Naval base. One imagines it would have been a bit of a hike from the tower at Glosh to the nearest Post office, wherever that was. Ted and Maureen Sweeney at Blacksod lighthouse operated a Post Office at the lighthouse for a time. There may have been one at Aghleam. They were certainly more plentiful than they are now.