Buoys keep swinging (across the Atlantic)

(This is a little piece what I writ for Lamp 140 a few months ago, and they somehow agreed to publish it. Lamp is the journal of the Association of Lighthouse Keepers and you don't have to be a keeper to join.)

The girl from Ipanema may well go walking but, it appears, the buoy from Louisiana may well give her a run for her money. I am well aware that that sentence will not work as well in America due to their different pronunciations.
The saga began in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina rampaged through the Gulf of Mexico and caused major devastation to the southern US states. One of its victims was an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, whose location needed to be marked. A company called Wet Tech Energy, then based in Lafayette LA, were contracted to manufacture a buoy to mark the spot. This they did and, in 2006, the buoy, affectionately named 3372899399, was placed in position and moored.

According to Todd Carl, operations manager with Wet Tech, the company realised it was missing on a regular tour of inspection in 2007. Evidently, it broke its moorings and began its wanderings on the ocean blue. One could say that the story started with Katrina and the waves.

For seventeen years, nothing more was learned of the fate of their beloved 399. Todd doubtless managed to pick up his life and continue as best he could. The old place in Lafayette evidently held too many memories, so the company relocated to Youngsville.

But then, in early April 2024, he was contacted by a man called Owen J Dunbar of Ballymoney, county Wexford on the southeastern shoreline of Ireland. 3372899399 had washed up on the beach there after seventeen years adrift.

I heard about the buoy being washed ashore here at Seafield beach in Ballymoney, said Owen, and I managed to see a serial number on it and the name of the company, Wet Tech, who are from Youngsville, Louisiana. Ever since 2007, the buoy has been on the Gulf Stream, or the North Atlantic Drift, as it is called. So its probably not the first time that it passed the Irish coast because the Gulf Stream is like a washing machine that keeps going round and round. As one might expect from spending seventeen years in a washing machine, the buoy is very clean but all the colour has been washed out of it.

The artist formerly located at Sub-sea well, Block 195

Owen got in touch with Todd and told him the joyous news. He also contacted the local news group, Broussard-Youngsville Local News (BYLN) who relayed the tidings to the  population of Louisiana

Owen, though, was worried. Storm Kathleen was about to break on the Wexford shoreline and it was entirely possible that the sea might try to reclaim what it regarded as rightfully her’s. Prayers were said and a candlelight vigil took place, though it didn’t work too well in the gale-force winds. As it happened, the storm only succeeded in pushing 399 further up the beach.

On Aprill 11^th, according to their website, BYLN met with Todd Carl, operations manager, and Paul Anderson, vice president of operations at Wet Tech. Anderson informs BYLN that this morning, he received a request from Aidan Bates, a dedicated marine officer with the Wexford coastline, who is working to move the buoy. Bates has requested a drawing of the buoy to know where the lifting eyes are, a crucial detail for the removal process.

At time of writing, the buoy is still there on the beach, although some lovely person or persons has already removed the solar light from its top. Its fate seems to be that it will be removed from the beach, whether by land or by sea. Todd is apparently too emotionally drained to want it back and locals have been speculating about its future. A feature on a local roundabout, perhaps? A beachside pedestal with an information plaque? Maybe it could even be used as a buoy?

Or, as one local remarked, if there was another one, it would make a nice pair of earrings.

All photos of the Ballymoney buoy courtesy Owen J. Dunbar

Since that article was published, I have learnt that the Ballymoney buoy was not the first transatlantic visitor to our shores. I came across this article in an old Beam magazine about a similar buoy that quit America at around the same time as Owen Dunbar's baby. It washed ashore from the eastern seaboard of the US at Furbo, co. Galway.

And, prior to that, around 1991, a US Coastguard Buoy washed up in Killala. For some reason, the Americans didn't feel like sending out a boat to bring it back so it lay in a field for nearly twenty years, warning cows of the dangerous rocks. Then, in 2010, Mayo County Council took it in, gave it a bath and some clean clothes and installed it in position near the Black Rocks at the entrance to Killary Harbour.

The Killala Buoy tried working on land but the sea was always in his blood (photo Tim Ryan)

In 2016, an eco-houseboat from Newfoundland washed up on the Mullet peninsula in Mayo, having apparently broke her moorings in Canada. Inside they found a handwritten note from the owner donating it to a homeless person. It was, however, in not quite the same condition as the picture below.

And in 2019, a US Coastguard boat made a sudden appearance between Doolin, co. Clare, and Inis Oirr, co. Galway, looking rather the worse the wear after being in the washing machine for some time. Judging by the length of the goose barnacles on it, it had been several years adrift.

Life on the Fastnet, 1956 style

The Fastnet and the little Fastnet (aw, isn't he cute?)

A blast from the past from the Irish Examiner 7th January 1956. The author of the piece is Youghal attendant Andrew Coughlan. There were Coughlans on the Fastnet almost from the very start in 1854.

 

1906 Accessing the Fastnet (NLI)

Like a Roundstone cowboy

 

The old cowboy in the corner of the Roundstone saloon spat in the vague direction of the spittoon and drained his whuskey.

"The round stone?" he asked. "What would a feller like you be wanting with the round stone?"

I explained that I researched lighthouses and navigational beacons and I had heard legends about an old round stone in this part of Connemara.

"Ah, I could tell you all about the round stone," my newly-found friend whispered hoarsely, "but my throat is desperate dry."

After I had replenished his beverage, he began his tale.

"Here in Roundstone, we talk about Before Nimmo and After Nimmo. Alexander Nimmo, came over from Scotland. Couldn't understand a word he said and he had no Gaelic, not even Scot's Gaelic. Before he came, there was only a few houses dotted up and down the coast and a bit of a harbour for the boys to fish out of..."

"He built the lighthouse at Dunmore East too," I interjected.

"That he did, and a lot of roads and piers and bridges around the country too, though mainly in Galway and Mayo. Didn't build a lighthouse here, though. Could've done with one. Fierce hardworking man. I remember passing him by and he digging out foundations for the pier here, all on his lonesome, and the sweat dripping off him."

"That would have been around 1822 to 1824," I said, somewhat doubtfully. 

"Aye, you could be right, about that time. Great man he was too."

"And the round stone?"

"I'm coming to that. Before Nimmo, you see, there was nothing except rocks and islands and inlets. The lads'd go out fishing and when they were coming in again, they couldn't tell one place from another, so they'd end up in Glynsk or Letterfrack or anywhere. One lad ended up with three different families all along the coast. Every time he put out to sea, he couldn't find his way back and ended up settling in another spot..."

"That's all by the way until in 1678, a man by the name of Roderic O'Flaherty came here. He was a bit like you, baldy-headed and not very good-looking but he could read and write like the duvvle."

"You remember him, I suppose?" I asked, somewhat sarcastically.

"Little Roddy? Yes, course I do. Fierce nice chap except when you needed a drink. Anyway, Roddy noticed there was a big round stone at the entrance to Roundstone Bay. Not on the Inishnee side, mind, on the western end. And he was in this very saloon one night and he says out loud, 'Boys, when yous are coming back from fishing, why don't you look for the big round stone at the entrance of the harbour? That way, you'd know where you were.' He said it in Irish, mind - Cuan na cloiche runta, the bay of the round stone. And the boys looked at him like he was Elijah coming down from the mountain. And that's how the town got its name."

"I thought it was Cloch na Rón, the rock of the seal?"    

"Ah, so they say, but they weren't there at the time."

"And what happened to this round stone?" I enquired.

"Ah, its still there. Sure, who's going to move it? Go down to the monastery and on the right you'll see a gate. Follow the monastery wall until you come out in a field with a herd of cows in it ready to be driven up to Wyoming and you'll see the round stone just offshore. Now there was talk of another drink but sure ..."

1st edition OS Map

Last edition OS map

Cape Clear light and some of its keepers

On far Cape Clear did George Halpin a copper dome erect,

but frequent mischt and dreary cloud ensured its beam was fecked.

So began the first draft of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epic poem Xanadu, which eventually deteriorated into some tat about Kubla Khan and his summer palace.

The lighthouse was established here in 1818 to ensure that transatlantic ships knew where the southwestern corner of Ireland was and didn't attempt to continue their voyages overland. It was very much a twin of the lighthouse on Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands in Galway Bay. Both were built in the same year; they look remarkably similar; both had a keeper called Richard Wilson for many years; both were built too high; and both were eventually extinguished in 1854 when a light was established on a nearby offshore island.

With such an early demise, we don't really know very much about the light, except that the outside still looks in remarkably good condition after 170 years. Thankfully, we have a description of it written in 1835, or halfway through its lifespan, by the son of the keeper, also called Richard Wilson.

It is a circular tower of cut granite, he wrote, in the Dublin Penny Journal of 7th March 1835, the workmanship of which is remarkably well executed. It is about 36 feet high from the base to the balcony which surrounds the lantern and, from high-water mark, 448 feet. On the inside are three flights of winding stone steps. The floors are very curiously constructed, being formed of large stones - the centre one, which is circular, supported by those adjacent, into which it is grooved and lead in the interstices.

In the upper part, or lantern, are 64 panes of the best plane glass, of near a quarter of an inch in thickness; the frame in which the glass is placed, is metal, with copper screwed over. The cupola, or roof, is copper, painted white and ornamented with a weather-cock.

The light is produced by 21 lamps, which are placed in the foci (focuses) of large parabolic reflectors. They are of copper with silver fronts, the whole of which are supported by a branch which revolves by machinery, much resembling a clock but on a large scale. This is enclosed in a brass-pannelled case and put in motion by a metal of three hundredweight.

The light appears once in every two minutes and is seen at a distance of six or seven leagues. From its brightest point, it gradually becomes less luminous until it is eclipsed.. On average 750 gallons of spermaceti oil are consumed.

Annexed to the tower by a corridor, or hall, is a square tower which was formerly occupied by a naval lieutenant and a midshipman with a party of soldiers. The assistant lightkeeper resides in it at present and the principal is in a dwellings built by the Ballast Board convenient to the tower. There are out-houses and yards  and the whole is enclosed by a perimeter wall with a gate opening to the road that leads to South Harbour.

From the description above, I would suggest that the lighthouse in Cape Clear, before its lantern was removed, looked remarkably like the lighthouse above. The only difference is possibly that Wicklow Head High lighthouse (also established in 1818) might have an extra storey - four winding staircases, rather than the three mentioned above. It even seems to have a corridor joining the tower to the dwellings, like Cape Clear.

As for the keepers promised in the title, well, records for keepers get scarcer and scarcer the further back in time you go and the first half of the nineteenth century is a veritable desert of blank squares on my XL spreadsheet. But we have a couple!

I have written about the aforementioned Robert Wilson in two posts, the second of which describes his time on Cape Clear. He was there in 1828 and was still there in 1854 when the light was extinguished and also in 1858 when he died. As I have no keepers listed for the first ten years of the light, every other keeper must have been his assistant.

This naturally includes poor Carty who, it seems from the reports, appears to have been bullied by Wilson into changing from catholic to protestant. He was definitely there in 1845 and probably there in 1843. I wonder if he ever found his first name.

Anthony Hicks was stationed there in the first half of the 1830s. In his early years, he had been a printer in Dublin. By 1858, he was coming to an end and would retire if he could, he said. He was probably one of the first keepers on Eagle Island when it opened in 1835, though he was transferred to Inishowen in 1837, where he spent 25 years.

The Calwell lists - the lists that keep on giving - indicate that John Butler's first posting was to Cape Clear around 1834 or 1835. Quite possibly, he took over when Anthony Hicks left for Eagle. Born with the century, Cape Clear was his first posting and then went to Inis Mor on the Aran Islands, possibly in 1840 when the two keepers there were drowned. He later served at Ferris Point before moving to Greenore in late 1861. He retired in March 1867, aged about 67.

George Brownell was also at Cape Clear some time early on in his lighthouse career. He started a dynasty of lightkeepers that continued well into the twentieth century. He would later serve at Duncannon, Haulbowline, the Maidens, Kinsale, Roancarrig, Poolbeg, Beeves and South Rock.

Many thanks to Elizabeth Doyle for maintaining and protecting this historic building in the face of enormous apathy from the council, government and Irish Lights down through the years. It is eight years since I was there last. Time for another visit, I reckon.