Pete's Irish Lighthouses

  As some of you will know, I started to write a book on Eagle Island several years ago. Many people gave generously of their time to help me and the book was to all intents and purposes, finished by the autumn of 2023.  That was the fun bit.  I hawked it around the usual publishers. Those who answered all agreed it was 'far too long.' So, no bother, I decided to self-publish. I got quite a shock, it being several years since the publishing of When the Light Goes Out to realise just how much printing and postage costs had risen in the intervening years. Nobody was going to buy a book by an amateur for the €30+ it would cost me to print it. Unless I pared it down. I started to do this, losing many of the beautiful photos I had been sent, losing whole chapters from shipwrecks to butterflies, but it was a hard slog as the formatting of the whole book changes every time you change a Word doc. In addition, I felt the book was becoming emasculated, just like the lighthouse of ...

Photo Damien Mcaleenan In early July 1851, a man called Mr Leslie, who was apparently the superintendent for the boring of the tunnel under the barracks, for the Great Southern and Western Railway Company - whatever that meant - purchased a diminutive little screw steamer called Witch . The boat, with a registered weight of only eight tons, had been built in Bristol and was intended to ply a coastal trade around the villages near Queenstown (Cobh) in Cork harbour. On 11th July, the Witch left Bristol in the hands of Mr Leslie and three seamen and that evening put into Swansea. The following morning, she left Swansea and reached Milford harbour. The next morning, the 13th, she left Milford with the intention of crossing over the Irish Sea but, upon sighting the coastline, a gale sprang up and they decided to head for Waterford. The wind however, which was coming from the northwest, had other ideas and blew her away from the harbour mouth back towards the Tuskar Rock off the southeast...