The Arbuckle light at Donaghadee?

Donaghadee really is the lighthouse that keeps on giving.
The beautifully photogenic lighthouse at the end of the pier was constructed in 1836 and has very much become a symbol of the town. I was delighted to find mentions also of two other lighthouses in Donaghadee, one dating back to 1640, the other to the mid-1770s. This latter edifice was 'a small wooden tower lit by tallow candles.' If I were a real historian, I'd spend six months trawling through indecipherable ledgers in the National Library to confirm their existence but I have a real job, and grandchildren.

I wrote about the two ancient lighthouses here and it was noticeable that, whereas there were reasonably accurate dates for their establishment, there was no mention of their demise. Two months? Sixty years?

It was therefore of some interest when I was looking something up on PRONI (the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland) online recently and found a letter dated September 1791 from one James Arbuckle, a 'Collector of Donaghadee' petitioning Lord Hillsborough for a light at the end of the pier in the harbour. (PRONI ref - D607/B277)

This would seem to indicate that the mid-1770s light was no longer operational, poor thing, RIP.

It is unlikely that James Arbuckle collected normal things like fridge magnets. His address was the Custom House in Donaghadee. There were lots of things for an enterprising man to collect in Donaghadee, like Hearth Rolls and rent on the big estates. Probably customs dues as well. Arbuckle seems to have had his finger in a lot of pies, a phrase which leads me to Fatty Arbuckle, a huge star (in every sense) of the silent screen, who was cancelled at the height of his fame after a very nasty incident at a party. By subconscious association, therefore, I see James Arbuckle, the collector, as a large, rotund man. I doubt he was emaciated anyway.

Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (No idea who the man is)

He was also Superintendent of the Lighthouse in the Copelands, which wasn't quite the same as a lightkeeper. Basically, he was the middle man. The Commissioners for Barracks were responsible for lighthouses around our coasts from 1767 to 1796, when they were superceded by the Revenue Commissioners. Neither body cared about the day-to-day running of the lights, so superintendents were hired to recruit and pay keepers and basically respond to any issues that might arise.

Anyway, two months after his unanswered letter to Lord Hillsborough, he wrote again. (27th November 1791) (PRONI ref D607/B323)

'I wrote to your Lordship from Edinburgh at the latter end of September, requesting you would provide some distinctive light for the end of our pier, otherwise there would be great risk of losing some of our packets during the dark nights of this winter.

Not hearing from your Lordship, on this or any other head, I have (en attendant) been obliged to procure a large globe lamp from Belfast, but it don't at all answer, as the seamen cannot discriminate between it and the other town lights. Indeed they seem all to be of opinion  that there ought to be two lights, one on the pier and another on the beach of the bay, so that when the two come into one, it should be a direction to bear in between the rocks. Now, I think that the present lamp might answer for the secondary light on the beach opposite to the entrance of the harbour. As to the lamp at present at the end of the pier, the seamen say it does more hurt than good.'

Again, I see an enormously large, round man, holding up a similarly-shaped lamp in Home Store and More or some plush Belfast department store and saying, 'What do you think, darling? End of the pier?'

It is doubtful whether the second light ever materialised and whether the local seamen put up with the large globe (the light, not the man) for very long either.

In 1796. Mr Arbuckle complained to Lord Downshire that he was being superseded by Thomas Rogers as Superintendent of the light on Lighthouse Island, in the Copelands. In this year, the Revenue Commissioners took over control of all the lighthouses around the coast and had appointed Thomas Rogers to take care of all the minutiae, like building new ones, appointing and paying keepers etc. 

Also around this time, the Revenue Commissioners decided they would do some collecting themselves, leading to James Arbuckle complaining to any Lord in writing distance that he deserved compensation for loss of earnings. He spent a lot of energy on political intrigue, despite which, he was lauded in his obituary in 1823, aged 90, as being the oldest Collector in His Majesty's service and the senior magistrate of county Down and held the 'esteem and regard of both the rich and poor by every exertion of benevolence in his power.' Yeah, right. His wife, the Lady Sophia Jocelyn survived him by three years.

When the Ballast Board took over the lighthouses from the Revenue Commissioners in 1810, poor Tom Rogers goose was cooked. But we'll come to him another time.