Lightkeepers and guns

Skellig Upper light

It can be surmised that many lightkeepers on Irish coasts owned guns, particularly in the real old days when families lived on offshore rocks and islands and needed to shoot wildlife to supplement their diet of tinned food. The bird reports submitted to Barrington by keepers in the latter half of the nineteenth century contain many examples of birds sent to the ornithologist that had been expertly shot by the keepers. Rabbits were another source of nutrition. John Crowley shot a 'sea monster' (probably a basking shark) with a shotgun off Mutton Island in 1935. And so on.
It was inevitable, therefore, that the odd accident should occur involving guns, though maybe not so many have come to light as may be imagined. (I'm not talking about fog guns, which were extremely dangerous and resulted in many serious injuries at places like the Tuskar, Rathlin Island and aboard the Princess Alexandra. As well as causing severe deafness in a lot of keepers) 

In November 1858, the Tralee Chronicle reported that 'a fine, young lad', the son of the head lightkeeper of the upper lighthouse, on Skellig Michael, John Reilly, had been severely injured in a shooting accident. The boy, who was unnamed, had taken a gun and gone off to shoot rabbits. On descending a cliff, he had thrown down his gun in front of him in order to better negotiate the descent when the gun went off. The charge exploded into the lad's wrist and tore away all the flesh on his arm up to his armpit. As was not unusual in those days, it took four days for the relief boat to come out and bring him back to the mainland where proper medical treatment was administered.

(John Reilly himself may well have been the victim of gun crime seven years later when he disappeared from the South Wall in Dublin after a night's carousing and bragging about his quarterly pay he had collected from the Ballast Board offices that morning. His body was never found.)

In August 1867, John Murray, assistant keeper at Oyster Island and Blackrock, landed by boat at Rosses Point and went to retrieve his gun. As the Sligo Independent reported, the tricker (sic) was pulled, and the gun went off, a small portion of the shot lodging in Mr Murray's side and carrying off a portion of the hip bone, a typical hurling injury. A Mayo man, John went on to become PK at Eagle Island and many other lighthouses.

The two Oyster Island lighthouses in Sligo Bay

The Belfast Newsletter, in its 15th April 1938 edition, reported that an accident occurred when two keepers, Martin Boyle (351) and William James (poss. 350*), went out shooting from Rathlin East lighthouse. The paper reported that James had a rifle. The men came across a disused house and James handed the rifle to Boyle while he crawled through a gap. When done, Boyle handed the rifle, butt first, to his fellow-AK, whereon it went off, the bullet penetrating Boyle's wrist and lodging in his thigh. One might surmise he said Damn! or Tarnation! and he could be forgiven for so doing. The paper said he travelled three miles on a bicycle to get the help of a nurse resident on the island, before being transferred to Dalriada Hospital in Ballycastle.

The one good thing about automation is that it has hopefully put an end to lightkeepers accidentally shooting themselves.

* The official Irish Lights list of keepers at Rathlin Island lighthouse (and Rue) was

There were over 80 lighthouses around the coast. One suspects somebody was acting the maggot arranging for three Jameses to be stationed at Rathlin East.