In the 1880s Praeger became frustrated with the inconsistent nature of his work as a freelance engineer on various public schemes such as drainage projects and harbour development around Belfast. Meanwhile, he had become an accomplished naturalist and active member of the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club. It was obvious by this stage that his life’s work would in some way be dedicated to the study of Ireland’s natural environment. In 1888 he was unsuccessful in his application for a job in the National (then the Science and Art) Museum in Dublin. His desire to change direction from engineering to natural history was noticed by the curator of the museum, Robert Francis Scarff, who suggested that he apply for a position as an assistant librarian at the National Library. Although he had no qualifications or experience in this profession, he accepted Scharff’s advice that ‘librarianship was largely a matter of general knowledge and common sense’.1
Despite leaving the area of his youth, Praeger relished the move to Dublin, continuing his involvement with naturalists’ field clubs. He explained, ‘When I left the north in 1893, I exchanged the Belfast Club and Ulster for the Dublin Club and Leinster, Connaught and Munster.’(WW)
Working in Dublin at the National Library, Praeger was surrounded by the scientific institutions that allowed him to mix with all the key naturalists of his day. These included the Royal Dublin Society and the National Museum, both in the Kildare Street ‘just across the grass plot dominated by the uninspiring statue of Queen Victoria,’(PS) the Royal College of Science next door and the Royal Irish Academy in nearby Dawson Street. In fact, while resident in Belfast, he had already been elected a member of the Academy in 1892. He wrote, ‘for a young man interested in science, as I was, the situation was ideal’. His excitement was palpable. ‘It was an exhilaration and a delight to me to have my limited stock increased daily by fresh facts and fancies bearing on so many branches of knowledge.’(PS)
Praeger’s exploration of the provinces of Ireland was assisted by the fact that the network of small railways at that time was much more extensive than it is today, reaching to remote places such as Dingle, County Kerry; Lahinch, County Clare; Clifden, County Galway; and Letterkenny, County Donegal. He was able to catch a train to almost any part of Ireland to do his fieldwork. At that time the rules of the Civil Service were applied with a ‘wise liberality’, especially in the National Library. It was possible for Praeger to spend long weekends in the country, from lunch on a Friday till lunch on the following Monday. In this way he managed to travel for a total of 200 days in the field over the last five years of the nineteenth century, walking for more than 7,000 kilometres and recording wild plants in every county in Ireland for his monumental work, Irish Topographical Botany.
Praeger was modest in his accommodation needs and, if far from town or village, he would happily sleep in the open on a bed of soft heather or bracken. He shunned the large tourist resorts, which he considered should be, ‘evaded by humble-minded naturalists like myself, as suiting neither our pockets nor our temperament. Personally, I like a homely small hotel, where there are no gongs or waiters or pygmy coffee-cups; where your host is full of information about local matters, and the son of the house wants to sail you out to foamy skerries to see the seals and the seabirds’. (WW)
There are plenty of seals and seabirds on the south-east coast, which Praeger described thus: ‘The Irish coastline here at its flattest …. in Wexford great stretches of sand and gravel, backed sometimes by shallow inlets of the sea’.(WW) In fact, the beaches here are so extensive that they are often deserted even in the midst of summer. Streams of seabirds flew past me as I sailed around Carnsore Point. Ahead of me I could see the long, straight coast and the familiar outline of the Saltee Islands.
Lady’s Island Lake
One of the shallow inlets referred to by Praeger is Lady’s Island Lake, named after a Christian pilgrimage site on an island in the lake. As sea levels rose further following the end of the Ice Age, the mouth of the inlet was filled with a barrier of sand and gravel blocking off the tide. It is now known that the pressure from wave action does allow seawater to penetrate through this barrier, and the salt concentration in the lagoon changes from south to north. Places where freshwater and seawater mix are usually described as brackish, while natural lagoons such as this are relatively rare on Irish (indeed, European) coasts, as a consequence of which they have been given special legal protection under the EU Habitats Directive. A major national survey in the 1990s found over a hundred such habitats in the Republic, ranging from natural saline lakes to artificial lagoons cut off from the sea by roads or causeways. The unusual salinity conditions and frequent fluctuations in levels in these lagoons support a unique collection of plants and animals, but most of this is below the waterline, and therefore normally out of sight.2
At Lady’s Island Lake, the sand on the barrier itself is home to one of Ireland’s rarest flowering plants, cottonweed, which survives here precisely because of the instability of its habitat. I have been present here just after a large, tracked excavator opened a channel through the barrier, allowing lagoon water to pour out at low tide. This annual cutting is normally done in the late winter or spring, when water levels are highest. Standing on the edge of ‘the cut’ is a dangerous activity, as the sand can crumble at any time from the power of the water gushing out to sea. After a number of weeks, the gap is normally closed by the action of the sea on the shingle beach and the inlet becomes a lagoon again. This management is undertaken by the NPWS so that around April the islands in the lake are available but surrounded by water just in time for the return of the terns. These small migratory seabirds will have spent the winter in African waters and are here to breed. The islands in Lady’s Island Lake hold the largest colony of Sandwich terns in Ireland, at around 1,700 nesting pairs. The birds require extensive, sheltered, shallow waters with a supply of small fish to support young chicks and adults.3
I first visited these islands in the company of Clare Lloyd and the late Oscar Merne, both experts on all seabirds, as part of a study of migration and survival of the terns. Recent studies of the terns have shown that they are back in west African waters by October, principally on the coasts of Senegal, The Gambia and even as far south as Namibia. Their annual switch from one hemisphere to the other means that they live in an almost continual summer, something we would all like to do at some time.
Saltee Islands
West of Lady’s Island Lake there is a long, unbroken coastline of sand and shingle which also encloses the lagoon of Tacumshin. Arriving by sea at the small fishing harbour of Kilmore Quay is usually a pleasure, because the marina in one corner is welcoming and well run. On one occasion, the engine on my yacht broke down as I approached with my friend Karl Partridge and, because the channel outside the harbour is narrow and bordered by rocks, the local lifeboat was dispatched to tow us safely into a berth. From the harbour, Declan Bates runs a ferry service to the nearby Saltee Islands in his two boats, named after the razorbill and guillemot. Located close to major trading routes on the south and east coasts of Ireland, the islands became a base in previous centuries for pirates and smugglers who regularly plundered ships that were wrecked or driven ashore in storms. A common practice was to tie a lighted lantern to the horns of a grazing cow so that the moving light looked like a ship at sea, thus luring cargo ships onto rocks or beaches, where they were robbed. The caves on the south side of the island were an ideal location for hiding plundered goods.4
These islands have long held a fascination for ornithologists due to their large seabird colonies. Praeger described the larger of the two islands, Great Saltee, as ‘one of the most populous and interesting breeding grounds of sea-birds to be found in Ireland’. He recalled:
I made the acquaintance of the wonderful avifauna of the Saltees during a pleasant week in 1913, as one of a party of zoologists and botanists. The birdmen were desirous of studying the night-life of this populous city, so we disclaimed the clock and all its works, and came and went as suited us, by day or by night, sleeping on a wisp of hay on the floor of the farmhouse (and getting plenty of fresh air since half of the roof was gone) or out among the bracken on the hill-side.(WW)
I have slept in the same farmhouse, now restored and comfortable. As I recount in the introduction, I first went there in the 1970s as one of a party of biologists to study the seabirds, and I have been on many summer visits since. Apart from the condition of the farmhouse, the comparisons with Praeger’s time are stark. The island was still grazed during Praeger’s visit, and had been farmed since at least the 16th century until the family here took to smuggling as a more profitable business. The botanist Henry Hart visited in the 1880s and reported that ‘on this island which is partly cultivated there is a resident family. The Lesser Saltee is used as pasturage and contains but one cabin for the use of herd boys.’ There are still the remains here of stone-built circular platforms that were used for drying corn prior to threshing. The farmhouse was lived in by a family up to the 1940s, when they were forced to abandon farming. Great Saltee was later sold to the self-styled Prince Michael Neale, and his descendants still own this private sanctuary. In 1950 the Saltee Bird Observatory was founded here by Robert Ruttledge and John Weaving. Lying off the south-east coast of Ireland, it was an important stopping point for exhausted migratory birds arriving from the European continent in spring and awaiting favourable winds in the autumn.5
Praeger noted in 1913 that an interesting new seabird on the island was the fulmar, which had been first recorded breeding in Ireland only a few years earlier. By 2018, this oceanic species, which is closely related to the albatross family, was breeding all around the Irish coast with a population estimated at 33,000 pairs. Similarly, Praeger noted in 1913 that the gannet was another newcomer, and that ‘for some years now one or two pairs have bred on the Great Saltee’. By now the population of gannets here has expanded to reach almost 5,000 breeding pairs.6 On my recent visits, noise from their colonies was deafening and, as I sat at the top of steep cliffs on the south side of the island, the smell of their guano was equally impressive. The gannets are large and very noisy, with a constant patrolling of adults around the colony – a feast for all the senses. The Saltee Islands are also an important breeding site for grey seals. This assembly is known to exchange individual seals with other colonies in the Irish Sea, including some on the Welsh coastline. In the late summer, when moulting is underway, many hundreds of these animals haul out in the nearby Wexford Harbour.7
Hook Head
Sailing past the long, narrow promontory of Hook Head, the most obvious landmark is the squat lighthouse with its distinctive black-and-white rings. This is thought to be the oldest working navigational lighthouse in Ireland or Britain, dating originally from the 5th century, when it was little more than a fire stoked by monks in order to warn passing sailing vessels of the dangers of the rocks. When the Normans arrived in Wexford they built a fortress and watchtower in this strategic location. The present tower was built in 1172, and after 850 years it is still in excellent condition.8 When I visited the lighthouse, I went inside and climbed the stone steps to the top from where there is a wonderful view of the coasts of both Wexford and Waterford. The tower is four stories high and has walls that are up to four metres thick. Richard Taylor, who worked on servicing the lighthouse, remembers one particular keeper called Bill Hamilton. ‘Bill would have to pass my room on his way to wind the light – a mechanism that operated not unlike a grandfather clock, and which had to be seen to every 40 minutes. Bill’s yarns were so long that by the time he had finished one, it was time to wind up again.’9 Today Hook Lighthouse is open to the public and guides are on hand to explain the intricacies of running a lighthouse in previous centuries.
The bedrock at Hook Head consists of two types of sedimentary rock: old red sandstone and limestone. A band of sandstone runs across the peninsula from Broomhill to Carnivan. For centuries this was quarried at Herrylock to make millstones, water troughs and other useful objects. The limestone rock was burned in the many limekilns, some of which can still be seen on the peninsula. The lime powder which this produced was used to improve the quality of the soil. It was also mixed with sand to make lime mortar for building stone walls and houses. The point of Hook itself consists of beds of limestone with some of the best-preserved fossils that I have ever seen in Ireland. These include the casts of corals, crinoids (sea lilies), brachiopods (shellfish), bryozoans and starfish, remnants of marine life in a tropical sea some 350 million years ago.
The rocky shore and seabed here are popular dive sites for scuba divers. There are exposed intertidal reefs and subtidal reefs, typically strewn with boulders, cobbles and patches of sand and gravel. The reefs around Hook Head have species-rich, tide-swept marine communities in both the shallow and deep-water areas. The rocks below low water mark are covered with dense kelp beds. In the deeper waters there are many colourful encrusting animals, such as cushion sponges, with branching sponges and rose ‘corals’. Sea squirts and brittlestars add a bit of action to the seafloor. In gravel beds there are burrowing sea cucumbers. Rare seaweeds also add to the importance of Hook Head, which is now a protected European site.
A strong tidal flow passes the point of Hook Head, where it meets the outcoming tide from the large Waterford Estuary. Sailing up to Waterford City I was careful to catch the incoming tide, which carried my yacht along at a steady six knots. The wide waters are bordered by farmland sweeping down to small sandy coves or low rocky cliffs. On the Wexford side at Duncannon, a prominent headland composed of hard volcanic rock is the site of an impressive star-shaped fort that was built in 1568 in anticipation of an attack by the Spanish Armada. But the invasion of 1588 did not reach this area, and instead up to twenty-four Spanish ships were wrecked in storms off the west coast.
Dunmore East
Praeger must have felt that the coast of Waterford was underappreciated, as he devoted eight pages to it in his book The Way that I Went.
I have lingered over the Waterford coast because it is known to very few and is well worthy of being known better …. Flowery slopes, lofty cliffs and stacks and pinnacled islets with colonies of seabirds of many kinds as well as choughs, peregrines and ravens; and an illimitable glittering sea extending to the southward. You can follow the shore tolerably closely by road but walking along the breezy clifftop is the way to enjoy it properly. There are not many places to stay … but that is one of its charms, for it keeps it unchanged and unspoiled.
Today, there are plenty of places to stay in the holiday resort of Dunmore East, which lies on the opposite side of Waterford Harbour to Hook Head. There is no marina here as this is a busy fishing port, but some pontoons have recently been added to the north-west of the old lighthouse, and I tied up here for a short time with the harbourmaster’s permission. As I walked around the harbour, between the usual heaps of fishing nets and old boats, my attention was drawn to the cries of kittiwakes on nearby cliffs. These small seabirds breed under the park at Outer Harbour and off the sea wall at Black Knob due south of the lighthouse. They previously nested in the Inner Harbour and I once had the opportunity to investigate these cliffs closely, using a mechanical ‘cherry-picker’, as there was a problem with soil slippage and I was requested to map the cliff vegetation. The kittiwake nests are amazing constructions containing seaweed and grass, cemented to almost sheer rock with the bird’s own droppings. Many of the nests in the harbour colony also incorporate fragments of discarded fishing net. Because it does not rot, this synthetic netting material has accumulated layer upon layer over many years, and probably results in more stable nest platforms than would be usual in a more remote colony.10
While most of Ireland’s seabird populations are in a reasonably healthy state, kittiwake numbers have declined by over one-third since the 1980s, and breeding success has fallen markedly.11 Poor breeding performance has been linked to declines in food availability, which has also been explained by rising sea temperatures as a consequence of climate change. This may also be partly due to the reliance of the birds on small shoaling fish such as sand eels, sprat and young herring. The practice of pair-trawling of spawning inshore sprat has increased in recent years and, with a thriving herring fishery in the Celtic Sea, there are likely to be implications for the breeding success of Kittiwakes along these coasts.12 This is ironic, given the close proximity of the Dunmore East colony to the fishery harbour.
Tramore Bay
The seaside town of Tramore lies on a fine stretch of sand that is popular for swimming and surfing. Praeger knew the ‘line of steep dunes backed by salt-marsh running out from the eastern side and nearly cutting the bay in two. This is the home of some rare seaside plants such as Asparagus’.(WW) This wild ancestor of the popular vegetable is still present there today, although parts of the Backstrand at Tramore are now surrounded by artificial sea walls to prevent flooding of the town and neighbouring farmland. It is also the location of an old landfill dump that, from the 1970s on, threatened the conservation value of the shoreline for birds and plants. This dump has since been remediated and is now used as an amenity walkway. Remarkably, around 500 bee orchids were seen there recently, showing that nature can partially recover even in severely damaged habitats.
As compensation for the environmental damage caused by siting the town dump on the Backstrand, Waterford County Council was required by the European Court of Justice to create a new wetland habitat. Compensating for the loss of beaches and mudflats is a difficult challenge, but it is increasingly being addressed in other countries by a technique known as managed realignment. In many estuaries of Ireland tidal land was reclaimed from the sea in the 19th century by building sea walls and pumping the water out. In 2013 the Tramore Wetland Restoration Project began when part of the existing seawall was breached and several fields at Kilmacleague were inundated with seawater to produce 7.5 hectares of wetland habitat comprising mudflat, transitional salt marsh, upper saltmarsh and pioneer marsh.13
As I approached the wetlands with Bernadette Guest, Heritage Officer with Waterford City and County Council, a large flock of curlews rose from the margins, calling loudly, while some lapwings stood peacefully on the new mudflats. Aside from compensatory habitat creation, the Tramore wetland restoration project is the first example of managed realignment in Ireland. This is a management tool for estuarine habitat, whereby sections of flood defences are moved inland to create or restore intertidal habitat. It is increasingly being used in other countries as a ‘soft-engineering’ approach to combat the problem of sea level rise, storm surges and coastal flooding. The Tramore wetland restoration project therefore provides a good opportunity to study the success of such a project in Ireland. The monitoring of this site has been led by Lesley Lewis of BirdWatch Ireland. Within a three-year period, the created intertidal habitat at Kilmacleague had developed an invertebrate community, albeit of low species diversity.
Waterbirds have also taken readily to the created habitat, with a total of twenty-one species recorded in the winter so far, including brent geese, wigeon, little egret, dunlin, curlew, redshank and greenshank. They feed regularly within the created intertidal habitat. In the future, we can expect to see also oystercatcher, knot, black-tailed godwit, bar-tailed godwit that specialise on shellfish and polychaete worms. Given the quiet and undisturbed location of the Kilmacleague wetlands, it is surprising that roosting behaviour is not more important during rising and high tidal stages.
Bernadette feels that this project will act as a demonstration of what is possible in other areas to adapt to sea level rise. She expresses the personal satisfaction she has found with this project: ‘In the 21st century where biodiversity loss is accelerating at a rapid pace it is a small win on a local level to see new habitat being created. It is rewarding to see the establishment of new saltmarsh habitat so quickly on the site and its use by large numbers of the wintering birds.’
Copper Coast
‘West of Tramore there is twenty miles of almost unbroken cliff and precipitous slope tenanted by sea-birds and a wealth of wild-flowers, with small villages nestling in gaps of the rocky wall, where streams enter the sea,’ wrote Praeger in 1937.(WW) From Tramore, I walked a section of this coastline along the line where the intensively farmed land meets rough grassland at the top of the cliffs. The calls of gulls were a constant sound along the cliffs, but occasionally I heard the distinctive cry of the chough, the red-legged crow of the Irish coast, in one of its most easterly breeding areas. Choughs use both types of habitat, the improved agricultural grassland in winter and maritime grassland with patches of gorse in the summer. This gives them the variety of feeding that they need to survive here throughout the year.14 The presence of livestock, such as cattle, is a key factor, as it maintains a short grass sward for the choughs to probe. I also saw choughs flipping over cattle dung to find insects and other invertebrates, which are a vital part of their diet.15
The coastline of Waterford west of Tramore is known today as the Copper Coast. It is so named because of the mines that were an important part of the local economy during the 19th century. As I dropped down into some of the cliff-bound coves I could see in the rocks some of the metal-bearing veins that were mined all those years ago. The oldest rocks here were formed 460 million years ago during the Ordovician period. At this time, the rocks were part of a continental margin, located under the sea near the South Pole. As one continental plate slipped under another, magma rose from the depths of the earth’s mantle until it erupted in two separate volcanoes. The first volcano erupted through the ocean floor. This created the dark-coloured volcanic rocks found along the coast and the mineralisation that produced the valuable metals.
The cliffs west of Bunmahon were mined for lead, silver and copper as early as the 18th century. However, the main phase of activity was in the mid-19th century, when the mines east of Bunmahon were worked by the Mining Company of Ireland. By 1840 this was described as ‘the most important mining district in the Empire’. However, this proved to be the peak and, as miners were working at depths of up to 400 metres and a similar distance under the seabed, there was a serious threat of flooding. In 1850 the company began to move its entire operation, including engines and buildings, east to Tankardstown, where a new lode had been discovered. Hopes for an upturn in the price of copper and a new discovery in the area faded after twenty years, and the last few tonnes were sold from Tankardstown in 1879. The engines were sold for scrap and all that remains today of a mining operation that once employed 1,200 people are the ruins of the engine houses on the cliffs at Tankardstown. Entire extended families moved away, mainly to America, where some of them worked at the Copper Mountain in Butte, Montana. The mine buildings have been remediated to some extent and made safe, and interpretative panels have been erected at the site. There is a visitor centre in Bunmahon which outlines the mine’s history.
Dungarvan Harbour
Dungarvan Harbour is only accessible to yachts at high tide, as the only available water at low tide is confined to a few narrow channels through the mud. I have sailed in a small boat here a few years ago and nearly ran aground on several occasions. At low tide, the yachts in the narrow town harbour sit on the mud, leaning at precarious angles. The bay outside is divided in half by a remarkable feature known as the Cunnigar, a long, narrow shingle ridge that has only one path on the crest. Praeger called it ‘a straight narrow ridge of sand very curiously placed’. I walked out along the path, which has waves breaking on the eastern side and sheltered mudflats to the west. On the northern end of the ridge, a tightly packed flock of roosting shorebirds sat out the few hours during high tide until they could return to feeding on the mudflats. They included brent geese, oystercatchers, curlew, godwits and many other smaller waders. Their calls echoed across the bay to Dungarvan.
The outer bay, known as the Whitehouse Bank, is used by shellfish farmers and, at low tide, I could walk between the wire cages, known as trestles, that are packed with Pacific oysters. These are grown here until they can be harvested and exported to countries like France, Spain, Italy and the UK. Many Irish people seem reluctant to eat fish or shellfish such as oysters. For seafood in general, Ireland has been ranked just 48th within a group of 160 countries in terms of fish consumption per person. Perhaps it is a fear of the unknown, or maybe there is folk memory of the 19th-century famines, which forced starving people to forage on the shoreline. The oyster trestles are usually located in the lower part of the intertidal zone, in areas where the cages are covered with seawater most of the time. At Dungarvan, large blocks of trestles are spread across the sandflats on the outer beach. Oyster spat (or seed) is supplied by hatcheries and put in plastic mesh bags, which are placed on top of the wire trestles. Oyster husbandry activities mainly take place during low tides, when tractors drive out onto the hard sand. Their permanent tyre tracks are quite visible on the beach.
To many shorebirds, shellfish are a key part of their diet but, despite their name, oystercatchers do not feed on oysters but mainly on smaller shells such as cockles, which they break open with their stout orange bills, using the firmer sand as an anvil. Dungarvan Harbour was one of the locations for a landmark study by Tom Gittings and Paul O’Donoghue, who assessed the impact of the oyster-farming on waders. The birds showing a neutral or positive response to the trestles were waders such as turnstone that feed in small flocks or oystercatchers, curlews, greenshanks and redshanks that are normally widely dispersed or in loose flocks. They were able to move between, and in some cases on top of, the trestles. In contrast, knots, sanderlings, dunlins, godwits and ringed plovers tended to avoid the oyster trestles, as these birds mainly feed in large flocks of tightly packed individuals. So there were positive, neutral and negative impacts of the aquaculture on birds, depending on the feeding behaviour of each species.16
East Cork
The historic town of Youghal, situated at the mouth of the River Blackwater, marks the county boundary between Waterford and Cork. Praeger reminded us that the unusual English name of the town is an attempt to translate the original placename, Eóchaill, which means ‘yew wood’ in Irish. Although now largely silted up, Youghal Harbour was once an important port that traded goods with Bristol and many cities across Europe. Fish, timber and wool were exported, while glass, ironmongery, exotic spices and foodstuffs, clothes, wine and salt were imported. However, the arrival of the Black Death in 1348, and general political unrest, had a terrible effect on Youghal. But trade increased again and in 1462 this became one of the Cinque Ports of Ireland based on a charter given to the town by King Edward IV.
Youghal became the major centre for the export of wool from Ireland in the 17th century. Starting in the 18th century, when a great period of Georgian expansion began, the size of the town was enlarged to almost twice that of the medieval settlement. The merchants who leased parts of the waterfront were required to build new quays, outside the line of the old harbour and town wall. Other developments also occurred at this time, including the Clock Gate tower (completed in 1777) which is part of the medieval Town Wall. The quays that remain today, such as Green’s Quay, Harvey’s Dock and Nealon’s Quay, commemorate the many merchants who built them. By 1750 the old medieval harbour had been in-filled, and is buried today beneath the Market Square. The importance of the new port continued to grow, and by the early 19th century large quantities of timber, coal and anthracite were landed here, and substantial amounts of agricultural produce loaded for export. There was also a seagoing fishing fleet of 250 vessels.17 With the large amount of shipping coming and going from Youghal, it was no wonder that many ran aground, or worse, on this largely unlit coastline. The Fleming family of Youghal were general merchants, with several ships involved in the coal trade between Bristol Channel ports and the home port of Youghal. In December 1913, one of these vessels, a three-masted schooner called the Nellie Fleming, was carrying a cargo of about 250 tonnes of coal bound for Youghal when she ran aground on the Black Rock off Curragh in Ardmore Bay. Some local fishermen rowed out to help while lifeboats from Youghal and Helvick also came to the vessel’s assistance. The crew were saved but an attempt to refloat the ship was abandoned when water flooded her right up to the deck through a hole in the hull. A group of locals later set up a company to buy the cargo of coal in the wreck and resell it at a profit. The valuable fuel was ferried by donkey and cart up to a field, where it was bagged, weighed and sold to local people. The Nellie Fleming now lies buried in the sand at the Ardmore end of Curragh Strand.18
The need for lighthouses to warn seafarers of hazards on this coast was recognised in the 1820s, and construction of a new one was begun in 1847 on the prominent Capel Island just off Knockadoon Head. However, when an important steamship, the Sirius, ran aground near Ballycotton in the same year, the location for the new lighthouse was changed to Ballycotton Head, and the stump of the tower on Capel Island was abandoned.19 The new tower was completed on a smaller island at the entrance to Ballycotton Harbour in 1851. Here Praeger mentioned ‘the little village of Ballycottin with its hotels tucked in below the hill out of the westerly winds, and its tall rockstack surmounted by a lighthouse’.(WW) There are many stories of heroic actions of local men in search and rescue, particularly the rescue of the crew of the Daunt Rock lightship which broke its moorings in a gale in 1936. The lifeboat crew endured forty-nine hours at sea to save the lives of eight men onboard the drifting lightship. The lifeboat involved, the Mary Stanford, is now at Ballycotton on permanent display above the harbour, having been rescued from rotting away in a dock.
Ballycotton is also well known as a sanctuary for American wading birds, as well as for many other species, blown across the Atlantic in autumn gales. I have been birdwatching here but never lucky enough to coincide with a ‘fall’ of migrants. There have been significant changes in the habitats here over the past century. These include an acceleration of coastal erosion, development of a coastal lagoon behind the shingle barrier in the 1930s, the subsequent loss of that lagoon in the early 1990s and its replacement by estuarine conditions. The loss of the lagoon led to a decline in both breeding and wintering ducks and swans but a corresponding increase in waders such as godwits, plovers and redshank.20 Since then, some wintering species such as wigeon, teal, curlew and lapwing have declined, as they have in Ireland as a whole, but little egrets are now breeding there, and brent geese have increased. The complex of wetland sites between Ballycotton and Shanagarry is good for seeing waders at any time of year.
Cork Harbour
On a sailing trip along this coast, my friend Brian and I decided to make an overnight passage from Wexford to Cork. At first, the moon lit our path, but gathering clouds turned the route ahead pitch black. We each took the helm in turn for two-hour shifts while the other crew member grabbed some much-needed sleep. Steering into the night I was reliant on my charts and the flashing signals of distant lighthouses and navigation buoys. Occasionally, a ghostly seabird would fly alongside before disappearing into the gloom. As the dawn broke behind us we finally reached the sheltered waters of Cork Harbour and the ‘welcoming’ beam of Roche’s Point Lighthouse. Here the meteorological station, just up the road from the lighthouse, records data of great importance to mariners. After passing through the narrow entrance between Roche’s Point and Weaver’s Point, we entered the comfortable marina at Crosshaven on the west side of the harbour. This involved some tricky manoeuvres due to the strong tidal currents passing through the pontoons, but we were eventually welcomed in the Royal Cork Yacht Club and invited to join an outdoor barbeque in the club grounds. This is the oldest yacht club in the world, which has been organising sailing here for over 300 years. It began on Haulbowline Island in 1720, where the headquarters of the Irish Naval Service is located today. The organisation of the club was then very much along the lines of the navy, with an admiral and captains. The rules show a clearly defined structure of sailing, with the admiral commanding the fleet and the other officers following in order of rank. Communication was by flags and gunfire, which enabled quite complicated manoeuvres to be completed. The gunpowder used by the race officers was mainly funded through fines, which were levied for such indiscretions as late arrival at the appointed rendezvous or for failing to attend meetings.
In Cork, there are several old, traditional boat designs that still sail today. In 1895, the Royal Cork Yacht Club commissioned a boat that could be replicated for competitive racing, could be crewed by four people, designed for the local conditions of Cork Harbour and built at that time for under £100 sterling. The first six boats were constructed and launched in 1896, with twelve Cork Harbour One-designs in total being built. In 1917 the United States joined World War I, with the first US Destroyers arriving in Cork, followed by submarines and a Flying Boat air base in Aghada in the eastern part of Cork Harbour. The following year Submarine Chasers, 110-foot wooden launches powered by gasoline engines, also arrived here. Their officers were mainly peacetime yachtsmen of the US Naval Reserve, and they were welcome visitors to the Royal Cork Yacht Club.
Not long before the outbreak of World War I the port of Cobh (then Queenstown) in the northern part of Cork Harbour became world famous for another reason. In 1912 the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic called to the port on her maiden voyage. She had set out from Southampton and called to Cherbourg before continuing on to Cobh, which was to be the last call before the transatlantic voyage to New York. A total of 123 passengers embarked here. Between passengers and crew, there were 2,206 people on board as she embarked on her final journey. Some 1,517 of these would never see New York, as she sank in the mid-Atlantic after colliding with an iceberg.
Just north of Crosshaven is the small inlet of Lough Beg, which dries out completely at low tide. The lough is surrounded by large industrial plants, several of which are run by multinational pharmaceutical companies. These firms were among the first industries in Ireland to employ wind power to fuel their operations, and several huge wind turbines now dominate the landscape here. I was commissioned to study the possible impacts of these turbines on wintering birds on the neighbouring shorelines over a period of some years. This included the question of displacement, thought to arise from the movement and noise of the rotors, as well as possible collision by flying birds with the turbines. With several colleagues, I accumulated much evidence to show that there was no measurable impact and the birds continued to feed close to the turbines after they were built. Very few birds were recorded as direct collision victims, the most dramatic of which was a pelican that had escaped from Fota Wildlife Park across the harbour.
Praeger summed up the inner part of the harbour near Cork City thus: ‘the seaward approach is erratic – a fifteen-mile zigzag channel through waters, sometimes broad, sometimes very narrow. The region between Cork and the ocean is then an archipelagic area, often richly wooded, with many villages and large residences – a picturesque and fertile region, very attractive, and quite unlike anything else in the country.’(WW) As we sailed into the northern part of Cork Harbour, known as Lough Mahon, I could see in the distance a Martello tower, partly ruined, on the edge of the railway that runs on a causeway past Marino Point onto Great Island. Having returned to tie up at the Cobh Sailing Club marina, I decided to visit the tower via the abandoned site of a fertiliser factory, and by walking along the edge of the railway embankment. My attention was drawn to the tower by the calls of a colony of terns nesting on top, a most unusual but nevertheless suitably secure site. This is one of a number of tern breeding sites around Cork Harbour, where the combined population reached a peak of 157 nests in 2015. They also nest on disused mooring structures in the Port of Cork at Ringaskiddy. Four of the tern chicks ringed in the harbour have been recovered on the west coast of Africa in Mauritania, Senegal and Togo, where they spend the winter months. This research has also produced evidence of interchange of terns from Cork with breeding colonies in Dublin, France and Britain.21
Harper’s Island
One of the most sheltered parts of Cork Harbour is at the northern edge around Harper’s Island near Glounthane. Although there was an older humpbacked bridge leading to the island, it also became linked to the mainland in the 19th century by a causeway that still carries the Cork-to-Cobh local railway line. The island was probably fringed by saltmarsh until large embankments were built around its perimeter and the land was drained for agriculture. An abandoned farmhouse and lime kiln on the island testify to bygone farming days. I first visited Harper’s Island in the 1990s, when it was still being intensively grazed. This was a time of economic growth signalled by the spread of motorways across Ireland. A route had been chosen for the new N25 linking Cork City with Midleton, and this cut right across the island from west to east. There was a period in the 1990s when flooding occurred regularly in winter and large flocks of waterbirds were attracted to the area. During the road construction work, the island was not being farmed and, presumably, the sluice was not being regularly maintained.
I went back for a visit to Harper’s Island recently with Tom Gittings. He is a lifelong naturalist who grew up in central London and became involved, as a teenager, in the urban wildlife movement. Now there is no longer any farming at Harper’s Island, and there is more water. The tide fills the lower parts and spreads out across former fields. The ponds contain both saline and fresh water, which offer a variety of feeding conditions for the birds. Two large shallow pools or ‘scrapes’ have been created, with a couple of small islands. These are covered with gravel to attract nesting terns that are short of other safe breeding places in Cork Harbour. The water levels in the ‘scrapes’ can be altered to attract feeding waders on the newly exposed mud, and the birds have responded. For the first time since this island was enclosed in the 19th century there were swirling flocks of ducks – wigeon, teal and waders – black-tailed godwit, golden plover and redshank. A solitary grey heron stood like a guard at the sluice, where the tidal water runs back out to the estuary. Nature seemed to be coming back to Harper’s Island.
This impressive rewilding has been driven by a unique partnership. As well as undertaking the all-important bird surveys to monitor what is happening here, BirdWatch Ireland members Tom Gittings, Paul Moore and Jim Wilson worked closely with the local community in designing this facility and bringing the project to fruition. Conor O’Brien of Glounthaune Tidy Towns and Garry Tomlins of the local Men’s Shed have been key members of the partnership. Two bird hides have been built at the end of screened walkways, and a third one is planned to allow visitors to get closeup views of the birds. A looped nature trail has been created around the island, and visions for the future include conversion of the old farmhouse to a visitor centre. In 2020 horses were introduced to graze the wet grassland and saltmarsh, but these are taken off in autumn when the main bird flocks arrive.
The proximity of Harper’s Island to Cork City and the nearby railway station are both important for visitors using the site. The local National School resource teacher has produced education materials for school visits. The collaboration between local authority, national conservation organisation and the local community have been key factors in the success of the project. Between all the partners this has produced an exciting new habitat for birds and a welcome facility for both local and visiting birdwatchers.
Coastal wetlands like these may be only isolated fragments of a once-common habitat in the Irish landscape. However, managing them for wildlife is especially valuable for those species that cannot survive in the intensive agricultural landscape that has replaced most of the wetter habitats. If more such sites could be protected and restored, they could act as a network of stepping-stones for those birds and insects that need to migrate on a seasonal basis. The visitor facilities developed at these sites also give great opportunities for environmental education so that more people will understand the key importance of wetlands for nature.
Kinsale
After a short passage from Crosshaven in Cork Harbour we sailed south-west between the Sovereign Islands just off the inlet of Oysterhaven. From there the long outline of the Old Head of Kinsale came into view, with its distinctive lighthouse on the end. This was the location of the tragic loss of the passenger ship Lusitania in 1915. At the time this was the largest liner in the world, and most of the passengers were British people returning from America. Almost 1,200 people died in this sinking by a German U-boat, which contributed indirectly to the entry of the United States into World War I.
Sailing up the long, winding inlet that leads to Kinsale, we had a magnificent view of the surrounding beaches and hills. I imagined the fleet of twenty-six Spanish ships sailing here in 1601, carrying 3,500 soldiers who quickly took possession of the town. The subsequent siege of the town by English forces and the Battle of Kinsale placed this location at the centre of a series of events that were to have major implications for the English monarchy.22
On either side of the bay are the substantial battlements of Charles Fort and James Fort, built during the 17th century to protect this important harbour from invasion. Having moored the yacht in the marina of Kinsale Yacht Club, it was a short walk through the town and round to the east side to have a closer look at Charles Fort. First completed in 1682 and named after King Charles II, Charles Fort was sometimes referred to as the ‘new fort’ – to contrast with James Fort (the ‘old fort’), which had been built on the other side of Kinsale Harbour before 1607. As one of the country’s largest and best-preserved British military installations, Charles Fort has been part of some of the most momentous events of Irish history. During the Williamite Wars, for example, it withstood a thirteen-day siege before it finally fell. In the Civil War of the early 1920s, anti-Treaty forces on the retreat burned it out. This massive star-shaped structure was designed by the Surveyor-General Sir William Robinson, also the architect of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Dublin. Its dimensions were impressive, especially as I walked around the inside and outside of the walls, some of which are sixteen metres high. I tried to imagine the garrison of scarlet-uniformed soldiers manning the battlements and scanning the entrance to the harbour for any tall ships that would threaten the town. The houses within the fort are mainly roofless now, bare stone structures that would have had few comforts and probably held prisoners as well as the soldiers themselves.
The town of Kinsale is a very popular tourist destination, and is a great place to sample the best of Ireland’s seafood. I decided to visit the well-known restaurant Fishy Fishy, which looks out from the quayside across the old harbour. Nearby, the reconstructed mast of a square-sailed ship gives a great impression of how the quaysides must have looked in previous centuries, when they were filled with vessels from all over the world. Here, I enjoyed a range of fish and shellfish including oysters, crabs and John Dory fish. The owner of the restaurant, Martin Shanahan, is one of Ireland’s leading seafood chefs. In the 1980s he was a chef at the renowned Huntington Hotel, San Francisco, where his love of fish cookery intensified. After returning from the USA, Martin spent seven years as a fish retailer in Kinsale before opening a café. His passion and skill with fish became apparent, and this was brought to a wider audience through the television series Martin’s Mad About Fish. He says, ‘fish is nature’s fast food. It is a gift, not a commodity, and deserves our respect’.23
West Cork
Leaving Kinsale on a single-handed passage, I rounded the lighthouse on the end of the Old Head and set sail along the south-west coast of Cork heading for the open Atlantic. Solo sailing is very different from having a crew on board, and a great way to learn good seamanship. My senses were constantly alert, watching for hazards like the floats of lobster pots which can get entangled in the propellor or rudder. I trimmed the sails frequently to get the best speed from the boat and adjust to changing wind speed and direction. I scanned the charts and the instruments regularly, estimating distances and travel times, monitoring wind speed, tide times and boat speed. Occasionally, I switched on the electronic steering and dropped into the cabin to make a cup of tea. Known as an autohelm, this is a vital accessory for any single-handed sailor. I didn’t feel alone at all, as I knew the boat so well it felt like an old friend. The sun was shining and the sea was calm, so all was well with the world.
My first destination was the inlet of Glandore, which also holds the fishery harbour of Union Hall. The narrow entrance requires careful navigation, as two dangerous rocks, known as Adam and Eve, are right in the centre of the entrance channel. Seafarers are advised to ‘avoid Adam and hug Eve’ in order to stay in deep water. Once inside, the inlet is almost land-locked and the wooded shorelines make it one of the most attractive natural harbours in south-west Ireland. The sheltered waters allowed me to motor slowly into position and run along the deck to tie up to a mooring bouy in the bay. Then I rowed ashore to explore the area. After a hearty meal of seafood and a peaceful night on board I dropped the mooring and headed out to sea.
Just around Reen Point is another wonderfully sheltered inlet at Castlehaven, which was the scene of a fierce naval battle in 1601 between Spanish forces, who had landed in support of the Irish rebels, and the British Navy, led by Admiral Richard Levison. The Spanish had been welcomed here by the O’Driscoll family, who gave their allies possession of a castle on the north shore of the bay, the walls of which still stand today. This local engagement was eclipsed by the Battle of Kinsale, which put an end to Irish resistance, forced the Spaniards to withdraw and finally confirmed the English as rulers of Ireland, leading to centuries of repression. The Protestant ascendancy here in the 19th century was led by the Townshend family, who built the picturesque village of Castletownshend and populated it with people of their own denomination.24 I walked down the steep main street to the edge of the bay, where an old corn mill dominates the shoreline. On the opposite side at Reen Pier, Colin Barnes moors his boat Holly Jo, in which he takes visitors out to see a variety of marine mammals on the West Cork coast.
Passing Toe Head on a flat, glassy sea surface, my yacht was joined by a school of common dolphins, riding in the small bow wave, breaching and playing underwater. Putting the steering on autohelm I moved up to the bow, where I was able to take close-up pictures of these lively mammals that are commonly attracted to boats. This area is one of the best places in Ireland to see whales and dolphins. Whale-watching boats leave each day in summer from Castlehaven and Baltimore. From April to December it is possible to see minke whales, common dolphins, bottlenose dolphins and harbour porpoises. In late summer and autumn they are often joined by humpback and fin whales, which come inshore to feed. They can sometimes be watched from vantage points on shore as well as from boats. Other marine animals regularly seen on these coasts include the ocean sunfish and the basking shark, the largest fish in the Atlantic Ocean. Leatherback turtles and bluefin tuna are often seen around here too, and are increasing in numbers with warming of the seawater due to climate change.
I steered a wide course around some jagged rocks here known as the Stags. In the 1980s, the threat of oil pollution was a very real issue, as many licences for offshore exploration were being issued by the Irish government. In November 1986, our worst fears were realised when the Kowloon Bridge, a bulk carrier with a cargo of iron ore pellets, lost power off the West Cork coast, drifted east and ran aground on the Stags Rocks. The resulting fuel spill spread out along the south coast, causing extensive damage to local wildlife and fisheries. In the six months that followed, the oil seeped into hundreds of inlets, beaches and rocky shores with varying degrees of damage. This coincided with the return of seabirds to their breeding colonies, and volunteers walking the beaches recovered hundreds of oil-damaged victims, most of which were already dead.
Lough Hyne
Having tied up outside the harbour at Baltimore, I decided to explore a unique habitat nearby which has the distinction of hosting the longest continuous series of marine biological studies in Ireland. Lough Hyne is a land-locked saltwater inlet, with its only connection to the sea being a narrow channel through which the tide runs at a fast pace over a series of rapids. I climbed the steep, rocky peninsula to the west and looked down on the rapids, which are like a fast-flowing river at low tide. The naturalist and filmmaker Gerrit van Gelderen wrote a vivid description of this unique feature:
The tide rises for about four hours but falls for about eight hours. This means that, even after the Atlantic tide starts to rise again the water level in the lake is still dropping until the very moment when the two meet. Then, for less than a minute, the current comes to a complete standstill. A hush falls over the waters, an unnatural quiet, and the weeds that have been pointing seaward quiver, stand up and when the reversing tide has gathered momentum, fall back again pointing inland. It is a moment when sea and lake seem to hold their breaths and, if you were there waiting, you would never forget it.25
Some friends of mine had recently sailed two small boats through the channel at high tide, making a speedy exit while there was still sufficient depth. The inlet inside is deep and mysterious, and surrounded by rocky shores.
In 1886 Lough Hyne was ‘discovered’ by marine biologists, but their studies were interrupted by the War of Independence in Ireland. In 1922, Louis Renouf, who was born on the Channel Islands near France, was appointed as Professor of Biology at University College Cork. Praeger met Renouf at an early date and told him of the wonders of Lough Hyne, encouraging him to study it. Praeger was clearly impressed by Lough Hyne, writing that,
it resembles a gigantic marine aquarium, and the peculiar conditions of life have remarkable repercussions on the flora and fauna. Many forms common on the surrounding shores are absent or very rare in the lough … many animals and some plants grow to quite unusual dimensions. The fauna is characterised by a remarkable abundance and variety of species, particularly of sedentary and sessile species. … To lean over the side of a boat and view the bottom with a ‘water-telescope’ is like peeping into a strange calcareous sort of fairyland.(WW)
In 1925 Renouf set up a marine laboratory here and built a wooden hut by the water’s edge. This was later adopted by the University, allowing generations of biology students to undertake their fieldwork here. Trevor Norton, later Professor of Marine Biology at the University of Liverpool, began his academic career in 1964 as a student who was inspired by the wonders of Lough Hyne, so much so that he wrote a lighthearted book about his experiences there. He described the book as ‘a biography of the lough, an inlet of the sea masquerading as a lake, and one of the most renowned ecological sites in the world’.26
A number of distinct habitats have been identified in Lough Hyne, including the intertidal zone between high and low water mark; shallow rocky areas down to about two metres below low water mark; fine mud zones covered with broken mollusc shells and red seaweeds; the mud-burrow zone with animals such as the Dublin Bay prawn; and the very deepest parts that have worm tubes standing up out of the mud.27 The great variety of marine habitats and water movements within the lough support several thousand species of marine plants and animals, making a unique assemblage in such a small area. This includes over 70 species of sponges, twenty-four species of crabs, eighteen species of sea anemones as well as three-quarters of the species of sea slug known in Ireland, and almost one-third of all the seaweeds recorded in this country. Many of the species are better known from southern Europe and the Mediterranean, suggesting that the habitats and water temperature here are particularly suitable for them. Unfortunately, there is strong evidence of a deterioration in water quality in the lough, with consequent changes in biodiversity. The causes are thought to be increased use of the area as a tourist site, arrival of invasive and non-native species and climate change warming the seawater.28
The lake is also popular for watersports. On a summer evening I was invited to join a kayaking outing here. This trip was a unique experience, being on the water from dusk into darkness. In the darkening sky I was mesmerised by the sounds of wading birds coming into roost, the sunset followed by a rising moon, the aromas of honeysuckle and gorse on the breeze, the panoply of stars overhead, the astonishing bioluminescence on the water and the deep, dark peace and serenity of night. It was a special coastal trip that I will remember for a long time.
Roaringwater Bay
The popular tourist destination of Baltimore turned out to be a good base to explore the islands of Roaringwater Bay, and I was joined here by a friend, Mark, and my son Derry. Praeger’s memories of Roaringwater Bay give a picture of West Cork around the beginning of the 20th century:
A meandering railway penetrates to Schull, and the roads are as good as you could expect them to be in so lonely a country. All is furzy heath and rocky knolls, little fields and white cottages and illimitable sea, foam-rimmed where it meets the land, its horizon broken only by the fantastic fragment of rock crowned by a tall lighthouse which is the famous Fastnet.(WW)
Our berth was on a small pontoon outside the harbour at Baltimore, while towering over the village is the well-preserved Baltimore Castle, built in 1215 by the Anglo-Norman Lord Sleynie. It later became the seat of the powerful O’Driscoll clan, and was used as a base for their trading activities and pirate ships. From here they conducted an ongoing rivalry and warfare with the ruling clans of Waterford. In 1631, Baltimore was attacked by Algerian pirates, who took over a hundred local people captive and carried them off to be sold as slaves in north Africa. In 1649 the castle fell into the hands of Cromwell’s troops, who set up a garrison here.29 For centuries afterwards it was a ruin but, following extensive restoration by the owners, Patrick and Bernie McCarthy, it now contains an exhibition of its pirate history and archaeological finds. I chatted to them for a while and discovered that they actually live in the castle as well as opening it to visitors. A walk on the battlements gave me fine views of Roaringwater Bay and the offshore islands.
Out to the south-west of Baltimore lie the two largest islands, Sherkin and Cape Clear, both of which have permanent populations. On Sherkin Island, we tied up alongside some pontoons, which are moored just below the hotel and provide ideal shelter from westerly winds. From here it was a short walk across to Kinish Harbour, a wide sandy bay that splits the island in two. To the north-west end is Sherkin Island Marine Station, a unique family-run study centre that has been operating here since it was established in 1975. I met the founder, Matt Murphy, who took me on a tour of the station. This now comprises a large complex of five laboratories and a library, together with an herbarium of plants and seaweeds. Biologists at the centre, and other enthusiastic volunteers from many countries, have undertaken long-term monitoring of marine life in Roaringwater Bay, as well as in Bantry Bay and Cork Harbour. We finished the day with a healthy bowl of fresh mussels in the hotel above the pier.
The next morning was fine, with a light north-westerly breeze, ideal conditions for a trip out to the iconic Fastnet Lighthouse. Sailing along the rugged south coast of Sherkin we passed close to a minke whale feeding lazily on the surface, while gannets dived into the waters all around. As always, the Fastnet Rock was surrounded by a good Atlantic swell, and landing was nigh impossible. This was often the last part of Ireland seen by departing emigrants bound for America in the 19th century, and it thus gained the nickname ‘Ireland’s Teardrop’. The building of the tower, started in 1899, was captured in a wonderful set of glass-plate photographs by the Commissioners of Irish Lights.30 The intricate masonry work comprises eighty-nine courses or layers of cut stone made up of 2,074 blocks. The lower part of the tower is well below sea level. Richard Taylor, who spent over forty years servicing lighthouses around Ireland, wrote that this was one of the few sites where the keepers had to live in the tower itself. ‘For exercise during those enforced sojurns, endless journeys would be made across the service-room floor, each man going in opposite directions.’31 In 1979 the famous Fastnet Yacht Race, which departs from the Solent in southern England, met a massive storm here, and many yachts were wrecked, with a total of fifteen deaths.32
With the wind in the north-west we had a lively sail back to the North Harbour of Cape Clear Island. This is the most southerly populated part of Ireland, and farming continues on the island in one of the most exposed locations in the country. Its position at the end of a long, partly submerged peninsula makes it a classic location for bird migration in and out of Ireland. An original account of the island’s natural history was published by Tim Sharrock, one of the founders in 1959 of the longest-running bird observatory in the Republic of Ireland.33 This was updated in 2020 with a new book by the warden of the observatory, Steve Wing.34 Having visited the observatory building on the quayside, we walked across the steep, narrow roads to the cliff-bound South Harbour and then east along the ridge of the main island. There are a few vehicles on the island, and it is wise to stand well back while they pass, as many are salvaged from the mainland, having failed their road tests. A return walk along the southern cliffs gave fine views of passing seabirds which are one of the attractions of this island for birdwatchers.
Back on the yacht, we sailed along the north side of Cape Clear and close to the eastern end of the three Calf Islands. On the way, we passed Heir Island, which lies just a few hundred metres off the mainland. A short ferry ride from Cunnamore Quay brings visitors and householders into the island. At one time this was a busy boat-building centre, when the lobster boats of Heir Island and Roaringwater Bay were once among the best known and most distinctive fishing boats of the region. This unique fleet set out under sail and oar each year to fish lobsters and crayfish all along the coasts of Cork and Waterford. English fish merchants were sending boats from Southampton to the Irish south coast to buy lobsters and crayfish and, by 1892, there were forty lobster boats registered in the Congested District of Baltimore with the majority of these based out of Heir Island. These were gaff-rigged sailing boats with a crew of three. The sails were made by the fishermen themselves from heavy calico or cotton, and they were ‘barked’ to preserve them. Tree bark was boiled in water and the resulting solution gave the sails their distinctive tan colour.
Peter Somerville-Large made a cycle tour of the entire coast of west Cork in the early 1970s. He recounted how the smaller islands in Roaringwater Bay had been deserted, one by one. He described how he had visited Horse Island opposite Ballydehob just a few years earlier. ‘The last people there, an elderly couple, were living all alone. Next year they were gone. The house, still intact and comfortable, stood empty, the linoleum in place, last year’s calendar on the wall. Down by the pier a plough had been thrown into the water where it looked like a gesture of despair.’35
From here our next stop was the large natural harbour of Schull, which is well protected from southerly winds by Long Island across the harbour mouth. Here we picked up a mooring for the night. I visited Schull Community College, which must be one of the few secondary schools with its own slip running straight into the sea. The college has an on-site sailing centre called the Fastnet Marine Outdoor Education Centre. This offers a range of maritime courses as well as regular sailing for students in the school’s own fleet of dinghies. Schull sailors have represented Ireland at individual and team international events. The village street in Schull is full of restaurants, fashion and craft shops, highlighting its popularity as a holiday resort for people from Cork City and further afield. Standing outside one of the pubs with creamy pints we listened to maritime stories from seafarers of all kinds.
Leaving Schull, we sailed along Long Island Channel, past Toormore Bay and into the sheltered inlet of Crookhaven, which was the last port of call on my yacht trip along the south coast. This deep natural harbour opens to the north-east, so is very sheltered from the Atlantic and a popular anchorage for cruising yachts. The village is busy with tourists in summer, so we joined them and enjoyed a good lunch of seafood chowder and locally caught crab in the sunshine outside O’Sullivan’s Bar. As the most south-westerly harbour in Ireland, this has been a strategic location for shipping over the centuries. During the Napoleonic Wars a provisioning depot was established here so that visiting warships could be supplied with wheat, oats, corn and butter. In the mid-19th century mail from Ireland was collected here by ships as their last stop on the way to America. In the early 20th century, when herring were abundant on the coasts of Ireland, a fishing fleet based in the Isle of Man would anchor here between March and June each year to exploit the passing shoals. Here too are the remains of a pilchard palace, once owned by the Earl of Cork and Sir William Hull. These fish-processing stations once flourished on the shores of Roaringwater Bay and around much of the west coast of Ireland. They probably reached their heyday in the 17th century, when pilchards were the main catch. Huge shoals of these small fish came to the comparatively warm, sheltered waters of the islands during the summer months, along with other oily fish such as herring and mackerel. The buildings contained iron presses to squeeze the oil from the fish before they were preserved in salt. Today, pilchards are rare in Irish waters due to a combination of overfishing and changing climate.
Having explored the inlet of Crookhaven and the dunes at Barley Cove, I walked out to the lighthouse at Mizen Head. Accompanied by a pair of choughs, I ventured onto the awe-inspiring metal suspension bridge across a deep chasm, from which dramatic geological formations of Old Red Sandstone were clearly visible. Mizen Head Fog Signal Station was sanctioned in 1906 by the Irish Lights Board to combat the high loss of life and shipping on the rocks below. The Station was manned by three keepers until 1993, when the lighthouse was automated. A community rural development initiative was then formed to create the tourist centre, ‘Mizen Vision’, in the former keepers’ quarters, while taking a lease on the path to the lighthouse from the Commissioners of Irish Lights.
I walked out to the next promontory north of Mizen, where the remains of old castle walls still stand on the edge of the cliffs at Three Castle Head. This coastline has been infamously associated with smuggling and piracy for many centuries. As recently as 2007 this was the scene of a dramatic discovery of cocaine, washed up on the coast here and valued at €440 million. The attempt to land the illegal drugs failed when one of the men filled their petrol-powered outboard engine with diesel by mistake. The inflatable launch overturned and dumped sixty-two bales of cocaine into the sea. Three of the men involved in the operation were sentenced in 2008 for a total of eighty-five years. This headland is where the coast turns north, and the great flooded inlets of the south-west begin.
Leaving the South Coast
The south coast of Ireland is fringed by the Celtic Sea, which stretches away to merge with the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay. But it also feels the strong influence of the Atlantic Ocean coming in from the west. Being closest to the European continent, the south coast has the warmest climate in Ireland but, occasionally, great storms and rainfall wash over it. This coast is frequently the first landfall of migrant birds moving north from Africa, and it has the distinction of being the best place in Ireland to watch large whales and dolphins in a natural setting. The human history of the south coast is dominated by trade with Europe, and its large natural harbours, such as Waterford and Cork, are havens for shipping in stormy conditions. The sailing waters of West Cork offer unrivalled cruising grounds, with numerous islands and welcoming harbours. I ended my sailing trip in the south-west because cruising in the Atlantic is more risky, due to big seas and a relative lack of sheltered harbours. My exploration of the remainder of the Irish coast was mainly by land, except where a boat or an aircraft was needed to reach remote islands.