Tucks Tweedy writes about his association with Hook Point Lighthouse.

Hook Point Lighthouse (Photo: Frank Pelly)

The Hook Peninsula for its two mile length is completely flat, dominated by its black and white banded lighthouse on the southern tip. For eight hundred years the approaches to Waterford Harbour have been guarded by this Lighthouse.

Growing up less than half a mile from its gates, and having attended the local school with the children of various Keepers stationed at Hook, we the settled ones found it hard to understand their arrivals and sudden departures, their sorrow when they were transferred, and the anticipation of new families coming. It must have been unsettling for children arriving at a new station and a new school. On their first days in school they could be seen on their own at break time, in one corner of the playground. However, as children are adaptable, they would soon integrate.

Years later I asked a Principal Keeper, whose father had been stationed around the coast, how he had been affected by these moves. He told me of one instance when his family transferred from Roancarrig to Inishowen. Having spent six years listening to the West Cork dialect, on arriving in Donegal they found not only could they not understand Irish but English sounded foreign to them as well.

Hook Point Lighthouse has always played a major role in the life of the community. Down the years local people were employed as temporary keepers and in earlier times assisted various tradesmen visiting the station. When three keepers' families lived at the station it meant extra custom for local farmers who provided milk and vegetables; it was also a considerable boost to local shopkeepers.

The fact that the Hook has always been notoriously dangerous to shipping must have been apparent to Saint Dubhan and his followers who came to Hook Point from Wales in 452 A.D. It is believed that shortly after his arrival he lit the first warning beacon on the point. His monks maintained this beacon for the next seven hundred years until the early 1200s when William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, founded the port of New Ross. It is fair to assume that to protect his own cargoes William Marshall built the present structure at Hook Point. Subsequently he installed the local monks from nearby Churchtown as the first keepers. The monks occupied the Lighthouse for the next three hundred years until the time of the Reformation.

Of the many ships which came to grief around Hook Head two of the more notable were the sailing ship the Royal Arthur, wrecked in 1895 opposite the entrance gate of the Lighthouse and the steam collier the Saint Margaret, which sank just south of Hook Point on 7th December 1919.

The Royal Arthur was carrying a cargo of ivory to Liverpool. For many years, after every storm, elephant tusks would wash ashore. I remember them being used by local farmers who had driven them into the loose stone walls of their stables and used them to hang horses' tackle.

The Saint Margaret, owned by Heitons of Dublin, had just rounded Hook Head on passage to Waterford with a cargo of coal, when she collided with an outward bound vessel which did not stop to render assistance. The Saint Margaret was holed and drifted back out to Hook Point where she sank, just two hundred yards off the lighthouse, with the loss of all her fourteen crew members. The Principal Keeper, Martin Kennedy, witnessed the sinking. The wreck prompted major activity in the area as its cargo of coal began to wash ashore along the coastline. Every available horse and cart came from far and near to salvage the coal, causing traffic jams on the approach roads to the Lighthouse.

Seven bodies from the Saint Margaret's ill-fated crew were found on Bannow Strand the following morning. They were all wearing life-jackets and it is said locally that one of the bodies had one side only of his face shaved, indicating he was preparing for port when the collision happened.

Having heard so much about the Saint Margaret as a child, it was a strange experience when, with my diving partner, we were the first to see the vessel since that ill-fated morning in 1918. Although broken in several pieces her propeller, steam-engine, and most of her hull still remain.

Another story told locally is of the Tuttle family who were stationed at Hook, and whose son kept pigeons. On returning from school one evening, he found the family cat had killed some of the pigeons. In a fit of rage he brought the cat to the water's edge and tried to throw her in. As he was doing so the cat managed to dig her claws into the sleeve of his coat, and he and the cat went into the water. It is believed that the cat swam ashore but unfortunately the boy didn't. This story may have been embellished somewhat over the years. Recently, however, while researching on people who had been stationed at Hook Head, Frank Pelly and I found in the records of Saint Mogue's Church, Fethard-on-Sea, the name Tuttle and the occupation was listed as station master of the Hook Lighthouse in 1846. This man was probably the father of the drowned boy.

I can remember as a child hearing about a Principal Keeper, who, when he had too much to drink in the local pub, would issue an invitation to his fellow imbibers in turn to hit him. As people knew his form, he was generally ignored until one night, when he challenged a seaman just home from a long voyage who did not know him. He was duly obliged, and suffered a considerable amount of damage to his face, rendering an instant cure to his drink induced masochistic tendency.

One hundred and fifty years ago, when the great famine claimed many lives all over the country, many emigrant ships from the ports of Waterford and New Ross would have passed Hook on their transatlantic voyages. Very little is known of the effects of famine on the immediate area. Records recently uncovered show that the pier at Slade Harbour was built as a famine relief scheme. It is generally accepted that Wexford in general fared better than counties in the West and other parts of Ireland. The local people would not have experienced the poverty and inhuman existence that devastated the lives of so many. The abundance of fish to be caught locally probably alleviated the worst effects of the famine.

As Wexford prepares to commemorate the bicentenary of the 1798 rebellion it has become evident that there was little local involvement in the uprising. The only reference that can be found alludes to soldiers having been sent from Duncannon Fort to guard the Lighthouse and billeted at the base of the tower.

Having been associated with the Lighthouse all my life, from visiting to play with the children of the many Keepers stationed there to being involved in the final relief next April, I can only reflect on the many changes this historic corner of Wexford, and its medieval tower, home to monk and Lightkeeper alike, have experienced over sixteen hundred turbulent years, from a Saint named Dubhan to a computer called Datac.