Blackrock Mayo is one of the most desolate lighthouses off the Irish coast. Before automation, when reliefs were carried out by local boat, it was the most difficult station at which to land. Reliefs often went weeks overdue. Frank Ryan tells of his own experiences in the early 1940s.

Frank Ryan with his model of the Golden Hind

I WAS STATIONED on Blackrock Mayo from 1939 to 1942. From time to time we had a local Temporary Keeper on the rock who used to sleep in a downstairs room in the workmens' quarters. On one particular occasion he was on the 10 to 2 watch and I was on the 6 to 10. In the morning I went in to call him as usual. The door of the bedroom wouldn't open, so I had to put my shoulder to it. When I got in, I discovered that half the ceiling had come down. I asked him when this happened and he said 'That is what I am wondering myself'. It was a lathe and plaster ceiling. He was lucky it fell on the opposite side of the room to where he was sleeping.

Spook?
On another occasion, when he was going to bed, the Temporary Keeper heard a fluttering sound. He thought it was a bird fluttering at the window trying to get out. He took a lamp and went around all the windows but couldn't find any-thing, so he went back into his room. He went around the windows three times. In the end he went back to his room. The fluttering continued, so he said '----you, now you can flutter all night. I am going to bed.'


Blackrock Mayo - Tower and Dwellings, 1956

I was on Blackrock Mayo another time with Walter Coupe and Jim Cahill. One afternoon Walter Coupe, who was on the 2 to 6 watch, was in the kitchen with the door closed. I was lying down in my room, reading, and Jim Cahill was asleep in bed. I was on the 6 to 10 watch and got up at about 5.15 to have my tea before going on watch. When I went into the kitchen Coupe said 'Cahill is outside. I heard him coming down the stairs with his heavy boots on'. The Principal Keeper and I slept in rooms downstairs and the other two slept in rooms upstairs. I said 'he didn't go out or come down stairs as he would have to pass my bedroom door and as I was lying awake reading I would have heard him'. We argued about whether he was in or out. I said the only way to settle it was to go up and see if he was still in bed. We both went up and found Cahill asleep. He was very annoyed at being woken. When asked if he had been up and gone outside his answer was 'no'.

When Coupe went ashore he told his wife what had happened, and when I went ashore she asked me about it. I said that when the place was so quiet and the wind blowing it could be anything. 'Anyhow', I said, 'I would want it see whatever it was before I would believe it'. She asked the local priest to go out to the rock and say a mass. He said he couldn't but he would say one ashore which would be equally as good. She also told him what I had said. He said to tell me that there was something there and I could thank God I didn't see anything.

War
During the war Walter Coupe and I saw the ss Mackville being attacked by a German plane. It was a nice sunny day, and we were walking up and down what was known as the parade. I think it was in the afternoon that we saw the plane coming from the south. The Mackville was on her way to Limerick with coal. She was on course to clear the Browns Rocks, west of Blackrock, when she was attacked.

The plane attacked her three times, dropping two bombs each time. We watched to see if they would hit or miss. When they exploded we couldn't see the ship for spray, so we knew they all missed. We reckoned the last two were incendiaries, as they just plopped into the water without an explosion. When approaching the ship, and after passing it, the plane's gunners had a go. The only Irishman on board was killed. I understand he was from Waterford. Ironically, it was his watch below and when the ship was attacked he came up and was handing ammunition to the gunner when he got a bullet in his chest.

The ship went into Blacksod where it stayed a few days. When I went ashore the Garda Sergeant told me that the morning she left he got word to arrest her for being an armed ship. She had overstayed her allotted time.

The German planes used to come up the coast and then head away north-west from Blackrock.


Blackrock Mayo c.1970

I also saw a tanker that had been attacked in the Atlantic and set on fire. The crew had abandoned it. Some days later they saw a burning ship and discovered it was their own. They re-boarded it, extinguished the fire and took it home. They hit the coast between Eagle Island and Blackrock and then proceed south. When they were going around Achill Head they hoisted the Red Ensign. I forget the name of the ship.*

Our light was reduced to half power during the war and the curtains lowered to cover the bull's eye half way. In normal times the curtains were drawn when the light was extinguished, as the sun shining through the lens could set the place on fire.

Transfer
I went on transfer from Blackrock Mayo to Inishtearaght in December 1942. It took my wife and I four days to travel by public transport from Blackrock Mayo shore dwellings in Blacksod to Inishtearaght shore dwellings in Valentia Island. Our household effects and other belongings were sent on ahead of us.

Frank Ryan returned to Blackrock Mayo as Principal Keeper in 1968 and remained stationed there until the lighthouse was converted to unwatched automatic in 1974 when he was the last Keeper to leave the station. He wrote this article shortly before his death and it is published by kind permission of his family.

*Probably the San Demetrio. The episode referred to was the subject of several books and a film, and is mentioned in Shipping in Dublin Port 1939-1945, reviewed on page 35 of this edition of Beam.

Thomas Murphy, now Attendant of Kish Lighthouse, was promoted Assistant Keeper and transferred to Blackrock Mayo at the end of May 1968. His wedding date had already been planned for the following autumn, but the pattern of reliefs at Blackrock Mayo did not coincide with the wedding date.

He explained this to the Inspector and was given a 'quick turn'--that is, he would only have to complete a fortnight's duty before coming ashore on the relief before his wedding day. In those days you had to have a very good reason to get a 'quick turn'.

Thomas was due to go back to Blackrock on 19 August 1968 but bad weather prevented the boat from carrying out the relief until 22 August. Because his fortnight's duty was late starting he would not now go ashore until 5 September, later than planned but still in good time for the wedding. But on 5 September the boating conditions were again bad and for the following week things got no better.

It looked as if the wedding would have to be postponed but two days before the wedding Thomas's father, who was then Principal Keeper of the East Pier Dun Laoghaire Lighthouse, asked the Air Corps to help.

As part of a training exercise Comdt Brian McMahon, Helicopter Flight Wing Commander, flew Frank Ryan, the Principal Keeper, from Blacksod to Blackrock Mayo and then flew Thomas ashore to Baldonnel, just in time to have his hair cut before the wedding.

Helicopter pads had just been built at a number of remote lighthouses but this was the first time one of them was used.