Local History - Rock Island & Crookhaven Lighthouse
Rock Island, Crookhaven-A Coastal Townland's History since 1800
by Aidan Power
Published by Aidan Power (aidan@crookhaven.ie)
isbn 10: 09552684 0 0
isbn 13: 97809552684 03
paperback, 233 pages
available locally in West Cork,
or by post from the author at €15 plus postage and packing €4 in Ireland, €5 elsewhere.

Reviewed by the Editor

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Crookhaven was a busy port used by coasters, fishing vessels, and transatlantic sailing ships for provisioning and as a refuge from gales. Smuggling was endemic and in 1709 there were two Revenue Officers based in Crookhaven.
In 1816 construction of a Coastguard station began at the south-west end of Rock Island, the peninsula on the north side of Crookhaven Harbour, opposite Crookhaven village. The station included nine houses, a watch house, and a boat house and slipway. Towards the end of the century the condition of the station had deteriorated and a new Coastguard station was built in 1905.
During the Irish war of independence Coastguard stations were targeted by the ira, and the station was evacuated in 1920. With independence in 1922 the Coastguard service was discontinued in the Irish Free State.
On the east side of Rock Island Crookhaven Lighthouse was established in 1843, marking the northern side of the entrance to Crookhaven Harbour. There had been numerous shipwrecks near the harbour entrance in the years before the light was established.
Almost immediately a campaign, which continued for over 40 years, was started for the lighthouse to be moved. In 1849 the Admiralty reported to the House of Commons that the lighthouse was on the wrong side of the Harbour 'alluring vessels to their destruction'.
In 1860 shipowners and merchants requested that the lighthouse be moved to the Alderman Rocks. The Alderman Rocks had been considered as a site for the lighthouse in 1838 but the Board turned this down as impracticable because of the unsound structure of the rock and its exposure to heavy seas. However in 1860 the Board agreed to erect a beacon tower on the Alderman Rock.
The beacon was built by a contractor and completed in 1862, but in 1865 it was damaged in storms. Capt. E.F. Roberts, the Inspector of Lights, who was appointed in 1867, recommended that the beacon be taken down, stating that it should never have been built there. By the end of 1865 the beacon had disappeared. Nevertheless demands for Crookhaven Lighthouse to be moved to the Alderman Rocks continued until 1873.
With the completion of the first Fastnet Lighthouse in 1854 Rock Island became a shore depot for Fastnet. The Fastnet Keepers lived in rented accommodation at first but in 1861 the Board decided to build shore dwellings next to Crookhaven Lighthouse. The houses were completed by the contractor in 1863. Until 1890 reliefs of Fastnet were carried out by local boat from Rock Island.
The Crookhaven Lighthouse complex was also used as a buoy depot from the 1860s. At this time, and until the 1970s, buoys were taken off station for repainting and repair after only a year at sea, and were replaced by a freshly painted buoy. Dirty buoys taken off station from around the south-west coast were brought to Crookhaven, where they were scraped down to bare metal and repainted with numerous coats by the off-duty Keepers. A blacksmith would be sent from the Irish Lights workshops to repair the buoys and moorings prior to their return to sea, temporarily increasing the population at the lighthouse. Local casual labourers were employed to hoist buoys out of the water and to launch them when being returned to sea.
From 1890 the Commissioners decided to carry out the relief of Fastnet, and of other south-west coast stations, using their own vessels.
In 1896 work on building the new Fastnet Lighthouse began. Crookhaven Lighthouse was used as a shore depot and a new pier, tramway, steam crane, stores, workshops, workmen's accommodation, and an office were built. Two additional dwellings for the Fastnet Keepers were also built
. A new light was installed at Crookhaven in 1904 and subsequently the position of Principal Keeper of Crookhaven was abolished. The Principal Keeper of Fastnet was put in charge of Crookhaven and the station was looked after by Fastnet Keepers who were on shore liberty.
In 1909 Mizen Head Fog Signal Station became operational. Additional houses were built at Crookhaven for the Mizen Head Keepers and their families, with the result that the area around the lighthouse grew almost to the size of a small village. Mizen Head was added to the responsibilities of the Principal Keeper of Fastnet, who was required to inspect the Fog Signal Station periodically to ensure all was in order.
In 1911 Crookhaven Lighthouse was converted to unwatched automatic operation, with a carbide-water generator providing acetylene gas to fuel the light, so the off-duty Fastnet and Mizen Head Keepers no longer had to keep a night watch at Crookhaven light. It was not until 1931 that Mizen Head got its own Principal Keeper. In 1953 the Fastnet Keepers were relieved of responsibility for Crookhaven and an Attendant was appointed in charge of Crookhaven Lighthouse.
In 1924 two of the nine houses at Crookhaven were un-occupied. By 1959 most of the Keepers were no longer living in the houses allocated to them. Lightkeepers and their families were no longer willing to live in such an isolated place, preferring to live elsewhere in their own homes. In 1961 the Commissioners decided to convert Fastnet and Mizen Head to non-dwelling stations and to sell eight of the houses. The ninth house was sold in 1998.
All of this indicates that Rock Island in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a busy place. Aidan Power has researched Irish Lights records and other archives in Ireland and Great Britain to bring together a mass of detail about Crookhaven Lighthouse, the Coastguard Station, the School, the Post Office, and local resident families including the Notters who were the main landowners.
The book is especially valuable because much of the information was not previously readily accessible to the general public. The sources used are meticulously referenced.
Inevitably in a book like this a few errors, misprints, and misinterpretations have crept in: catadiptric should be catadioptric (p18); Muggins should be Muglins (p22); Gunners and Gasmakers did not have the same status in the Service as Lightkeepers (p37); Balbriggan Lighthouse remained under the control of the Commissioners of Irish Lights until 1989 (p40); the Commissioners' Principal Medical Officer in 1902 was Dr (later Sir John) Lumsden, not Dr Lunnesden (p44); Puritol was used to purify acetylene gas in a carbide-water generator, not an anti-corrosive paint (p82); ss Discover should be ss Discovery II, the Antarctic Survey ship loaned to Irish Lights from 1947 to 1948 following the sinking of the Isolda (p82)-I mention these to avoid their being perpetuated by others. On page 103, Fran Hollens's reminiscences, jew's harp is transcribed as 'duce harp'.
The book is self published and might have benefitted from more professional design. It will be especially interesting to retired Lightkeepers and their families. There are many familiar names here-though, as the author points out, Lightkeepers whose names appeared in reports to the Board usually did so for the wrong reasons, while those with unblemished service were never mentioned. And little did I think, when I was marking off the D3 books in the 1960s, that these records would be quoted in a book published in 2006!




The Atlantic Telegraph-by W.H. Russell
(Tempus Publishing Ltd, The Mill, Brimscombe Port, Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG, England)
ISBN 1 84588 074 9,
paperback 128 pages,
25 illustrations, £16.00 in UK

Reviewed by Tony Hogan

The Atlantic Telegraph was written in 1866 by William Howard Russell, a journalist and war correspondent with The Times, and describes the various attempts to lay a submarine telegraph cable between Valentia Island and Newfoundland. This is a reprint of the original edition.
The first submarine telegraph cable was laid in 1851 between Dover and Calais, and in the following years others followed. The first submarine cable across the Irish Sea was laid in 1853 and joined Portpatrick and Donaghadee, a distance of 27 miles. Holyhead and Howth were linked in 1861 (64 miles). By 1857 the longest cable laid amounted to little over 100 miles.
Cyrus Field, an American financier, was the inspiration behind the proposal to join the New and Old Worlds by telegraph cable. His original concept, in 1854, was to lay a cable across the Cabot Strait from Cape Breton to Newfoundland and to run ships carrying the messages from Newfoundland to Galway, thereby shortening the time for messages to cross the Atlantic by four to five days. By 1856 the 85 miles long Newfoundland cable had been laid and Cyrus Field proposed an Atlantic submarine cable. A new design of cable, capable of withstanding the pressures on the seabed at depths of up to 2000 fathoms (over 2 miles), was required.
The author describes in detail the formation of a company to handle the project, the raising of finance, the agreements with the various legislatures on both sides of the Atlantic, and the design and testing of the cable. The proposed route was surveyed in 1856. For the first attempt in 1857 the cable was divided between HMS Agamemnon and USNS Niagara; other vessels were in attendance. Various dignitaries visited Valentia to mark the commencement of the enterprise. Having secured the shore end to the telegraph station on Valentia, USNS Niagara began laying cable towards Newfoundland. Testing of the cable's integrity between shore and ship showed that after almost 300 miles had been laid the cable had broken and this first attempt was abandoned.
In June 1858, HMS Agamemnon and USNS Niagara commenced a second attempt. On this occasion their starting point was mid-Atlantic. The cable ends from each vessel were spliced after several attempts and Niagara headed westwards and Agamemnon eastwards. Yet again the cable broke after a total of about 300 miles. The ships returned to port. As sufficient cable remained aboard the vessels a third attempt was made in late July, again with a mid-Atlantic starting point and by early August both vessels reached their respective shores. Having connected the cable to both shores, messages of congratulation were telegraphed back and forth, including ones between Queen Victoria and US President James Buchanan. However, all was not well with the cable and by early September the cable failed for unknown reasons.
The fourth attempt was in 1865 with a redesigned cable, the construction was of which is explained in depth. The company chartered the Great Eastern and loaded her with 2,300 miles of cable. HMS Terrible and HMS Sphinx would escort and assist Great Eastern on her voyage. The steamer Caroline was entrusted with 27 miles of cable for the Irish shore end at Valentia. The author describes the speeches and partying on Valentia Island. Vast numbers of people travelled and turned out to view Great Eastern. They were disappointed as the enormous ship and her escorts stood off from Valentia. Other ships including the Dublin Ballast Board steam-yacht Alexandra were present. Once the shore cable from Caroline had been spliced to that aboard her, Great Eastern set course for Newfoundland and commenced cable laying. The continuous testing performed on the cable between Valentia and the telegraph test room aboard Great Eastern is described as are the various faults which occurred and were corrected-there was even a suspicion of sabotage!
When 1060 miles from Valentia and 600 from Newfoundland, the cable broke and one end was now over 2 miles down on the floor of the Atlantic. The attempts to recover the cable from the seabed are well recorded-three times the cable was caught and brought half way to the surface before the grapnel's own cable broke with the weight of the telegraph cable being lifted. This fourth attempt was thus abandoned and Great Eastern headed back to Crookhaven to convey the bad news. The author records the raising of funds, and modifications to be made before yet another attempt in 1866.
The original book concluded at this point. The 1866 successful laying is covered by a one-page postscript. Over a fourteen day period Great Eastern successfully laid this latest cable all the way across. She then recovered the cable lost the previous year and continued laying to Newfoundland, so there were now two trans-Atlantic submarine telegraph cables in use.
In these days of cell-phones and texting, one can only imagine what a difference the Atlantic cable made to communications. Prior to its completion news and messages between the Old and New Worlds took days if not weeks to travel in one direction-imagine waiting for that urgent reply!
The details of company formation, cable manufacture, raising of finance, modification to cables, modifications to ships, and methods of testing, laying and recovering submarine telegraph cables make this an interesting, if at times, a somewhat tedious read. When written a century and a half ago, this book could well have been on the non-fiction best-seller list.




A view of ourselves and the world

Forty Years Behind the Lens at RTÉ-by Godfrey Graham
Ashfield Press, 30 Linden Grove, Blackrock, Co. Dublin.
isbn 1 901658 55 4
softback, 247 pages,
106 monochrome photos
no price given

Reviewed by the Editor

I have a clear memory of the night television started in Ireland-New Year's Eve 1961
Godfrey Graham wanted to be part of it so much he borrowed a movie camera and filmed the scene in O'Connell Street, Dublin, outside the Gresham Hotel, and in the ballroom inside the hotel, that first night.
Godfrey Graham left school at 16 and worked for some years in a photographic shop in Grafton Street. In 1960 he left this job for the chance of two week's experience as an assistant cameraman on a movie being filmed in Waterford. A number of brief filming jobs followed.
He got into Telefís Éireann, initially in the editing department but soon afterwards as a lighting cameraman. In the ensuing years he filmed many current affairs, documentary, and feature programmes, one of the first being the John F. Kennedy visit to Ireland.
His work took him all over Ireland, to most of Europe, to Russia, the United States, and Africa, and gave him the opportunity to meet many famous people in the arts, entertainment, and politics, as well as many ordinary people who in reality were not ordinary at all.
Graham writes in a flowing, natural style. His word pictures of people he worked with are as expressive as the images he previously created through the lens. He interweaves his personal opinions, observations, and pieces of his own family history.
The book is beautifully printed and designed.
Ireland has been transformed since the 1960s. Reading this book is a reminder of just how much. It is often said that the country was changed by television, but television also reflected and recorded that change.
Of most interest to Irish Lights people will be his description of filming the ss Ierne reliefs of south-west coast rock lighthouses for the Discovery documentary series in 1964 (Ierne is misspelt 'Ierine'). The film crew landed on the lighthouses by derrick from the ship's boats to film the stations and Keepers. Graham pays tribute to the skills of Keepers and Ierne's Seamen. The beautiful documentary film which resulted is preserved on the Mizen Collection dvd set which is available from Mizen Head Signal Station visitor centre, website www.mizenhead.net; e-mail info@mizenhead.net.