{"id":573898759,"date":"2026-03-18T20:01:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T00:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573898759"},"modified":"2026-04-06T17:53:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T21:53:55","slug":"blacksod-lighthouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2026\/03\/18\/blacksod-lighthouse\/","title":{"rendered":"Blacksod Lighthouse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We made a quick stop to start the day at a place that&#8217;s been historically relevant in more than one way and in more than one time. Blacksod Lighthouse has been in operation since 1866. It remains an active lighthouse. It is waymark for local fisherman, has been a post office for the community, and still serves as a fueling stop for the locals and also emergency operations. <\/p>\n<p>Just out of view here is a small collection of signs memorializing the vessels and people that left from these shores during tough times. This was the place where struggling, starving people set out for Great Britain and Canada and the United States. You can just come to the little beach here and do a little genealogical work if you are of Irish descent. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/mar26\/mar86.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>The lighthouse hasn&#8217;t opened for seasonal tours just yet, and it&#8217;s a quiet spot in the midmorning. Just two other people were there, having a picnic on the stone wall overlooking the water. Behind the building is the rocky beach. Just off the right of the frame is where you&#8217;ll find the garden with all of the immigrant vessels.<\/p>\n<p>Then, in 1944, the people working here played their role in saving the free world. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/mar26\/mar87.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Blacksod, as a weather station, measured atmospheric conditions and made regular reports to Britain and the US. There were no satellites or computer models, of course, there was only first-person observation, extrapolation, and educated guesswork. A young woman, Maureen Sweeney, was a part of that effort. She worked there in the mail office and also made hourly weather observations from this key spot, one of the first stations on the western coast. On her 21st birthday she saw the coming storm that threatened the armada assembled in the English Channel for northern France. Men were sick in the boats, nervously waiting to go ashore or jump into France or ferry others here and there. It was the world&#8217;s largest military operation and it came down to secrecy, timing, the tides and the moon, and the weather. What Sweeney saw helped generate the forecasts that convinced Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, to postpone the invasion by a day. <\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a movie due out this summer about the weather, full of wonderful actors all delightfully miscast. But the star will be the history, and that weather. Some of it was recorded and reported at this spot, at Blacksod.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zdM4tdLQBg0?si=0ThJzkES26b6Y9RI\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Maureen Sweeney stayed on there, running the mail, until she retired in her 80s. She died at 100, just a few years ago. Working here is a family business. Her son runs the lighthouse these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We made a quick stop to start the day at a place that&#8217;s been historically relevant in more than one way and in more than one time. Blacksod Lighthouse has been in operation since 1866. It remains an active lighthouse. It is waymark for local fisherman, has been a post office for the community, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,32,62,10,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573898759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-history","category-ireland","category-photo","category-wednesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573898759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573898759"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573898759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573898769,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573898759\/revisions\/573898769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573898759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573898759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573898759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}