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Just a few more shots of some of the roadside sheep we encountered today.
It’s hard to imagine this becoming a novelty.
But they’ve seen enough cars and people that they aren’t impressed in the slightest bit.
And, yes, they have the absolute right of way on the roads.
Don’t get between the livestock and their lunch.
It was a somewhat shorter day — our last day, sadly — touring around Ireland. This week we went west, and then worked our way north. This evening we have to drive back down to Dublin. We’re flying out tomorrow morning. But that’s tomorrow, and there’s still today. And we have a few more sites to see.
When you go to Dunree Head you’re really going to Fort Dunree. There are several old barracks, the view of the water, Lough Swilly, below and the Fanad Peninsula across the way.
There’s a museum, and a few historical pieces outside on display. Your basic fort features, really. Like, for instance, the 90 cm carbon arc searchlight. Their predecessors were put in early in the 20th century, these were installed in 1938. They were intended to light up enemy ships and assisting the Royal Navy steamers.
The light was so bright it lit up the Ballmastocker Beach we saw yesterday and the village across the way. That’s more than three miles as the crow flies. The story they tell is that you could read your newspaper, at night, from the strength of that light.
The light was manually moved. A soldier stood off to the side several feet and steered the thing around. He was stationed to the side because of the heat the light generated.
You send some electricity through carbon rods and the reflection off the concave mirror does the real work. It could be used as a pinpoint light, or in a moveable wider arc, which turned all of night into day on the water. There are two of these on display, at least one of them would still work. They last used it in a 2011 ceremony.
There are also two QF 12 pounder CWT guns, made by the Elswick Ordnance Company in 1893 and installed here in 1925. The idea behind this weapon was harbor defense against small vessels. They were in service until 1956.
The gunner stood to the left of the weapon. He threw his arm over the shoulder piece, trying his best to look cool. The left hand elevated and depressed the barrel. The right hand rested on a pistol grip, and there he fingered the trigger.
It fired a 3-inch shell, and could average a round down range ever four seconds.
Another key element of the fort was the Mark XVII sea mine.
This is a contact mine, the standard British armament. If your ship bumped up against this your ship would go boom. It was an update on World War I British mines, an evolution from their German counterparts.
There were switches in those horns, now painted red, and this was the standard device during World War 2. Here, they were used defensively, meant to deny access to the waterways. (Historians still debate their effectiveness.) Inside of the mine was a mix of ammonium nitrate and TNT which apparently made for a lower quality explosive. The explosive charge could range between 320 and 500 pounds of explosives. I have no frame of reference for what that means.
In the old rooms of the fort there are little displays, highlighting things like the uniforms and tools and the forge that were all fixtures of the place when it was in active service, which was the case between 1798 (We’ve seen multiple references on our trip to the French fleet that came in to support the Irish Rebellion at the turn of the 18th century.) until after World War 2.
The water here is an important geological feature, one of just three glacial fjords on the island. The water is deep, and there is a sheltered, safe harbor to the left as you look at the photo above. If you sailed to the right, you’re quickly in the transatlantic shipping routes. The British used Lough Swilly’s deep water for much of that time. And here, on top of this cliff, close to the mouth of waterway, the fort commands the best views and any traffic that tried to come through. During the Great War, they erected a boom across the water to protect the British Grand Fleet from a U-boat attack. The British gave over the fort over after the Irish gained independence.
This was the last place handed over to the Irish. There was a brief, small ceremony on Oct. 3, 1938. Not a lot of people saw it, but there was romance and pageantry. A major marched 32 men from the 17th Heavy Battery Royal Artillery to the peak of the fort. Waiting there were 26 men from the 5th Coast Defence Battery Artillery Corps of Ireland.
It was a cold and windy day. It was October, over the North Atlantic. They’re all hunched over with a certain sort of military acceptance and proficiency.
The Union flag was lowered, the Irish tricolour was raised. Sergeant Arthur King lowered the British flag. Quartermaster-Sergeant Michael McLaughlin raised the Irish flag. They were brothers-in-law.
King married a local girl. And the way the signage reads, not everyone was in on the moment. He said they were “keeping this fort in the family” and explained that he was related, by marriage to McLaughlin.
McLaughlin had signed up at 19, in 1922. He stayed on here until 1940, when his service took him to Dublin. He stayed in the Irish Army for another decade after that. When the quartermaster sergeant died his coffin was draped in the flag he hoisted here in October, 1938.
After World War 2 the Irish coastal defense forts were reduced in size and then closed. The guns were fired in their last training exercise in 1964. They were never fired in anger.
In 1989 Fort Dunree was considered strategically unnecessary. The next year, it was formally closed as a base. There was a gale blowing over the Atlantic that June day, but the waters here were said to be perfectly calm. The flag was lowered by a man named Captain William Donagh. He gave the flag to his father, Major General Bill Donagh, pictured above, who had been the officer in charge when the Irish took control in 1938, 52 years earlier.
The place was already a museum by then, since 1986 in fact. When they opened the museum, it served as a reunion, of sorts, for the men who’d served here. They gathered together for this photograph.
That photo was taken 40 years ago. They could tell a lot more stories beyond the excellent signs inside, I’m sure. Hopefully someone jotted them all down.
This is our last day on the Wild Atlantic Way, and our last day in Ireland. It is back down to Dublin tonight, and a plane in the morning. We had to make today count, and did we ever. We warmed up with two quick stops.
Lisfannon Beach on Lough Swilly is in a natural heritage area. It is an important wetlands site for birds. Meanwhile, a short walk away is Fahan Wood, noted for oak, hazel and rowan. The beach itself is a big site for vacationers and it offers some lovely views.
Near here you can sail in some of the same seas that Englishman John Newton sailed, and survived. Born in 1725, Newton went to sea at age 11 with his father. In 1743, he was pressed into the Royal Navy. He got involved in the slave trade, became a slave himself in Africa. Rescued and brought home, he eventually captained several slave ships himself. Along the way, he found his faith. The story goes that he encountered a bad storm in the waters near here, and that was part of the personal catalyst. It was a bit of a slow burn for him, but he eventually became an English evangelical Anglican cleric and abolitionist. He stared hard into what had been some moral blind spots, and wrote a tract apologizing for his role in the slave trade that became popular enough to require reprinting. He also wrote hymns, including Amazing Grace.
The British Empire ended their role in the African slave trade in 1807, just months before Newton’s death.
Just to the west we found our next step. And in true local fashion, it’s beautiful, and entirely devoid of human life at the moment. Also there are a few houses dotting the area, reasonable little places, with people all at work, or tending to chores, or who knows what. It’s a sunny Friday in the spring, it’s a reasonable temperature, and no one is around.
Ballyhiernan Bay consists of a sandy beach, about a mile long, backed by low dunes and protected on its flanks by rocky points to the east and west. Directly through there, though, is the Atlantic Ocean.
The tides were well out, and the beach was pristine. There are cattle and sheep grazing behind us here, but it hasn’t always been as peaceful as all of this. The 3rd Earl of Leitrim, William Clements, a balding many of bushy hair, had all of this in his estate at one time. His family had earned it the old-fashioned way: they’d stolen it decades earlier. Also, he had a thing about assaulting girls and women, supposedly. A real tyrant. His historical pullquote has become Lord Leitrim was not a bad man – if he got his own way. He had a history of evicted people for the slightest reasons. So maybe not a pleasant man. Here, after several previous attempts on his life, the locals got their revenge. In 1878, on a windy, sleet-filled April morning, they ambushed the man’s carriage and killed him and two of his employees. A few people were arrested, one died in jail, no one was ever convicted.
And that wasn’t enough for the locals. A few days later, people tried to capture his hearse. Apparently they wanted to throw his remains into the street. In 1960, a Celtic Cross monument was dedicated to the men who killed the earl, “in the cause against landlordism.”
This took place about 10 miles away. From reading the above account it was not an easy death. But standing there, at the beach, having read the tourist marker, you only know a little a bit about this. The historical signs are selective, and bound by space limitations and public relations considerations because, hey, beach!
Off to the left side of the beach we spent some time among the rocks and the tidal pools that make up a part of the point.
It’s been almost 150 years. You wonder if any of the people living here now are descended from those farmers, or those “patriots.” You wonder if there’s any knowing slaps on the back at the pub. “My great-great-great-great-great grandpa showed him!” With history so deep, some stories would probably sound as if they knew those people, as if they were still looking for clues out on that muddy hill.
I found a piece of rusted angle iron on the beach. I wonder if it means something.
The pebbles were more interesting. I picked up a few and played with them on the way back to the car.
I should have been looking for patriots.
We moved up the bay and are, here, pretty close, to the northernmost part of the emerald isle.
Fanad Point, the tip of a long peninsula, has long been strategically important, and hazardous for sailors. Today, about 2,700 people live in the area. The fishing industry has long been in decline, but livestock and salmon farming are some of the many economic drivers. Because of the dramatic coastline, and the varying salinity of the water, every lagoon is just a bit different, and so there are all sorts of different biomes.
For about a century the British had coast guard stations here and in other places around Ireland, but that all changed with the treaty in 1921. The Irish themselves took over, and this was one of about 200 lookout posts along the coast. In 1939 World War II began about 250 miles away at sea in 1939. Seventeen men kept watch here for much of the war, though the Irish managed to stay out of things. They and their counterparts listed dozens of torpedoed and ships bombed in the North Atlantic in December of 1940.
But the history goes back a bit further. The first lighthouse, a need inspired by the nearby wreck of the HMS Saldahna that we just learned about, came in to service here in 1817. This beautiful lighthouse was erected in 1886.
If you take the tour, you go into two main rooms on the ground level and learn a bit about what it meant to be a light keeper here, and about some of the experiences of the people who worked out here, which was a manual operation until 1983.
You have the great big light, of course, but for direct communication, at a closer ranger, you would use the flag system. Each of these flags serves as a letter, phrases, or codes. You’ve perhaps seen them on a ship. But you don’t often see them together historically, apparently. This complete and original set seems to be a rare thing in Ireland.
The people working here were simply the signal operators, a different setup than we had in the U.S. where the man that had to climb the steps also had to sometimes hustle out to sea to help people in distress. But, here, the key that climbed these steps just called the rescuing professionals. And those guys got help in 1969, when helicopters came to the peninsula.
The 1906 lighting apparatus was replaced in 1975 when the light was converted to an unwatched electric setup. In 1978 the assistant keeper was transferred. When the principal keeper retired in 1983 the station was re-classified as an attendant station.
Because I read, Brilliant Beacons, a book about lighthouses, I asked the host about Fresnel lenses. He immediately had me pegged as That Guy. Anyway, the light here sits behind a 300mm refractor. The light’s distinctive signal can be seen 21 miles away at sea.
And here’s a view from outside. We were just up there! That point in the distance is the other side of the bay. That’s some four miles away. So there, and well beyond, the light keeps the night.
There’s something romantic about lighthouses, we all seem to agree. And even as you learn more about them, that doesn’t necessarily go away. Maybe it becomes more mysterious. While many lighthouses the world over are now automated, and the ones still in operation can be vitally important, if a backup of sorts, we’re never going to look at a GPS system — miraculous as they are — in air, on land and at sea — with the same sort of wonder.
I think it is the style of technology. The lighthouse represents a lonely, perpetual vigil with no peers beyond the next lighthouse elsewhere down the shore. They stand there, quietly, and say a lot. And, without them, the very real possibility of doom awaits us. GPS, meanwhile, is omnipresent, and always chattering. You have how many apps on your phone that are tapping into it at any give time? And, sure, you can’t beat that functionality and the precision is quite something, but even in just a generation of everyday use we’ve come to think of it not as a lifesaver — which it clearly is in some circumstances — but merely a directional tool.
If you just sailed over here, rolled down the window and yelled to some landlubber “Which way to Scapa Flow?” you’d be no more impressed when the fellow gave you an answer.
There’s a little VR video you can watch at the lighthouse. You put on a headset and it tells the story of that 1811 vessel that sank nearby, the HMS Saldahna. The video is narrated by the captain’s parrot, which survived the wreck. Or a cartoon of the parrot. We’ll never know what the real parrot thought. The bird met it’s own grisly fate nearby soon after.
We walked along the shore and enjoyed some of the views behind the gift shop. They have three options to stay here, renting out the recently restored lightkeeper’s cabins. No phone, no wifi, it sounds delightful. Read at night, walk here in the daytime. It is probably a bit out of my price range, but if I ever disappear, add this to places you might look for me. But only after a month or so has passed by.
These are both panoramas. Click to see them in another browser, and then click them once more to see the whole image.
We got a few things from the gift shop, including dry socks. If you rent one of those cabins, make sure you take good care of your feet. The ground can be sodden here, but by no means should that dissuade you. You’ll love it here.
