Death of an Island?

In October 1960 David Scott witnessed the last islanders leaving Inishark. The following draws from his essay ‘Death of Inishark’, printed in the Daily Mirror in October 1960.
Shark Island lies seven miles off the Connemara coast. Since men first began to toil, hardy folk have tortured a living out of Shark’s thousand acres of rocky pasture and the sea around it. The farming and fishing community used to be counted in hundreds, but in October 1960 the last twenty-three survivors moved out of Shark like a garrison surrendering after a life time’s siege. The Atlantic beat them and hammered them into submission, cutting them off from the outside world for weeks and months on end. Too often and too easily their tiny landing bay was whipped into a perilous cauldron by even the weakest winds. And over the years, as family after family emigrated, the situation those who stayed grew more desperate.
In 1958 a Shark man died from appendicitis because no word of his plight could be got out for five days. That death sealed Shark’s fate. In October 1960 four boats arrived on the last mercy mission to Shark. The fleet was commanded by young Father Flannery, the island’s priest. Men, women and children staggered along the stony 500 yards between their cottages and the landing stage with their burdens…. a huge, home-made wardrobe lashed to the shoulders of fifty-three-years-old Michael Cloonan. A dark brown cat in an old blackened cooking pot, with the lid half tied down… Eleven-months-old baby Anne Lacey in the arms of her mother… Anne Murray’s geraniums, hens in baskets, geese in sacks, straw brooms and string-tied suitcases, iron bedsteads and baths. Thirteen cows, twelve dogs, ten donkeys. eight more cats, scores of hens, a hundred sheep, a stack of hay -and a tear in the eye of Thomas Lacey, the elder. They all came down to the water’s edge of Shark for the last time.

“Why should I not be happy to be going?” said Thomas, 73.“I’ll not be grieving for it. I’ve wanted to leave for years. This island has had its share of my life. His voice trembled and his eyes glistened. “It gave me only poverty and it took two of my sons,” he said. “Look yonder at that strip of cheating water between the islands. That is where my sons drowned eleven years ago…”

During November and December 1959 there were only six days when it was possible to leave or land on Shark. There was no tea, sugar and paraffin for six weeks. Nights were long when you had only the light of the peat fire to see by. Christmas came and went like that. It was too much. Those leaving the island watched the twelve inhabitable but untenable houses of Shark fade out of life. “That island is finished”, said Thomas Joseph, turning his back on it and pulling noisily on his pipe. A new life awaited the island folk on the mainland. Linkback: mountainviews.ie/island/1382/comment/17543/

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Island of melancholic beauty

Inishark, occupied for thousands of years, has numerous prehistoric monuments, including burial grounds and hut sites. However, its exposure to vicious Atlantic storms meaning no one could land on the island for weeks on end, combined with numerous tragic drownings, convinced the Irish government to finally evacuate the island’s remaining residents, rather than attempt to build a costly new pier. The very lifeblood of the population having been drained by decades of migration, the last two dozen inhabitants of this isolated fishing and farming community closed the doors of their respective homeplaces forever in October 1960 and, with all of their worldly possessions and livestock, departed in a flotilla of boats and curraghs for the mainland. A rich folklore was consigned to history with the migration of the inhabitants. One such custom was the crowning of a king, whose duties included translating the British landlord’s English into Gaelic for the islanders, deciding when and what to fish for and dividing the valuable seaweed harvest among the islanders for crop fertilisation. The Irish language film, Inis Airc, Bás Oileáin (Inishark, Death of an Island), (2006), tells the islanders’ story of the evacuation.

Above the old harbour, where it is often dangerous to disembark due to submerged rocks, is the deserted village, slowly being consumed by the elements. It is evocative to wander amid the nettle choked ruins of these old homesteads which once rang with the sound of human voices, where now only the lowly sighing of the wind whistling through the exposed rafters can be heard. St. Leo’s Church, open to the sky and named for the island’s patron saint, Leo of Inis Airc who lived here some time between the sixth and eighth centuries, cuts a somewhat forlorn presence at the heart of the old village. Right above the Atlantic Ocean, the old boreens covered in weeds and lined by broken down field hedges behind which lie ghostly ridges of lazy beds once verdant with the foliage of life-giving potatoes, lend a melancholy beauty to this wild island.

Inishark is home to Gannets, Guillemots, Arctic terns, Red-billed oystercatchers and Fulmars, nesting in great profusion on the island’s magnificent palisades and where the Atlantic has bitten the cliffs into sharp, narrow coves. The screaming of nesting herring gulls is incessant. In May of 2014, at least two Corncrakes were recorded on the island, confined mainly to the nettle patches around the abandoned cottages due to the presence of sheep, which graze unfettered across the entire island and have eaten the vegetation right down to the ground. The noisy chit chat of Wheatears is ubiquitous and you may get buzzed by Great Skuas, whose numbers appear to be on the increase.

From the summit trig point, feast your eyes on 360 degree eye candy, including Achill Island and Inishbofin, Croagh Patrick, Mweelrea, the Twelve Bens and the endless deep blue expanse of the restless Atlantic. Linkback: mountainviews.ie/island/1382/comment/17535/

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The beauty of the Inishark cliffs

There are 200 foot cliffs plunging into the boiling sea to the southwest of the summit of Inishark.. This photo shows how the constant lashing of wave and wind have shaped one of these cliffs to resemble a lady gazing out to the west into the face of the prevailing wind and waves. The west coast of Inishark, like so many of our Atlantic Islands, consists of high, severe cliffs and angry rock walls while the land slopes gently down to the east where the island folk built their village and pier. A beautiful place to be on a hot, calm summers day but a nightmare to behold in the depthts of a winter storm. Linkback: mountainviews.ie/island/1382/comment/17544/

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