September 14, 2006
Hound of the Sea
Shipwreck on Clare Island, Co. Mayo. In the background, swathed in dawn cloud, is Croagh Patrick. Photo taken September 10, 2006.
Michael Viney describes the Clare Island Survey of 1910-1911 as
the world’s first major inventory of nature in a single location…over three years, more than one hundred scientists were deployed there, from Ireland, Britain, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.¹
The survey was organized and led by an Ulster-born naturalist, Robert Lloyd Praeger. He described the result thus
Of a total of 5269 animals observed – ranging from mammals to microscopic rhizopods² – no less than 1253 species were found to be hitherto unknown in Ireland, of which 343 were unrecorded also from Great Britain , and 109 new to science. Of the 3219 plants collected, from phanerogams to diatoms, 585 were new to Ireland, 55 new to the British Isles and 11 new to science.³
There was another species out and about on the island last weekend – Galway Walkers on a weekend trip. Given that, of the 30+ walkers that travelled over for the weekend, there were only three gentlemen [ok, 2 gentlemen and me], any fellow heading to the island next weekend for the Singles Weekend should hope for a similar ratio of men vs. women. But I digress.
Not all of the species discovered by Praeger and his team were actually on the island – many of them were dredged up by a Royal Navy Fisheries Protection vessel. After the War of Independence, that ship, called the Muirchu – named after Cuchulainn’s hound, became Ireland’s first Coastal Defence vessel. It wasn’t an entirely successful one, as this excerpt from a Dail debate on naval procurement from 1947 shows:-
The Muirchu was regarded as a joke in this country because the trawlers that were plundering our coastal waters and the fishing banks were able to escape because of the slowness of that particular vessel… We are to have six corvettes to defend our island. Well, now, that is amusing. When the war was on we had no corvette at all. We had only the Muirchu steaming around, slowly, being laughed at by every aeroplane that flew overhead and being sneered at by every submarine that stuck its periscope over the water.
That last speaker was a little harsh, since the Muirchu did manage to sink a U-Boat during World War I. And it’s early career as a Fisheries Protection vessel was hampered by the fact that it was unclear what Ireland’s territorial boundaries were, as discussed in this 1930 Dail debate :-
Last week, we had a case in point, in which we did not even know whether the islands off our own coast are our property or not. It is not fair to the Board; it is not fair to the Dáil; it is not fair to the country, and last, but not least, it is not fair to the captain or to the crew of the Muirchu, because they have done their duty, as far as I know, conscientiously. They have arrested trawlers; they have brought them into port. Their duties ended there, but when the court was held and fines were imposed in certain cases, they could not be collected. In the other cases when it was attempted to impose a fine the defendant snapped his fingers and said “That particular part of the world where I was arrested does not belong to the Free State at all,” and the Free State has to take it lying down.
But it was another military action earlier in the war that garnered its fame, aimed not at the Germans but at Irishmen. In April 1916, the ship steamed up the Liffey and shelled the Four Courts, in an effort to dislodge Irish rebels taking part in the Easter Rising. Back then, the Muirchu was known by its Royal Navy name – the Helga.
Clare Island is not a place that one would naturally associate with naval protection, since it was home to Ireland’s most famous pirate, Grace O’Malley [or Granuaile]. Grace was an equal-opportunities pirate – she robbed from the Irish and English alike; harrying the moneyed inhabitants of the West coast without prejudice. The Muirchu was sold on in 1947 and sank off the Saltees in the same year (with no casualties). Boats still make the 3 kilometre journey from Roonagh Pier (just west of Louisburgh in Mayo) to the small quay on the island, which is still guarded today by the castle of Grace O’Malley.
¹ Ireland – A Smithsonian History; pp 10-11
² amoeba or other slimy little thingies
³ The Way that I Went; pp 186-187
Back then, it wasn’t Spanish trawlers that were seen as the chief plunderers of Irish waters – it was the French, as another excerpt from the 1947 Dail debate shows:-
The Minister said that we have three corvettes. I should like to see more money being spent under this subhead, because the failure of our Navy in the past, the Muirchu, to deal with the depredations of foreign trawlers has been forcibly brought home to us. These French trawlers came to within a few hundred yards of our coast, raiding the finest fishing beds along the west coast and behaving as if the place belonged to them.
Camera = Canon 5D , lens = Canon 24-105mm@24mm, ISO=50, aperture=f11, speed=1/2 sec. tripod
clare island,helga,muirchu,granuaile,autumn,ireland, mayo,irishblogs,photoblogs,photography,galwayblogs,monasette,Canon,5D,september,2006
Posted by Monasette at September 14, 2006 05:38 PM