Irish Sea

“ The Ocean bore the same fate to Munster and to Ulster. And in fact so long as the sea surrounds this island, so long all its peoples must be linked in a common fortune. The deep that encompasses Ireland has made this country one, gathering together into the Irish family all races that have entered within its circuit. By the might of that encircling Ocean the men of Ireland are bound together in one inheritance, unchanging amid ceaseless change. ”

“ Ireland, lying on the western flank of Great Britain, commands on the south the approaches to the Channel, on the west the North Atlantic; and on the east the Irish Sea, all sea-roads by which millions of pounds' worth of supplies are brought to England. On every coast Ireland has excellent harbours. There are Lough Swilly on the north, Blacksod Bay on the west, Bantry Bay, Cork Harbour and Waterford Harbour on the south, Kingstown Harbour and Belfast Lough on the east—to name but these—besides numerous lesser inlets which can serve as shelter for small craft and destroyers. ”

“ But the sea about Ireland is still less explored than the land. All round the Atlantic seaboard of the Irish coast are shoals of herring and mackerel, which might be food for men, but are at present only consumed by the multitudes of sea-birds which follow them. ”

“ There was frequent trade, for from the first century Irish ports were well known to merchants of the Empire, sailing across the Gaulish sea in wooden ships built to confront Atlantic gales, with high poops standing from the water like castles, and great leathern sails—stout hulls steered by the born sailors of the Breton coasts or the lands of the Loire and Garonne. The Irish themselves served as sailors and pilots in the ocean traffic, and travelled as merchants, tourists, scholars and pilgrims. ”

“ Those which take to the west, after offering themselves to the Hebrides, where the great stationary fishery is, proceed towards the north of Ireland, where being interrupted they make a second division; that to the western side is scarcely perceived, being soon lost in the immensity of the Atlantic, whilst the other, which passes into the Irish Sea, rejoices and feeds the inhabitants of most of the coasts that border upon it. ”

“ After those days Danes and Irish and English plundered in their turn, but the stillness of the rock and the loneliness of the sea closed in again on the islands, while on the mainland rebellion and conquest alternated in a various agony, and the civilisation thrust on Ireland was a coat of many colours, dipped in blood. These Aras of the Sea rest in their primitive calm, nurturing a strong, leisurely people, with the patience and hardiness of the rock in their blood ”

“ The terrors of the sea journey drove travellers to the land route, and the way across England to the Continent became so important that clerics of the tenth century could not imagine that any other way had ever been possible. The new sea-kings, moreover, were not the people to forget the ancient and profitable trade routes of the wine commerce, or the Irish harbours into which trading ships from north and south had sailed for the last two thousand years, or the gold that had been dug from Irish mines in old days. ”

“ Every coast has developed [Pg 131] its own particular type, although, of course, the fundamentals of their construction are basic and permit of little change. Many of them cross the North Sea, and consequently must be seaworthy, for the North Sea has a habit of being rough. The Irish Sea is filled with them—of many shapes and sizes. European ports seem always crowded with these little ships, which steam about their business with a sort of jaunty cocksureness that is amusing in smooth waters. ”

“ It is commonly supposed that the fortunes of the island and its civilisation must by nature hang on those of England. Neither history nor geography allows this theory. The life of the two countries was widely separated. Great Britain lay turned to the east; her harbours opened to the sunrising, and her first traffic was across the narrow waters of the Channel and the German Sea. But Ireland had another aspect; her natural [8] harbours swelled with the waves of the Atlantic, her outlook was over the ocean, and long before history begins her sailors braved the perils of the Gaulish sea. ”

“ All this, and more, is the Atlantic to the whole of northwest Europe,—Ireland in particular,—and its influences are not only great, but far-reaching.
The Irish, they say, have never been great seafarers. This, it is feared, is true to no small extent. They are not even great fishermen, as they well might be in their sea-girt isle. The Irishman himself will tell you that it is because the thrifty and hardworking west-coast Scotch have usurped their market. ”

“ The wool which they might not use at home must be exported to England alone. They might [175] not build ships. From old time Ireland had traded across the Gaulish sea: her ports had seen the first discoverers of America. But now all her great harbours to the west with its rising American trade were closed: no merchant ship crossing the Atlantic was allowed to load at an Irish port or to unload. ”

“ Thus in Ireland old worlds were ever intermixed with new. Pilgrims cast themselves on the sea in curraghs, and drifted to the Faroes and to Iceland carrying with them the power of piety and learning. But there were also Irish traders with business minds. They, like the French, learned from the Scandinavians to build ships, and like the French, used Norse words for their new sea-faring vessels, “brown-planked” warships, and merchant ships, ships large and small, and boats ”

“ But the Irish people, before the Norse invasions, knew no human enemies in the northern ocean. Accordingly, I think that the Fomorians originally belonged to the continental geography of Celtic mythology, and that the sea from which they came was not the ocean to the north of Ireland but the Baltic and the North Sea, and that their islands were originally perhaps Britain and Ireland and the islands of the Baltic and the Scandinavian peninsula itself, which was thought to be an island when it first became known to the Greeks. ”

“ Fish caught off the coast of Ireland by English fishermen, taken to England and cured, and then "returned to Cork" for exhibition! Here is an opening for patriotic Irishmen. Why not catch and preserve the fish at home, and get the entire benefit of the fish traffic? Will it be believed that there is probably more money value in the seas round Ireland than there is in the land itself? This is actually the case with the sea round the county of Aberdeen. [7]
A vast source of wealth lies at the very doors of the Irish people. ”

“ Besides these "ceols," which seem to have been small ships built of wood, they had also skin boats. Whilst they harassed the east the Irish were equally busy on the west burning and plundering. To their early voyages we may now appropriately turn.
The Celtic inhabitants of Ireland appear to have been bold navigators at a very early date. Unlike their kinsmen the Welsh, and like the Bretons, Cornishmen, Menevians, and West Coastmen of Scotland, they have always shown a taste for the sea, which has declined, but not disappeared, with the lapse of time. ”

“ But the Irish, who started abreast of the other northern Celts in nautical efficiency, who had advantages of proximity to other shores, and in the early centuries of their history sailed to the far-away Faroes and even to Iceland, peopled southern Scotland by an oversea emigration, made piratical descents upon the English coast, and in turn received colonies of bold Scandinavian mariners, suffered an arrested development in navigation, and failed to become a sea-faring folk. ”

“ The beauties of Ireland are as unspeakable as they are unknown. The strip of sea holds some tourists back, and others seek the prestige of holiday on the Continong. A German traveller, hight Bröcker, declares that Ireland beats his previous record, and that the awful grandeur of the Antrim coast has not its equal in Europe, while the wild west with its heavy Atlantic seas, is finer far than Switzerland. Germans are everywhere. The Westenra Arms of Monaghan boasted a waiter from the Lake of Constanz, and I met a German philologist at Enniskillen who had his own notions about Irish politics. ”

“ They drop equally quickly, and thus it is not uncommon for the morning to be calm, the midday raging in waves dashing resistlessly upon the beach, and the evening still again. The Irish, who are accustomed to the salt ocean, say, in the suddenness of its storms and the shifting winds, it is more dangerous than the sea itself. But then there are almost always islands, behind which a vessel can be sheltered. ”

“ Again Ireland appeared when the barbarians had spread over Europe, still unconquered, sending back across the Ocean the learning she had stored up, the free distributor on the Continent of the classics and science and Christian teaching. We have seen the island again on the fringe of the Scandinavian Empire, even now unconquered, and still in the mid-stream of European traffic. When a new revolution came, [97] and trade swelled under the Normans, every Irish port was full. Irishmen sailed every sea. Their fabrics were sold in every country as far as Russia and Naples. ”

“ Near it is Sennen Cove, where there is a fishing-village and a Coastguard station. Some way off the shore, rising from amid the foaming waves, is a high rock, denominated “The Irish Lady,” from the peculiarity of its form, which is that of a female figure, with a long robe, advancing into the sea. We were told that many years ago an Irish vessel was driven on the rocks; but that one female alone was seen clinging to the wreck until the waves washed her away, and that it is her figure which now appears still surrounded by the foaming billows. ”

“ The tide of emigration is westward and there are comparatively few steerage and second-class passengers going east on the Cunard and White Star steamers that touch at Queenstown. The steamship companies would make a low rate for the round trip which would give an opportunity for thousands of Irish-born citizens of the United States to spend a short vacation across the sea visiting their old homes and the homes of their fathers. The fact that everybody is doing the same would be a great incentive, and for a few weeks Ireland would be crowded with her former sons and daughters. ”

“ GLENGARRIFF AND BANTRY BAY TWO of the most famous men in English literature have passed unstinted praise on the beauty and charm of the southern Irish coast.
If one looks at a map of the southwest of Ireland, it will be seen that its whole coast-line is broken into serrations, making harbours, islands, bays, and coves. If he should go to the coast itself, he will have revealed to him a wondrous kaleidoscope,—alternate scenes of sweet, pathetic gentleness, and stern and rugged grandeur, all full of engrossing charm. ”

“ But it is chiefly in Aran, and on the opposite Connemara coast, that Irish ballads are still being made as well as sung. The little rock islands of Aran are fit strongholds for the threatened language, breakwaters of Europe, taking as they do the first onset of the ocean 'that hath no limits nearer than America.' The fisher-folk go out in their canvas curraghs to win a living from the Atlantic, or painfully carry loads of sand and seaweed to make the likeness of an earth-plot on the bare rock. The Irish coast seems far away ”

“ And here it may not be out of place to say that the generally clear waters of most of the rivers of Ireland add greatly to the beauty of its scenery. Scotch rivers are also generally clear, and the reason they are clear is the reason why the Irish rivers are clear, and that is, because they are filtered in the lakes through which they generally flow. A limpid river is one of the most beautiful things in nature, but a river of dirty water would not be beautiful if it flowed through [Pg 256] the Garden of Eden. ”

“ The progress of pastoral countries, political and general, as they have little city life, is slow. With beauty Ireland is well endowed. The interior is flat, with large peat bogs and brimming rivers. But the coast is mountainous and romantic. The western coast especially, where the Atlantic rolls into deep inlets, has a pensive charm which, when troubles end and settled peace reigns, may attract the villa as they do the wanderer now. ”

“ On Arranmore island, in the Bay of Galway, the Rev. W. Kilbride discovered habitations and artificial structures extending from above high water-mark to under the low water-level of spring tides: from this it may be inferred that man existed in Ireland before the last subsidence of the land. The Irish Annals contain much that was formerly looked upon as fabulous relations of inbreaks of the ocean, but which may be reasonably held to be the reflex of traditionary tales having some foundation in fact. ”

“ If you will examine the map you will understand the situation better, and a geological chart of the island will show you that the western coast, from Mizzen Head to Bloody Foreland, is protected by a chain of mountains, bleak, rugged, and abrupt, which nature has placed as a buttress to support the rest of Ireland against the fierce attack of the Atlantic. ”

“ There are many respects in which Ireland is eminently fitted by nature for prosperity. There is hardly to be found anywhere in the world such natural facilities for the development of a great mercantile marine as exist on the eastern coast from Londonderry and Antrim to Waterford and Cork, and Belfast to-day contains one of the world’s greatest and most able ship-builders.{46} There is, it is said, no part of the country which stands at a greater distance from a waterway to the sea than four and twenty miles. ”