The pirates of Mayo's Inishkeas survived the great famine

By Tom Gillespie

TWENTY-three years ago Co. Kerry author Brian Dornan published Mayo’s Lost Islands - The Inishkeas in which he described the level of piracy that took place off the coast of the county in the 1830s.

The sea, as a provider of less honest earnings through piracy, developed in the 1830s and reached a peak in the 1840s.

By this time, being becalmed in the waters around Inishkea was dangerous for any boat.

The method of capture was relatively simple and made use of two things - the calm wind conditions in the sea area, especially in April and May, and the lack of an efficient coastguard network.

The principal plunderers on this part of the coast in the late 1840s were the boats and currachs of Inishkea.

The means whereby the currach crews subdued the sailing craft was described as follows: ‘The boats carried no arms but each carried a quality of stones which they shower such a volley on the deck, that the crew are driven below’.

The coastguard record ‘that from the whole of the shores of Boradhaven, Blacksod Bay and the islands of Inishkea the currachs assemble in great numbers.

‘The speed and the organisation of the piracy astonished the authorities when the schooner ‘Mans’ was plundered on April 16, 1847. The boat had bags and axes on board and the crew had demanded flour to eat.

‘The problem as to how the island population got through the worst of the famine ravages has been something of a puzzle.

‘The entire Belmullet region was devastated, yet the island population had shown a continual increase. The answer may lie in the introduction of an alternative means of obtaining food.

‘Dombrain, writing on the state of Co. Mayo in 1847, stated that the people ‘must plunder or starve’.

This piracy of looting of craft required considerable organisation and risk taking. Several of the craft attacked were up to 20 miles out to sea.

Ships that were driven ashore on the rocky coast like the ‘Sorcha an tSneachta’, which sunk between then two islands in 1847, provided a certain type of plunder. On this occasion the islanders put out in their boats to help the crew. Those on board who were below deck were drowned, only one survivor was rescued. The cargo of flour in barrels from the USA was no doubt very useful.

Prior to this in 1834, the islanders took advantage of another ship. In 1834 The Telegraph reported that a brigantine on 155 tons, ‘The Mansfield’, with Thomas Moon as master, was en route from St. John’s in Newfoundland to Ballyshannon, laden with timber.

She ran into a gale on November 6, and was abandoned off the north island. Her crew landed on the mainland at Glenlara where ‘the locals stripped them of their few possessions’.

The ship was boarded by about 20 people from the south island who ransacked the cabins, stores and spirits they found. The large number of islanders suggested a communal action by several boats and numerous families.

However, some islanders took an opposite view and set off to the mainland to report the matter to the coastguards.

The newspaper reports state that ‘four persons were involved’, but does not name names nor mention the age, sex or which island they came from.

The result was that two coastguards boarded the ship and took charge of the vessel. The time lapse for this must have been several hours to reach Blacksod and return. Six of the islanders agreed to help the coastguard crew the ship.

The authorities were in the act of bringing the ship into anchorage at Blacksod when the ‘rest of the islanders on board interfered, drove the coastguard from the helm and ultimately obliged them to quit the vessel’. The islanders then sailed her to the south island where there ‘drove her into a narrow rocky cave where she soon bilged and filled with water’.

When the coastguard arrived the next day they found that she had been ‘stripped of every portable article, her sails and rigging carried off and so completely hidden in caves and secret places of the island that little had since been recovered’.

By April 1847, it was found necessary to send a detachment of marines to the island. There they ‘detained a large boat heavily laden with meal, pulling in towards the land’. There was a crew of five on board who were unable to give the soldiers a satisfactory account of where they had got it. As the troops tried to arrest and detain them, the rest of the community made it very difficult for them.

The warship ‘HMS Acheson’, from whence the detachment had come, proceeded to sail to the islands, confiscated the meal and the boat, which was unregistered, and took the five men prisoner.

The previous night a smack, ‘The Maris’, bound for Westport from Liverpool, had been plundered. The marines had chased a second boat ‘into the breakers, but it had overturned’.

The efficiency of the plunder can be gauged by the acton on ‘The Maris’. Two boats came alongside, threw a shower of stones at the crew, men landed and took over the helm, unbattoned the hatches and off-loaded 10 tons of flour. A short while later, twin boats came alongside. In all, the captain estimated that 50 men were involved.

The islanders must have had a good lookout system organised to locate becalmed boats with a suitable craft, but they did not appear to expect any military presence where they returned.

The report went on to describe ‘200 people assembled on the beach, cutting the bags open and carrying away as much as they could’.

On the mainland the arrested men also found support. When they were marched to Barrackstown, they were placed in a hut guarded by a sentry. People assembled at the front and the rear of the hut, ‘unroofed it and assisted the prisoners to escape’.