Islands of Ireland: Ode to Sherkin in the 70s — where my love of islands began

This number includes almost everything south of a line from Galway to Dublin and many, but far from all, above it. 

There were some truly special places. 

Swimming underwater at Achill Beg, County Mayo, an island off an island off an island, is high on the list; Gola, County Donegal is another personal favourite. 

Stormy seas near Tory Island, County Donegal and a wall of water in Connemara brought hairs to the back of my neck.

However, the island that got all this craziness going is the one that is in my DNA, Sherkin Island. 

In the 1970s my family had a house there beside the Jolly Roger pub and for six weeks every summer it was our escape from reality. 

For my brothers and sisters as kids the prospect of going to Sherkin for the summer set the pulses racing.

For a teenage boy the names of some of the islanders we knew were like something out of a picaresque novel along the lines of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. And yes, this island had its fair share of pirates as mentioned in Connie Kelleher’s book. The entire Roaringwater Bay was a hotbed of privateering and piracy for more than 100 years.

One famous incident involved the impounding of a wine shipment from Portugal to Waterford.

In a reprisal for the impounding of the Waterford-bound ships, the villages on the island were burnt along with Dunalong Castle and the Franciscan Friary on the island. 

By 1601 the Spanish controlled this Sherkin castle and some of the other O’Driscoll castles in the build-up to the Battle of Kinsale.

Thirty years later the infamous Algerine raid on Baltimore took place where about 100 people were shipped to north Africa and sold into a life of slavery. It was a period when clan rivalries, whether north African, West Cork or Waterford were settled in blood.

All of these magical stories fed the fevered brain of the columnist as a teenager. These stories were enhanced by the islanders of the 70s whose lives were just as mysterious to me.

There was John Willie Nolan, one eye obscured by his cap, who captained the ferry and who often brought my father Daniel G and mother Florence on the late, late boat; Mary Simmy who fled from lightning; Derek Thrower who had escaped from the Nazis by leaping from a train; Cecelia and Oscar Mairlot from Belgium and their exotic house; old Willie Norris who clambered over the boreens on his donkey and cart, and his son John possessed of an infectious laugh; Mary Jacob and her French husband Youen who later established a restaurant in Baltimore; Mark O’Neill, with a twinkle in his eye, who transported us from the pier to the house in the back of a tractor; the O’Driscoll family known as the Globes who lived on the edge of the island; the mercurial Willie Fenwick; Matt Murphy who ran the groundbreaking research station; the O'Neills who ran the post office; Other visitors like ourselves included the adventurous English family, the Creaghs.

Other characters included the stylish Tim and Stella O’Callaghan who ran the hotel; Mon Breathnach, whose son patched a terrible wound on my brother's leg; Michael the Yank, to whose farm I would cycle to fetch buttermilk; and last but not least, the owner of the Jolly Roger pub, Maureen O’Sullivan always accompanied by her faithful dogs, Barney and Mandy.

We looked across to Baltimore past the Harbour Lights over fields of poppies hoping the ferry would never arrive.

How to get there: No ferry to the past unless Charon is engaged to cross the River Styx. Otherwise, sherkinferry.ie

Other: Sherkin Island: A local history, Dolly O’Reilly, Slievemore Press; The Alliance of Pirates: Ireland and Atlantic piracy in the early seventeenth century, Connie Kelleher, Cork University Press