Islands of Ireland: Crow Island cable car was first
learns more about the cable car on Crow Island.
The challenge of reaching islands has always tested man’s ingenuity. Boat is the obvious means: Other routes can be by flight: helicopter or plane; walking or even swimming to tidal islands. Last week we saw how Goat Island, Co Waterford was used to test the breeches buoy system of rescue.
The very same device was once used at Dursey Island not for rescue but to enable people to exercise their right to vote. In 1948 a breeches buoy was shot over to Dursey to allow the islanders vote in the election.
This method of connecting with Dursey may have inspired Tadhg Roger O’Sullivan from Scrivogue, Garnish, to build Ireland’s first cable car to Crow Island (Inis Ealbhach) off Crow Head, adjacent to Dursey, so that his sheep would have more grazing. The intrepid farmer in turn inspired the local priest Rev M Keane to think ‘well if a cable car works for tiny Crow Island maybe it will work for Dursey Island too’.
After much lobbying, the Dursey cable car was constructed in 1969 and brought much needed relief to the often stranded islanders. The cable car has since been used by tens of thousands of visitors.
For years, Tadhg had to row several miles to Crow Island with the help of a few men and land his sheep, usually from November to February. However, with emigration, help became harder to find. So necessity being the mother of invention, he stepped back and considered the matter.
Helped by his brother-in-law Tadhg Peats Harrington, and a neighbour Donie Shea, Tadhg drilled holes in the cliffs at Crow Head, and 65 yards across the chasm on to Crow Island itself. The men then laid two 5/8 inch steel cables across the gulf and secured them at both ends.
They then attached a 4.5ft by 3ft cage with a wheel built into the cables to prevent it from toppling over. And hey presto! … a readymade cable car to transport his sheep. With the contraption in place Tadhg was able to draw himself and his dog across the gap and round up the sheep.
Writer Penelope Durrell takes up the story.
He was ingenious. He set up a metal bucket that went across to Crow Island. He rigged up a contraption to put his sheep on to go and graze on the little island because there was good grazing there, apparently about five acres. He thought ‘why let it go to waste?
Local man Noel O’Sullivan was the first person to brave the cable car which dangled on its cables about 70m above the sea. He was around 14 at the time and recalls: “I remember going in with a couple of sheep and pulling myself along.” Was he terrified going across? “Not a bit of it, young and brave.” He says Tadhg had no fear. “Danger meant nothing to him. Looking at it now, if you gave me the European lotto I wouldn’t go in there now in that box.”
In 2014 the Irish Coastguard and Kerry Mountain Rescue organised a reconstruction of Tadhg’s original cable car and successfully demonstrated the achievement of this engineering pioneer.
A Southern Star article from 1965 mentioned a blacksmith in “olden times” called Goileann Gabha who lived on Crow Island with two servants. Years later, some men from Eyeries parish came in search of gold but got “frightened by some happenings” and made a speedy exit, the article states.
Cork County Council has plans to build an interpretive centre and to construct a two-way cable car system in the near future at Dursey Sound. Castletownbere man Pat O’Shea is planning to set up boat tours around Dursey Island. The area has tremendous potential and it all began when one man dared to dream.
Crow Island can be seen, but not visited, from the cable car to Dursey.
lehanmore.com; www.durseyisland.ie;
