Spike Island: The Rebels, Residents and Crafty Criminals of Ireland's Historic Island

SPIKE ISLAND

John Crotty hails from County Waterford and spent eleven years living in the UK, where he graduated from Swansea University. He travelled the world from his UK base, visiting over sixty countries and seeing many of the world’s wonders. On his return, he managed Spike Island, Cork, as CEO for six years, leading the island to win prestigious international travel and tourism awards. Under John’s stewardship, the island launched its popular ‘After Dark’ tours and the first Spike Island Literary Festival. John has been featured in multiple publications and TV shows sharing the island’s story. This is his first book.

INTRODUCTION

AT THE OUTSET OF THIS process, I pondered why there was no publication that shared in full the rich history of Spike Island. Setting out to write such a book, it soon became apparent. It is a subject so vast it could fill several libraries, let alone several publications.

Spike Island represents the most extraordinary historical location on the island of Ireland. This is a significant statement for an island nation where you can hardly walk a mile without tripping over something of historical importance. Ireland is a place of tombs older than the pyramids, where island monasteries perch precariously atop jagged cliffs; a nation where mighty seats of kingly power still stand sentinel.

Yet Spike Island stands shoulder to shoulder with them all, elevated perhaps by the sheer diversity of its varied past. It is a site of truly global significance, a world wonder for its historical depth and state of preservation. I hope at this book’s end, the reader will understand and be in agreement that this truly is Ireland’s historic island.

The book you hold has been structured with the aim of sharing the island’s vast history in the most interesting way and in a digestible format – by seeing it through the eyes of the people who lived here. Given that there were sinners and saints, captains and convicts, residents and rioters, this makes for a storied tale. We will cross paths with republicans, taoisigh, philosophers, Fenians, future prime ministers and a queen, on a journey through many key moments in Ireland’s history.

Understanding that history, it will be no surprise to the reader one future day when the island joins the hallowed halls of UNESCO recognition, a proposal already made to owners Cork County Council. It is a day fast approaching, when the island achieves a global status befitting its sacred ground.

To understand the depth of history, and better appreciate its significance, the first three chapters of this book will summarise that history in chronological order. The story will then turn to the many wonderful

characters who lived on the island, served on the island, visited the island or were sentenced to its shores.

Many thousands were sent here with little choice in the matter, as James Coleman so poetically put it in his 1893 book, The History of Spike Island: ‘Upon no other island on the Irish coast have so many eyes rested, or so few persons voluntarily set foot.’

Let’s dive straight into the legend, mystery, history and lore of this incredible Irish island.

9000 bc to ad 1600: Ice Age Foundation to Late Middle Ages

SPIKE ISLAND GAINED ITS ISLAND status some 10,000 years ago as one of the largest natural harbours in the world formed around it as the last Ice Age departed. Glaciers from the frozen north had plunged Ireland and Europe into a long winter, with kilometre-deep ice sheets crushing the mainland. A glacier buried the future sites of Ballincollig town and Cork city, extending along the Lee Valley as far as Ringaskiddy and Great Island.1 It reached for the harbour entrance like a great white snake, its runoff slithering a path to a then distant sea.

As the glaciers retreated north, Ireland’s coastline was redrawn by rising sea levels. Areas once far from the coast became inundated as the Celtic Sea rose to its current levels.2 Where once a tundra-style landscape existed, like those found in Iceland today, the rising sea water crept into every nook and cranny to form the impressive expanse that is modern Cork Harbour.

Rising temperatures increasingly made Ireland more hospitable to animals and humans, many of whom had evacuated during the Ice Age. While some species could not return due to rising sea levels cutting off land bridges, the ability of humans to overcome ocean obstacles meant they could join the diminished but striking variety in the new island nation. Spike’s new status as an isolated island held appeal for many human endeavours.

It is highly likely that Spike Island was used as a stopping-off point by early Irish inhabitants some 9,000 years ago. Boats were in regular use by this time and archaeologists have excavated fishing and habitation sites all around the surrounding harbour. No excavation has been completed on Spike Island’s shoreline to date, for fear of disturbing a rich natural habitat.

Tidal mudflats that are exposed twice a day make for plentiful feeding grounds, supporting a wide variety of the 20,000 waterfowl regularly found in the harbour. They are best left undisturbed.

We must jump forward some 8,000 years to find the first definite accounts of human occupation on Spike Island, as Ireland’s mysterious monks established a monastery there in the seventh century.

Early Christian missionaries crossing the Celtic Sea faced a difficult task convincing the Irish to abandon their long-held Celtic ways. St Patrick is credited with converting Ireland to Christianity in the fifth century, but there is evidence that Christianity had made the crossing before his arrival. Palladius, the son of a nobleman from Gaul, had been sent by the Pope to administer to Ireland’s Catholics in ad 431, a year before Patrick set off on his mission.3

Palladius stayed just one year in Hibernia, as the Romans named Ireland. Given that Hibernia translates as Land of Winter, this is perhaps understandable. The Roman Empire never made the short crossing from Britain to conquer Ireland, allowing the Celtic/Gaelic civilisation to flourish.

If the depressing title given to Ireland was not sufficient deterrent, descriptions written by early Roman tourists might have sealed the deal. Visiting tourist Pomponius Mela described the Irish as being a people totally wanting in every virtue and destitute of piety.4 He also said the island was so luxuriant in grasses that the cattle would burst if they were left to feed for too long. The triple threat of endless winter, virtue-lacking locals and exploding cattle was enough to keep the Romans at bay.

Patrick faced a stiff task convincing the locals to switch belief systems. The druids were once a powerful force in Ireland – mystical wise Magi versed in law, education, natural philosophy and the rules of the land. It would take many centuries, and many compromises, before Ireland could be called a Christian country. Even then it was an adoption that blended, rather than eradicated, Celtic and pagan traditions.5

By the seventh century more than 200 years had passed since the arrival of Christianity, and the religion was extending its reach across the island. With increased uptake of a religion that had a tendency for remote worship, more and more of Ireland’s islands saw conversions to religious use.

Aidan O’Sullivan of Maynooth University writes of the reason for this remote island appeal:

The traditional view of this phenomenon is that early Christian monks or peregrini in sixth-century Ireland, inspired by the followers of Saint Anthony and the Egyptian fathers, were seeking places for self-exile, retreat and asceticism. Early Irish monks, embracing the peregrinatio pro amore Dei (‘wandering exile for the love of God’), left their homelands for isolated places or foreign lands (e.g. Anglo-Saxon England, Merovingian France and Lombardic Italy). Others, seeking to emulate the desert fathers, turned to find a desertum in ociano (‘desert in the ocean’), a remote island as a place of retreat, solitude and prayer.6

Thomas Cahill, in How the Irish Saved Civilization, writes of ‘The Green Martyrdom’, which was an Irish response to the ‘red martyrdom’, a term given to those who suffered death for their Christian beliefs.7 The Irish Christians headed for the mountaintops and remote islands to forsake all comforts, communing ever closer with their one true God.

By the early seventh century, when Spike Island’s monastery came into existence, Christianity was widespread across the country, with varying degrees of adoption and the upper classes first to convert.8

With all this commandeering of remote spaces, it is of little surprise that Spike Island was eyed admiringly. The island is relatively easily reached by boat, yet it feels distant and isolated after the journey. Its location in the sheltered confines of Cork Harbour sees it avoid the wild weather and seas of more westerly Irish outcrops. This gives it the allure of remoteness without much of the associated hardship.

Spike Island’s day arrived in ad 635 when St Mochuda arrived with dozens of his followers, marking the first recorded human conversion of an island that now boasts 1,300 years of recorded human endeavour. St Mochuda, or Carthage, had already established a monastery at Rahan from which he was allegedly expelled. He was walking southern Ireland and came across Cathal, son of Aodh, then King of Munster, who was deaf, dumb and blind. Cathal prayed to Mochuda for a cure to his many ailments and he responded, making the sign of the cross across his eyes, ears and mouth to elicit the required response.

A cured and delighted Cathal Mac Aodha bestowed Mochuda with extensive lands in perpetuity, including Cathal Island, Rossbeg, Rossmore and ‘Inis-Pic’, now Spike Island.9 Mochuda sent some followers to Rossbeg

to establish a monastery there in his name and set off in person to create the Spike settlement.

Mochuda would spend just one year on the island before leaving to continue his mission, establishing an important monastery at Lismore in County Waterford.10 He left three of his most loyal disciples, the ‘sons of Nascon’ – Goban, Srafan and holy Laisren – together with the saintly bishop Dardomaighen (Domangenum), to carry on his work, with a large band of around forty monks. Life was likely pleasant for Spike Island’s first Christian dwellers, who carried on Mochuda’s work with due diligence. Later references gushed, ‘Inis-Pic is a most holy place in which an exceedingly devout community constantly dwell’.11

Based on similar sites of the era, of which much is known, the likely building arrangement was a rectangular central church with circular accommodation and storage buildings surrounding it. The church was probably wooden in construction as stone churches were extremely rare in seventh-century Ireland, although Spike Island had abundant stone in its quarry so may have been the rare exception.12 Settlements were surrounded by an enclosure to keep out livestock, which were an essential contributor to a diet of the time.13 Cattle were the primary animal, for their dairy more than their meat, as meat was the preserve of the wealthy. Cows were joined by pigs, goats and chickens, while domesticated dogs and cats patrolled the boundaries for vermin.

The island’s 104 acres were enough to sustain a thriving farming community, with grain crops common by the seventh century. Barley and oats were staples of the period, but wheat was a luxury for most. How these grain crops could be processed in volume was only recently discovered with the incredible find of a tidal mill dated to ad 630 in nearby Little Island, Cork Harbour. These intricate installations required impressive scientific and engineering capability, blending knowledge of soils and substances with engineering prowess.14 If the establishment of the monastery on Spike Island was influenced by the location of the nearby mill, or vice versa, we do not know.

The waters surrounding the island gave the monks access to a marine supplement to their diet, so all in all the forty plus souls who occupied the first monastery would have had ample work to keep them busy. The island had other strings to its bow, as farming and fishing would be complemented by weaving, cloth-making and iron work, the labours and trades typical of a seventh-century monastic settlement.

While food was the priority, after prayer time, the production of goods which could be traded with the mainland would have been useful, and the work meditative. In this way the monks lived on down the centuries, with references suggesting some form of use into the twelfth century.

The fact that a potential 500 years of monastic occupation may have played out on Spike Island is impressive enough. But there is more, potentially much, much more. The island may have played a part in another extraordinary industry of the age, with a great secret lying in wait to be discovered under Spike Island’s soil.15

Spanish Professor Manuel C. Diaz y Diaz was undertaking research in the 1950s on an ancient Spanish document of great importance. He was examining the Liber de Ordine Creaturarum, a famous seventh-century ecclesiastical Spanish manuscript that describes God and his great plan for the universe in glorious prose. It is invariably described as ‘a work of magnificent conception’ and a ‘fascinating and multi-faceted treatise … revealing much about the milieu in which it was written’.16

This was praise indeed for the document, so it was sad news for Spanish religious interests when Professor Manuel’s research concluded the respected document was not from Spain at all. The nation of origin was Ireland.

Writing two years after the findings of Diaz y Diaz, Paul Grosjean said in 1955 that the author was ‘associated with the foundations of Saint Carthach (Mochuda)’ and cited southern Ireland as the likely place of origin.

Taking up this previous work, Marina Smyth of the University of Notre Dame and senior in its Medieval Institute undertook a translation of the document and extensive research of the possible new designation. Her findings stated that the Liber’s reference to tidal activity and harbour knowledge, initially attributed to the Shannon, instead pointed to the ‘more southern coastal area of Cork harbour’ as a likely place of origin, ‘where a monastery said to have been founded by Saint Carthach was located on Spike Island’.17

In particular, Smyth concluded, a work by the Irish Augustine, De Mirabilibus Sacrae Scripturae, may have been composed on Spike Island, a text that heavily influenced the later Liber Creaturarum.18 This is a sensational suggestion and one that implies that Spike Island was involved in the production of the majestic manuscripts of the era. There would be nothing unusual in this, as manuscripts were often produced at multiple locations, with each site adding their own flair to the pages.

Doctor Michael Martin, respected author and historian in Cobh and great champion of Spike Island, wrote further on the subject in 2007, highlighting another site founded by Mochuda, Lismore, as a possible source of inspiration for later spiritual reform movements, movements that espoused the kind of deep philosophical thinking evident in the Liber Creaturarum, adding weight to the argument.19

If the assertion is true and a scriptorium lies in wait within the ruins of the Spike Island monastery, then a new page of Ireland’s monastic tradition is yet to be written. Ireland was a global centre of excellence in this period. Irish scribes and scholars were among the finest craftspeople in the world, at a time when much of Europe had fallen into the Dark Ages. The works created in Ireland between the seventh and ninth centuries are considered among humanity’s finest, including the Book of Kells (ad 800), the Ardagh Chalice (early eighth century) and the Tara Brooch (late seventh century). The possibility that the island contributed similar artefacts or manuscripts, or that some may even remain there, is tantalising.

Whatever secrets there are, they lie buried incredibly deep beneath centuries of military and penal endeavour. No physical trace of the monastery has ever been discovered, as later building work on the fortress reshaped the entire island. As a result of this, exactly how long the monastery survived is up for debate.

The eighth- or ninth-century ‘Martyrology of Tallaght’ indicates an association with a ‘St Ruisen’ at Spike Island, and this association is repeated

The Great Island of Corke Harbour, 1700, showing church-like ruins. © British Library

in 1180 when the ‘church of St Rusien on Inis Pic’ was granted to St Thomas’ abbey in Dublin.20

The Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, written in 1632 from earlier sources, records ‘Sealbhach of Inis-Pich, died, ad 821’ among a list of ecclesiastical deaths.21 This suggests the monastery survived for at least the intervening 200 years, from ad 635 to 821.

Interestingly, the year before this death, ad 820, is the recorded year the Vikings made their first incursion into County Cork. The marauding Norsemen are unlikely to have sailed past the island monastery without paying a not-so-friendly visit. The death of a notable monk so close to their arrival may be more than just a coincidence.

In 1199, one of Pope Innocent III’s many Decretal letters included a reaffirmation of the island, highlighting Rome’s awareness of the site, suggesting a potential 500 years of religious use.22 There may have been sporadic occupation if the rampaging Vikings forced abandonment and temporary closure. Local Irish tribes were also not averse to raiding a monastery for its spoils.

In later centuries, the Irish Monastic Possessions 1540–41 states the island was the property of Teampall Brecain. This was later known as Baile Brecain or Ballybricken, which was granted or indebted to St Catherine’s in Waterford. The document states its ‘value is in the tithes of Inyspyke and of another small island, with tithes of oysters taken in Laby Skydder [Skiddy’s oyster bed]’.23 Grants to the church could have been related to ongoing religious use, but equally this could have been a rental agreement bestowed to a farmer-landowner.

Later maps and paintings of Cork Harbour include Richard Bartlett’s 1625 map showing a ruined, roofless structure with a cross on its walls, suggesting the monastic end came before his visit.24 Interestingly, the location of a ruined religious structure to the island’s east is confirmed by three other sources from the same century, suggesting the lost monastery on Spike Island is not so lost after all.

A late seventeenth-century map produced for King George III denotes a ruined building to the island’s east, with dimensions typical of a church.25 A separate drawing of the harbour by respected Royal Navy engineer Thomas Phillips shows a similar structure in the same location.26

Seemingly confirming the location’s importance, a 1693 map of Cork Harbour from Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot clearly shows a rectangular

shaped area to the island’s east, accompanied by the words ‘a Burying ground’. Today a large unexplained mound occupies the location, betraying no secrets.

Whatever was left of the monastic period was swallowed whole by the arrival of the British military in 1779, as the American War of Independence and growing naval fleets dictated a new purpose for Spike Island.

Between the possible existence of a scriptorium, unexplained structures in areas of interest and question marks over a potential thousand years of monastic use, there is mystery still left on Spike Island. Advances in groundpenetrating radar, and suitable funding, may yet change our understanding.

Spike Island cut a quiet figure from the twelfth to the eighteenth century, most likely as an outpost of farming endeavour. King of Desmond Diarmait Mac Carthaigh surrendered lands including Spike Island in the late twelfth century, when exotic new ownership names like Milo De Cogan and Raymond Mangunel heralded the arrival of Norman influence.27 In 1427 the island was in the ownership of a John Pyke, having been granted by William Reych, son of John, the premises and lands of Ynispyke (Ynispyke

The 1693 map from Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot (Greenville Collins, London).

joining Innyspyge, Inispich and Enespyke as one of the many misspelling of Inis Pic).28

The arrival of the Pyke family may have given Spike Island its modern name, a subject of some debate. The earliest recorded references to the island refer to the monastery on Inis Pic, InisPich, Inish Phich and other variations. There is no clear translation path from this Gaelic name to Spike Island, a more accurate translation being Spanish Island.

Grants in 1427 and 1499 refer to the island as Ynispyke or Inispyk, the first time the Spike sound appears.29 Given the new owner was John Pyke, this made the location Pyke’s Island, creating the possibility of a hybrid with the earlier Gaelic name – Inisspyke, or Pyke Island, heard and later recorded as Spike Island. The more likely scenario is that an early mapmaker misheard the words Inish Pic, spoken quickly in Gaelic by locals with strong accents as Inish Spik, to be Inish Spike.

By the 1600s the name became Enespike, spelt as it was heard by the mapmaker but retaining the 1427 Spike sound. It is only in the late 1600s and early 1700s that maps exclusively call the location Spike Island. By 1499 the landowner was Thomas Pyk, presumably a relation of John Pyke, before Ynispyke was granted to Maurice Ronan of nearby Kinsale.30 In the seventeenth century it belonged to the Roches and Galweys, representing changing names and faces down the centuries.31

The next phase of Spike Island’s history, however, was to be entirely different from the peaceful times of the monks and farmers. The walls and walkways that had heard 10,000 prayers would hear them again, but for entirely different reasons.

The first of four prisons across 400 years was about to land on Ireland’s historic island.

1650s–1913: Cromwell, Pirates, Prisons and Notable Residents

THE NAME OLIVER CROMWELL IMPACTS the Irish ear with a thud, such was his influence. His reach extended even to this remote Cork Harbour island, as evidenced by a poem written in 1687 by Diarmaid Mac Seain Buidhe MacCarthaigh: ‘After they had laid low their armies, in Spike Island they imprisoned thousands, without food or drink or beds, waiting for a journey to an unknown country.’1

Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland brought thousands of prisoners of war into his charge. He was reluctant to release them for fear of facing them again on the battlefield, so he turned to a practice that would solve England’s incarceration problem for centuries to come – transportation. It became policy to transport a person against their will to a far-flung British colony, where they were put to work in the useful service of the king or queen. The practice had its roots in a 1597 law that stated rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars ‘shall be banished out of this realm … and shall be conveyed to such parts beyond the seas as shall be … assigned by the Privy Council’.2

This allowed a growing empire to ship its undesirables overseas while providing labour and residents for nations it wished to colonise. Early destinations for the transported were the first American colonies and Caribbean islands like Barbados. Here they worked unwaged for a set number of years, toiling for an assigned master. They could be bought and sold among employers without say, could not marry without permission, and if a woman became pregnant, the length of her contract was extended to account for the months she could not work. They were punished for perceived underperformance and trespasses, and without the full support of

the courts or a legal system; these punishments could be arbitrary and at the whim of a master lacking in scruples.

They were, in many ways, slaves, though it is important to note the significant distinctions between the African slave experience and indentured Irish: kidnapped African slaves became slaves for life, not a determined sentence, while their children also inherited their slave situation. Some Irish indentured servants also operated in enforcer roles, while other Irish nationals were slave owners themselves.3

No physical trace of the seventeenth-century prison on Spike Island remains; this is unsurprising due to its status as a temporary holding depot and not a formal prison designed for long-term use. Likely wooden in construction, its materials would have been discarded or reused in time.

If the location held the majority of Cromwell’s transported enemies, as many as tens of thousands may have suffered Spike Island’s shores, awaiting a fate unknown. The island’s suitability as a transatlantic crossing departure point is well established, and a four-century career in incarceration was under way.

However, caution is urged on the claim of a Cromwellian prison on Spike, as the only reference is that of Diarmaid MacCarthaigh. Oliver Cromwell has also been associated with far more activities and locations in Ireland than are probable or even possible. The myth outstrips the man in many cases but, despite any mislabelling, the first transported Irish being held on Spike Island in the seventeenth century would be in no way surprising.

An enormous explosion of a gunship, the Breda, off the island’s shoreline in 1691 adds weight to the claim. Over 400 souls perished when a fire on board reached the ship’s gunpowder stores, tearing the vessel asunder. One hundred and sixty of its passengers were Jacobite prisoners, suggesting the use of the location for holding prisoners in Cromwell’s century. The fire was allegedly deliberately set by a Captain Barrett, angry at the upcoming release of the prisoners in a prisoner swap, making him the first mass murderer in Spike Island’s story.4

PIRATES AND SMUGGLERS

The next human industry to impact the island was the exploits of pirates and piracy. Though not readily associated with the practice, the south coast of Ireland became a base of piracy to rival anywhere in the world.

By 1536 the problem of piracy was commonplace enough to prompt an Offences at Sea Act, outlawing the activity in England.5 However, it took a later 1604 proclamation, which outlawed privately commissioned vessels, to force those engaged in piracy to consider relocation to Ireland for fear of punishment. Since the anti-piracy act could not be enforced in Ireland due to a legal loophole, and there was a lack of ships covering the southern Irish coast, it was widely ignored.

Pirates arrived in droves as they relocated to an area they knew well to avoid English punishment.6 With a safe base to operate from in West Cork, the golden age of Irish piracy was beginning. Many ex-navy men were out of work due to the end of Elizabethan privateering in the early 1600s, and they were keen for new employment. The operation grew so large it was far more significant than the activities of the more famous pirates of the Caribbean at all points in history. The maritime rogues operated mainly from West Cork, but Spike Island and Cork Harbour would see their share of activity. The Lord President of Munster, Henry Danvers, complained loudly that Munster was like Barbary, common and free for all pirates.7

The Harbour of Corke by Samuel Thornton, 1702.

The situation escalated to the point of an effective pirate blockade of Cork Harbour in 1609, as four pirate ships carrying some 300 men blocked its entrance. The authorities could do little but watch. ‘The Lord-President Danvers could not raise even one ship strong enough to defy the marauders, and so in Cork he had to stay, while the unwelcome visitors sailed up and down the coast seeking sustenance.’8

The southern Irish seaboard was something of a free-for-all, English traders complaining loudly that ‘the cellars and storehouses of Waterford are full of Englishmen’s goods, and the Irish there come and trade for them familiarly’.9 The pirate activity would occupy many a fireside tale, with visitors to Cork recounting their stories. British tourist Philip Luckombe relayed in his eighteenth-century A Tour Through Ireland, ‘Spike Island, a noted place for smuggling; for small vessels, at high water, steal in unseen by the Officers of Cork’.10 Spike Island prison chaplain Charles Gibson, in his A Life Among Convicts, recalled, ‘It was once a noted place for smuggling.’11

The larger vessels of the brazen pirates of the early seventeenth century were later replaced by more discreet smuggling operations. Merchants keen to avoid paying taxes saw the island outcrop close to the mainland as the perfect place to carry out operations.

Gone were the days of entire villages being taken as slaves by pirates, as happened in the West Cork town of Baltimore in ad 1631.12 A smaller-scale event off Spike Island’s shore was recounted by travellers Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall in their travel book of the early nineteenth century: ‘During the early part of the last century, numerous are the anecdotes related of the daring exploits of hostile privateers and pirates, performed actually within Cork harbour, and in full view of the town of Cove … In one instance the customhouse officers were made prisoners and carried off “to larn them to spake French”.’13

The island has many local legends around the smuggler period that survive to this day. A large tunnel exists from the rear of the island fortress, leading to the ocean. Tall enough to stand up in, it was used as the sewer for the nineteenth-century prison operation, carrying the waste generated by thousands of prisoners. Legend says the tunnel existed when the British military arrived in 1779, having been carved by pirates so they could smuggle goods from the rear of the island to its interior.

There is also a grisly story told by the Spike Island prison chaplain of the 1860s, Charles Gibson, who recounts the story of ‘gold rock’ or ‘golden rock’.

The story references a small stone outcrop to the east of Spike Island, visible at low tide but submerged under higher tides.14 The story holds that a pirate buried a cache of gold by the distinctively shaped rock, which he intended to return for at a future date. Wishing to protect his booty, the pirate murdered the servant who accompanied him, a black slave, and buried the unfortunate over his prize in the belief that his spirit would scare off any would-be thieves.

It is a fanciful tale recounted everywhere pirates once operated. No find of gold has ever been reported, and rising sea levels mean the soil around the rock is now never fully exposed. Would-be treasure hunters are best advised to leave the metal detector at home.

MILITARY ENDEAVOUR

The end of this illicit endeavour came after the arrival of the British military on Spike Island in 1779, starting a remarkable 159-year occupation. The reason was the need to protect Cork Harbour, which was now the primary provision base of Britain’s American armies engaged in the American War of Independence.15 The enormous harbour could safely shelter the growing empire’s fleets, while the surrounding countryside and nearby city were rich in provisions, chiefly butter and salted beef.

With this distinction came the threat of attack from the enormous ships of war now plying the oceans.16 As many as seventy-four guns and 700 sailors manned French ship-of-the-line warships, a force sufficient to make short work of cargo ships anchored in Cork. This was the golden age for sail ships, with vessels growing to enormous size and armament. To effectively protect the supply ships from French attack, several land-based forts were constructed. Spike Island’s central harbour location was never going to be overlooked.

Britain had been at war with France countless times over the centuries. The threat of a direct invasion of Britain or an invasion through the back door of the Kingdom of Ireland was a real possibility. With France’s population outnumbering Britain’s three to one at the time, the existential threat was very real. In later decades, the emergence of a rampaging Napoleon heightened concerns.

Funding arrived for a first fortification in 1779, which consisted of a modest battery of eighteen twenty-four-pound cannons, commandeered from Cobh.17 When danger was averted with the end of the American War, it was dismantled just a few years later. However, the French threat remained

and an engineer sent to survey the area, General Charles Vallancey, insisted on a fortress of scale to permanently defend the harbour. He believed its desirability would only grow and he was correct, as 150 years of military endeavour followed.

He got his wish and construction began in 1790 on the first Fort Westmoreland, a not inconsiderable ten-acre structure. Though incomplete, it served its deterrent role when France mounted attempted invasions of Ireland in the 1790s – they chose to brave more difficult landing locations up the coast rather than tackle the allegedly well-defended Cork Harbour.18 French intelligence was some way off, and a focused assault on Cork Harbour may well have altered Irish and British history.

Those invasions sparked calls for something of truly significant scale, to finally quell the fears of foreign invasion of Cork Harbour. Works were undertaken around the harbour at present-day Fort Meagher and Fort Davis, before construction began on Spike Island in 1804 on something so monumental it would never be surpassed in Irish history.

The fortress, known today as Fort Mitchel, covers 24 acres of a 104-acre island that was re-engineered to suit its demands. Its building work required thousands of labourers, an army of 100 horses and as much as several billion in modern financial terms to construct.

An aerial view of Spike Island taken in 2019 by Skytec. © Spike Island Collection

The work to set it down into the island required dozens of feet to be shaved off the island summit, while the smoothing of its surrounding slopes involved phenomenal tonnage of rock. A first order of two million bricks was the first of many, emptying the stocks of suppliers in Youghal and prompting later deliveries from London.19 In addition to human and animal labour, dynamite was used in later decades to blast out the fort’s current shape, prompting epic explosions that echoed around Cork Harbour.

In effect, an entire 104-acre island was re-imagined as one enormous kill zone. Arcs of overlapping cannon and mortar fire would pound would-be attackers from unseen firing points as they slowly scaled the steep slopes leading to the fort, exhausted and endlessly exposed to raining hell.

Over a million pounds, close to a half a billion in modern money, was expended in just seven years across Spike Island and Haulbowline, eyewatering figures which drew criticism.20 Work continued at pace until 1820, when funding dried up after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and with a shift in priorities away from coastal defence. Work resumed with gusto when ample convict labour arrived from 1847, with the opening of an enormous convict depot, continuing into the 1860s. Such was the scale of the endeavour, a causeway bridge with train tracks was constructed from Spike Island to its near neighbour Haulbowline, allowing for the rapid movement of men and materials both ways. The tracks remain visible on parts of the island today, although the sea has reclaimed the causeway.

The fort was only considered largely complete some sixty years after work began. When all the expenditure is considered, it is likely the most expensive construction project in Irish history. It is the largest military fortification in Ireland and one of the largest in the world. Dublin’s Croke Park and London’s Wembley stadium could fit neatly side by side within the fort’s walls. The entirety of Alcatraz Island could fit inside, while the Colosseum of Rome would fit four times over. As structures of scale go, there is little to rival the second Fort Westmoreland, now Fort Mitchel.

The fortress is also one of the very last star-shaped forts constructed anywhere in the world, representing the pinnacle of almost 1,000 years of military evolution. It is an evolution from dirt ditches and stone walls to impressive castles grasping for the sky. Gunpowder and improving cannon technology made exposed castles obsolete, resulting in efforts to make defensive structures hidden and stealthy, in as far as that is possible for such

enormous works. Their effectiveness at slowing or stopping invaders saw them termed ‘the most important piece of military technology in modern European history’.21

As efforts to counter ever-improving cannonball fire went up, so did the cost. Despite the constant clever refinement of defensive engineers like Michelangelo, who applied the thinking in his defences of Florence, advances in artillery, mortar and shell fire reduced the effectiveness of these buildings, and the justification for such expensive undertakings.

Today Spike Island is a national monument, and its fortress can only be described in one word – monumental.

After the Napoleonic Wars ended, the risk of invasion was lifted for a battle-weary Britain, which had endured decades of tensions and threat. With a population heavily taxed and devoid of many husbands and fathers who did not return from the war, the appetite for military spending quickly evaporated.

A PENAL LEGEND

The island cut a quiet figure from 1820 to 1847, until its peace was once again shattered by the arrival of the potato blight to Ireland. Britain’s policy to allow Irish natives to starve rather than provide sufficient relief led to the next epic undertaking. Desperate Irish citizens turned to theft for survival. In an era when stealing bread, milk or a handkerchief could result in a sevenor fourteen-year sentence, the results were predictable. Every Irish jail was filled to capacity, as the transportation system that was now sending Irish convicts to Australia could not cope. A convict-holding depot of significant scale was urgently required, and thoughts turned to Spike Island again as Cork Harbour became ground zero for the Irish transportation system.

The prison that followed from 1847 to 1883 was every bit as monumental as the fortress it occupied. By the early 1850s, it housed over 2,400 inmates, making it the largest known prison in the world.22 There has never been a larger formal prison in Ireland or Britain before or since. Its conditions were predictably appalling, and those conditions will be shared in later chapters through the stories of those who filled its cells.

It is perhaps sufficient to say in summary that today, over 1,300 souls lie in two unmarked mass graves on Spike Island. One grave alone, the larger of the two, contains over 1,000 who perished in the first several years of the

prison’s operation –1,000 men and boys, dead in the care of the state, in just seven years. In the worst year for deaths, almost 12 per cent of the prisoner population perished, not far off a prisoner a day.23

When the prison closed in 1883 the military, which had remained in situ during its opening period in a reduced fashion, retained the strategic site. Spike Island was a quiet posting for the men sent there and their families, who were allowed to live on the island. By now an entire village had sprung up, with a national school opening in 1846.24

News from the wider world crossed the waters from the mainland: startling medical inventions like the stethoscope (1816) and Aspirin (1829), working wonders like the typewriter (1829) and sewing machine (1846), while domestically there was news of the violent activities of agitation groups like the Whiteboys and the Ribbonmen, who fought for what they saw as the undefended rights of tenant farmers to practise subsistence farming. This was the humble act of growing enough crops to feed their families.

It was against this backdrop of continued national resistance to British intervention and international developments that Spike Island carried on through the last decades of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Its fierce fortress was manned but never called into military action, performing its intended deterrent role.

For the soldiers stationed on the island, it was a time of welcome peace or a time of unwanted boredom, a safe place to wile away years of service or a boring backwater where no action ever occurred, dependent on outlook. The striking military and merchant vessels that glided past provided visual distraction, replacing the prison ships that once left the surrounding bay. No more did convict vessels creep quietly past Spike Island, beginning their epic three-month voyage transporting hulls full of the unwanted. Transportation of criminals to Australia largely ended in 1853, save for small transfers to Western Australia until 1868 and a transfer of Fenians in 1867.

Among the residents at the turn of the twentieth century was the family of Colonel Percy Fawcett, who had a son born on the island. Fawcett had served in far-flung British colonies like Sri Lanka and some in Africa before arriving in Cork Harbour, but when he left he truly made his mark. He finished three years’ service in 1906 and began a career as an explorer, becoming one of the most famous names of the century, in a story recounted later.

Another Spike Island resident who found fame, in this case unwanted, was the daughter of soldier William Organ of County Waterford, who

arrived on Spike Island by way of her father’s role in the military. Ellen Organ became known in later years as Little Nellie. She would end up dying from tuberculosis aged just four, a common ailment of the period which also took her mother.25 How she endured her suffering and displayed miraculous qualities inspired the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Cork, where she was sent after her mother died of consumption and her father could not cope. She requested to take Holy Communion before she passed, something unheard of at the time for a child so young, as the age of Communion was twelve. A bishop was brought in who was equally moved by her story and he allowed her to take the Holy Bread. The story made its way to France, where a friar wrote a book which would soon be seen by the highest authority in the land – Pope Pius X.26

The Pope was said to be fascinated with her story as it struck a chord. He had been pondering reducing the age of Communion from twelve, admitting younger children. It gave him restless nights and he prayed for guidance. On hearing Nellie’s story, he exclaimed, ‘This is the sign I have been waiting for.’27 In 1910, buoyed by the ability of one so young to grasp the mysteries of Communion, he issued the decree Quam singulari, which lowered the age of Communion to seven for all Catholics. In this way a former Spike Island resident influenced hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people across the world.

This short summary is the general theme of the Little Nellie story that has been told for the last century, but its somewhat celebratory theme is now questioned. Little Nellie was a young child who died tragically. The miracles attributed to her, including her intense religious knowledge and devotion, seem to be a product of a very religious mother, who instructed her prior to her death and brought her daily to the island church. The nuns of the Good Shepherd continued this instruction when she arrived.

Visions attributed to Little Nellie by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd Convent in Cork city are tainted by the severity of her condition. Ellen either received powerful painkillers to treat her debilitating consumption or she received no pain relief at all, either of which could account for much of what the sisters reported as visions and miracles.

The Good Shepherd itself is also now known to be a place far removed from a place of God, with reports of abuse in its Magdalene laundry coming to light.28 Nellie was seemingly spared this abuse because of her reputation as a pious, un-sinning child, the same belief system punishing alleged

transgressors. Her story is unquestionably an interesting tale, and meaningful to those who find comfort in stories of devotion, but modern eyes might well see it as a sad tale corrupted to suit a religious agenda.

The end of the quiet period of military occupation came in 1914, as the world went to war. Spike Island remained a British military base, its role thrusting it back into the limelight. Its residents and soldiers feared for what the future had in store.