51°43′.2 N · 09°58′.7 W — ADMIRALTY No. A 5721

STATION FRESNEL

FL(2) W 15s FOCAL PLANE 41 M · RANGE 24 NM

Two flashes, then the long dark. The optic turns once every fifteen seconds and has not missed its mark since the first of March, 1849. Ships do not read the light; they read the interval. So will you — the flashes on this page keep the true character, counted against your clock, and when the fog comes the horn takes over.

ENTRY I

The Apparatus

The plate below is riveted to the pedestal at the level of the service gallery, where a hundred and thirty-eight years of hands have kept it bright. Everything the light is, in eleven lines.

Optic: First-order Fresnel, eight panels in four pairs
Maker: Henry-Lepaute, Paris, 1847 · works No. 213
Character: Group flashing — two white flashes every 15 seconds
Focal plane: 41 m above mean high water springs
Luminous range: 24 nautical miles
Bullseye: 920 mm diameter, central of nine refracting rings
Prisms: 13 catadioptric above the belt, 6 below, each panel
Rotation: Mercury float bath (fitted 1907) · one revolution in 15 s
Drive: Clockwork, 240 kg weight, 27 m drop — wound every 40 minutes until 1962
Illuminant: Colza oil 1849 · paraffin vapour 1904 · electric 1962
Tower: Cut granite, dovetailed courses, 46 m to the gallery

For a hundred and thirteen years a keeper climbed ninety-eight steps every forty minutes, all night, to wind a quarter-tonne weight back to the top of its drop. The interval you are watching is the shape of that labour — kept now by a seventy-watt motor the size of a kettle.

ENTRY II

The Keepers, 1849–1987

Twelve principal keepers in one hundred and thirty-eight years. The Commissioners recorded tenures; the log recorded weather. Between the two columns, whole lives.

1849–1861 Elias Crane Lit the lamp on the first night and disliked the sea ever after. Retired to a farm with no view of it.
1861–1874 J. B. Tarr Kept bees in the lee of the oil store. The honey, one inspection reports, “tastes of rope.”
1874–1919 Josiah Veale Forty-five years — the longest watch ever kept here. His son Thomas, nineteen, drowned at the landing stage during the October relief of 1889. Veale asked to keep the winter alone, and the Commissioners, to their shame or their credit, allowed it. From November to April the log records nothing but weather. “9 Nov. 1889 — Wind NNW force 9, squalls of sleet. Light exhibited as usual.”
1919–1926 Samuel Odlum Invalided ashore after the great storm of January 1926. Asked, in his last letter, whether the lantern panes had held. They had.
1926–1938 Fintan Quirke Logged 4,140 consecutive hourly weather observations without a missed watch. The record stands.
1938–1947 Denis Macrae Kept the light dark on Admiralty orders for twenty-six nights in 1941, and called them the longest of his service.
1947–1954 H. G. Plunkett Brought a violin out on the relief of 1949. The boatmen refused to carry it back.
1954–1961 Nolan Brophy Seven winters. His wife Agnes kept the assistant’s watch through two of them — unpaid, and unrecorded until now.
1961–1970 Cornelius Bird Took the station electric in 1962. Trimmed no more wicks, and wrote that he missed the smell.
1970–1979 Michael Lowney Grew tomatoes in the lantern-room glass. Official reprimand, 1974. The practice continued.
1979–1984 Gerald Maine Oversaw the helideck works of 1981 — the end of the landing stage’s working life, though nobody said so aloud.
1984–1987 T. C. Helvick The last. Turned the key at 09:00 on 14 May 1987, rode the helicopter ashore, and never wrote a word about it.

ENTRY III

14 May 1987

At 09:00 the light was switched to automatic operation and the station was demanned. The helicopter lifted at 09:40. The Commissioners’ minute for the day runs to four lines; the manifest ran longer.

REMOVED FROM STATION — MAY 1987

1 barometer, Admiralty pattern, mercurial
1 clock, pendulum, “in need of attention”
1 telescope, brass, with case — the relief-watching glass
14 volumes of the log, 1849–1987, to the Commissioners’ archive
3 chairs; 1 armchair, condition poor
1 kettle
1 dog, Bran, to the harbourmaster’s daughter at Kilmoran

NOT RECOVERABLE

The remarks column. Instruments record the weather; they do not remark on it.
The smell of hot brass and paraffin on the stair.
A human voice answering Channel 16 at three in the morning.
Tomatoes.

The light itself noticed nothing. It flashed twice and kept the interval, exactly as it is doing now, over your reading.

ENTRY IV

Landing — Weather Permitting

The station may be visited by boat from Kilmoran pier, Wednesdays and Saturdays, May to September, weather permitting. The weather permits roughly one sailing in four.

Date	Result	Remarks
WED 03 JUN	CANCELLED	Swell over the landing
SAT 06 JUN	CANCELLED	Swell over the landing
WED 10 JUN	LANDED	41 minutes ashore
SAT 13 JUN	CANCELLED	Wind SW force 7
WED 17 JUN	TURNED BACK	Fog inside the mile
SAT 20 JUN	CANCELLED	Residual swell
WED 24 JUN	LANDED	55 minutes ashore
SAT 27 JUN	CANCELLED	Swell over the landing
WED 01 JUL	CANCELLED	Wind NW force 6, sea rough
SAT 04 JUL	CANCELLED	Swell over the landing
SEASON TO DATE — 10 SAILINGS SCHEDULED · 2 LANDED

There is no jetty. You step from a moving gunwale onto wet granite, as the keepers did.
The boatman’s decision is final, and it is usually no.
Bring nothing you cannot carry in one hand. The other hand is for the rope.
Enquiries: the harbour office, Kilmoran — VHF channel 12. Refunds are issued more often than tours are given.