You cannot visit Blackrock, so let’s be straight about that first: it is a private working lighthouse on a sheer Atlantic rock about 12 miles west of Blacksod Bay, reached now only by maintenance helicopter, with no public landings. What you can do is see it. From the Mullet Peninsula – the viewpoint near Glosh Tower is the one to aim for – or from high ground on Achill Island, the rock rises out of the sea like a small volcano, often half-swallowed in the mist that wraps it most days. Locally it is An Tor, ‘the tower’.
The rock climbs roughly 70 m straight out of the water, and on top sits a 15 m (50 ft) round stone tower, painted white, built in 1864 from stone quarried on the island itself. Its light flashes white and red every 12 seconds, carrying 20 nautical miles to seaward and 16 to landward. The waters around it are prized by sea anglers for big pelagic fish – blue shark, porbeagle, halibut and bluefin tuna – and Blackrock is one of the four lighthouses of Erris: from a few spots in the region you can catch all four lights at once, if a local will tell you where to stand.
History
The case for a light here was argued for decades – the great lighthouse inspector George Halpin kept preferring Eagle Island – before the Board of Trade finally judged Blackrock the most important of the proposed western stations. The tower was built in 1864 and the light first shown on 1 June that year, flashing white to sea and red to land every 30 seconds. The lantern sits 86 m above the high-water mark, high enough to clear the worst of the Atlantic spray.
Life on the rock was brutal, and the record shows it:
- September 1937 – Keeper Patrick Monaghan was swept off the lighthouse by a freak wave. The later visit of his descendants to the island is the subject of the RTÉ Radio 1 documentary Good Day at Blackrock.
- 20 August 1940 – A German Focke-Wulf Condor attacking the SS Macville nearby raked the lighthouse with fire, shattering lantern panes and damaging the roof. None of the keepers was hurt.
- Winter 1942–43 – Storms smashed the landing stage and derricks and cut the keepers off completely. Three men were stranded for as long as 117 days, kept alive by baskets of supplies dropped from the air.
The keepers were withdrawn when the light was automated in 1974, and the island has been uninhabited since. On 3 August 1999 the light was converted to solar power, running on 24 panels, a 12 kW generating set and a PRL400 electric lantern, while keeping its old white-and-red character. In March 2017 the island was at the centre of tragedy again when the Irish Coast Guard helicopter Rescue 116 struck Blackrock on a night approach with the loss of all four crew; the difficulty of recovering the wreckage from these waters showed exactly how violent the sea here can be.
Seeing it
Irish Lights attendants land by helicopter for periodic maintenance; everyone else stays ashore. The clearest views are from the Mullet, around Blacksod and Glosh, and from the higher ground on Achill on a settled day. Bring a long lens – 200mm or more – because even at its nearest the rock is a fair way out, and go on a bright morning before the mist closes back in. After dark from the Mullet you may pick out the flash itself, twelve seconds apart, far out on the black water.
Nearby
- Blacksod Lighthouse – the mainland light on Blacksod Point, which does run guided tours, and the place from which a 1944 weather reading famously helped fix the date of the D-Day landings.
- Belmullet – the main Gaeltacht town of Erris, and the base for exploring the Mullet Peninsula.
- Achill Island – across the water to the south, with the Atlantic Drive and Keem Bay.