Overview
You aren’t meant to land on the Keeragh Islands, and after two nights spent clinging to their reef in 1914, the sailors and lifeboatmen who survived a wreck here would have agreed. The two low islets (Irish: Oileáin na gCaorach, ‘islands of the sheep’) lie about 1.5 km off the south Wexford coast, opposite Blackhall Strand and Cullenstown Beach. Together they cover only about 2.38 hectares, under six acres, and rise no more than 10 m out of the sea, ringed by a wide, boulder-strewn rock platform thick with seaweed. What looks like a calm pair of humps from the beach is a genuine hazard to boats, which is the thread running through their whole history.
The Helen Blake disaster
The reef around the Keeraghs has wrecked ships for centuries, and locals once built a small stone refuge on the summit of the larger island to shelter stranded crews; its crumbling walls are still there.
The worst of it came on 20 February 1914. The Mexico, a Norwegian barque loaded with mahogany, ran onto the reef in heavy seas. The Fethard-on-Sea lifeboat, the Helen Blake, reached it but was smashed on the rocks: nine of her fourteen crew drowned, their bodies washed ashore the next morning. The five survivors and eight Norwegian sailors were left stranded on the exposed reef, and one of the shipwrecked men died of exposure there on 21 February.
Rescue was beaten back by the gale until two Rosslare Fort lifeboatmen, Bill Duggan and Jim Wickham, launched a small dinghy and ferried the survivors off two at a time, over six trips in stormy water. On one run the dinghy was holed, and they kept the sea out by plugging the breach with a loaf of bread wrapped in oilskins. The memorial on the summit reads ‘in memory of the Helen Blake lifeboat and crew 1914.’
There’s a footnote that stuck: after the disaster, donations raised for the crew’s families were sent in error to Fethard in County Tipperary, and to end the confusion the Wexford village renamed itself Fethard-on-Sea, the name it still carries.
Wildlife and conservation
The Keeraghs are a Special Protection Area (IE0004118) for one reason above all: their breeding great cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo), which nest here from May to September in nationally important numbers. Being predator-free, the islands also work as a safe winter night roost for gulls, wildfowl and migrating birds. In the past they held breeding terns, and early accounts suggest the Keeraghs may have been home to one of Ireland’s last colonies of the great auk before that flightless seabird went extinct in the mid-1800s.
Visiting
The honest advice is to look, not land. Landing is strongly discouraged, especially in the April–September breeding season, and the surrounding reef is dangerous. You’ll get more from the mainland anyway.
- From the coast: Blackhall Strand and Cullenstown Beach both give clear sightlines. Low tide exposes the full reef and is the best time for a coastal walk and photographs.
- By boat: Charter operators out of Wexford Harbour and Rosslare sometimes take in the Keeraghs on trips to the Saltee Islands. A telephoto lens will get you the cormorants without pushing the boat in close.
- Kayaking: Only for experienced paddlers in calm conditions, with the tide checked and a life jacket on; the sea state here changes fast.
Parking near Blackhall Strand is limited, so come early on a fine summer day. There’s little in the way of facilities at either beach, so bring what you need. For the official conservation objectives and site maps, see the National Parks and Wildlife Service page: https://www.npws.ie/protected-sites/spa/004118.
If you time it for sunset off Cullenstown, the islands frame nicely against the distant Saltees, and the reef that caused all the trouble finally does something kind.