Stormy Waters and Strong Gales

Lighthouse on Skellig Michael (off the Co Kerry coast).  Credit: Wikipedia

by Patrick J. (Paddy) Heneghan (The Meandering Milesian)

 

My mother used to tell us about "The Night of the Big Wind" (Oíche na Gaoithe Móire in Irish literature).  It is recorded that on the 6th-7th January 1839 a violent storm hit Ireland, causing massive damage not alone in the town of Tralee where she lived, but all over Ireland. Winds reached a force beyond any others in living memory. It was more than just an “ordinary” storm.  It left trees uprooted and did considerable structural damage. According to meteorologists, speeds up to seventy miles an hour can be expected during such violent storms.  I am not aware that the wind on the occasion in question was scientifically recorded.

Unfortunately I can remember very little of the detail recounted to us by my mother, who had had it from her father. He in turn must have had the details from his own father, whose family were merchants in Tralee at the time of the event. The heavy iron gates of the County Gaol in Ballymullen, my mother said, were lifted by the storm and deposited some distance away.  She had heard a story about an “ass and cart” which had been lifted bodily from one street to another, an occurrence which the animal had apparently survived.

For reasons other than the memory of the January 1839 event, my mother and her family were never very easy when storms were brewing. There was a foreboding about high winds which haunted my mother and grandmother, and “trimmings” were always added to the family Rosary for sailors and others at sea.  My grandmother’s father had drowned in Waterford Harbour late in the 19th century when a sudden squall upset the small craft from which he had been fishing. My mother’s uncle William (grandmother’s brother), while engaged during World War I in an action against Turkish troops, was drowned off the Turkish coast from a Canadian warship, the Prince Edward. 

In October of 1961 my mother was on a short holiday in Manchester when we sent her news that our second daughter, Anne, had just been born.  She cut short her holiday and booked her passage back to Dublin.  Thus it was that on a stormy night in October 1961 my mother found herself aboard a passenger ship leaving Liverpool for Dublin when the vessel was struck and holed by a Norwegian oil tanker in the mouth of the Mersey River.  After the shock of the impact, the cabin down below where she and my father were sleeping became awash with water coming from the corridor immediately outside.  My mother, remembering the fate of her grandfather and uncle, hastily scrambled from the cabin to reach the deck above, with her Rosary beads around her neck.  She was met by the purser, who seeing the Rosary, said “Calm down, madam, it’s not all that bad”, telling her that the hole torn along the side of the ship was above the Plimsoll line, and that luckily both ships were able to dock in Liverpool for the night. 

Meanwhile, as my mother’s sea drama was developing, I was visiting my wife Mary and new-born infant in Dublin’s Mount Carmel Hospital. The entrance to the hospital was then by way of a tree-lined avenue. That evening all the trees were in motion, and walking from the car-park to the hospital was difficult, with classic Beaufort Scale indications of a strong gale. When the end of visiting hours was called, most of the trees I had passed on my way in had been uprooted and were lying across the avenue.  Luckily the hospital’s rear entrance was still clear. 

Was it any wonder then that after the series of events recounted above that my mother never omitted that special ‘trimming’ after her the Rosary?   

***

One has to go to Oklahoma in the U.S. (where I’ve never ventured) and take an organised trip with tornado spotters (at a price, of course) to be almost sure of experiencing the very fastest of wind speeds. Tornadoes have been recorded there with wind speeds of 286 and 302 mph. Not, for sure, the kind of holiday I’m likely to venture on. The nearest I ever got to a tornado was a waterspout which I saw one day arising out in Tralee Bay as I cycled from Camp village to Tralee.  The spectacular column of water rose hundreds of feet into the air and hung there for several seconds, before collapsing into the sea with a mighty splash.  Whether this Tralee Bay phenomenon happens regularly I have never established.    

Towards the end of the year 2000 I had an unexpected experience in Sydney, Australia.  I got caught in another type of windy phenomenon: a cyclone, which passed through the city, killing two people and injuring twenty-three.  A certain comic postcard firm, in the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions, famously produced a ‘black comedy’ cartoon with the punch line ‘One atomic bomb can really ruin your day!’.  A cyclone has, roughly, the same effect.

My plan for that particular December day in Sydney - the 4th of that month and meteorologically-speaking the start of the Australian summer - was to visit Bondi Beach.  I reached there about midday. To have a leisurely paddle at the water’s edge was the extent of my ambition.  I was travelling alone and hoping to see the famous surf. I had been warned not to leave my property lying unsupervised on the crowded beach. That day the sky presented a deep and cloudless blue, with scarcely a trace of wind, and nothing more than a ripple was to be seen at the water’s edge.  I noted as I removed my shoes and socks that an ominous black shape was appearing just over the hills to the south.  I entered the water with my trousers rolled up to my knees, but I had barely started my intended paddle in the South Pacific when I became aware of a steady stream of people making their way up towards the promenade at the top of the beach where a number of buses were assembling.  I figured that something was amiss and I left the water to make enquiries.  A man who was busily gathering together his belongings nodded towards the hills and said that a cyclone warning had just been given. By this time flashes of lightening were coming at regular intervals.  I was at the time nursing an arthritic hip, but I took to my heels with a much dignity and speed as I could muster, and managed to squeeze myself into the last of the waiting buses.  We took off as torrential rain began to fall.  Water in the roadside channels shortly reached six inches or so in depth.  The news of the deaths and injuries came on television that evening. What surprised me was that the cyclone seemed to have taken a rather narrow path over the city before dissipating itself later on in the day in the Blue Mountains.  The main element that remains in my memory was of the rain rather than the wind.  I have to say that on return to Ireland for a few months I ‘dined out’ on this story until eventually my friends began to cross over to the other side of the street whenever they saw me coming.

My most vividly-remembered experience with wind and rain occurred on St. Stephen’s Day, 26th December 1948 in Tralee during the Christmas holiday break at my grandmother’s home at Moyderwell.  We began to play cards after tea on that date, and we continued until well after midnight.  My grandmother was presiding over a family gathering which included Uncle Jim, who lived in St. Brendan’s Park on the far side of the town.  One of grandmother’s golden rules was that no-body left home during Christmas, but it suited her that Uncle Jim should have a standing dispensation to come to make up the numbers.  By the time the last game of cards finished, a considerable gale was developing outside.  Slates were clattering down on the street and Uncle Jim was worried.  We really feared for his safety as he left to walk to the other end of the town.  My two brothers and I retired that night to the top front bedroom of our three-storey house. My bed stood against the end-of-terrace south-facing gable which adjoined a school playground. The three us settled down and tried to sleep despite the noise outside.  Suddenly, above the howling of the developing gale, a sharp crack like a rifle shot rang out in the room and was repeated at short intervals.  I found to my alarm that the gable wall, which was at my elbow and constructed of sandstone blocks two feet thick, was shuddering at intervals as particularly strong gusts assailed that unsheltered side of the house.  I should explain that the room was in darkness, as the upper floors of the house had not yet been wired for electricity and we went of bed by candle-light.  I could sense that the other two in the room were making efforts to sit up, but by now I was standing out on the floor. Another sharp “crack” had come above the noise of the storm, and soon we seemed to be coming under regular fire from some quarter.  I groped in the dark in an attempt to discover the source of the gun-like reports.  They seemed to be coming from the window nearest the gable, and I stumbled over in that direction.  Too late!  I identified the cause of the noise: about an inch of the top sash of the window was open, and a wind-created vacuum was sucking the roller blind out of the room.  Every few seconds one of a series of tacks by which the fabric of the blind was held to the wooden roller gave way and shot back into the room.  Just as I stretched out my hand to save the blind, the final tack gave way and the blind disappeared into the night.  That was the last we ever saw of it. 

Meanwhile, pools of water were developing on the floor.  We figured out later that as the storm developed slates were being stripped gradually from the roof on the street side of the house, and the wind then started to blow through the attic, causing slates on the other side to explode outwards. By now everyone in the house was awake and dressing.  As many pot, pans and buckets as we could lay our hands on were placed at strategic points in the top-floor bedrooms to gather the water dripping through from what was left of the roof.  All this work was done by candle light.  Oh, what a night!

In the morning the wind had died down somewhat and by first light we surveyed the external damage.  The street outside was littered with slates, every house in the terrace having suffered in some fashion.  Many windows had been broken, although we escaped any such damage.  Luckily Uncle Jim arrived home safely.

The news arriving from outside the town was grim. Two men had died in the north of the county.  They and a companion were travelling home in a van at the height of the storm.  Finding themselves in danger of being blown over, they stopped the vehicle and managed to pack it with rocks from the adjoining beach to keep it steady.  After some time spent sheltering in the stationary van, one man elected to remain in the van until morning, but the other two decided to make a dash for home on foot.  They were found in the morning dead on the seashore, having apparently been blown into the sea during the night.  In West Kerry, near Brandon village on the

Dingle peninsula, boats moored by the shore were found in fields some distance inland. The lighthouse on the Skellig Rock, miles off the Kerry coast near Waterville, had been extinguished by a boulder, which, it was thought, had been thrown up many hundreds of feet by the sea from the base of the lighthouse.

On our return to Dublin early in January, we told our friends about our experiences in Tralee.  They listened in disbelief.  There had been no storm in Dublin that Christmas! 

I was able some years later to contact Central Meteorological Office in Dublin who confirmed that in fact such a storm had occurred along the west coast of Ireland, but it was recorded for 27th December,  1948.  Following up on the event, I read in copies of the local press held in the Tralee County Library accounts of the full extent of this ‘Christmas storm’.  Maybe the whole affair was a ‘one off’ to enliven the holidays, a Royal Command Performance by the Clerk of the Weather, so to speak and exclusively for the Kingdom of Kerry!