O'Connell Bridge to Ringsend and Sandymount

SECTION XVI

The Port of Dublin - O’Connell Bridge to Ringsend and Sandymount

At the present time O’Connell Bridge marks the head of Dublin port, though formerly shipping penetrated a mile further up the stream. The Ballast Office, from whence the Port and Docks Board exerts its authority over the harbour, is appropriately placed at the northwestern corner of Westmoreland Street looking seawards. The history of this body and of its predecessors is long and interesting.

The early Danish mariners left no traces of their presence except a Long Stane, or Stone, which once stood on the strand opposite Trinity College. By the charters of the English monarchs the first corporations of Dublin were given certain privileges over the stretch of coast from the Nanny Water, a brook near Balbriggan, to Arklow in County Wicklow.

The mayors, however, were more anxious to claim their tolls and bounties than to perform their manifest duty of improving the harbour, which, of itself, would be very unsafe, and indeed owes little to nature except its remarkable scenic beauty. For instance, in the case of ships laden with wine, the authorities exercised a right of taking one butt from before and another from behind the mast.

If the captains tried to evade the irksome dues at Dublin by putting into other neighbouring havens, such as Baldoyle or Dalkey, the mayors sallied out thither in strong force to obtain their perquisites by force of arms, if necessary. Thus they were often at loggerheads with the lords of the manor along the coast line. After three centuries they began to have a clearer conception of their true interest.

Just where the Liffey begins to lose itself in the bay, the deposits brought down by the river continually tend to form a bar or submerged sandbank. This extends right across the fairway and would, if unchecked, soon become a great danger to navigation. A ship might easily run aground and bump her heart out in the turbulent sea produced there by the contending forces of wind, tide and river current. In 1577 a “perch” or buoy was set to mark the bar, and in 1588 proposals were made for the erection of a tower or lighthouse.

During the next century the Ballast Office was established. As its name implies, its first function was the regulation of ballast. Before its foundation shipmasters had taken in sand or shingle from the strand haphazard, a course which proved their own ruin, for the harbour soundings, in consequence, varied continually, and the deep water of yesterday was a shoal to-day. The Ballast Office, with an earnest zeal and industry which appear between the lines of their official reports, at once set about the improvement of the port. They defined the channel for at least two miles below old Dublin by the erection of walls on either side. The masonry was carried boldly across the marshy flats, cutting off from the sea a large space, which was gradually filled in and is now covered with streets.

One of the shipping quays on the south side is called after the “City.” The longest stretch, however, bears the name of Sir John Rogerson, a local proprietor, who achieved a good deal of private reclamation. The northern line is still known by the generic name of the North Wall, a well-deserved tribute to the conception of the Ballast Office. They placed a lightship at the entrance. It was driven ashore almost every winter, but was invariably restored to its former position, if still seaworthy.

They also began a great breakwater designed to remedy the chief defect of Dublin Bay. Considered as a harbour, its great drawback is that it is wide open to every gale from the east. With the not unusual south-east wind, the northern coast from Clontarf to Howth, fringed through most of its length with a sandbank called the Bull, became a dangerous lee shore. The port authorities therefore constructed a granite mole three miles and a half long stretching out from Ringsend into the deep waters of the bay. This continued the line of the South Wall and gave good shelter to ships against gales from the southward.

By pile-driving in the shallower water, and by sinking kishes or crates filled with stones in the deeper, they obtained foundations for their work. The task cost Dublin many lives, much material and a huge expenditure of money. The safety of the port was finally assured by the building from the northern shore at Clontarf, in the nineteenth century, of a similar breakwater, which nearly meets the older south wall and completes the enclosure of the mouth of the Liffey.

The whole harbour may be viewed by a walk along the southern quays from O’Connell Bridge to the furthermost extremity of the long breakwater beyond Ringsend, which took a good part of a century in the building.

Leinster Market.jpg (76355 bytes)Those who do not care for shipping and quaysides, however, may see a good deal from the Ringsend and Sandymount tram route, which passes several points of interest. At its city end, after crossing O’Connell Bridge, the tram passes through D’Olier Street, one of the improvements made by the Wide Streets Commissioners. To the left, off this street, is Leinster Market (pictured right), a quaint, narrow old passage, which has very little light even in its open parts, and at either end has to burrow under the first floors of houses that lie right across the way. Here, too, is the singular Crampton monument, which stands on the site of the Danish Long Stone. It looks more like a botanical curiosity than anything else.

In the churchyard of S. Mark’s, Brunswick Street, is a curious old wooden open-air pulpit.

At the suburban end of the tramline are Irishtown, with a venerable ivy-clad square-towered church, and leafy Sandymount with its martello tower on the shore, one of hundreds built round the coast hurriedly and at great expense to repel an invasion, which was never attempted. “Billy Pitt’s Folly” was the nickname bestowed on these structures, useless even in their day and now hopelessly antiquated.

The route chosen for this section will, however, lead along the southern seaward line of quays, going east from O’Connell Bridge. If it has drawbacks, it has also charms of its own. The atmospheric effects are often very striking. On bright days a peculiar, light silvery mist plays over the bay and the lower Liffey, dancing and quivering in the sunshine. There is, too, a romance about seaborne commerce, which compensates for the sombre aspect of the districts where it is to be found. Even the most ordinary of ships is associated with scenes of heroic effort, of danger, and of sudden and cruel death.

Of such romance Dublin has had its full share. Before the harbour works were finished, the annual total of wrecks in the bay was enormous, sometimes exceeding a hundred.

The strangest story of the many that might be told, is that of the “Ouzel Galley.” She left Ireland with a valuable cargo, which had, as usual, been insured with Dublin underwriters. For several years nothing more was heard of her. At last it was thought that she must have perished. The owners made their claims, as for a total loss, and were paid in full accordingly.

Soon afterwards, to the astonishment of all concerned, the “Ouzel Galley” reappeared, laden with spoils and full of adventures. She had been captured in the Mediterranean by an Algerine corsair, who, liking the qualities of the vessel, had not sunk his prize, but adapted her to his own evil purposes.

The “Ouzel” preyed on the trade of Europe and was soon stored with a cargo far exceeding in value that with which she had first sailed. By a fortunate chance the Irish crew, who had been biding their time, were enabled to turn the tables on their late captors and bring the ship, with her ill-gotten gains, back in triumph to Dublin.

The great wealth gained by this achievement, however, gave rise to a long and knotty legal dispute between the merchants and the underwriters. The owners, while offering to repay the amount they had received for the loss of the ship, claimed that the spoils won by their servants should belong to themselves alone. The other party declared that, on paying the insurance money, they had acquired a right to any possible profit to be derived from the salvage or recovery of the “Ouzel Galley.”

The matter dragged through the courts for years, but was at last settled privately by arbitration before a committee of merchants.

To commemorate this satisfactory solution of the difficulty, the traders of Dublin founded the “Ouzel Galley Society” for the settlement on similar lines of commercial disputes without the intervention of the law. The scheme was popular and successful. Awards were made in hundreds of cases to the apparent content of both parties.

After the manner of Dublin institutions, the ” Ouzel Galley Society” gradually took a convivial tone. Its nautical associations became a subject of after-dinner jocularity, when untravelled landsmen delighted to style themselves “captain,” “boatswain,” “coxswain,” “gunner,” and so forth.

After a long and jovial existence it tamely submitted itself to the law, from which it had tried to rescue others. In 1888 it was dissolved by the Court of Chancery and its funds distributed among city charities. Mr Litton Falkiner mentions that a picture of the famous ship hangs in the newsroom of the Chamber of Commerce. The Commercial Buildings in Dame Street were the Society’s last place of meeting.

customhouse.gif (32195 bytes)A little below O’Connell Bridge on the northern bank is the Custom House (pictured left), the most beautiful structure in Dublin. It would provide a splendid picture to the throngs who daily cross the river to and from Sackville Street, but, unfortunately, the ugly railway bridge of the Loop Line has been allowed to intervene and mar the view absolutely. However, from almost any position on the quays to the eastward of the railway it is possible to obtain a standpoint which does justice to the long semi-classical facade crowned with its graceful tower and emblematic figures.

The hated John Beresford, of Tyrone House, the leading spirit among the Commissioners of Customs, took a great part in the construction of these stately offices for his department. He was a man of a refined taste, but somewhat unlucky in his projects.

His Custom House now shelters a dozen boards beside the original occupant. Beresford Place, behind it, was to have” been a wide open space, set with trees, and bounded by the not unpleasing rear buildings of the Custom House and the great houses of Dublin merchant princes on three sides, while the fourth looked on to a large and crowded dock.

But the dock rarely contains more than one or two small sailing-ships, the merchant princes reside miles away from Dublin, the houses intended for them are now stores or warehouses, and, to crown all, the Loop Line has run a railway viaduct on pillars across the square, blotting out almost all trace of Beresford’s conception.

The large house or stores at the north-east corner of Beresford Place is a memorial of bygone methods of taxation. It has no fewer than sixty-seven blocked and bricked-up windows. This wholesale blinding of the eyes of a house was not unusual in the days of the window tax, when each opening to let in light and air cost the owner a certain number of shillings yearly. The result was, of course, that builders omitted windows, wherever possible, and occupants of old houses stopped up as many apertures as they could.

On the south bank, half way along Sir John Roger-son’s Quay, the old buildings of the Hibernian Marine Society appear. The old naval charity founded for training sailors’ orphans to the sea has now migrated from the quays to the purer air of Clontarf. Close by there are a few old houses and some ancient stores furnished with the old-fashioned rope and pulley for swinging in goods.

The pedestrian is at last compelled to turn to the right to obtain a crossing over the inlet to the Grand Canal Docks. This he will find at the lock gates. The “docks,” to which they give access, are really a small artificial harbour constructed in the century before last, to allow sea-going ships to load from the barges which journey hither along the Grand Canal from the distant Shannon and Barrow. The canal boat, the most peaceful and pastoral form of water carriage, contrasts oddly with the weatherworn merchant ship.

There is still more water to be crossed. The river Dodder, changed from the romantic stream of the more southerly suburbs, lies beyond the canal docks and is spanned by Ringsend Bridge. There is a tradition that this stream behaved with great perversity when the first bridge was erected here. No sooner was the fabric completed than the waters forsook their old channel, leaving the costly structure high and dry, and, of course, absolutely useless. The peccant river had to be brought back by main force, and narrowly restricted to its present bounds.

Ringsend was until recent times the usual landing-place for travellers coming across channel. Some of these have made an obvious joke on the name, which they declared to be a typical Hibernian blunder, since a ring has no beginning or end. However, it is more appropriate than they guessed. The “ring” in question is the Irish term for a point or spit of land, here apparently that enclosed between Dodder and Liffey. Dublin Bay, curiously enough, beside the “blunder” of Ringsend, has two remarkable “bulls” (the sandbanks of that name opposite Clontarf and Sandymount).

At this little fishing village Oliver Cromwell landed in 1646 with 8,000 foot, 4,000 horse and a train of battering guns, by means of which he afterwards destroyed some of the oldest strongholds in Ireland.

At Ringsend the South Wall proper, as distinct from the city quays, begins. About half way along is the Pigeon House, a curiously named fort, which has now become an electric light and drainage station. Its grey old buildings, with their embrasures and loopholes, are in odd contrast to the tanks and dynamos around.

There are various explanations of its title. The most usual one is that the Ballast Office had a servant named Pigeon, who established a sort of hotel here called, from its proprietor, Pigeon’s House and, later, the Pigeon House. Another story is that the people were struck with a resemblance between the hexagonal fort with its gun ports and the ordinary dovecote, which is pierced in like manner by a number of little apertures.

There is a small harbour in the middle of the fort, where vessels were subjected to customs examination before proceeding on their journey to Dublin. Before the Union and even for some years after it each country still had its own scale of tariffs, so that passengers from England were compelled to submit their belongings to the ordeal of inspection. Military officers were sometimes compelled to pay heavy duty on the gold lace in their uniforms.

Passing right through the Pigeon House, the pedestrian emerges on the bare and wind-swept seaward portion of the South Wall. Hitherto the nature of the engineering work has been somewhat concealed, because the drift of the sea has gradually accumulated sand against the south side of the mole, so as to form a long bank, which has now been dotted with cottages and fringed with an ordinary carriage road.

Beyond the Pigeon House, however, the wall is in its original condition, formed of great slabs of granite, one foot in width b~ four feet long and three feet deep. The sea lies below on both sides and there is no parapet. The waves that break over the narrow causeway with every storm have browned the gray stones to a rust colour. In some places the wall seems to have sunk slightly from its true level, and there are gaping chinks where the cement has disappeared. Still the work, as a whole, does great credit to the perseverance and industry of the ancient Ballast Office.

On the left or northern side is the deep anchorage of Poolbeg, the name of which is Irish for “the little hollow.” It was used as a roadstead for ships awaiting a favourable tide, or perhaps unable to enter the port on account of their great draught of water. The Liffey was not deepened artificially until vessels came to be built with lines so sharp that it was dangerous for them to “take the ground,” as had once been the practice.

Some stirring scenes have happened in Poolbeg. At one time pirates and privateers hovered off Howth and made daring dashes into the harbour. During the Jacobite wars Sir Cloudesley Shovel boldly ran into the bay, attacked and threw into confusion King James’s fleet at anchor.

To the south of the wall is the wide, shallow expanse of the southern h4f of the bay, a level of sand at low tide, except at one point, called the Cockle Lake, where there is always a fair depth. This name, too, is a perversion. It was originally the “Cock Lake,” frequented by the cocks or cockboats, from which the coxswain takes his title.

Passing the Half-Moon Battery, an old outwork of the Pigeon House, still preserving its curved form, a further walk of five minutes reaches the lighthouse, which marks the end of the wall. It, too, is an old structure, as is shown by its thickset, stumpy form, not unlike a windmill bereft of its sails. The once dreaded bar of Dublin lies between the end of the South Wall and the half submerged masonry of the companion breakwater on the opposite side.

The rough walking of the last mile or two is now rewarded by a beautiful and comprehensive view of the whole bay, from Howth right round through Dublin and out again to Dalkey. The shape is, roughly, a great semi-circle with the city set midway in its circumference. The spectator is in the centre of the tract of water enclosed.

To the north-east is the Hill of Howth, rugged on one side, but sloping more gently on the other. It has that curious resemblance to a couchant lion, which has often been noticed in such isolated promontories, notably at Portland and Gibraltar. The bay is fringed throughout its length with villas, on which the sun gleams brilliantly wherever it finds a white or polished surface to reflect its rays. Beyond, the country gradually rises into what seems to be thick woods, but are only the continuous gardens and demesnes of Clontarf, Sandymount, Blackrock and Monkstown. To the west are the spires, domes and chimneys of the city, blended by distance into a vague outline suggesting the presence and the myriad activities of man.

But the greatest beauty of all is the long mountain-chain that runs along the whole southern horizon, reaching an altitude of nearly 2,000 feet. Almost every peak can be named and recognised. On the extreme right is Montpellier Hill, crowned with a large square house, where the Hellfire Club were said to assemble and where, it is told, they used to close all the windows and doors and make a mimic hell of their own with burning sulphur and pitch, vieing with each other who could endure it longest. How idle and foolish such pranks seem, out here in the open amid the sea breezes!

From Montpellier Hill there is a long and lofty ridge, which continues unbroken until it reaches Two Rock and Three Rock Mountains, so called from groups of boulders on their summits. Next is the great natural cleft known as the Scalp, where a “skelp” or slice has been taken out of the mountain. The name is akin to the English “scallop,” meaning “to hollow out,” rather than to the “scalp,” which covers the human skull.

In some parts of Ireland such fissures are ascribed to diabolic agency, as, for example, in the Devil’s Bit at Templemore. Further eastward are the mountains near Bray, the Sugarloaf, almost conical in form, the Little Sugarloaf, a poor imitation of its neighbour, and the Paps, so called from the small rounded knolls on its summit.

Finally in the extreme south-east there are the three characteristic hills of Dalkey, all of the same size and shape, and each bearing some obelisk or monument to mark its highest point. North, south, east, west, it is a splendid panorama, which has, not undeservedly, been compared with the Bay of Naples.

“Oh, bay of Dublin, how my heart you’re troublin’

Your beauty haunts me like a fevered dream.”

It is a poetic rapture, but many, like the exile in Lady Dufferin’s poem, “feel their heart’s blood warm when they but hear the name” of Dublin Bay, or recall to their minds that magnificent tableau of land and water, which is in most cases the Englishman’s first sight of Ireland, or, sad thought, the Irishman’s last glimpse of his lovely native land.

To Chapter 17. To Chart Index.