Riotous Assemblies

by William Sheehan

  If popular fiction and pictures of shipwrecks are a guide, the answer would be in the affirmative, for they depict battles of wit, with hapless officials and strandees facing cunning but imprudent indigenes.5 Indeed the attitude of the ‘civilised’ world, in Ireland and elsewhere, to the people of the coastal frontiers was encapsulated in Robert Louis Stevenson’s line: ‘They will fence their fields with mahogany, and, after a decent interval, sup claret to their porridge.’6 Underlying Stevenson’s condescension lay truth of a sort. The aesthetic sense of subsistence societies was different from that of the literate world, so the luxuries of the latter were not necessarily valued in the former. This understanding, arguably, informed the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, the relevant legislation in 1873. Its provisions on salvage, which had been promoted by the marine insurers Lloyds, included guidelines for rewarding salvors for their labour and for risks undertaken. The act also provided for the appointment of Receivers of Wreck, who would take charge of wrecked vessels, manage the retrieval of cargo until the owners were traced and divide the proceeds equitably between salvors and owners.7 Thus, the reward earned by an islander for salvaging mahogany might be used to purchase a greater quantity of more appropriate fencing material.

  Map of the Ceantar na nOileán area, created by Síubhán Comer.

  The salvage provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act may be seen as part of a process of extending the legitimacy of the ‘rule of law’ to parts of the population that had hitherto held to customary law and had regarded the official legal system as an oppressive or alien force. The rulers of eighteenth-century England, historian E. P. Thompson argued, sought to achieve hegemony by ensuring that, in its operation, the law gave the appearance of neutrality, allowing members of subaltern groups to secure occasional legal victories. With the official law retaining a coercive aspect but allowing for just outcomes, it became rational to engage with it in most circumstances rather than to fight against it.8 Historians of the Subaltern Studies group have disputed that anything like the ‘rule of law’ was applied in the British colonial world, and their arguments in this regard have had a resonance among some scholars working on Ireland. Nonetheless, it is clear that, in certain fields of contention at least, the authorities in Ireland resorted more often to appeasement than to repression when faced with rebellious groups or crowds.9

  In a classic article, Douglas Hay showed that, even where they co-operated with salvage law, communities around the coasts of Britain and Ireland continued to hold to customary notions. People from poorer households in particular, were dependent on what the sea might bring for their furniture and for occasional indulgences, so, in the aftermath of a shipwreck, they naturally tended to prioritise their own real wants over the claims of those who were manifestly less needy.10 It was not that coastal communities lacked morality in the matter, rather that where customary law clashed with the ‘rule of law’ at moments of crisis and distress, there was potential for grave misunderstandings. Arguably, such misunderstandings contributed to the negative depictions of islanders in mainstream culture.

  Shipwrecks were frequent in the second half of the nineteenth century, although the total varied widely from one year to the next. In the admittedly adverse conditions of 1859, it was estimated that one in 175 voyages by British ships engaged in overseas trade ended in total or partial shipwreck. During the third quarter of the nineteenth century, there were generally more than a hundred wrecks annually around the coast of Ireland, but only a small percentage fetched up on the western seaboard.11 That salvaged materials were important to the lives and economies of island and coastal communities in Ireland is indicated by folk memories surrounding the bountiful yields of particular wrecks. Since most shipwrecks occurred away from inhabited places, however, it was relatively unusual for abandoned cargoes to arrive intact and ready for salvage. Rather, they yielded up their treasures over a wide area and over an extended period, so the garnering did not generate much conflict.12 Of course, whenever a cargo was deposited close to shore, there was the potential for a dispute involving two or more of the interested parties – rival groups of finders, the owners, the insurers and the forces of order.

  Each case was different, and the available details are usually scanty and unreliable; but the tragic events surrounding the salvage of the Julia generated extensive evidence – including depositions from Irish-speaking witnesses. Testimony relating to events at Lettermullen was gathered for and presented at a coroner’s inquest, a manslaughter trial, a Board of Trade inquiry and an internal admiralty inquiry, and it was commented on in the press. With such plentiful primary sources, we can draw conclusions about issues on which no judgements were made at the various hearings of the 1870s. The details of the case should be regarded as illustrative rather than representative, but they shed light on a number of interesting questions: the extent to which a coastal population was prepared to operate the law on salvage; the way that the full ‘majesty of the law’ was experienced by an isolated community in Ireland in the 1870s; the attitudes towards each other of a coastal population and a body of public officials; and the attitude of petit-bourgeois anglophone Ireland, generally, towards an Irish-speaking community.

  For the people of south Conamara, the tragedy of the Julia began on the night of Thursday, 2 January 1873, when the barque-rigged sailing ship of 974 tons was dashed against Golam Head, just off Lettermullen. The Liverpool-bound vessel was derelict, having been abandoned by her crew during an Atlantic storm, and that part of her cargo of Quebec-grown timber that had been stored on deck was already washed away.13 But the rest of her cargo was a welcome bounty for the mostly impoverished inhabitants of the treeless district. According to an inventory, the cargo consisted of 109 pieces of oak, 50 pieces of elm, 240 pieces of white pine, 715 pieces of square white pine, 1,827 deals and 6,467 pipe staves. Some of the pieces of ‘square timber’ were substantial: there were enormous balks of coffin oak, for example, 22 inches (0.56 m) square by 75 feet (23 m) long, valued at £7 10s. each, equivalent to five months’ wages for a fully employed agricultural labourer.14 News spread quickly and within days a large number of people had arrived to stake their claim. There were ‘strangers’ from nearby island and mainland communities hoping to salvage a balk or two, and there were officials seeking to protect the entire cargo on behalf of the owners – whoever they might turn out to be.

  The first public official arrived on 4 January. This was William Farraday, a coastguard officer based on the mainland at Casla, ten miles away. Accompanied by two policemen and two subordinate coastguards, his immediate concern was to save the cargo before it was washed out to sea and he employed a number of islanders to help him. Frederick St Clair Ruthven, a police sub-inspector based in Spiddal, twelve miles further east than Casla, learned of the wreck on 4 January. On the following morning, which was ‘wet and wild’, he set out along with several underlings. It was dark when they reached Lettermullen, having crossed by currach from Carraroe to Garumna, and walked the five or six miles from there, pausing to cross the Cuigéal, a narrow but treacherous strait between the islands of Garumna and Lettermullen. Approaching Golam Head, they met ‘several parties’ carrying pieces of rigging and other salvaged material; arriving there, they found that the vessel had separated into three sections more than a hundred yards from one another. St Clair Ruthven took charge of nine men, police and coastguards, and set a guard on the timber. At first he allowed islanders to take small pieces for firewood, but he withdrew this concession when he considered it was being exploited.15

  The coastguards and policemen found shelter close by the wreck in an abandoned cottage, which served as their barracks for the next few months. One of them said: ‘It would be impossible to describe the inconvenience of the shanty, and the misery of spending the night in it. The accommodation was shared by a cow and a calf, two pigs, and sundry cocks and hens, which laid their eggs in the room in which we slept.’ The senior men did not remain long in the shanty – St Clair Ruthven, for examp
le, found ‘digs’ with Fr Nagle, the island priest.16

  If the officers found the shanty lacking in creature comforts, they were little worse off than their near neighbours, many of whom also shared accommodation with animals.

  According to a report on the area prepared for the Congested Districts Board in the 1890s: ‘The houses of the poorest are of rubble stone work, set dry and plastered thickly inside. The rafters are of bog deal ... The simplest form of interior plan is one general living-room, with fireplace against one end wall.’17 Charles Browne reported that ‘tempered cow-dung’ was used to plaster the interiors of the poorer houses, whose floors were ‘usually of bare rock, or large stones, the spaces between being filled up with mortar or beaten clay’. Furnishings were meagre too, due largely to the lack of timber. Browne’s descriptions – ‘a rough table, perhaps a rude dresser knocked together from a few boards’ – indicate that they were fashioned from driftwood and maritime wreckage.18 A generation later, a medical doctor told a government inquiry: ‘So long as the population is allowed to stay in Lettermore and Lettermullen, you will have nothing but misery and poverty. Their economic means are practically nothing.’19

  Despite their attested inhospitability, the islands had a substantial and growing population. Not yet affected by emigration, Lettermullen’s 787 craggy acres supported 383 people in 1851 and 626 in 1881.20 That it could support so many was a source of puzzlement, even after the islands were linked by bridges to the mainland in 1897.21 Survival on what one islander described as a ‘bit of a rock that a dog wouldn’t look at, where the pigs die and the spuds die’ meant exploiting every resource of land, shore and sea. Charles Browne wrote that the community was ‘one of fishermen and kelp-burners, who till a little land and keep a few cattle and sheep’, but it was more than that, for poitín-making, turf-cutting and salvage were further elements of household economies.22 There were highly regarded boat-builders, a number of shop- and síbín-keepers, and a prominent family of middlemen and merchant shopkeepers, the McDonoghs – based on the small island of Crappagh but dealing throughout the district.23

  Charles Browne was a rigid social Darwinist – given to measuring heads and categorising people according to an ‘index of nigrescence’ – but he was a sympathetic observer, and his report of life on the islands of Ceantar na nOileán and on the ‘psychology’ of their people was quite comprehensive. The Lettermullen people, in particular, were ‘shrewd and intelligent’, and had other positive qualities. For one visitor to Ceantar na nOileán, however, the disposition of the people was a source of mixed blessings:

  An almost perfect community of goods exists on the island ... This is a happy state of things from a moral standpoint, but, taken economically, it is sad, as indicative that each man knows not the day or the hour when he himself may have to fall back on the charity of his neighbour.24

  Farms were rented jointly by several families, in rundale, with commonage for their animals.25 The typical family cultivated an acre of potatoes and an acre of oats or barley, crops that were fertilised by ‘black weed’ brought from the shore. As there were no wheeled vehicles on the islands and few beasts of burden, the weed was carried in baskets, a task which fell to the women. Women evidently performed a large portion of the labour – they also carried home the turf and joined in the field-work. Sheep-shearing, milking, butter-making and the care of fowl were all regarded as women’s work.26 For almost all the economic activities of the men, a boat of some sort was required and a variety of them were built on the islands. A bád iomaire, a sturdy rowing boat, was used for heavy loads; also widely used was a large currach, fitted with a sail when conditions were suitable. Of the purpose-built sailing vessels in use, the púcán and gleoiteog were used for fishing, while hookers were used in the turf trade and by shopkeepers bringing merchandise to and from Galway.27

  There was a school on Lettermullen, with 120 boys and girls on the roll, but average attendance was about a third of that. Apart from the poorly paid teacher, the Catholic priest was the only figure of outside authority. There was, complained one official, no ‘public building on which cautionary notices could be placed except the chapel’.28 That building in 1873 was ‘a small, rude, structure of the most primitive style ... perhaps the oldest of its kind in Connemara ... [with] neither belfry nor cross, nor any architectural ornamentation to mark it out as a house of worship’. For want of a bell, a ‘small flag flying from a pole’ summoned the congregation to mass.29 The island had not always been quite so neglected by the outside world: there had been a coastguard station there and others nearby at Lettermore and Muighinis until the early 1860s, and the landlord family, the Comerfords, had a house there, which they occupied until the early 1860s.30 If contact with outsiders was the reason English was more widely understood on Lettermullen than in neighbouring communities, as one observer suggested, it may also have given the islanders a better understanding of the mores of the outside world.31

  Some hours after the arrival of Inspector St Clair Ruthven on 4 January, Denis Duvally, acting Receiver of Wreck, landed on Lettermullen. Duvally, an Irish-speaking Galway-based career customs officer, was accompanied by a friend, Michael Connolly. After an uncomfortable night in the shanty – it being too late to find lodgings – Duvally spent the following morning ‘enumerating’ timber. In the afternoon, he recovered twenty substantial pieces buried under freshly dug earth. The same day, he addressed the people in Irish, explaining the law on salvage. On 6 January, he employed three gangs of salvors, who would be entitled to a share of the value of timber they rolled above the high-water mark – ranging from two-thirds of items worth £3 to one-third of items worth over £5. Duvally was satisfied that twenty large balks were salvaged on the first day, but next day two more coastguard officers, John Clarke Drew and Richard Jago, arrived and questioned these arrangements.32

  Lieutenant Drew, an inspecting commander of the coastguard, left Galway on a steam tender on learning of the wreck. Facing a storm, he returned to Galway, and hired a horse and car to take him to Casla. There, adverse weather detained him for two days, and then forced him to take a circuitous route to Lettermullen. On his way, he counted fifty boats towing timber ‘in different directions’. When he eventually arrived on 7 January, accompanied by Jago of the Bearna coastguard station, both had formed poor opinions of the salvage operation.33

  Next day Duvally changed his system, probably in response to their criticism. Despite inconsistencies between the testimonies of Duvally and his friend Michael Connolly, it is clear that Connolly was appointed salvor at that point. Initially, for several days he acted as joint salvor along with the local people; then, he became sole salvor, and the status of the islanders changed from that of salvors on a percentage to that of day labourers. According to Connolly, he paid each man 3s. 6d. a day and also provided a daily barrel of whiskey, because ‘it was wet and stormy and they had to go waist deep in the sea’. If the wage was good – three times the agricultural labourers’ rate – the working conditions around Golam Head in January were truly appalling.

  The change was made because it made things ‘easier for the Customs’, according to Duvally, or because the local people could not understand the salvage principle, according to Connolly. In either case, the new arrangements benefited Connolly, and possibly Duvally. They certainly marked an important change in the relationship between local people and the newcomers.34 In the circumstances it is understandable why there might have been resentment. Having agreed to work under the 1854 Act, local people now saw the rules changed to benefit outsiders – and fewer local people benefited at all. With twenty to thirty people employed each day, only a quarter of Lettermullen households were legitimately sharing in the bounty. And that does not take account of the sense of entitlement among the people of Garumna.35

  As soon as it became calm enough, timber had been towed away by men in currachs. This activity now intensified, especially at night; there was an air of excitement as groups of men, many from Garumna a
nd elsewhere, gathered around shops and síbíns. Wherever he saw a crowd, Duvally urged them (in both languages, perhaps indicating lack of fluency in Irish) to disperse. He also asked Fr Nagle to ‘caution his parishioners against plunder’. At mass on Sunday 12 January, Duvally was pleased with the sermon in Irish on the seventh commandment – the timber has owners, the priest told his flock; taking it was theft.36

  The islanders were not the only ones needing to be reminded of the commandment. That same weekend the Bearna coastguard officer, Jago, accused Michael Connolly of salvaging already-salvaged timber and advised him that he would not be paid for his work. An agreement was brokered that meant Connolly would be paid for the work already done, provided he ceased to act as salvor and continued only as an auxiliary coastguard. It seems his friend Duvally’s authority was diminishing, since Connolly was dismissed from that post too after nine days. Lieutenant Drew took the role of salvor.37 To complicate things further, there was a concurrent dispute for custody of the Julia between Duvally and Captain Lodge of the insurers, Lloyd’s, who arrived on 9 January. This went on for two weeks and was resolved only when the Receiver of Wreck instructed Duvally officially to defer to the insurer’s representative.