The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Festival hears how every shop in Dingle dealt in smuggled goods
HARBOURS, coves and quiet inlets around Dingle Bay provided a haven for pirates and smugglers who operated a thriving illicit industry, with the collusion of officials and the support of locals for hundreds of years.
Details of how this industry operated and who was involved were outlined in lectures delivered during last weekend’s Maritime Festival by Dingle GP Dr Conor Brosnan and underwater archaeologist Dr Connie Kelleher. The lectures were so well attended that extra chairs were called for at Dr Kelleher’s lecture on Saturday, while at Dr Brosnan’s lecture the following day no space remained for extra chairs and people had to be turned away at the door.
Dr Brosnan, who has gathered a wealth of information from contemporaneous newspaper accounts and official British records, told his audience in Mara Beo on Sunday that every shopkeeper in Dingle was dealing in smuggled goods between the late 1600s and the early 1800s. Some of the houses in town were reputed to have seven-foot-thick gable walls where contraband was stashed and in 1820 an informant claimed that Simon McKenna, who lived in what is now Benner’s Hotel on Main Street, had his house packed from the ground floor to the attic with smuggled goods.
The Knight of Kerry, Maurice Fitzgerald who lived in The Grove, was officially responsible for policing trade in Dingle port but, a man with scant loyalty to the Crown and a cellar-full of Barcelona wine, he turned a blind eye to the illicit trade.
Tea, brandy and tobacco were the main goods smuggled around Dingle Bay and a measure of the extent of the trade was to be seen in the seizure in 1775 of a ship carrying 672 gallons of illicit brandy.
“You couldn’t rule Kerry,” said Dr Brosnan, who quoted a despairing report from the time that stated: “Not even a shadow of the wholesome laws of Great Britain is extant.”
Dr Kelleher’s lecture focused on piracy, which was another thriving business in Dingle Bay from the late 1500s up to the late 1700s.
With the opening of European colonies in the Americas and a growing trade in spices from the east, the south west coast of Ireland made an ideal base for English and Barbary Coast pirates, many of whom moved here to prey on the growing number of ships plying the trade routes from the Americas and the Mediterranean. Dr Kelleher said that aboub 70 pirate captains, each commanding two or three ships, operated in a triangle between the south west of Ireland, Newfoundland and North Africa and in 1612 a Dutch map, which was drawn up to identify pirate harbours in Ireland, included Smerwick, Ventry, Dingle, Valentia, Ballinskelligs and Kenmare among the network of harbours described as havens for pirates.
Like the smugglers in Dingle, these pirates could only operate with the support of an onshore network, and they found many willing hands around the coast of Dingle Bay. Pieces of eight and Barbary ducats were acceptable currency and shopkeepers were only too happy to provision pirate ships with supplies that were paid for at two or three times the going rate. Meanwhile, officials found that pirates paid a lot better than their masters in far off London.
Sporadic efforts were made to clamp down on piracy around our coast and in 1621, 26 pirates were hanged in Valentia. However, the trade continued to flourish and Dr Kelleher pointed out that some of the steps that can still be seen cut into cliffs leading to quiet coves remain as evidence of where pirates secretly landed their booty.
Kevin Flannery, who organises the Maritime Festival along with former harbourmaster Brian Farrell, said the lectures are now so well attended that they will have to look at getting a bigger venue. The festival is run by volunteers who get no State funding to help with the costs, however they’re able to keep the show on the road with very welcome support from the board of Mara Beo and locals who help provide food and accommodation for guest speakers.