The first time I ever visited the small County Wexford fishing village of Kilmore Quay, it was to see a red-hulled steel lightship in the harbour. She’d been embedded in concrete in 1986, her service as a working lightship having come to an end in 1968 when she was sold to the Wexford Maritime Museum Committee. She was the Guillemot II.

The first Guillemot (1893), was stationed at South Arklow. In 1917 German U-boat UC 65, captained by Otto Steinbrinck, sank her after first ordering her entire crew to leave the vessel. Her replacement served Irish Lights for the next 45 years. This was the red lightship I saw that day in Kilmore Quay.

The sea area off the coast of Kilmore Quay was often referred to as the “graveyard of a thousand ships”. I had come across a June 1878 report in Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser describing how a liner, the 1869-built SS Idaho, impaled herself on the Coningmore Rocks to the south of the Saltees in June 1878 in dense fog.

Des Kiely, in a 2023 Facebook piece (an extract from his ‘Fascinating Wexford History -Vol 5’) revealed that “All 129 passengers and crew made it ashore on lifeboats to Great Saltee Island where they spent the night.” He termed it a “miraculous story — which, of course, it was.

THE IDAHO, 354 feet long and with a beam of just over 43 feet, was a single-screw ship of 3,356 gross tonnage. Her two masts were rigged for sail, and her working speed was 11 knots.

When the Idaho pulled out of New York on the 21st of May 1878 for Liverpool, via Queenstown/Cobh, she had on board 151 passengers, 51 horses, 1,000 tons of beef, cotton, and mails. Some passengers and the mails were landed at Queenstown before the Idaho resumed her intended voyage to Liverpool.

She encountered a rapidly thickening fog almost as soon as she cleared Cork Harbour. Visibility drastically worsened as the fog became more dense by the minute. And then, shortly before a quarter past seven in the evening, the liner ploughed into and on top of the Conigmore Rocks.

The ship’s master, Captain Holmes, immediately ordered the lifeboats to be launched, and an orderly evacuation of the passengers and crew of the rapidly sinking ship took place. Last man to abandon ship, abiding by the finest traditions of the sea, was Captain Holmes. His lifeboat was said to have been no more than 30 yards from the Idaho when the ship disappeared from sight and plunged to the bottom. Her disappearance took place 22 minutes after she first struck the rocky hazard.

Not a single human life was lost. Sadly all 51 horses perished.

The six lifeboats packed with survivors from the Idaho reached and clambered ashore on Great Saltee. There was only one small cottage on the island, the abode of the caretaker, a Mr Parks. He immediately gave up his meagre home to the women survivors, many of whom had had to rush from their shipboard accommodation without time to dress in protective clothing, or rescue any possessions.
The 127 passengers and crew from the wrecked steamer landed at Kilmore Quay on the following day, were transported to Wexford, and finally were conveyed to Dublin by special train from Wexford.

THE WRECK of the Idaho lay undiscovered and untouched for the best part of 100 years. Paddy Power was fishing for scallops one day in 1976 when his dredges came foul of the wreck and were lost. Local diver James Kehoe decided to investigate. Subsequently over the next few years he and a couple of colleagues made many dives to the wreck of the Idaho, which was 135 feet below the surface. They recovered a few items such as portholes.

In 1988 the beam trawler Morgensonne lifted the Idaho’s anchor and ship’s bell and landed them on the pier at Kilmore Quay. The anchor was refurbished and placed on public view in the village (see above). And the ship’s bell went to Kehoe’s noted local hostelry.

It was a maritime miracle that no-one died when the Idaho went down. ÷

Read Dan Conway’s Corner every week in Ireland’s Own