Lightship Guillemot on the quay in Wexford, photograhed by Padraig Grant in 1987, if you click on the picture you get to his website.
The image of the Guillemot shrouded in mist on the quay in Wexford, it’s ingrained in my memory. The big red lightship was a constant in my childhood, I used to have dreams as a kid and teenager that I was sailing her up and down the quay. Strange because she never moved all the time I was in Wexford and I never saw her being towed away. I still find it hard to believe that it got towed off to Kilmore. I suppose someone with more enthusiasm wanted it down there and it didn’t fit in to the plans for the revival of the woodenworks area of the quays. Harder to believe that 20 years has gone by since the above photograph was taken, a whole generation of Wexford youngsters have grown up never knowing of its existence, something so solid and real, gone, moved away.
In my youth (which was hardly delinquent but we used to think we were hard men), myself and the lads used to climb onboard when the tide was right, to go for a crafty smoke on the starboard side out of sight, none of your Moroccan Woodbines or any of that crap, at worst had hand rolled cigarettes made with Old Holborn tobacco or Drum and at best someone was able to scrape together enough money for a “family pack” of 20 Kingsize Rothmans, you were extremely popular for the duration of the pack of smokes. If our parents had found out we believed that we would have been skinned alive, in fact now I don’t know that they couldn’t have known, the smell of tobacco is nearly impossible to hide maybe they turned a blind eye. Back on the Guillemot we would lean over the gunwale and stare out over Wexford Harbour, at the “Black Man” and the Ballast bank and further out to the darkness of the Raven, and see the flash of Tuskar Rock lighthouse looming over the horizon. You would hear the water lapping up against the side and feel the slight movement as her mooring ropes were fairly slack. Little did I know then about ships or lighthouses or how they would affect me. I can’t remember so much about what we talked about, probably girls, and music or music and girls!
A few years after she moved to Kilmore I went down to take some photos and do a project for my College on her, she looked fairly sad beached up with brackets welded to keep her upright. I managed to lose the whole project somewhere along the way.All that is left is a few negatives, with pictures of the Guillemot on the beach most of them with an ex-girlfriend in the frame, I don’t know if I was so interested in the Lightship that day! She is still there (the Lightship) in Kilmore boxed in concrete, I guess it won’t be so easy to move her anymore and she has become a constant there now.
Guillemot at Kilmore circa 1991, before it was set in concrete and not too long after if arrived from Wexford.
This may be dirty and smelly to you, but it is fascinating information to us. Thank you.