Tramore Bay

For centuries, Tramore Bay in County Waterford has held an infamous reputation as a graveyard of ships. The most famous of the wrecks being that of the Sea Horse transport, which driven into the bay and shipwrecked in a storm, almost two hundred years ago, on 30 January 1816. In 1738, William Doyle, the hydrographer surveyed the coast of the county and published a chart of Waterford Harbour and Tramore Bay. Doyle noted that the bay was notorious for shipwrecks and ought to be carefully avoided. According to Doyle, the real danger came in heavy weather when Hook Tower could be mistaken for Waterford Harbour. When the wind blows hard from SSE to SW tumbles in a great ground rolling sea which together with to a great in-draught towards Rhineshark Harbour, where the tide sets with great force and velocity, renders it almost impossible for embayed ships to weather the heads and the ground being generally as well on the east and west side, as almost over the bay foul and rocky cables are frequently cut, in this extremity such as can’t obtain Rhineshark ought if they possibly can endeavour, to run on shore between in the middle of the strand, the nearer to the  western end the better, where on a loose stony beach the water flows to a great height; by this means men and goods have been saved. The bay at the eastern third of the strand is all sandy and the tide is long approaching the shore and there flows very little, and ships are therefore at a great distance involved in great and terrible breakers. So that men are seldom saved.[1]

This blog chronicles the reports of shipwrecks, narrow escapes and other nautical occurrences of note in the bay area. Many of the references, while taken from contemporary published sources, were themselves at least second hand reports of the actual events. So while it is true to say that these events were reported on, it is a different thing entirely to say that they actually happened in the manner that they were reported. Many of the locations given are vague, some saying ‘near Tramore’ or ‘at Tramore’. It has become obvious that many of these instances actually occurred off Islandikane, Annstown and as far west as Bonmahon and to the east, off Ballymacaw and beyond. So for the purpose of completeness, the geographical area covered extends to these areas.  Many sources are drawn upon, Lloyd’s Lists and Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, Bridget and Richard Larn’s, Lloyd’s shipwreck Index of Ireland, Edward J Bourke’s three volume, Shipwrecks of the Irish Coast, as well as Roy Stokes and Liam Dowling’s Irish Wrecks Database and Irish Wrecks Online. The majority of the newspaper reports are sourced from subscription websites, mainly the 17th, 18th and 19th century ‘Burney Collection of Newspapers’, the ‘British Newspaper Archive’, and the ‘Irish Newspaper Archive’.

[1] William Doyle, A new chart being an actual survey of the harbours of Rineshark and Waterford, Waterford 1738.