Killybegs
Killybegs is Ireland’s leading fishing port, something which the
townspeople are understandably proud of. There is much more to Killybegs than the fishing,
however; it is a town with a long and interesting history in its own right.
When the County Donegal Railways line reached here in 1893, a visiting
journalist noted that
"Rome is built on seven hills, but Killybegs is built on seven
hundred hills"
The area around the deep fjord-like inlet of Killybegs has been
inhabited since prehistoric times, as evidenced by the twenty or more ring forts that
remain, most of them near the shore. The town was named in early Christian times, the name
Na Cealla Beaga referring to a group of monastic cells. Interestingly, and perhaps
surprisingly in a region not short of native saints, the town’s patron saint is St.
Catherine of Alexandria. That this St. Catherine is the patron of seafarers surely
confirms that Killybeg’s tradition of seafaring is very old indeed.
The Mac Suibhne Boghaineach (Sweeney Banagh) were the leading family
in medieval times, having displaced the O’Boyles when they carved out the territory
for themselves in the late middle ages. While their main seat was in the castle of Rahan,
near Dunkineely, Killybegs was their main port.
In the Autumn of 1588 Killybegs hoved into the centre of European
history, when the remains of the Spanish Armada struggled into the harbour, on the way
home from their doomed attempt to invade England. Three ships made it as far as the bay,
most notably the ‘Girona’. This galliass - a ship of more than one deck, with
two or more banks of oars and two or more masts - was "sore bruised by the
seas", and was repaired using timbers from another of the Armada ships which had run
aground and broken up off Killybegs. The crews of other ships which were driven ashore in
Donegal also made it to Killybegs, leaving the greater part of five ships crews in the
town; when the ‘Girona’ set sail after her repairs with between 1,100 and 1,300
men on board there were still around 2,400 Spaniards in Killybegs. The ‘Girona’
struck rocks of the Antrim coast, and sank, with only five survivors. The fate of the
other 2,400 remains something of a mystery. Maybe the answer lies in the cosmopolitan feel
of present day Killybegs.
Killybegs’ pre-eminence as a fishing port is not
recent. When the O’Donnell chieftains were known as the "best lord(s) of fish
in Ireland" in the sixteenth century, Killybegs was the chief port of Tír
Chonaill. As early as 1556, Spanish ships bought the right to fish off Killybegs following
an agreement between Queen Elizabeth and King Philip of Spain, her erstwhile suitor. The
English Exchequer earned one thousand pounds per annum for granting the Spanish fleet this
right, but it is not clear how much of this money found its way to the people of the town.
The agriculturist Arthur Young visited Killybegs some two centuries
later. In 1776, he was taken by Lord Conyngham’s agent for a trip along
"the coast where the fisheries are most carried on, particularly
Inver Bay, McSwyne’s Bay, and Killybegs Bay. The coast is perfectly sawed with bays.
The lands are high and bold particularly about Killybegs, where the scenery is exceedingly
romantic . . ."
During the nineteenth century the government made several attempts to
put the fishing industry on a sounder footing. A commission of enquiry, which heard
evidence in Killybegs in January 1836, found that the years from 1822 to 1831 were
disastrous for fishing, as the herring shoals failed to appear, although the story
improved radically from 1832 on. During the Famine times of the late 1840s the
availability of fish meant that Killybegs did not suffer greatly; in fact there was much
greater distress in the area in the 1860s and especially 1880s, when the potato crop
failed again. The establishment of the Congested Districts Board in 1891 opened a new
chapter in the fishing industry. During the 1890s a new pier was approved for Killybegs,
whose £10,000 cost was borne jointly by the Board and the Treasury. The Board also
invested in new fishing craft and in fish processing. The coming of the railway in the
same decade meant that there was a much quicker way of getting the catch to market.
The super trawlers and their crews to be seen in the harbour, including Ireland’s
largest trawlers and boats and crews from many countries in Europe and further afield, are
thus the latest in a long line of seafarers in the town.
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