Pennsylvania
( William Penn )
William Penn, 1644 – 1718, the son of Admiral William Penn, founded the English North American Colony Province of Pennsylvania in 1681, when he received a Royal Charter from King Charles II of England. In 1665 he had travelled to Ireland where, after attending Quaker meetings in Cork, he converted to Quakerism. He was a good friend of George Fox in England, who had founded the Quakers in the 1650s, and of William Morris, a leading Cork Quaker who lived at Castle Salem near Rosscarbery. Admiral William Penn’s varying political circumstances had led the family to reside at Macroom Castle in the early 1660s, switching later to Shanagarry Castle in East Cork in 1667.
Port of Ballinacurra
( Ballinacurra Lass )
The eastern channel around Great Island and onward to Ballinacurra was especially prone to silting and difficult for shipping. In 1825 work commenced to widen and deepen the channel and 1826 saw Captain John Richards become the first Harbour and Ballast Master of Ballinacurra, with responsibilities extending down to East Ferry (McCarthy 2019). Ballinacurra would become a small but active port on the edge of Midleton. The Cork Harbour Board leased land from the Earl of Midleton and built 300 feet of quay wall in 1832. Ballinacurra retained a Deputy Harbour Master up until 1842, when the Board abolished those positions at Passage and Ballinacurra and extended the area of jurisdiction of the Deputy Harbour Master at Cove (Cobh) (O’Riordan 2014). The main import was coal for the Midleton Distillery, the gas company and local merchants. Exported were malt and barley for the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, oats for the English West Country, pitwood for the Welsh mines and silica clay from the Cloyne Quarries (Scott 2012). By the end of the nineteenth century, the little village was handling up to 150 vessels a year, practically all sail. In 1895, out of 151 arrivals, only five were steamers and all but thirty-six were loaded outwards ( ibid ).
Ports of Clonakilty/Ring and Timoleague/Courtmacsherry
( Thomas & Anne )
Clonakilty, like the City of Cork, suffered limited access to shipping due to silting. It is possible, but unproven, that the Lisbon earthquake and subsequent tsunami which reached Ireland caused further silting. Although The Topographical Dictionary of Ireland describes the channel between Clonakilty and the outer harbour as shallow and narrow, such that ships of 100 tons could only access Clonakilty on high spring tides, the author, writing just eighty-two years after the tsunami, does not mention it as an apparent cause of the silting (Lewis 1837). Smith (1774 Second Edition), who first wrote his account of Cork in 1749, before the tsunami, stated: ‘This bay is dangerous and sandy; at low water there are not above four or five feet’ . This difficulty of access to Clonakilty for larger ships meant that Ring became the functional port of Clonakilty and much of the trade into Clonakilty was conducted by lighters. The apparent channel improvement up to Clonakilty in the early nineteenth century might well be credited to the development of their sandlighter service (this Appendix below: Sandlighters ).
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