Keeping Greystones’ Home Fires Burning

Sail on…

atest local historical nugget from Gary Paine, this time charting the many voyages of schooner supreme, Belle Vue.

Exactly 180 years ago today, 6th August 1864, the Greystones-built coal schooner Belle Vue sank off the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde.

The 49-foot long, 12-foot wide, 52 ton, 2-masted schooner is believed to be the largest vessel ever built in Greystones.

For more than 22 years, from her launch in 1839 until her last recorded voyage here in 1861, she kept the home fires of Greystones burning, predominantly importing coal from Whitehaven on the coast of Cumbria, with occasional visits also to the coal ports of South Wales and Ayrshire in Scotland. She along with her owner, John Doyle (1793-1855), helped put Greystones on the map as the name appeared in newspaper shipping lists as well as the half-yearly accounts of voyages required to be submitted to H.M. Customs.

To understand the history of the Belle Vue, it is necessary to go back to the early 1800s. James and Mary Doyle – originally from the corn mill in Newcastle Co. Wicklow – had moved to Windgates in the early 1790s, where they had a small holding and bakehouse.

In 1809, their son John, then aged 16, became a trainee tidewaiter at Wicklow harbour for H.M. Customs. Tidewaiters were put aboard vessels as they entered port on the tide and their duty was to remain on board until the discharge cargo was complete, in essence ensuring no goods were imported without the proper duty being paid.

Section of 1838 Ordnance Survey map showing The Long Cottage

The experience working as a tidewaiter was to prove formative for John Doyle as he realised the financial reward to be gained by owning trading ships, in particular, importing coal. In 1817, he married Martha Dalton, whose elder sister, Margaret was married to the Bray schooner owner, William Cuthbert, who in the mid-1830s was importing coal from Whitehaven to Bray in his schooner, William & Margaret. William Cuthbert was 14 years older than John and undoubtedly acted as a mentor to him. Around 1830, John Doyle’s parents had moved from Windgates to The Long Cottage (where Wavecrest is today at the harbour) shown on the annotated section of the 1838 Ordnance Survey map.

Importantly, its proximity to the rocks and the sea coupled with a yard to its rear were key factors in John Doyle taking the plunge to join the ranks of Wicklow’s ship owners and coal importers. He commissioned the Arklow shipwright Arthur Connor to build him a coal schooner in this yard. On 10th February 1839, Connor signed the certificate of construction for the schooner and she was registered at the port of Dublin on February 27th 1839. In recognition of where she was built, she was called Belle Vue, as a nod to the name of the country home and estate of the La Touche family, owners of the land upon which her keel had been laid down.

Robert French 1880s (colourised) showing rocks in front of The Long Cottage (Wavecrest today)

The 1880s photograph taken prior to the construction of the boat slip and dock shows the rocks in front of Wavecrest (to the right of Watson’s shop) over which the Belle Vue was launched.

The late Dr. Leslie Doyle (great-grandson of John Doyle) wrote in June 1985 that ‘the schooner was launched using tree trunks as rollers, down rather smooth rocks where the boat slip now stands (silted up).

‘The launching was the occasion for a celebration. An ox was roasted and spirits flowed where Coolnagreina is now’.

Old map showing Swan’s Rock

When coal schooners first sailed to Greystones before the original jetty was built at the harbour in 1847, the coal was unloaded just off the South Beach into smaller flat-bottomed boats or barges from where it was landed by porters at Swan’s Rock and brought across the beach by horse and cart.

In recent years, Swan’s Rock has been buried under shingle, unlike in the 1890s photograph with bathers in Victorian dress.

This popular spot was named after a Mr Swan, who at one time worked in the nearby coalyard.

Pigot’s Directory of Ireland, published in 1824, noted that, at that time, George Seymour operated as a coal and slate merchant headquartered in Bray.

Swan’s Rock on the South Beach

The coalyard marked at the bottom of the 1838 Ordnance Survey map was operated by the Seymour family and was known locally as Seymour’s Coalyard. It was located where the car park and playground are today, close to Swan’s Rock. At that time Greystones was just a few scattered dwellings.

On the 1841 census, it was too small to be returned and was included within Delgany Parish comprising of 351 houses, split into 3 segments: (i) Rural Portion, with 1,888 persons (covering an area of 3,946 acres and what is now Greystones), (ii) Delgany Town, with 201 persons and (iii) Killincarrig Town, with 179 persons. Of the 2,268 total population just over one quarter were listed as visitors.

The Belle Vue’s maiden voyage under her master, Robert Carson, was from Greystones to Whitehaven, where she arrived on March 15th 1839. Given Ireland’s comparative lack of indigenous coal reserves and its geographic proximity, Whitehaven became the main export harbour for coal, at one time accounting for 80% of the seaborne coal exports to Ireland.

Laden with coal, she departed Whitehaven on her maiden voyage back to Greystones on March 28th 1839, accompanied by George Seymour’s schooner, Better Luck Still, bound for Bray. Shipping lists at this time reveal a degree of co-ordination of sailing dates between the Belle Vue and various Bray coal schooners to/from Whitehaven, indicating a desire for safety in numbers.

For the next 22 years, the Belle Vue sailed regularly between Greystones and Whitehaven.

In the photograph of Whitehaven harbour (at one time the second largest port by tonnage in England after London), the large chimney air vent which still stands, and is known locally as The Candlestick, can be seen.

Whitehaven Harbour with Jonathan Swift’s house

This was built in the mid 1840s when the Wellington Pit, the greatest of all Whitehaven’s coal mines was sunk. The building in the foreground is reputed to be the house in which the Dublin-born author of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift, lived in for three years during his childhood, part of which was spent in Whitehaven.

The account of voyages for the six months ended June 30th 1845 reveals that the Belle Vue ‘was employed in the coasting trade between Whitehaven and Greystones’. Of particular note is that her crew included Michael Fields, aged 22, and John Fields, aged 34, both born in Greystones. The Fields family were one of the oldest fishing families in Greystones and members of the family were among those that lived in the cottages on the North Beach which were washed away between 1929 and 1931.

Belle Vue voyages 30th June 1845

The half-yearly accounts of voyages required to be submitted to H.M. Customs (those that have survived for the Belle Vue in the archives at Kew) reveal that the ship was regularly tied up in Dublin to avoid the worst of the winter before recommencing her twice monthly sailings across the Irish Sea. For example, her log record for the first half of 1857 records her as ‘laying up in Dublin’ between January 1st and March 17th, prior to her making six voyages to Whitehaven and two to South Wales (Llanelli and Neath) before arriving back to Greystones on June 30th.

So numerous were the ships sailing to Whitehaven (in 1835 there were 435 ships registered there) they posed a problem for the harbour authorities. Conscious not to have their harbour choked with discharged ballast, from 1846 arriving vessels were charged 6d per ton of ballast discharged into hoppers. There was thus an incentive for the Belle Vue to carry pit props from felled timber on the La Touche estate in Delgany as ballast, avoiding the 6d charge per ton, enabling her owners to boost profits by selling the props to the mine owners.

John Doyle played a role together with the fishermen in agitating for the construction of a pier at Greystones. Between 1825 and 1828, the landowner, Peter La Touche, supported the proposal, but without H.M. Treasury funding to meet the bulk of the costs, it didn’t progress. A pier was eventually constructed in 1847, enabling the Belle Vue to come alongside and discharge her cargo of coal through to her last visit in 1861.

Sadly no photograph or painting of the Belle Vue exists. The photograph taken in the 1880s of a top-sail schooner (c. one and half times the length of the Belle Vue) coming alongside the 1847 pier (later extended in 1887/1888) gives an indication of what the scene at Greystones would have looked like upon the arrival of the Belle Vue from Whitehaven to discharge her cargo of coal.

Schooner at Greystones pier 1880s

From information passed down through the Doyle family, the Belle Vue was always regarded as being a very well built vessel. It is noteworthy that her consort who accompanied her on those tentative first voyages from Greystones to Whitehaven in 1839, the Bray-owned Better Luck Still was similar in measurement to the Belle Vue, however the latter was one foot shorter and one foot wider, a factor which may have helped her survive a number of major storms. Shipping lists reveal the Belle Vue putting into Strangford Lough on occasions to seek sanctuary from storms.

The Illustrated London News dated March 23rd 1844 noted ‘one of the most violent storms ever known upon the Irish coast blew from the eastward on Friday morning and Saturday. The injuries sustained by vessels and the damage done to property in Kingstown has been very considerable’. Towards the bottom of the report it described ‘the schooner, Belle Vue, of Greystones, perfect wreck’.

The term ‘perfect wreck’ is a descriptive rather than a definitive technical term. While the Belle Vue gave every appearance of being in a terminal state, she survived to sail another day. Her crew’s sense of relief would have been tinged with sadness as crew of the Bray owned schooner, Seymour, all perished when she sank in Dublin Bay – the Seymour had accompanied the Belle Vue on the latter’s second voyage to Whitehaven in 1839.

The Belle Vue was also caught up in the great storm of February 8th and 9th 1861, which battered the east coast of Ireland – Lloyds of London recorded 135 ships lost around the coasts of Britain and Ireland, their highest recorded for a single day.

Between Howth Head and Wicklow Head, over the course of the two days, 29 ships and many of their crew were lost. Walkers along Dun Laoghaire’s East Pier will be familiar with the imposing granite memorial to Captain Boyd of HMS Ajax, who, along with five of his crew, perished trying to assist schooners in distress during the storm.

Capt Boyd memorial Dun Laoghaire pier

The Belle Vue was one of a number of coal schooners that departed Whitehaven as the storm was gathering. Bound for Greystones with her cargo of coal, against all the odds, she managed to make it to the relative sanctuary of Dun Laoghaire harbour, but only just. The Dublin Weekly Nation dated February 16th 1861 reported that four of the crew of the brig, Mary of Warrenpoint, were drowned when she broke up on the shore at Greystones. It also noted the following. ‘A most remarkable fact is that this brig was towed out of Whitehaven harbour by the Belle Vue of Greystones, but the latter was more fortunate than her consort, for she was able to make the harbour at Kingstown, although in a disabled condition, her masts having gone over the side.’

John Doyle’s son, Samuel Doyle, became the master of the Belle Vue in August 1852 and her owner the following year. John Doyle died in 1855 and his widow, Martha, acquired full ownership of the vessel from her son in June 1859.

Ownership by the Doyle family eventually ceased in March 1862, when she was mortgaged for £160 to John Barr, proprietor of Ardrossan Colliery in Ayrshire. For the remainder of 1862 she brought coal from both Ardrossan and Troon to Dublin. In January 1863, William McJannett, a ship broker also based in Ardrossan, acquired 100% ownership of the vessel.

Bowmore Harbour

Between January and September 1863, the Belle Vue imported coal from Ardrossan to Bowmore harbour, home to one of Scotland’s foremost whiskey distilleries. Bowmore is on Islay, the southernmost of the Inner Hebrides, and its distillery’s whisky maturation warehouses are the oldest in Scotland. One wonders whether some bottles of whisky went back aboard the Belle Vue to the mainland.

During 1864, the Belle Vue regularly sailed from Ardrossan to Belfast and Derry with coal.

In early August, she sailed up the River Clyde to Bowling, just up river from Dumbarton.

There she was loaded with coal from the Lanarkshire coalfields destined for yet another voyage from Britain to Ireland.

She cast adrift, headed down river and headed out into the Firth of Clyde bound for Belfast.

View from Lamlash pier…

Early on the morning of Saturday, August 6th, when off Holy Isle on the east coast of the Isle of Arran, she sprang a leak. While the little ship’s luck had finally run out and perhaps because they were in the shadow of a monastic isle, the gods were smiling on her crew of three.

A quarter of a century after her launch over the rocks at Greystones, the little ship slipped below the waves, but not before the crew had managed to get into her life boat and make landfall at Lamlash on the Isle of Arran.

Ahead of attending last month’s Open Golf Championship at Royal Troon, I took the ferry from Troon across to Arran and visited Lamlash.

Standing on the jetty, I took a photo looking out towards Holy Isle and the final resting place of the Belle Vue.

In the National Archives at Kew, the leather bound Copy Register for Transmission to The Chief Registrar of Shipping, provides the final information relating to the Belle Vue.

It was customary that the final entry relating to a ship was always written in red ink.

Not for her the more common entries of ‘vessel broken up’ or ‘sold foreign’. In the case of the Belle Vue, her final entry in red ink reads ‘vessel lost 6/8/’64’, formally recording her ultimate fate. Ironically she sank within sight of Ardrossan, just 12 miles across the Firth of Clyde from where she had departed on her last known recorded voyage to Greystones on 12th November 1861.

John Doyle 1793-1855

An oil portrait of John Doyle (1793-1855) was painted during the 1840s, with him holding a telescope, a reminder of his association with the sea from his time as a trainee tidewaiter at Wicklow harbour in 1809, through to becoming a Greystones ship owner 30 years later.Upon his death from pneumonia in 1855, his body was carried on a bier to Delgany Church.

His tombstone, facing the main door of the church is unlike others in the churchyard. Its obelisk, almost Ordnance Survey marker shape is appropriate for a man who played a very significant part in helping put Greystones on the map.

Throughout his life, he was acknowledged locally as being an expert tap-dancer and he went on to be, albeit briefly, Greystones’ first postmaster.

Today, a number of the old houses around Greystones harbour as well as the direction of Trafalgar Road owe their existence to John Doyle. He built Nos.1,2 & 3 Bethel Terrace, Brighton Lodge, and Brighton House (now Coolnagreina). He also built Trafalgar House and the cottages along Kenmare Terrace for the coast guards in 1842 when H.M. Customs made the decision to relocate the coast guards from Blacklion to the harbour area.

This effectively created Trafalgar Road, which had previously been a private road adjoining John Doyle’s land leading to a field owned by George Evans. His son, also John Doyle, developed what is now The Beach House and also built houses on Bayswater Terrace. On the right of the earlier photo showing the rocks in front of Wavecrest, you can see the arched entrance to his coalyard leading to where the Boat Yard is today.

John Doyle Memorial launch 2019

Another son, George Enright Doyle, built Bushfield House and Stanley House (where Fenton Fires is today).

A nephew, also John Doyle, built Frankfort House and Carrick Cottage at the intersection of La Touche Place and Church Road, giving rise to its local name of Doyle’s Corner.

This John Doyle also served as coxswain of Greystones Lifeboat and is remembered by the plaque at the harbour when he drowned along with two other family members rendering assistance to a stricken schooner in 1892.

1883 Ordnance Survey map

Acknowledgements to the late Dr. Leslie Doyle (1919-2000), great grandson of John Doyle (1793-1855), who in his youth had the foresight to ask and more importantly write down details of the schooner, Belle Vue, from his family elders. A typed sheet neatly summarising details of the Belle Vue (measurements, masters, owners etc) which was obtained from The National Archives in London by Dr. Leslie Doyle during the 1950s can be viewed here.

The above story of the the mighty Belle Vue along with plenty more historical nuggets is told in Gary Paine’s glossy 296-page historical archive of the town, A Pictorial History of Greystones & Its Coastal Environs 1760 to 2018, which is still available from Greystones Antiques beside the train station. Or you can order the book online for €35 plus postage right here.

The full gallery of hi-res pics from this Belle Vue article are here, and you can explore more Paine archives here, and go deep with our 2018 interview with the man himself here.