Supplies are delivered to the keepers of the Kish Bank and Rockabill lighthouses in time for Christmas.
The Kish Bank lighthouse is the first to receive Christmas hampers via the Irish Lights tender 'Atlanta'.
A floating lighthouse eleven kilometres off the Dublin coast warns seafarers away from the dangerous sandy shallows of the Kish Bank. Designed by a Swedish engineering firm, it has been in service since 1965. Its predecessor the Kish Lightship operated from this area for one hundred and fifty years.
Rockabill (in Irish Cloch Dábhiolla meaning ‘Two Lips Rock’) is situated approximately five kilometres off the coast of Skerries and consists of two islands, The Rock which is home to the lighthouse and The Bill which is the smaller of the two.
Work on Rockabill Lighthouse commenced in 1855 and by 1860 it was fully operational. Granite from the Mourne Mountains and limestone from Milverton quarry in Skerries were used in its construction.
This is the third Christmas at the Kish Bank for lighthouse keeper Jack Roche, but he has many years of service under his belt with the Commissioners of Irish Lights,
I’ve been numerous Christmases on lighthouses, too many to mention.
Christmas for a lighthouse keeper is the same as any other day on duty. They will have a Christmas dinner, talk to their families by telephone, send greetings to their colleagues around the coast via VHF radio, and sing a few sea shanties and ballads,
We’ll have a bit of a singsong amongst ourselves.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 19 December 1967. Some sections of this report are without sound.
