HMS Terror and Lough Swilly

The HMS Terror and Lough Swilly

One of the most famous British Royal Navy ships of the nineteenth century, the HMS Terror, spent some time in Lough Swilly. The ship underwent repairs and the crew spent some time here recovering from an arduous trip to and from Southampton Island in the northern waters of Hudson Bay in Canada.The ship was later to achieve fame as one of the ill fated ships used by Captain John Franklin, whose ill fated expedition to find the North West Passage was to end with the loss of both ships and crew. The North West passage was a supposed sea route to the orient around the northern waters of Canada. The HMS Terror was a specialized warship and a bomb vessel constructed for the Royal Navy in 1813. She participated in several battles of the War of 1812, including the Battle of Baltimore with the bombardment of Fort McHenry. She was converted into a polar exploration ship two decades later, and participated in George Backs Arctic expedition of 1836–1837.

HMS Terror was launched in 1813.  It was designed by Sir Henry Peake who was one of the Royal Navy’s foremost shipwrights and designer of HMS Erebus with whom the Terror would be forever linked.

A vesuvius class bomb ship, one of three built in 1813 to the same specifications, her sister ships were HMS Vesuvius and HMS Beelzebub.  In 1814, she took part in the battle of Baltimore under the command of Captain John Sheridan where she bombed Fort Mc Henry on the 13th and 14th of September.  It was at this battle where the “Star-Spangled Banner” was written by Francis Scott Key, which later became the American national anthem. Her actions are immortalised in “The Star Spangled Banner”.  The “bombs bursting in the air” actually came from the Terror.  Like all such bomb vessels or mortar ships, she spent long periods in “ordinary” or storage.  After an extended period in ordinary, she was recommissioned for service in the Mediterranean in 1828 where she was almost wrecked in a hurricane.

After returning to England, she was salvaged by James Fitzjames who perished with Franklin and the Terror many years later in search of the fabled North West Passage.  In 1835, the Terror and her sister ship Erebus were quickly outfitted to resupply 11 whaling ships trapped in ice near the Davis Strait but the whalers escaped before the terror and Erebus set to sea.  In 1836, the Terror was further refitted for extended polar exploration and, under the command of George Beck, spent the winter of 1836/37 in severe ice conditions off Southampton Island in the Hudson Bay.

It was on the return journey from expedition that the ship spent time in Lough Swilly.

While trapped in the ice of the Hudson Bay, the ship was under such tremendous pressure from the ice, Beck reported that resin (turpentine) was squeezed from her timbers and her bolts “wept”.  She was repeatedly thrown on her beam ends and eventually her stern post shattered – damage that would have been fatal in a less sturdy vessel.  Captain Beck described in a letter to the Royal Geographic Society that the ship suffered greatly.  

“February 18, early in the morning, thermometer at 33 degrees below zero, a disruption of the ice took place.  The waves of ice, 30 feet high, were rolled towards the ship which complained much.  The decks were separated, the beams raised off their shelf pieces, lashings and shores, used for supporters, gave way; iron bolts partially drawn; the whole frame of the ship trembled so violently as to throw men down”.  

In what was hailed as a remarkable display of skill and nerve, Captain Beck sailed the Terror across the Atlantic with as much as 5 feet of water pouring into her hold every hour. They made landfall on the northwest coast of Ireland  Her crew utterly exhausted from working the pumps, the Terror was beached at Rathmullan in Lough Swilly.  Beaching the vessel allowed for a full inspection of the damage, as Beck described in his report.  

“It was found that upwards of 20 feet of the keel, together with 10 feet of the stern post, were driven over more than three and a half feet on one side, leaving a frightful opening astern for the free ingress of the water.  The forefront was entirely gone, besides numerous bolts either loosened or broken; and when, besides this, the strained and twisted state of the ship was considered, there was not one on board who did not express astonishment that we had ever floated across the Atlantic.”

Beck reports

“I beg to lay before you a sketch of the fractured stern post and run of the ship, copied from an outline taken with great accuracy by Lieutenant Smyth with a camera lucida, feeling sure that such a representation will give a better idea of the nature of the damage than anything short of actually seeing the ship” (1837).

Having rough weather in the North Atlantic – they passed Rockall at less than 10 miles but couldn’t see it because of bad weather.  They sailed into Lough Swilly at 2am.  They tried to obtain a pilot.  Rockets, “blue lights” and cannons were fired for that purpose but no one came.  So, they trusted to soundings and “glided silently past the lights of the fishermen’s cottages” and near midnight safely anchored in Lough Swilly.  When morning came, Captain Beck reports

“with indescribable delight, did we inhale the fragrance and contemplate the beauty of the land.  Imagination could scarcely picture a scene so enchanting as to our weary and frost dazzled sight appeared that soft and lovely landscape, with its fresh green tints and beautiful views”.

Those among the crew who were sick were committed to the care of Dr Evans at Buncrana “from whose judicious treatment, the greatest benefits were derived”.  

The ship was appraised, then hauled off to anchorage for repairs.  The Captain reports

“I must not omit to mention the hospitality displayed by many estimable families in the neighbourhood of Lough Swilly.  To their attentions, indeed, may be attributed the speedy restoration to health of many of the officers, who equally with myself, will ever retain a lively recollection of their kindness” (from A Narrative Of An Expedition in HMS Terror Undertaken With A View to Geographical Discovery On The Artic Shores).

Buncrana at that time was a garrison town, with a sizeable landed gentry, military presence being only ten miles from Derry.

In September 1837 The Derry Standard newspaper reports on a dance held on board the H.M.S. Revenue Cutter “Wickham”, in honour of the ship and crew while at anchor in Buncrana, attended by many people of note from the area which lasted long into the night. “Novel and splendid entertainment” read the headline.

To the officers of H.M.S. Terror (Captain Back) and the Nobility and Gentry of the Shores of Lough Swilly”.

The newspaper reports that dancing continued til one o clock and a supper consisting of “all the delicacies of the season”. The report of the night continues;

Dancing commenced shortly after eight o clock, there being a separate set of quadrilles on either side of the deck, which, with waltzes, reels, and gallops, were kept up til one o clock, when supper was announced, which for a time interrupted the dance. The supper was most tastefully arranged on two tables, one at the stern and the other before the mast, so that the dancing part of the deck was not interfered with. All the delicacies of the season were in profusion, and never was a host ”more kind and attentive” than the commander of the Wickham.

The guest list included some of the luminaries of Buncrana at that time.Lieutenant and Mrs Todd, The Rev. J Curry, Lieutenant Lane R.P. and Dr. Nielson. Following on from this grand event, a return ball was duly organised in October 1837 and held in the courthouse in Buncrana. The Belfast Newsletter newspaper reports;

Ball at Buncrana.-

On Friday evening there was a grand ball and supper held at the courthouse of Buncrana, in compliment to the gallant officers of her Majesty’s ship the Terror. The stewards were Sir J. Stewart, Bart- Hugh Lyle and James Todd Esq. The company was numerous and fashionable; and dancing was kept up til three o clock in the morning. As Gallopaders and waltzers the officers of the Terror were universally allowed to be pre-eminent. The band of the Derry staff were in attendance, and acquitted themselves admirably.



Following her repair, Terror and Erebus were next assigned expeditions to the Antarctic.  Later still, achieving fame as the lost expedition of Franklin in search of the North West Passage.

John McCarron











John Mc Carron









Lough Swilly Railway

Intended to link Lough Foyle and Lough Swilly across the Inishowen peninsula in north Donegal, having superseded a plan to connect these two bodies of water by canal, the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway was incorporated in 1860. The catchment area of the railway that was eventually to become the L&LSR was all that area of County Donegal extending from Derry westwards to Letterkenny and beyond, and northwards to either side of Lough Swilly itself. On the face of it, an unlikely setting for a railway, yet it was through this countryside that Irelands second largest narrow gauge railway was built, and on which some some of the most impressive steam engines to run on the Irish narrow gauge operated.

The engineer of the line was the Sir John MacNeill. The railway opened on the last day of 1863 as a 5ft 3in gauge line, running from Derry to Farland Point where there would be steamer connections throughout the Lough and beyond, and a branch to Buncrana. Unfortunately the service to Farland point was very little used, the steamer timings not being under the railway company’s control, but that to Buncrana flourished. As a result, the Farland branch was abandoned and the L&LSR concentrated all its services on the line to Buncrana.

Farland was closed in 1866.

Since the mid 1850s several projects had been mooted to bring the market town of Letterkenny into the railway network and this led to the incorporation of the Letterkenny Railway Company by the act of Parliament in 1860.

After some twenty years of discussion and delay, the Letterkenny Railway opened on 30th June 1883 from Cuttymanhill to Letterkenny to a gauge of 3ft. It was worked by the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway, and absorbed by them in 1887. To avoid transhipment, and under pressure from the Government, the Company relaid its original line to 3ft gauge in 1885. In 1901 the Company extended its line from Buncrana to Carndonagh with a Government grant of 80% of the costs. The 49¾ mile Burtonport extension of 1903 was worked by the L&LSR with nominally separate engines and stock. The Company operated 100 route miles in 1911.

The early decades of the twentieth century saw the L&LSR at its most developed, with a fleet of steam locomotives as well as coach and goods rolling stock. These years saw the heyday of the company, Paddle steamers connected with the trains at Fahan pier and ran services to Ramelton, Rathmullan and Portsalon.

This was to change as events of the time conspired against it. The war of independence left its mark. Trains were often the means of transport for British troops and local staff frequently refused to operate them. The railway was attacked and damaged so as to prevent troop trains from running and on at least one occasion a mail train with plain clothed British agents was attacked and a running gun battle ensued.

After partition the L&LSR was not included in the Great Southern Railway merger of 1925 since 3 miles of its line were on the wrong side of the border. It continued to keep its equipment in first class condition. It decided to transfer the whole of its business to road transport.

A disaster occurred on the evening of 30 January 1925 at around 8pm at the Owencarrow Viaduct near Kilmacrennan.

A wind storm with gusts topping 110mph derailed the carriages of the train at the viaduct.

On that evening, an engine pulling a wagon, two carriages and a van was travelling on Burtonport Extension. Until then, there had been no serious accidents, and only two incidents which resulted in fatalities on the line. Owencarrow Viaduct was known to be dangerous in bad weather, and a strong windstorm raged that night. The train approached the viaduct, which was 420 yards in length, at a slow speed of only 10 miles per hour. The train had just departed Kilmacrennan Station at 7:52 pm, around eight minutes earlier.

When the train was 50 yards onto the viaduct, there was an extremely strong gust of wind, which blew the carriage next to the engine off the rails. The driver immediately stopped the train. When the train came to a halt, the back carriage had carried the wagons halfway over the wall of the bridge. The second carriage was lying on the embankment, the covered wagon was lying over the parapet and the passenger carriage was upside down.

The wind had lifted two of the coaches off the rails and left them upside down. Their roofs were smashed and passengers were thrown from the carriages into the valley below. The engine kept the rails however, and the couplings linking the wagons held, suspending the coaches over the parapet. Of the fourteen passengers who had been on the train that evening, four were killed, nine injured, only one escaping unscathed, a young woman, who was thrown clear and landed in a patch of soft soil.

The lines from Buncrana to Carndonagh and from Gweedore to Burtonport were abandoned in 1935 and 1940 respectively. The closure of the remainder of the system had to be deferred due to Second World War shortages of petrol and oil for the replacement road services. By the end of the war years the Company was carrying nearly 500,000 passengers per annum on its rail services from Derry to Buncrana and Gweedore.

With the ending of hostilities the line from Letterkenny to Gweedore was in a dangerous state of disrepair and the Company re-embarked on its policy of replacing rail services by road transport. The daily goods service between Letterkenny and Gweedore was withdrawn in January 1947, the line finally closing in June. Regular passenger services ceased on the Derry to Buncrana and Tooban Junction to Letterkenny sections in September 1948. Freight workings and occasional passenger specials continued on these lines until 8th August 1953 when the remaining rail services, immaculately turned out to the last, were withdrawn.

The L&LSR continued to operate road services even after the Company was sold in 1981. By this time, the L&LSR had become one of the longest-lived railway companies in either Ireland or Britain, having outlasted nearly all the others by many years.

The “Swilly” buses continued to run until it closed down on Saturday 19 April 2014, having gone into liquidation. The final service was a bus from Derry at 18.00 to Letterkenny.

A L&LSR railway staff used to ensure that only one train is on a section of line at a time. It was passed to the driver by an attendant on the platform.

This one is marked

Carndonagh – Clonmany.

Advertising poster for L&LSR.



Engine no.5; 4-8-4 tank. Photographed at Pennyburn in may 1950.



Engine no. 12; 4-8-0

A note of some of the larger engines operated by L&LSR.

Both of these classes of large engine can be considered together, as one was in effect a tank version of the other.

There were two engines of each class: the 4-8-0s came first, in 1905, Nos. 11 and 12 in the Company’s stock, and the 4-8-4Ts followed in 1912, Nos. 5 and 6. All were built by Hudswell Clarke & Co.

They were noteworthy in several respects. They were the first engines in Ireland to have 8-coupled wheels. The 4-8-0s were the only Irish narrow gauge tender engines, and the 4-8-4Ts were the largest and most powerful engines to run on any gauge as narrow as 3’ 0” in these islands, in fact from their massive appearance at close quarters they might well have been taken for standard gauge machines. In one other respect both classes were also unique, in that they were the only examples of a 4-8-0 tender engine or a 4-8-4T ever to run in Great Britain and Ireland. They were built primarily for working over the long 74-mile line from Derry to Burtonport, although in later years the 4-8-4Ts were not often seen on this section. No.11 was scrapped in 1933, No.12 remained to the end, but was little used after the closing of the Burtonport extension in the early 1940s. Nos. 5 and 6 were also retained until the complete closure of the remainder of the line in 1953, when they were cut up. A sad end for these wonderful pieces of early twentieth century engineering.

Bishop Maginn

The fate of the dead is being envied by the living”.

Edward Maginn, one of Derry’s most notable Catholic bishops was born in Fintona Co. Tyrone in 1802. He moved to Buncrana with his parents at an early age, spending most of his childhood there.

At age 16 he entered the Irish college in Paris to study for the priesthood and was ordained in 1925.

He was appointed curate at Moville and served there til 1829.

He was interested in political, social and religious movements of the time, being very much on the side of the ordinary people. He was a supporter of Daniel O Connell and his struggle for Catholic emancipation. He had already become popular among the local people before he was appointed parish priest of Desertegney and Lower Fahan in 1829. Here too he was a defender of such rights as ordinary people enjoyed and of anything that was of benefit to the people.

He began a huge scheme of building schools when the national school scheme was set up in 1831.

A mammoth task considering the poverty of the times, he built schools in Cockhill, Drumfries, Tullydish, Illies and Ballymacarry. The school in Cockhill was near a church which stood in what is now the old graveyard.

In 1845 Bishop Maginn was appointed Bishop of Derry following the illness of Bishop McLaughlin. This was a very popular appointment and people throughout the diocese raised £200 to give to him as a presentation. A fortune in those days.This was at a time of great distress for the local people. An Gorta Mór was ravaging the country.

In a letter from Bishop Maginn dated 15th December 1846 to Dr Paul Cullen, (later Cardinal Cullen), of the Irish College in Rome, he begs the Catholic hierarchy to postpone the devotions which were called for by pope Pious IX, because;

“Our people throughout the length and breadth of the diocese are in a state of actual starvation…”

The winter of 1846 was a particularly harsh one, with freezing temperatures and frost and snow.

He states;

“You see that for the present it would be impossible for them to attend to the good works prescribed by his Holiness’s rescript. The scenes here are heart-rending and the fate of the dead is being envied by the living. God only knows where it will end.”

Around this time the British government hatched a scheme to send or “transfer” one and a half million Irish catholics to Canada. A circular was sent out to the Catholic bishops to canvass their views on the plans.

Bishop Maginn replied in the form of an open letter to the newspapers;

“In sober earnestness, gentlemen, why send a circular to a Catholic Bishop asking his consent to the expatriation of millions of his co-religionists to Canada? – you who reduced by oppression and persecution the greatest people on earth, you who made the most fertile land on earth a place of skulls. You are anxious, I presume, to induce a Catholic Bishop to abet your wholesale system of extermination, to head in pontificals your convoy of exiles, and thereby give the sanction of religion to your atrocious scheme. You never, gentlemen, laboured in a more egregious mistake!”

His efforts were now directed to the relief of hunger and the saving of lives.

In the midst of this horror he built and opened the parish church at Cockhill on Sunday 13th July 1847, the darkest year of this disaster known forever as Black ‘47.

In 1847 Bishop Maginn recorded that;

“In the diocese of Derry we have a catholic population of 230,000 souls. Of these, at the present time, there are at least 50,000 in actual starvation”.

He endeavoured to seek assistance from his contacts abroad and in the summer of 1847 he received the sum of £360 from a group in Paris, £20 from the Bishop of Hyderabad in India as well as contributions from organisations in Canada, US, Italy and England.

Two years later he fell victim to typhus, one of the many diseases rampant at that terrible time and died on the 17th January 1849. He was 47 years old.

Bishop Maginn had travelled as far as London to raise funds for the building of Cockhill church.

A loan of £1000 from the commissioner of public works was a major part of his collecting efforts. It was guaranteed by Big John Grant of Glenard and one of the Kellys. It took thirty years to repay, but it was paid out in wages to the workers at the time when they had no other means of survival.

There was a policy at the time, much favoured by landlords, of building Catholic Churches outside of towns and away from areas of population, a common feature in Ireland at the time. In the case if Cockhill, the church was built approximately one mile outside Buncrana.

It is a pity that no trace remains of the older church which stood in what is now the old graveyard. A mass rock is also situated nearby, across the river Crana which flows past the Church and graveyard.

John McCarron

WIH&HS,

Bealtaine,

2019.



Bishop Edward Maginn (1802-1849)



Bishop Maginn’s Famine Pot



Bishop Maginn’s Grave.

Cockhill graveyard.





A letter from Buncrana to the Irish College in Rome.

Dated 15th December 1846.



Maginn Avenue, Buncrana