Gerald Butler on looking after a landmark structure in Galley Head and how the weather shapes us.
ON the wild Atlantic coast, the Galley Head Lighthouse stands tall between Red Strand and Long Strand. It was built from 1874 to 1878 to guide ships through dangerous waters in all kinds of weather. Gerald Butler knows the lighthouse and the coast around it inside out. He grew up here, was its keeper for years and still looks after the landmark structure.
Our interview starts the way life along the coast often does—with uncertainty. ‘It depends on the weather,’ Gerald tells me when I call to arrange a chat for the following day. He has plans to take his boat to Oldcourt Boats for repairs. If the fog clears in the morning, he’ll be
going.
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The fog did clear, so our interview didn’t happen until the next week. And when we meet at the Galley on a sunny, breezy day, the impression I got over the phone is confirmed: Gerald is a man shaped by conditions.
Someone who has spent a lifetime reading and reacting to the elements, not just looking at them.
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Colourful biography
The 75-year-old from Rathbarry has a glint in his eye when he says he learned the ropes from his father, Larry Butler. And he remembers wanting to become a lighthouse keeper as early as four years old.
‘From just talking to my father you were learning things and learning about other stations that you were going to visit, but they weren’t on your horizon at the time,’ says Gerald, who is now president of the Association of Lighthouse Keepers.
We sit at the table in the kitchen of the main building when he talks me through his colourful biography. The pattern on the tablecloth shows tropical fruits and a white porcelain jug sits in the window bay next to it. Outside, the waves roll in a steady rhythm and gently tickle the rocks while seagulls circle around a sailing boat.
Gerald grew up as one of 15 children, in a family where the tradition of lighthouse keeping ran on both sides. His twin brother Edmund, now living in Ballinspittle, also became a keeper.
In 1973, after much training at many different stations, Gerald landed his first permanent one as assistant keeper at the Bull Rock off Dursey Island, saying life there was ‘just beautiful’.
‘I did a lot of swimming and the fishing rod was in just inside the back door,’ he says. ‘I would grab that and I’d go down to the landing, take one cast and you’d get a pollock. You’d put it in the pan and have that for supper.’
The Fastnet
His wife Maria is there with us, helping Gerald with a steady stream of visitors coming through the two iron gates up to the lighthouse that day. Gerald and Maria both have religion as a cornerstone in their life. They have been together for many years and married just over a year ago. I ask to take a picture of them together in front of a gold-framed painting showing a yacht in the rough waters around a lighthouse that’s reminiscent of the Fastnet Lighthouse. Along with Kinsale and Mizen Head, the Fastnet is another light in West Cork Gerald is more than familiar
with.
His memory of those years in his twenties is mostly a happy one: summer sun, winter storms that would make the lighthouse tower sway, alongside much reading, building model ships and not a lot of sleep. But most of all, he remembers having lots of time on his hands and being patient.
Then in 1979, events around the Fastnet brought the tragedy of the 1979 yacht race very close to home. Gerald clearly remembers the day of the disaster, in which 21 people lost their lives.
He says in the morning, the weather was calm and the surface of the sea still as a mirror.
‘Nobody knew what was coming down the tracks,’ he says. The sudden rupture in the stillness came as the weather turned and gale-force winds arrived. He remembers seeing huge sails rounding the Fastnet and looking through his binoculars from the lighthouse balcony.
Lifeboat call
As events unfolded, he made the radio call to Baltimore Lifeboat and the late Eileen Bushe answered. The lifeboat was launched to search for casualties while the number of yachts arriving increased and conditions deteriorated as the sea disaster took its course.
He recalls: ‘Our visibility was reduced seriously. All we were able to watch for at this point was yachts coming close to us. The waves were now breaking west of the Fastnet. But when the water would rise up, the wave would hit the tower right underneath the balcony. You’d be standing on it and you’d look at this massive plume of water, and it’d be just horizontally travelling under your feet. It obscured every bit of vision you had beneath you.’
Gerald and his wife, Maria
News delivered
At the same time, Gerald remembers life on the Fastnet Rock as more than that crisis. There were everyday routines that showed how keepers lived. Newspapers tied together in a role reached the Fastnet Rock by boat every Sunday morning, including The Southern Star.
‘You would read every single word right down to the page number and the advertisements,’ Gerald said, adding it would make the lighthouse crew feel connected with the outside world.
His face lights up when he speaks about his colleague and friend, artist Kieran O’Brien, who would teach in Dublin on his months off: ‘He would take a bar of soap, peel away while talking and hand back an image of yourself better than if you were looking in the mirror.’
We climb up the steep spiral staircase that leads up to Galley Head’s balcony.
As we stop before the green door that opens up far-out view across the sea and coastline, Gerald tells me about his mother, Pauline Fitzgerald. She was Ireland’s only female lighthouse keeper in her day. Pauline lived at Galley Head and was its guardian until she retired from her role as Attendant Lightkeeper in 1997. Afterwards she moved to Riverstick, did a diploma in geology at UCC and travelled the world.
‘Her life was a very good one and she used to say to us ‘The reason your eyes are at the front of your head is to look ahead, don’t ever look back,’ says Gerald, who was forced to retire from his job in 1990 when automation was introduced at Galley Head.
At the iconic lighthouse today, you can see the habits of a man who learned long ago that you don’t control the elements, you respond to them. His story is one that shows that lighthouse keeping was never just about watching a light. It was learning how to live with the sea and how to keep going when things refuse to be predictable.
You can read The Lighthouse Keeper, written by Patricia Ahern, to find out more about the keeper of Galley Head.
