Inishark or Inishshark (), sometimes called Shark Island, is a small island neighbouring the larger Inishbofin in

County Galway "Righteousness and Justice" , anthem = () , image_map = Island of Ireland location map Galway.svg , map_caption = Location in Ireland , area_footnotes = , area_total_km2 = ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

Overview

The island is now uninhabited; the last 23 inhabitants of this former isolated fishing and farming community were evacuated on the 20th of October 1960. The islanders had been unable to leave for months in winter and the government opted to resettle them on the mainland rather than build an expensive pier on the island. Like Inishbofin, Inishark is composed almost entirely of

Silurian The Silurian ( ) is a geologic period and system spanning 24.6 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. The Silurian is the shortest period of the Paleozo ...

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

s and

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especial ...

s. It rises almost to

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The comb ...

. The documentary film ''Inis Airc, Bás Oileáin (Inishark, Death of an Island)'' produced in 2007 by C-Board Films for TG4, told the story of the last years and abandonment of Inishark. Produced and directed by Kieran Concannon, it featured interviews with surviving islanders and archive newsreel footage of the final evacuation. In 2009,

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...

's Irish Studies program (in cooperation with

Irish Film Institute The Irish Film Institute (IFI; ), formerly the Irish Film Centre, is both an arthouse cinema and a national body that supports Irish film heritage. The IFI presents film festivals, retrospectives and curated seasons, along with independent, ...

) screened ''Inis Airc, Bás Oileáin (Inishark, Death of an Island)'' as part of the Irish Studies Film Series telling the evacuation story from the surviving islanders' viewpoint.

History

The island was occupied for thousands of years and has many Bronze Age sites such as burial grounds and monuments. The name Inishark, Irish ''Inis Airc'', may derive from an ancient chief or king named Erc; other writers connect the name with ''searc'', "love" (Old Irish ''serc''), or with Old Irish ''airc'' meaning "hardship" or "

strait A strait is an oceanic landform connecting two seas or two other large areas of water. The surface water generally flows at the same elevation on both sides and through the strait in either direction. Most commonly, it is a narrow ocean channe ...

." The island's patron saint was

Leo of Inis Airc Leo of Inis Airc was an early Medieval Irish Christian saint. Biography Inishark lies south-west of Inishbofin, Galway and was inhabited up to 1960. Leo is the patron saint of the island, and responsible for perhaps the first Christian sett ...

, who lived there sometime between the sixth and eighth centuries. The remains of a 19th-century church named after him lie on the island today. On Easter Sunday, 1949 three young islanders drowned travelling to Inishbofin for mass. Soon afterwards, during a period when the island was cut off due to bad weather, another young man died from appendicitis. These incidents as well as emigration were contributing factors driving the clamour to evacuate the island, as by this point there were few young people remaining on it.

Demographics

The table below reports data on Inishhark's population taken from ''Discover the Islands of Ireland'' (Alex Ritsema, Collins Press, 1999) and the

Census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses incl ...

of Ireland. Census data in Ireland before 1841 are not considered complete and/or reliable.

References

External links

*
''Inishark, Death of an Island''
Contemporary ''Daily Mirror'' story about the day the island was evacuated. 1960-10-27.
''The surviving residents of Inishark''
: Narrated documentary slideshow about Inishark and its surviving residents produced for the fiftieth anniversary of the evacuation of the island. Cyril Byrne. ''The Irish Times'', 2010-10-20.
Inis Airc: Bás Oileán – Youtube Videovox hiberionacum - Early Irish Christianity and Early Medieval Ireland
Islands of County Galway Uninhabited islands of Ireland {{Galway-geo-stub

Overview

History

Demographics

See also

References

External links