It was a beautiful fine day with very little wind in August 1953. My father James (1890-1964) and my brother Tommy (1933-2017) were fishing mackerel from a currach about three hundred metres north of Roonagh pier, heading out towards Clare Island. They had no engine and as they rowed along Tommy was describing his experiences in Dublin where he had just finished teacher training.
Another subject of conversation that day was the green sea – a very unusual phenomenon that was not understood at the time, and which I clearly remember myself even though I was only six years old. The whole of Clew Bay and further out into the Atlantic for a kilometre or so took on a green colour, dark on a cloudy day and mid green when the skies were clear. It lasted for several weeks in June and July and fishing was very poor while it lasted. We now believe that it was an algae bloom and it was known ever after as “the year of the green sea”.
When fishing from the currach we were constantly on the lookout for “marks” or lines of sight to features on the land which would pinpoint a spot where we got a good catch of fish. As my father and brother were looking to the southwest in the direction of High Island, about 24 kilometres away off the coast of North Connemara, they saw an unknown island a little bit further west, about half way between High Island and Inishbofin. Naturally they were completely shocked and literally could not believe their eyes. My father had been fishing there for 50 years and knew every rock, breaker, island and headland all over that magnificent coastline from Cleggan to Clew Bay. He asked Tommy if he saw the same thing and was assured that he had.
My father told of this unexplained sighting many times until he died in 1964. A farmer, he was also a travel agent for the Cunard Line and was extremely well read. He was not in the slightest bit superstitious and did not believe in miraculous apparitions. Nevertheless whenever he described what he and Tommy witnessed that day it was always with a mixture of awe and incredulity.
As father and son described it, the island they saw initially appeared green and hazy, lying on the horizon which was about 20 kilometres away directly southwest of them. Over the course of the next 15 minutes it gradually became clearer and they were able to make out what looked like tall palm trees and white houses in between. It was not a big Island – a lot smaller than Inishbofin and of a similar height. It shimmered a little then got clearer and receded several times until it eventually disappeared like it had begun in a haze, leaving nothing behind but the clear blue Atlantic stretching away to the horizon.
I have looked for Hy Brasil myself all down the years but was never lucky enough to see it. In the middle of the incredible summer of 1995 (around the middle of July I think) the village of Carramore and beyond it the town of Louisburgh took on a most unusual appearance for about twenty minutes viewed from Clare Island harbour. The land seemed to float above the horizon and houses appeared much higher than they should – almost like high-rise apartments. But that was looking south east, not in the direction in which Hy Brasil is normally seen.
So is Hy Brasil an optical illusion, an atmospheric phenomenon which projects islands from far away on to our horizon? Or there a simpler explanation, similar to a mirage in the desert? One thing is sure, my father and brother saw it way back in 1952 and they never forgot it as long as they lived.
John McHale
