One of the more unusual Irish pirate radio stations appeared on the airwaves almost by accident but it became widely popular with fan mail and requests arriving from all along the East Coast of Ireland and as far away as Manchester. Unusually too for Ireland it was based not on land but at sea and one man John McGuinness, deserves much of the credit for providing the entertainment.
McGuinness was born in Blackrock in County Louth and after a brief time as a trawlerman he found himself from 1954 working as a relief officer on the Dundalk Pile Lighthouse. Located in Dundalk Bay, the lighthouse dated back to the mid nineteenth century. In May 1958, under the direction of the then chief lighthouse keeper William Hamilton, a radio telephone was installed. This allowed the operators on board to maintain contact with ships entering Dundalk port, transiting through the Irish Sea and other lighthouse and lightship operators. In an interview in the Dundalk Democrat[1] following a feature on RTE TV’s ‘Nationwide’[2] programme, John McGuinness recounted how he became a pirate radio star and to become known as ‘the Singing Lightkeeper’.
He said that it began when John
Scanlon in the Kish Lighthouse heard John singing in the background and asked
him to sing ‘The Boys From County Armagh’ but while he thought he was just
doing a colleague a favour, his fame was travelling quickly. The radio
transmitter on the lighthouse transmitted on 191.4m medium wave, not far from
the popular Radio Luxembourg on 208m. In 1958, Radio Eireann’s output was
limited and many tuned into Luxembourg once RE closed down. As they scrolled
down the medium wave band, they came across the broadcasts from the Dundalk
Lighthouse.
The sing song over the airwaves was
a hit. Fan mail began to arrive on the lighthouse along with supplies. Requests
to say hello to those listeners were also being delivered and aired. In an
interview in 2005 for the Louth Archives project[3],
John recounted,
‘we started
getting fan mail and I got letters from Manchester, Manchester, Ballycotton,
from Howth and Dundalk around and then there was this one came from Warrenpoint
and it said “Dear Johnny, We enjoyed your rendering on Saturday last of ‘the boys
from the County Armagh’. What about
giving us that good old
I knew they were receiving me and I’d say “goodnight Marcella, goodnight Pat, my brother, goodnight Sean and goodnight, they were only wee toddlers thing. So anyway, next I’d be saying goodnight and next anyway, this day was of a Saturday and Larry Butler was the other lighthouse keeper. He was turned in, he was having a bit of a lie in. So anyway next (makes a knocking sound), there was someone there. So next I looked down the ladder here, I looked down and this fella says, “me mammy sent this out to you”. So, I put down a rope, hauled it up. “me mother says will you say goodnight to her on the radio tonight?” And when I opened the bag what was in it only a dozen of stout, a dozen of eggs and all the daily papers. Larry Butler he loved a drink too and I grabbed Larry said I “you better come out”. This is out in the middle of the Summer, “Santa Claus has arrived” says I. So next anyhow he comes out and we’d a half a dozen each, a dozen of stout and I said certainly we’ll say goodnight to you and we said “Good-night Mrs Vernon Annalacken Shore and good-night Michael” to the son do you see. So be Jesus the next evening about 24 hours later here I see someone coming out and wasn’t it the younger brother with another bucket, with another bag and the same thing again. I’d to say goodnight to the brother, the other lad then Jimmy then. But it gained momentum you see and we used to get an awful lot of fan mail. That was before there was any pirates, I was a pirate. I was a pirate before there was any radio pirates.
The pirate broadcasts continued through 1958 and 1959 but in 1960 John McGuinness found a full time position on land with CIE as a bus driver where he stayed until his retirement in 1999.
The Dundalk Lighthouse and their
191.4m frequency made the newspapers again in 1970 when a new offshore pirate
radio station in the North Sea, Radio North Sea began broadcasting initially on
186m but in April 1970, they mistakenly moved to 190m causing interference to
Lighthouse around the coasts of the British Isles and therefore impacting on
the safety of the shipping traversing those seas. After a jamming campaign on
the station’s frequency, RNI moved to 217m[4].
Radio Scotland was located on board a ship
broadcasting off the coast of Scotland near Troon, when pressure from the
authorities forced the ship to lift anchor and cross the Irish Sea to anchor off
Ballywalter in County Down, following an unscheduled anchorage in Belfast Lough
sheltering from a storm. On April 9th 1967 at 12.31p.m., Radio Scotland and Ireland
as it announced itself began broadcasting on 242mMW. The station stayed on the
air for a month before pressure from Northern Ireland's Customs service forced
the ship onto the seas once more and back across the sea towards Scotland.
Sources & Thanks
Dundalk Democrat
Irish Newspaper Archives
The Louth Archives
RTE Archives
The DX Archive
World Radio History Archives
A Century of Irish Radio 1900 - 2000
No comments:
Post a Comment