Islands of Ireland: A personal connection to West Cork islands with a tragic past

Heir Island man, John Harte risked his own life to save five people when a boat sank here, with the loss of six lives, on October 10, 1918

Feral goats at The Catalogues, Roaringwater Bay, Baltimore, County Cork. Picture: Dan MacCarthy

The Catalogues are a patchwork of islands, a mini-archipelago of small islets which can be seen from the Baltimore to Cape Clear ferry on the northern tip of Sherkin Island. Possessed as they are of a name to please a bibliographer, they just about deserve an entry in this island catalogue.

They are a hilly group, heavily-heathered, and definitely unpopulated. One of them has a small beach where it is possible to land a small craft. Otherwise, they are pretty forbidding to all but their feral goats.