The West Cork island that is free from scurvy knaves

It may evoke the world of Long John Silver and Captain Bluebeard but it is safe to say no pirates ever lived there.

Mon, 08 Mar, 2021 - 00:05

Dan McCarthy

Not an island from a Joseph Conrad or a Hermann Melville novel with their salty flavour of jolly rogers and keelhauling, but the genuine article in West Cork.

This tiny island on the Mizen Peninsula may evoke the world of Long John Silver and Captain Bluebeard but it is safe to say no pirates ever lived there.

At 26 perches or less than one-eighth of an acre, it is the smallest island to appear in this series after Flea Island at 43 perches in Castlehaven, West Cork. It is safe to assume that it will retain that record, as there is barely enough room for your average pirate to swing a cutlass.

Dan McCarthy: 'It is not clear how the island came to be so-called. Possibly, as no Irish name is evident, it was named by someone from the Hungerford estate.'

Scurvygrass Island is one of a sextet of islands on the northside of the Mizen Peninsula in Bantry Bay. It is located very close to land about halfway between the village of Dursey and Three Castle Head at the end of the peninsula. Its immediate neighbour is the also, (but not equally) diminutive Lusk Island, and then Cold Island, Horse Island, and the comparatively huge Furze Island and Carbery Island. All were once under the ownership of the local 19th-century justice of the peace, Richard Hungerford. When his 600-acre estate dissolved the islands were sold off separately.

It is not clear how the island came to be so-called. Possibly, as no Irish name is evident, it was named by someone from the Hungerford estate. Scurvygrass (spoonwort) is the predominant plant on the island along with sea thrift and furze.

According to Matt Murphy’s Sherkin Island Marine Station (about four leagues to the southeast of Scurvygrass Island): “Common scurvy-grass is frequently found on rocks, shingle strands, on sea cliffs, and at the bases of walls near the sea. It can create a large splash of white in some areas in spring.” There are several varieties of the plant including common, Danish, English, and estuarine. Its primary use was as a dietary supplement to fight off scurvy, so the plant was brought on long-distance sea voyages to ward off conditions including anaemia, spontaneous bleeding and exhaustion. When citrus fruits, plentiful repositories of vitamin C, became more widely available demand for scurvygrass died out.

Scurvygrass or spoonwort, a source of vitamin C.

The benefits of the plant have been known for hundreds of years. In his
Complete Herbal, the 17th-century English botanist Nicholas Culpeper was of the view that the plant is efficacious when used “by those that have the scurvy” and that it “is of singular good effect to cleanse the blood, liver and spleen, taking the juice in the Spring every morning fasting in a cup of drink. The juice also helps all foul ulcers and sores in the mouth, gargled therewith; and used outwardly, cleanses the skin from spots, marks, or scars that happen therein.”

Elsewhere in Ireland, the islanders on our northernmost island Inishtrahull, Co Donegal, made an ointment of scurvygrass and fats. “They boiled the plant, melted the fats and mixed both while hot. This plant is said to be very good for cuts.”

Scurvygrass has been found to be attractive to other species, namely otters. UCC forest ecologist Markus Eichhorn made some interesting discoveries about otters’ tastes on a recent trip to Bere Island following a tipoff from local Maurice Neligan.

“The otter haulouts are very obvious, and invariably marked with scurvygrass. The plant does grow elsewhere, unsurprisingly, but never in such densities and
with such luxuriant foliage as where they occur alongside otter signs. Whatever the otters are doing, the scurvygrass is enjoying it,” writes Eichhorn. No otters were evident on the day the Irish Examiner visited recently, nor their telltale signs of digestion, their spraints. This is a habitat perfectly suited to them: lots of land; lots of water; lots of fish. And no people. It is evoked in Ted Hughes’s brilliant poem The Otter.

“Underwater eyes, an eel’s oil of water body, neither fish nor beast is the otter: Four-legged yet water-gifted, to outfish fish;

“With webbed feet and long ruddering tail And a round head like an old tomcat.”

How to get there: Kayak appears to be your only route: Ballygibba North pier on the R591.

Other: wildflowersofireland.net; sherkinmarine.ie; Irish Naturalists’ Journal Vol VIII; treesinspace.com/2019/02/27/of-otters-and-scurvygrass