COUNTY VIEW: The tidal wave at Westport Quay

In the 1993 issue of ‘Cathair na Mart’, the journal of the Westport Historical Society, the amazing story is told of the tidal wave that engulfed Westport Quay nearly a century earlier. The story was recounted by the celebrated novelist Eleanor Fairburn, the pen name of Westport native Eva Lyons, who in turn was drawing on the memoirs of her late father, Michael J Lyons.
By way of setting out the stall for the story, it is worth mentioning that, like his talented daughter, Mr Lyons was himself a gifted wordsmith. During his lifetime, he had written several short stories and at least one novella, for his own private enjoyment. Nor, as those who knew him could attest, was he a man given to exaggeration, so that his very precise account of the happenings on that cataclysmic day at the Quay can be taken as totally credible.
But to begin, Michael J Lyons recalled a November afternoon in 1909 when, as a 15 year old, he was sent to help his father convey bags of flour from the warehouse of North Shore Milling at the Quay to various shops in Westport. Lyons senior was a horse drawn carrier who conveyed goods to the town, assisted by his sons, Michael, the narrator of the story, and Pat. En route to the warehouse to load, Michael noted, on glancing across the Saltpans toward the Bath Hotel, that it was low tide.
On arrival at the six storey warehouse, to the rear of the Quay railway station, they made their way to the flour section when suddenly “the entire building began to tremble and shake from top to bottom. A loud rumbling noise like thunder seemed to be coming from under the ground”. Sensing some terrible danger, the trio dashed outside and, with the horse shivering in uncontrolled fright, the father decided to hurry back to the safety of the town.
As they exited the railway property on to the main road, and turned right for the town, they encountered something very strange. “We saw no actual wave, but water was pouring out on to the road because the force of the sea had split the wall in one-yard lengths and was throwing those concrete blocks as if they were pebbles. We later learned that the entire road all the way to Rosbeg was strewn with large pieces of broken sea wall.”
By the time they reached the present location of The Towers, the horse was galloping through four feet of water. As they sped on, the terrified trio noted two strange features. One was that, even though the air seemed dead calm, all of the telegraph wires were emitting a peculiar kind of high, screaming noise. The other was that salt water was raining down on them, although there was no wind to carry it in from the sea.
The next day, they returned to the Quay to observe the devastation. Tons of timber were strewn about, boats lay on the road, the contents of the Bath Hotel were scattered everywhere. The warehouses were devastated; thousands of tons of sugar were turned to treacle; stacked bags of flour, meal and bran were soaked up to six feet high. The ruination was biblical. Nothing like this had never happened before.
But what had caused, or where had come from, this epic tidal wave? Michael Lyons could only surmise that, somewhere far out in the Atlantic, some volcanic eruption had taken place.
He could well have been right. It later transpired that, several days before the Quay occurrence, an unprecedented tidal wave had struck the southern coastline of the US. The tail end of that eruption must, in some strange way, have found its way to Westport.