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It appears at low tide and quicksand – the skeletal remains of a shipwreck on Streedagh Beach in Co Sligo.
Known locally as the Butter Boat, several stories have been told about its origins, but the true identity of the wreck has just been confirmed thanks to a detailed investigation led by the National Monuments Service.
For at least twenty years some of the NMS’s underwater archaeologists have been investigating the famous Spanish Armada shipwrecks off Streedagh and were intrigued by the ship’s bones poking out of the sand at low tide and the folklore local surrounding.
Was it called the Butter Boat because of its shape or its business, could it possibly be from the Navy, was it a tourist boat as one registry said, or was it something else entirely?
They started with a scientific analysis of the wood and dated the ship sometime after 1712.
Underwater archaeologist Karl Brady said this gave them a clue to take to their database of more than a hundred shipwrecks off the coast of Sligo in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Working with various historical resources, including the National Folklore Collection (UCD) and newspaper reports, they were able to make a match to a shipwreck.
The Butter Boat is actually The Greyhound, a coastal trading ship from Whitby in Yorkshire that sank in a storm in December 1770.
With the identification of the wreck came a tragic story. The Greyhound had been caught in a storm off the coast of Mayo.
Unable to seek a safe harbor in Broadhaven Bay, he was driven to anchor in a dangerous position below Erris Head and the crew abandoned ship.
However, in the panic there was a tragic oversight and a cabin boy remained on board.
When the crew realized that the boy was still on board, some of them, along with local volunteers and the crew of a passing ship, Mary, from Galway, set out to rescue him and managed to get back aboard the Greyhound.
However, due to the severity of the storm, the ship was eventually forced to disembark at Streedagh point, where 20 of the 21 people on board tried to reach shore, but fell into a hole in the rocks and drowned.
The sole survivor had remained on the boat and when he finally reached the beach, he went to a wakehouse and alerted the local people who went to the place, but everyone on board had been lost.
250 years after the sinking of The Greyhound, the deceased were remembered in a small ceremony in what remains of the wooden ship.
Eddie O’Gorman of the Spanish Armada Ireland group was pleased that the Butter Boat mystery had been solved and said it was important to remember those who had died in his town so many years ago.
The group has a small museum in nearby Grange where the Butter Ship is mentioned along with the history of the Navy Ships that sank in the same area in 1588, but now Eddie says the full story can be told.
For Michael MacDonagh, chief archaeologist with the National Monuments Service, the discovery of the history of The Greyhound is a wonderful example of the power of archeology to tell a story thanks to the union of science, research and folklore.
Telling the human story is very important, he said, and it gives people a whole new perspective on this well-known shipwreck.
MacDonagh said more research will be conducted on the people who were aboard The Greyhound and the National Monuments Service will work in partnership with local people and the local authority to bring the story to Streedagh visitors in the future.
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