Islands of Ireland: Turkish sailors with outbreak of cholera on board buried their dead here

We saw recently that Islandmore in County Mayo had contact with Turkish sailors at the end of the 19th century when the great windjammers plied their trade on the high seas. A coin of Turkish origin bearing the image of the 19th-century sultan Abdul Mejid was found on the island in the 1950s.

With the growth in international trade in the early 19th century, and modern medicine in its infancy, diseases crossed the globe unchecked. Malaria and cholera epidemics were a regular feature of port cities and Cork City had several serious outbreaks.

Ireland had many quarantine ports where people or animals could be quarantined as the local medical authorities decided. Quarantine ports were established at Lough Larne and Carlingford Bay; Derry; Killybegs; Clew Bay; Scattery Bay; Poolbeg; Warren Point; Belfast; Tarbert; Baltimore; Passage East; Spike Island and Galway Bay. They operated from around the mid-18th to mid-19th centuries.

The Baltimore station was on a small island on the way to the village, coincidentally located just off Turk Head — and was known as Quarantine Island. The station had a surveyor, cox, and six boatmen and had a barge at their disposal to impound any suspect cargo.

One quarantine case involved the Valkyrie which in 1871 stopped off at Cobh (Queenstown then) on its journey from Havana to Liverpool. An article in the British Medical Journal bemoaned the inept laws that saw sailors quarantined for yellow fever or plague but not for smallpox. The journal sought an immediate update of the laws: "for a disease so homely, frequent and fatally contagious as smallpox, there is no power of enforcing quarantine nor any harbour hospital provision".

It was surprising for a port of such well, import, that Castletownbere did not have such a quarantine station to adjudicate on vital medical matters. So when a Turkish ship arrived to Bere Island in the early 19th century flying a distress flag indicating it had several sick sailors aboard, the ship was prevented from docking at Lawrence Cove. The entire ship was in quarantine. Whether supplies were brought to the ship by locals is not known but several of the sailors succumbed to their illness. It was then decided to inter those misfortunate souls on the minute Turk Island. Prior to using the island as a burial place, the island probably did not have a name.

An email to the National Monuments Service confirmed the local stories. “On Turk Island, a small island with a dense cover of ferns and gorse, on the east side of the entrance to Lawrence's Cove on the south side of Berehaven Harbour. In pre-Famine times, sailors from a Turkish ship with an outbreak of cholera on board buried their dead on this island. Three graves are marked by flagstones.”

Bere Island has a few other satellite islands, all of fairly small size, moored off the mother ship, as it were. West of Turk Island are the Bracklagh and Sheep islands; Illaundoonagaul on the west near the lighthouse and possessed of a name that begs to be explored, and Illaunathough on the southern flank.

As resting places go, Turk Island is not a bad place to contemplate eternity. There are a few mounds on the island which could be the burial sites of the Turkish sailors, but as it is very overgrown with furze, heather, briars, and nettles it was impossible to determine their precise location.

How to get there: Take the ferry to Bere Island; Turk Island is just outside the mouth of Lawrence Cove. Or kayak from the mainland from a beach at Sandmount Bay.

Other: British Medical Journal; 18/02/1871