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SOME NOTICE OF THE
the quays and piers and similar works within harbours ;
the
other, the neglect to provide Lights on the south coast of
i.iij.hiet Ireland. The defence of the Board was made by in deleac*.
Mr. Halulnv
in a pamphlet in the form of a letter, as from Henry
Vereker, Secretary of the Ballast Board, to Sir William
Somerville, Bart., then Secretary of State for Ireland. 1
To Captain Washington's first complaint there was this
ready answer, that the Board were not authorized to expend
lighthouse funds on constructing harbour works ; the powers
of the Board being confined to erecting and maintaining
lighthouses, beacons, and buoys.
As to the second, the want of lights on the south and
south-west coast of Ireland, Mr. Haliday showed that since
1810, when the Irish Lighthouse Board was transferred
to the Ballast Board, sixty lighthouses and lightships had
been established, and twelve more were in progress, and all
this without increasing the light dues levied, without any
grant of public money ; whilst the Board had at the same
time made a reduction of twenty per cent, on the light dues,
which even previously were lower than those of either
England or Scotland, and further had commenced an
accumulation (then amounting to 100,000) which if per-
mitted to increase and act as a sinking fund, would not only
be sufficient to erect all the lighthouses required in future,
but would yield 4,000 a year, and ultimately relieve all
vessels from any charge of maintaining the lighthouses on
the coasts and harbours of Ireland.
Mr. Haliday in this pamphlet also complained much of
the inaccuracy of a printed map appended to Captain
Washington's report, lithographed and coloured for the
1
Letter to the Right Honorable Harbour Department of the
Sir William Somerville, Bart. M.P., Admiralty on the State of the
from the Corporation for Preserving Harbours and Lighthouses on tlie
and Improving the Tort of Dublin, south and south-west of Ireland.
with Observations on the Report of 8vo. Dublin pp. 37. P. D. Hard)
Captain Washington, B.N., to the and Sons, 1849.