scubish.com: Scuba diving Valentia Island - Ireland

Valentia Island (Dairbhre in Irish), is one of Europe's westernmost inhabited locations, lying off the Iveragh Peninsula in the southwest of County Kerry in the Republic of Ireland. It is linked to the mainland by a bridge at Portmagee, as well as by a ferry which sails from Reenard Point to Knightstown, the island's main settlement. The permanent population of the island is 650, and the island is approximately 11 km long by 3 km wide.

History

Valentia was the eastern terminal of the first transatlantic telegraph cable. The first attempt in 1857 ended in disappointment. Subsequent failures in 1858 and 1865 finally resulted in commercially viable transatlantic telegraph communications in 1866 that operated for one hundred years until Western Union International terminated cable operations in 1966.

Prior to the transatlantic telegraph, American longitude measurements had a 2800 foot uncertainty with respect to European longitudes. Because of the importance of accurate longitudes to safe navigation, the U.S. Coast Survey mounted a longitude expedition in 1866 to accurately link longitudes in the United States to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Dr. Benjamin A. Gould, Jr. and his partner Mr. A. T. Mosman reached Valentia on October 2, 1866. They built a temporary longitude observatory immediately adjacent to the Foilhommerum Cable Station to facilitate synchronized longitude observations with Heart's Content, Newfoundland. After many rainy and cloudy days, the first transatlantic longitude signals were exchanged between Foilhommerum and Hearts's Content on October 24, 1866.

In 1993, an undergraduate geology student discovered fossilised tetrapod trackways, footprints in mud preserved in Devonian rocks on a rock platform on the very coast. About 385 mya, a primitive vertebrate passed along a muddy shoreline in the equatorial swampland that is now southeastern Ireland and left prints as if in wet concrete. The prints were preserved by silt overlying them, and were converted to rock over the ages. The Valentia Island trackways are among the oldest signs of vertebrate life on land and have been studied extensively by the paleontologist Stössel.

Attractions

The combined features and history of the island make it an attractive tourist destination, easily accessible from the popular Ring of Kerry route.

On the northwest of the island stands modest Glanleam House amid its famous sub-tropical gardens; protected by shelterbelts from Atlantic gales and never touched by frost, these gardens provide the mildest microclimate in Ireland. Starting in the 1830s, Sir Peter George Fitzgerald, the 19th Knight of Kerry (1808 – 1880) , planted these gardens and stocked them with a unique collection of rare and tender plants from the southern hemisphere, normally grown under glass in the British Isles. The gardens are laid out in a naturalistic style as a series of walks. There are plants from South America, Australia, New Zealand (the tallest tree ferns in Europe) Chile and Japan. The gardens are memorialized in a selected golden-variegated Luma apiculata "Glanleam Gold" that originated as a sport in the garden. The gardens are open to the public.

Attractions on the island also include a grotto with a statue...