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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show for those who can never know enough about history.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gay Bluesia and today we're looking back at a

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Speaker 1: bittersweet moment in Irish history, the sad but necessary evacuation

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Speaker 1: of the Blasket Islands. The day was November seventeenth, nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty three. The Irish government evacuated the last remaining residents

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Speaker 1: of the Blasket Islands. The Rugged six Island Darkipelago lies

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Speaker 1: three miles off the west coast of Ireland's Dingle Peninsula.

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Speaker 1: It's the westernmost part of the country and some people

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Speaker 1: joke that the next Irish parish after the Blaskets is

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Speaker 1: the US Massachusetts, in particular. The largest of the islands,

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Speaker 1: the Great Blasket, was inhabited for centuries by a small,

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Speaker 1: close knit community of Irish fishermen and farmers. Some families

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Speaker 1: had lived on the island for generations. Others settled there

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Speaker 1: during the first half of the nineteenth century after being

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Speaker 1: evicted from their homes on the mainland. Many of them

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Speaker 1: found a better way of life on the island. They fished, farmed,

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Speaker 1: and hunted for their food and got on well with

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Speaker 1: their neighbors. That said, life on the rocky, wind swept

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Speaker 1: island was never easy. There were no stores, pubs, priests

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Speaker 1: or doctors, and getting to the nearest town required a

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Speaker 1: three mile boat ride and a five mile walk each way.

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Speaker 1: That was a long way to go for bread, flour,

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Speaker 1: or medicine, and since the weather didn't always cooperate, the

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Speaker 1: trip sometimes became longer and more perilous than expected. It

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Speaker 1: was probably a relief then in the early twentieth century

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Speaker 1: when scholars from across Europe took an inn in the

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Speaker 1: islanders and began making frequent trips to see them. Many

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Speaker 1: of the visitors came to study the unique language of

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Speaker 1: the Great Blasket, an especially pure form of Irish, uncorrupted

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Speaker 1: by the English spoken on much of the mainland. They

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Speaker 1: also tried to preserve that language for posterity by encouraging

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Speaker 1: the residents to record their own experiences in writing. Up

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Speaker 1: until that point, the Blasket community had relied only on

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Speaker 1: oral storytelling to pass down history and traditions, but thanks

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Speaker 1: to those visiting anthropologists, a few of the more literary

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Speaker 1: minded residents were convinced to put pen to paper. The

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Speaker 1: result was a rich and surprisingly extensive canon that includes

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Speaker 1: renowned autobiographical works such as The Island Man by Thomas o' crohne,

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Speaker 1: Twenty Years a Growing by Maurice O'Sullivan and Pague by

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Speaker 1: Pegue Sayers. Those lyrical accounts of daily life on the

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Speaker 1: island helped preserve the community's culture, memory, and language, and

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Speaker 1: they became all the more vital once it was time

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Speaker 1: for the islanders to bid their home farewell. The Great

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Speaker 1: Blasket's population peaked in nineteen sixteen at one hundred and

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Speaker 1: seventy six people. From that point on, the number steadily declined,

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Speaker 1: with most of the younger generation choosing to leave, either

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Speaker 1: to settle on the mainland or to head west to America.

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Speaker 1: By the nineteen forties, there were only a few dozen

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Speaker 1: Islanders left, most of whom were getting older and feeling

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Speaker 1: increasingly cut off from the rest of the world. It

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Speaker 1: was hard for some of them to walk up a hill,

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Speaker 1: much less make the trip to the mainland, and with

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Speaker 1: fewer people to farm and fish, food shortages became increasingly

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Speaker 1: common in the small village. Rising sea levels and extreme

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Speaker 1: weather patterns presented their own challenges. The Great Blasket is

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Speaker 1: only about three miles long and a half mile wide.

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Speaker 1: It has very few trees and structures, and the highest

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Speaker 1: point on the island is less more than one thousand

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Speaker 1: feet above sea level. High winds and waves posed a

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Speaker 1: serious threat to residents on the lower part of the island,

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Speaker 1: especially since they were completely cut off from emergency services.

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Speaker 1: By the late nineteen forties, conditions had grown so dire

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Speaker 1: that some of the islanders started to petition the government

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Speaker 1: for help. It took a few years to work out

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Speaker 1: the logistics, but in nineteen fifty three the Tatia, or

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Speaker 1: Prime Minister of Ireland, finally ordered an island wide evacuation.

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Speaker 1: There were only twenty two residents left by that point,

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Speaker 1: and while they were sad to leave their homes, most

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Speaker 1: agreed there was no future for them on the island.

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Speaker 1: With that grim realization in mind, the Blasket Islanders gathered

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Speaker 1: on the shore on November seventeenth, nineteen fifty three, with

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Speaker 1: all of their furniture and belongings. They waited there for

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Speaker 1: an officer of the Irish Land Commission to arrive, at

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Speaker 1: which point they were ferried over the sound and taken

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Speaker 1: to four newly built cottag in the nearby village of Duncan.

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Speaker 1: Living on the mainland was a difficult adjustment for all

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Speaker 1: of them, but the younger generation had an easier time

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Speaker 1: than the older islanders. Some families cross the Atlantic to

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Speaker 1: the US, while others stayed put on the Dingle Peninsula

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Speaker 1: in sight of their former home. Those who did later

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Speaker 1: helped establish the Blaskets Center, a museum in County Kerry

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Speaker 1: that celebrates the legacy of the islanders, including their many

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Speaker 1: literary achievements. So even though the island has been uninhabited

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Speaker 1: for the past seventy years, the story of those who

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Speaker 1: once called it home lives on. I'm Gabe Lucier and

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Speaker 1: hopefully you now know a little more about history today

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Speaker 1: than you did yesterday. You can learn even more about

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Speaker 1: history by following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at

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Speaker 1: pdi HC Show, and if you have any comments or suggestions,

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Speaker 1: you can always pass them by writing to this day

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Speaker 1: at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing

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Speaker 1: the show, and thank you for listening. I'll see you

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Speaker 1: back here again soon for another Day in History Class.