Before steamers and tourism, Portrush’s harbour ran on sail power and hard living — and two stories survive from that era with genuine bite to them.
The Battle at the Harbour
Sometime between 1780 and 1790, according to harbour pilot George Scott’s own account, a young cook from Inishowen serving aboard the ship William Little — crewed by Portrush men — was beaten by his crewmates after offending the captain, and died after eventually making it home. At that year’s Midsummer Fair on 22 June, boatloads of Inishowen men armed with blackthorns and reaping hooks arrived at Portrush harbour looking for revenge, and a full brawl broke out.
The Portrush women fought too — “with paving stones wielded in thick woollen stockings,” by one account — and one moment stands out clearly enough to have survived in the retelling: “a powerful young woman of Portrush, named Mary McIlvernock, came behind this champion, caught him by the leg… he tried to get up [when] another woman with a pair of tongs hit him on the head a blow which stunned and rendered him senseless.” It’s the kind of detail that reads more like folk memory than official record — but it’s specific enough, and old enough, to have earned its place in local history regardless.
On the old windjammers
A different, darker story comes from a 12-year-old Portrush boy who joined the crew of the Emily Walters, bound for Newfoundland with a cargo of coal. During the voyage, the ship’s anchor line suddenly “surged,” striking a crewman on the head and pulling him under — his air-filled sea boots reportedly “stuck up like periscopes for a moment” before he sank. The story survives because that same boy retold it decades later, “now aged 78 years.” At the time, mid-19th-century Portrush could host up to a dozen ocean-going windjammers anchored at once, and sailors making the crossing from Portrush to America were paid noticeably better — around £2 a month — than those sailing out of Belfast, a detail that hints at just how much traffic once passed through this small harbour.