Portrush nearly got a very different kind of harbour — one big enough to shelter a naval squadron, built around the Skerries islands, and approved by a House of Commons committee that never saw it built.
A meeting in the schoolhouse
On Monday 12 October 1857, landowners and merchants gathered in the Portrush school-house, convened by George Macartney, MP for Antrim, and chaired by the Earl of Antrim. They unanimously resolved to pursue a “Harbour of Refuge” — a safe haven for ships rounding Ireland’s notoriously exposed north coast during north-westerly gales, built by filling the gaps between the Skerry islets with basalt rubble topped by masonry.
On 25 March 1858, a House of Commons Committee took evidence. Admiralty Surveyor Mr Hoskyn described the site in detail — its eastern and western islet chains separated by a sound 528 yards wide and 13 fathoms deep — and noted its potential value “in time of war for a squadron watching the entrance of the north channel,” a remark that would prove strikingly prescient decades before either World War. Engineer John Hawkshaw drew up plans; the estimated cost was £100,000, with construction expected to take two to three years. Committee witnesses judged the Skerries site superior to Lough Foyle or Lough Swilly as a refuge. Newspaper coverage of the hearings even preserved a moment of dry Victorian wit — asked about coastal smuggling, one witness answered simply, “Only whiskey.”
Why it never happened
Despite the Committee’s favourable recommendation, the government never proceeded. The reasons given at the time vary: officials at the rival ports of Coleraine and Londonderry are said to have protected their own trade, while some shipowners generally opposed refuge harbours, preferring fast crossings and insurance cover over the delay a shelter stop would cost them. The scheme quietly died, and the Skerries remained — and remain today — undeveloped rocks rather than a working harbour.
A speculative what-if
It’s worth wondering what a completed refuge harbour might have meant decades later. A finished Skerries harbour could plausibly have become a strategic Atlantic convoy base during the Second World War — and, by the same logic, a Luftwaffe target. It’s speculation, not history, but it’s a genuinely interesting counterfactual for a stretch of coast that came remarkably close to looking very different today. The Skerries harbour idea resurfaced more than once in the following century — see our page on Saving Ramore Head and the Skerries for what happened next.