History

The O’Driscolls were pirates and smugglers who built castles and harbours and by the fifteenth century were one of the strongest clans in Ireland. The many different castles in the Baltimore area of Cork and surrounding islands provide a useful indicator of the extent of the O’Driscoll’s territories and wealth.

But it was the wild Atlantic ocean that was their real domain and few entered the O’Driscoll waters without an invitation.

O’Driscoll’s Irish Whiskey is a tribute to those famous men of the sea and encapsulates that wild Atlantic spirit of adventure, bravery and survival.

So infamous were the O’Driscolls that in 1450 Henry VI decreed that no person of Waterford and Wexford should fish in the O’Driscoll territory, warning of heavy penalties or forfeiture.

The O’Driscolls were almost always involved in petty warfare, smuggling, pirating and raiding, as was the Gaelic Irish custom of the time. They would have manys an encounter with the Waterford people during the fifteenth century, visiting the city to plunder and sailing home, their ships laden with booty of whiskey and wine.

The O’Driscolls engaged in both legal and illicit seafaring occupations – pilchard fishing and trade on the one hand; extortion, piracy, and smuggling on the other. Their dominance in these latter occupations eventually gained the wrath of some Waterford merchants, who had been robbed of a cargo of wine. In retaliation, these men razed two principal castles of the clan, including Dún na Long (Fort of the Ships), and the Franciscan friary on Sherkin Island. They also sacked and burnt Baltimore and stormed Dún na Séad.

Even though documentary evidence of the O’Driscolls in the thirteenth century is scarce, it was probably soon after the upheaval at the Battle of Callan in August 1261, that they took possession of Dún na Séad and their former lands around Baltimore.

From the twelfth century, O Driscolls were confined to an area consisting of poor land and a long and dangerous coastline, from Castlehaven to Baltimore, including offshore islands. In their time they had seven castles (Tower Houses) within the territory they controlled, Dún na Séad, at Baltimore being the ‘jewel’ or the principal one. From their castles, the O’Driscolls established themselves as great mariners on the south coast, engaging in piracy, feuds, warfare and wound up controlling some of the richest fishing grounds in Europe.

The castle at Dún na Séad became the main seat of the O’Driscolls for the next four hundred years. It was used as a centre of administration for trading activities and collection of taxes from the foreign traders who frequented the port. In the middle and later-middle ages therefore, the O’Driscolls enjoyed a prosperous lifestyle. Lavish gatherings took place in the ‘great hall’ of Dún na Séad castle and a well-documented feast in 1413 is said to be one of the earliest written records of people dancing in Ireland. This documentary evidence of trading is supported by archaeological finds from recent excavations of the Dún na Séad site, which reveal the presence of late twelfth to fourteenth century pottery from the Saintonge region of France, and reflect the lucrative trade links between Baltimore and Europe at this time.

In 1500, the territory of the O'Driscolls stretched roughly from Cape Clear and the nearby islands, through Baltimore to Castlehaven.

During Elizabeth I’s reign, Sir George Carew described Baltimore’s harbour as being “. . . a pool about half a league over, where infinite numbers of ships may ride, having small tides, deep water and a good place to careen ships." The name of this remote town, located on the southwest coast of Ireland in County Cork, was believed to have come from the Gaelic baile an tí mhóir, which meant “town of the great house.” Great house referred to the fortified tower house, which the Irish called Dún na Séad (Fortress of Jewels; also known as Dunashad Castle).

Prior to the English invasion of Ireland in 1169, this remote village was home to the O’Driscoll clan. “The surname comes from the Irish O hEidirsceoil, from eidirsceol, meaning ‘go-between’ or ‘bearer of news’. The original Eidirsceol from whom the family descend was born in the early tenth century, and since then the family have been strongly associated with west Cork, in particular the area around Baltimore and Skibbereen, where they remained powerful up to the seventeenth century. They were part of the Coca Laoighde tribal grouping, descended from the Érainn or Fir Bolg, Celts who were settled in Ireland well before the arrival of the Gaels . . . Their arms reflect the family’s traditional prowess as seafarers . . .” .

Much of the O'Driscolls’ wealth derived from the rich fishing grounds off the coast of Baltimore. These became particularly valuable in the 15th century, when a series of climatic changes caused the migration of herring shoals to the south and west of Ireland. The herring attracted numerous foreign fishermen, particularly from England and Spain. Because herring had to be salted within twenty-four hours if it was to retain its flavour, the local lords grew rich on the dues (known as black rent) paid to them by fishermen for the use of their havens and bays for refitting, revictualing, and landing their catch.

It may have been the O'Driscolls' demands for black rent that brought them into conflict with the city of Waterford during the Middle Ages.

The O’Driscolls had a particularly long-running feud with the colonial merchants of Waterford city (further up the east coast) and spent years attacking and looting their trading ships (this actually started in 1368, when they sacked the city).

Together with their allies the le Poers of Waterford, O'Driscolls fought a series of pitched battles against the citizens of Waterford. In 1538, an event occurred that was to have a serious and long-lasting effect on the West Cork clan. It started on 29th February, when three Portuguese ships carrying wine, as well as merchants, from Spain to Waterford were driven by storms towards the coast of West Cork. One of them, La Santa Maria de Soci, was driven into Baltimore harbour. There, the "chief captains of the Islands," Fineen O'Driscoll, his son Conor, and his illegitimate son, Gilly Duff, agreed to pilot the ship into the harbour in exchange for three pipes of wine (1 pipe equals 126 gallons).

Initially, everything went according to the agreement. The ship anchored off Sherkin Island, in front of Dunalong castle, and the O'Driscolls received their three pipes as payment. At that time, wine, also known as the ‘King of Spain's daughter’, was a highly prized commodity, and having drunk the wine they had been given, the O'Driscolls decided to seize the ship. They invited some of the merchants to dinner in Dunalong, but on arrival put them in irons. The O'Driscolls then manned their galleys, seized the ship, and proceeded to distribute the cargo, which comprised of 72 tuns of wine (1 tun=252 gallons).

On 3rd March, news reached Waterford of this incident. A citizen of Waterford, Piers Doben, set off with 24 men in a pickard that was well-armed with artillery pieces. They arrived at noon the following day, to find the Portuguese vessel still occupied by the O'Driscolls. As the Waterfordmen boarded the ship from one side, Gilly Duff and 24 of his men fled over the other. Doben manned the vessel and released the imprisoned crew. Of the cargo, only 25 tuns of wine still remained. Doben then had the great hall of the O'Driscolls bombarded by the pickard's cannon, and then sailed for home.

Later that month, on the twenty-seventh, the citizens of Waterford launched a reprisal against the O'Driscolls. Led by the mayor of the city, four hundred men sailed in three vessels, including La Santa Maria de Soci and the Great Galley of Waterford, to Waterford. On the night of Wednesday, 1st April, the expedition arrived in Baltimore harbour, and proceeded to shell Dunalong castle on Sherkin Island. The bombardment continued all night. At dawn the garrison of the castle fled, allowing the Waterfordmen to land on the island. They spent five days there, destroying all villages on the island, all the boats of the O'Driscolls, as well as the abbey of the Friars Minor located near the castle and a mill. At the end of the five days, the Waterfordmen sailed to Cape Clear, where they again proceeded to destroy all the habitations on the island before landing on the mainland and burning Baltimore. On Good Friday, the Waterfordmen returned home, apparently without suffering a single casualty.

Following this attack, the power of the O'Driscolls was effectively broken. Although the boats and castles that had been destroyed were eventually replaced, there is no record of the O'Driscolls ever again attacking Waterford or merchant vessels. The O'Driscolls were quite possibly the first clans of the south-west ever to be attacked by artillery, and the impact of the assault appears to have stayed with them for the rest of the century.

In July 1540, Sir Anthony St. Leger was appointed the Lord Deputy for Ireland and initiated a major new policy, which has generally become known as ‘surrender and re-grant’. The objective of this policy was to incorporate the Gaelic lordships by consent into a new kingdom of Ireland, fully anglicized and covering the entire island. Under the policy, Irish chieftains were induced to surrender their lands to the English crown and renounce their Gaelic titles. In return, the crown regranted the lands to the applicant, together with an English title. The applicant benefited by having his title to his land legally recognised by the Tudor State, and by being able to pass his land directly on to his descendants through primogeniture (the eldest son inherits). The English government gained partly by the further anglicization of Ireland, but more importantly, it gained by being able to seize the property of any Irish lord who had surrendered his land and who might subsequently, at some future date, rebel.

In the mid-1540s, the aims of the English government in Ireland had shifted away from assimilating Gaelic Ireland and moved towards the subjugation of the border clans in order to protect the Dublin Pale. By the spring of 1549, the whole midlands area had been conquered, and although most of the land was regranted to conformable Gaelic lords, plans were also made to settle some of the lands with Englishmen.

Not much is known of the O'Driscolls during the decades 1538-1568. Mention is made of a Spanish vessel fishing in Baltimore under the command of so it is likely that they went back to charging vessels for fishing in their waters.

By late 1568, the perception was rife that the English government intended to overturn the rights of existing Old English and Gaelic proprietors and institute a small-scale but widespread plantation. At the same time, Sir Peter Carew, encouraged by the government, was laying claim to lands once held by the Anglo-Norman Carews in the Pale, Carlow, and Munster.

At that time as well, a number of prominent Englishmen applied to the Queen for a grant of the fishing on the south and southwest coast of Ireland as well as for the incorporation of the town of Baltimore, presumably with the intention of establishing a settlement there. This scheme was approved by the privy council in principle in April 1569. It is unknown whether or not the O'Driscolls knew of this plan, but in the previous year, on 2 November, 1568 it was reported that Fineen O'Driscoll (chief of the O'Driscolls) and others, "whose ancestors never came to any Deputy, are come in, of their own accord" to meet a representative of the government.

In 1569 the First Desmond Rebellion against English rule took place. It is unknown what involvement the O'Driscolls had in the rebellion, though it would appear that they provided some help to the rebels. In 1573, Finnin O'Driscoll and several other O'Driscolls received pardons for their role in the uprising, although there is no mention of any them taking an active role on either side. Their overlord, and Sir Fineen O'Driscoll's father-in-law, Sir Owen McCarthy Reagh, was reported in 1567 to be one of a number of large possessioners in the county of Cork, who were "so injured and exacted upon by the Earl of Desmond, `as in effecte they are or were become his Thralls or Slaves.'

In 1573 Fineen O’Driscoll, who was also called Fineen the Rover, became chieftain of his clan. With England seizing Irish property either by force or through legal trickery, he was astute enough to recognize that he might lose the clan’s lands and his title. Rather than allow that to happen, he opted to collaborate with the English. To that end he renounced his Irish title before seeking an audience with Queen Elizabeth.

Fineen O'Driscoll entered a "suit to surrender all his possessions to the Queen, and to hold them by such tenure as shall seem good to her" in March 1573. This application for a surrender and regrant was formally presented to the government in September, where it received a favourable response. O'Driscoll would appear to have been regranted his lands shortly afterwards, together with a knighthood.

When he returned home as Sir Fineen, his kinsmen no longer retained any rights to the clan’s lands and he could do with them as he wanted. This so enraged his son, that the young man later joined Hugh O’Neill and the other Irish men and women who wished to oust the English from their homeland. Eventually they sought assistance from Spain and a Spanish invasion occurred in 1601.

At the beginning of the 16th century, the O'Driscolls of West Cork were the premier maritime lords of the southwest, and one of the most powerful clans in Munster. Within a century, most of them had been dispossessed, and, Baltimore, the traditional seat of their power, had been completely colonized by English settlers.

In 1594, a great revolt broke out in Ulster against English rule by the Gaelic Irish and spread throughout the whole of Ireland. It was headed by Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Hugh Roe O’Donnell, Chief of Tyrconnell, in what is now County Donegal. O’Neill visited Munster in January 1600, and encamped with his army at Inniscarra, near Cork. He was waited on by many chiefs, including Donall O’Sullivan Beare.

The English generals hitherto commissioned to suppress the rebellion had failed, so now Queen Elizabeth sent over Lord Mountjoy as Deputy, and Sir George Carew as President of Munster. Carew, by fraud and treachery, as well as by force, had subdued nearly the whole of Munster by the end of 1600.

The Irish were making pressing demands on the King of Spain for help which was offered, but was very slow in coming. At last, on 23rd September, 1601, a Spanish fleet of 54 ships with a force of 3,000 on board entered the harbour of Kinsale. The ships were to be brought into Cork Harbour, but, on nearing its entrance, a head wind started which caused them to make for Kinsale.

Fineen and Conor O'Driscoll went to he commander-in-chief, Don Juan de Aguila, and gave their word to support him in early November. Sir Fineen O'Driscoll and his son Conor, who appears to have overruled his elderly father's objections towards supporting the rebels, also showed up with O'Sullivan Beare. Sir Fineen O'Driscoll allowed Spanish troops to occupy one of the O'Driscoll castles dominating Baltimore harbour.

On 24th December, the Irish forces met the English in battle and were badly defeated. Aguila made no move because the Irish never reached the appointed rendezvous. Instead, he surrendered on 2nd January, 1602. The battle at Kinsale effectively broke the rebellion: O'Donnell left for Spain to seek further aid but died soon after, while Tyrone was finally forced to surrender on March 30, 1603.

While some O’Driscolls fought with the Gaelic Irish O’Neill and seized much of Sir Fineen’s holdings, the uprising failed. Sir Fineen sided with England and eventually reclaimed his property, but he also incurred significant debt and had to mortgage his land, including Baltimore, to satisfy his debtors. Fineen O’Driscoll allied himself with the Spanish at the Battle of Kinsale and handed over Dún na Séad castle to Don Juan del Aguila. The defeat at Kinsale resulted in Dún na Séad being handed over to Captain Harvey on behalf the English crown.

The historians known as the Four Masters attributed the defeat to the anger of God, and O’Sullivan Beare to the sins of the Irish. If the Irish won the battle, O’Neill would be paramount, and some of the Irish Chiefs, it seems, preferred a stranger. They fled from the field and created a panic, which was the real cause of the defeat. the Irish were broken, scattered, slain. They were pursued two miles, and the English did not return to the camp until they were “tyred with killing.” It is estimated by some that the Irish left 1,200 dead on the field, and 800 wounded, many of whom died that night. Other authorities state that the number of dead was about 200.

Connogher O'Driscoll was to spend the rest of his life in Spain.

Not long afterwards, a series of English settlements sprung up in South-West Cork, in particular at Baltimore, Crookhaven, and Bantry Bay. The motives for this sudden expansion were threefold: fishing, piracy (or the aiding of pirates), and freedom of religion. The largest of these was Baltimore. In 1606, Sir Fineen O'Driscoll, financially ruined by the Nine Years’ War and no longer able to charge fishing vessels for operating off the coast of Baltimore, granted a 21 year lease of the town and associated lands of Collymore, to a Londoner, Thomas Crooke. Crooke paid an entry fine of £2,000 and afterwards rent of £56 a year.

According to the Lord Bishop of Cork, Crooke “at his own charges . . . gathered out of England a whole town of English people, larger and more civilly and religiously ordered than any town in this province that began so lately . . . ” and relocated them to Baltimore. In 1612 the town became a Royal Borough, which meant the corporation could make their own laws and hold weekly trials for minor infractions. “Chasten[ed] delinquents” were punished in the pillory or at the whipping post, which were located in the courtyard of Dún na Séad. James I of England knighted the younger Crooke in 1624, even though the king disliked Calvinists. Thereafter, pirates dared not consider the town a friendly port.

Although the Irish no longer lived in the town, those disinclined toward the English usurpers often harassed the settlers, while Walter Coppinger, who believed he had a legal right to the land since he had loaned money to Sir Fineen, used the courts to gain control of Baltimore. All he succeeded in obtaining was control of Dún na Séad.

By 1629, when Coppinger received a deed of defeasance from O'Driscoll's heir, giving him legal ownership of the land and making him landlord of the settlement. By that stage, there were over 100 English households in and around Baltimore, with very few O'Driscolls or native Irish left.

The Algerian pirates did not reach the castle at the time of the Sack of Baltimore in 1631, but on 15 August 1642 the castle is recorded as sheltering 215 of a new wave of English Planters against Catholic rebels such as the Coppingers and the O’Driscolls, who made repeated, unsuccessful attempts to gain entry. Soon after this, in 1649, Oliver Cromwell arrived in Ireland and took the castle as a garrison for his troops.

Baltimore (Baile an Tighe Mhóir) became the seat of the O Driscoll Mór in the mid-thirteenth century. The castle in Baltimore, known as Dún na Séad (the Fort of the Jewels), was built in 1215 by the English and it is probably the oldest of the O Driscoll castles. When exactly it came into their hands is not known. It has been completely restored by Patrick and Bernadette McCarthy and hosts the Annual O Driscoll Clan Gathering at Baltimore. Other O Driscoll castles or tower houses were at Oldcourt, Castlehaven, Castlenard, Lettertinlish, Rincolisky, Aghadown, Lough Hyne and Ardagh, as well as those on the islands; Dún an Óir at Cape Clear, Dún na Long in Sherkin and Dún na nGall in Rinn Garóige or Ringarory Island. There was also a fortification at Spanish Island which commanded the entrance to the Ilen river.

Dún na Séad fell into a gradual state of decline after the departure of Oliver Cromwell’s troops. The building and lands can be traced in title to the present day to the present owners, Patrick and Bernie McCarthy, who began the work of restoration in 1997. The restoration was completed in 2005 and the castle is now inhabited again for the first time since the middle of the seventeenth century. It has been restored following the original design, which was revealed through a study of the remaining features.

After the Battle of Kinsale 1601, the fortunes of the O Driscolls declined, their castles were abandoned and became ruins, the remains of a number of which are still to be seen. The seventeenth century Finghin Ó Drisceoil, ‘Fineen the Rover’, although famous in song and story, set in train a series of events and land deals which were to reduce the O Driscolls to poverty and cause their leaders and many of their descendants to emigrate to England, Canada, America, Australia and New Zealand.

They went as ‘Wild Geese’ to France and Spain and other places where they made a name for themselves in military, ecclesiastical and other affairs. In time in Ireland, they adapted to new ways and became merchants, journalists, authors, poets, sportsmen, educationalists, religious and legal figures. Their contribution to the armed forces, religious, economic, scientific, artistic, medical, cultural and political life of many countries has been significant. The O Driscoll Diaspora is worldwide with members of the Clan still rooted in great numbers throughout West Cork.