Inishark or Inishshark sometimes called Shark Island, is a small island neighbouring the larger Inishbofin

Inishbofin, Galway

Inishbofin is an island lying about off the coast of Connemara, County Galway, Ireland. It is about 5.5 km long and wide, and has around 200 inhabitants. The island is popular with artists. Inishbofin can be reached by ferry from the pier in Cleggan...

 in County Galway

County Galway

County Galway is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the city of Galway. Galway County Council is the local authority for the county. There are several strongly Irish-speaking areas in the west of the county...

, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

.

Overview

Now uninhabited, the last 23 inhabitants of this former isolated fishing and farming community were evacuated in October 1960. The islanders had been unable to leave for months in winter and the government opted to resettle them on the mainland rather than build an expensive pier on the island.

Like Inishbofin, Inishark is composed almost entirely of Silurian

Silurian

The Silurian is a geologic period and system that extends from the end of the Ordovician Period, about 443.7 ± 1.5 Mya , to the beginning of the Devonian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya . As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the period's start and end are well identified, but the...

 slate

Slate

Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...

s and shale

Shale

Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. The ratio of clay to other minerals is variable. Shale is characterized by breaks along thin laminae or parallel layering...

s. It rises to 100 metres above sea level.

In 2009, Boston College

Boston College

Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...

's Irish Studies program (in cooperation with Irish Film Institute

Irish Film Institute

The Irish Film Institute is both a film theatre and a national body that supports Irish Film heritage. It maintains an archive of Irish films and provides education in film culture. It shows independent and foreign language films overlooked by commercial multiplexes at its cinema in the Temple Bar...

) screened Inis Airc, Bás Oileáin (Inishark, Death of an Island) (filmed in 2006) as part of the Irish Studies Film Series telling the evacuation story from the surviving islanders viewpoint.

The island's patron saint was Leo of Inis Airc

Leo of Inis Airc

-Biography:Inishark lies south-west of Inishbofin, Galway and was inhabited up to 1960. Leo is the patron saint of the island, and responsible for perhaps the first Christian settlement on the island. He lived in the 7th century....

, who lived there sometime between the sixth and eighth centuries. The remains of a 19th century church named after him lie on the island today.

External links

• Inishark, Death of an Island. Contemporary Daily Mirror story about the day the island was evacuated. 1960-10-27.
• The surviving residents of Inishark: Narrated documentary slideshow about Inishark and its surviving residents produced for the fiftieth anniversary of the evacuation of the island. Cyril Byrne. The Irish Times, 2010-10-20.