It was a late October day when the boats came to take people off Inishark. They'd been scheduled to arrive a week earlier but bad weather prevented them. However, this time they succeeded in landing. Animals, household possessions and human beings were loaded on to a boat and, in the space of a few hours, a way of life which had existed for generations was gone.
The depopulation of Shark may not have been as well documented as that which occurred on the Great Blasket in the 1950s, but the same factors were involved - isolation, an ageing population and a government which solved these problems by moving islanders to the mainland.
Today, if you stand on the shore at Claddaghduff in Connemara, or on the west side of Inishark's neighbouring Inishbofin Island, you can see the remains of Shark's small deserted village. It's a lonesome sight, and an even more lonesome place to visit: ruined houses huddled together, many roofless with gaping doorways and grass growing through the crevices on walls and floors.
Inishark may only have been seven miles from the mainland, but it was extremely isolated. Today, people who lived there and on Inishbofin remember the difficulty of landing on Shark. Because of the size of the island's pier, it was accessible only to currachs; big boats couldn't land there.
Currents were another factor. In bad weather Shark could be cut off for days from its closest neighbour, Bofin, which had a far better pier and where the Shark people went to shop for flour, tea and sugar - there was no shop on their island. At the time of the move, 10-year-old Philomena Murray told the Daily Mirror that the island had been without tea, sugar and paraffin for five weeks in the previous year.
When a man on Shark died of appendicitis in 1958, it was the final straw for islanders. "A man died without a priest or a doctor because of bad weather, and it caused a lot of upset. That was the start of the talk about moving. There were no phones or communications with the mainland or Bofin," says John Gavin, who was 19 when he and his family moved off the island. "We'd nobody if anybody got sick. You'd be hoping that people wouldn't get sick in winter time. Now it's different: there are phones and helicopters." The islanders had appealed for a radio phone, similar to one which operated from the more populous island of Bofin. However, in the political climate of the time, it was more economic to move them than to provide such a phone.
Anyway, for many people the prospect of leaving was attractive. "A lot of people were getting old and young people weren't coming back. The old people weren't able to manage on their own." People knew for a couple of years that the move was coming, Gavin explains. "They (the Land Commission, which physically organised such moves) started building houses on the mainland for us. I was a youngster in those times and was looking forward to it, but the older people didn't like it, to tell you the truth. But nobody said they weren't going. They had no choice."
On Shark Gavin survived by fishing and a bit of farm work. In the evenings people would visit each other's houses "playing cards and all that craic. You wouldn't be bored."
On the day of the move, the islanders had all their belongings packed and ready. "The boats came from Bofin and moved the stuff out. It must have been four boats. About a day it took. We got on the boat and moved. I felt a bit lonesome about it, to tell you the truth."
Gavin and his fellow islanders were relocated to Claddaghduff, where he still lives. He and others return occasionally to their birthplace, and he still has the ruin of a house there. "I'd take a visit nearly every year. It brings back memories when you look around and see all the houses empty."
Margaret Murray, who now lives on Inishbofin, taught on Inishark for two years during the mid 1950s. "I was free and single and loved it. Looking back it would have been a difficult life, but it wasn't difficult then because people didn't know anything else."
Like many communities along the western seaboard, Shark had no electricity and no running water. People lived by fishing and farming and - except for commodities like sugar, tea and salt - were self-sufficient. But, unlike other seaboard communities, Shark had extra difficulties. "There was no communication from the island whatsoever when the weather was bad, and because there were fewer than 100 people on the island, it was not feasible to install a radio telephone. It was difficult for people, especially women who were pregnant, although they didn't seem to worry. If someone got ill in bad weather, there was no way of communication except by lighting a fire at night on the hill."
Current accounts tell of the island being cut off at one point for almost a month. At that time nearby Inishbofin had a resident doctor, she remembers. But in really bad weather, the simple fact remained that Inishark was inaccessible.
The priest, Father Flannery, was based on Bofin and said Mass once a month on Shark. "He'd come in on the fourth Sunday - or on a weekday if the weather didn't permit that." There was a church, but it had no seats, Murray recalls. "It was just a building and an altar. If you wanted to sit, you brought your seat with you."
In 1949 three men died on their way back to Inishark after spending a Sunday on Bofin, having gone over for morning Mass. That was another blow to the island community.
Some families had begun to move off in the 1950s and, when the official depopulation came, it didn't surprise Murray. "In the last 15 or 20 years there'd have been support from outside if people had wanted to stay there. But not then. When people move on the land and houses were left in their ownership, but it wasn't feasible because of weather conditions and after a year or two they came in very little."
Some of the islanders still own their land. Murray's family also has land on Shark. Her late husband, Paddy, had relations on the island who moved off during the 1950s, and he bought their property. Nowadays the island is used to graze sheep. They are easier to transport than cattle. The waters around Bofin and Shark are also suited to diving, and an increasing number of day trippers visit during the summer months.
But the pier has fallen into almost total disrepair. Recently some islanders have approached the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands with a view to having the pier repaired. The Department is currently waiting for a quote from Galway Co Council on the cost of this, says Minister of State Eamon O Cuiv. Priority must be given to populated islands and other depopulated islands which have habitable houses, such as nearby Inishturbot, which is inhabited during the summer months. He's making no promises.
He doesn't condone what happened in 1960, but it was a "policy within its time", he stresses. Meanwhile former Shark islanders such as John Joe Murray would like to see the pier repaired. He has approached O Cuiv about the matter. "It's nice to go in now and again. The ruin of our house is still there, and my kids would be talking about going in. If the pier was right, more people would go there and do up the houses."
But on the day of the move, back in 1960, not everybody had positive feelings about the island. Seventy-three-year-old Thomas Lacey, who had lost his two sons to the sea in 1949, told a reporter from the Daily Mirror how he felt about Shark: "It gave me only poverty and took two of my sons."