9 September 1636 — the ship that turned back
The Eagle Wing
A hundred and fifty tons, built at Groomsport by a consortium of Ulster Presbyterian landowners — James Hamilton among them — who had run out of patience with the Church of Ireland's drive to silence non-conforming ministers. Four ministers sailed: John Livingstone from Killinchy, Robert Blair from Bangor, John McClelland and James Hamilton (a different one). A hundred and forty passengers in total, bound for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were two months at sea and roughly halfway across when North Atlantic storms broke the rudder. They put back into Loch Fergus in November. Some of the passengers tried again, individually, over the next thirty years. The bulk of Ulster-Scots emigration to America did not start in earnest until the 1710s. The Eagle Wing was the first attempt, and it failed honestly.
The cottages that didn't fall down
Cockle Row
Two single-storey thatched fishermen's cottages on the harbour, dating to the 17th century, when Groomsport was a working herring port. The whole row used to run further along the quay. The two that survived were restored by the council in the 1990s and opened as a small heritage centre — one cottage furnished as it would have been around 1910, the other a craft shop and exhibition space. Open at weekends in summer, manned by volunteers, free. The thatch is real, the half-doors open, and the chimney still works on the rare days they light the fire.
The tern colony in the harbour
Cockle Island
The little rock off the end of the pier is Cockle Island and in summer it is one of the larger Sandwich tern breeding colonies on the east coast of Ireland. Arctic and common terns nest there too. You can hear them long before you see them. The island is off-limits to landing during the nesting season, which is the whole point. Watch from the harbour wall with whatever lens you brought.
Why the village stopped fishing
The herring went
Groomsport was a herring port from the 18th century through to the early 20th, when the shoals in Belfast Lough moved further offshore and the bigger boats out of Bangor and Ardglass took what was left. The wee yawls that used to land their catch on the strand below the cottages stopped coming back. The harbour the council maintains today is recreational. The last commercial fisherman from the village hung up the nets within living memory and the cottages are now the memorial.