From the Wall Street Journal, August 16, 2019:
Irish Folk Singer Wants to Reverse Britain’s Last Imperial Conquest—a Rock
Rockall is about 230 miles from the nearest habitable land and Brian Warfield is a 73-year-old folk musician without a boat
Brian Warfield has promised to reverse Britain’s last act of imperial expansion, and claim the Atlantic island of Rockall for Ireland......MORE
Rockall is an 80-foot wide, uninhabitable rock, battered by 50-foot waves. The nearest habitable land, Scotland, is around 230 miles away. Mr. Warfield is a 73-year-old Irish folk musician without a boat.
Tensions between Britain and Ireland are rising over the prospect of a no-deal Brexit. Fans of Mr. Warfield’s band, the Wolfe Tones, want him to make good on the pledge.
Philip Casey, 62, first read about Mr. Warfield’s promise in a newspaper.
“I thought, good on him,” he said, as he waited for the Wolfe Tones to hit the stage.
The U.K. annexed Rockall in 1955, in what London newspapers dubbed the last act of the Empire, to stop the Soviet Union using it to spy on British missile tests.
Though it doesn’t claim the rock as Irish, Dublin has never recognized British sovereignty, saying nobody should own the remote island. Nor has Mr. Warfield and his band, the Wolfe Tones, who first took up the cause in 1976 with the satirical song “Rock on Rockall.”
This June, as the Scottish government ordered Irish boats to stop fishing the squid-rich waters around Rockall, Mr. Warfield told a newspaper: “We’d be prepared to go up there in a trawler ourselves and claim the rock back for Ireland.”
Then the band went on a tour of the U.S. and Mr. Warfield mainly forgot about his promise.
Back in his native Ireland, he is discovering that not everybody else has.
“You shouldn’t say you are going to do something, unless you are going to do it,” said Anne Cassidy, who had come to watch the band play in Derrybeg, a village in the northwest coast of Ireland.
But there is the question of finance and logistics, Mr. Warfield said, from his hotel ahead of the show.
The logistics would require the aging musicians to brave gales and rough seas in a journey that could take up to 30 hours from an Irish port.
“It’s essentially just a big rock in the middle of nowhere, covered in bird excrement,” said Englishman Nick Hancock, who spent a record 45 days on Rockall in 2014.
Aside from the waves, the band will have to conquer huge swells at the base of the rock that make it difficult to get close, warns Tom McClean, a Brit who spent 40 days there in the 1980s.
With no place to land, visitors have to swim or leap onto the rock from a boat. Once on, the Wolfe Tones would need to climb 50 feet up the rock to plant the Irish flag. Mr. Hancock is an experienced rock climber and plays rugby. Mr. McClean is a former member of Britain’s elite Special Air Service group.
The Wolfe Tones play golf.
“How can the Wolfe Tones do it? We are just a band,” Tommy Byrne, the 75-year-old guitarist, asked Mr. Warfield, as they settled into comfy chairs and pints of beer. “I’m not saying that I am not up for it, but 40-foot waves?” he said.
Noel Nagle, the band’s 75-year-old whistle player, wasn’t surprised to hear of Mr. Warfield’s promise on his and Mr. Byrne’s behalf.
“I’ve known him for over 50 years, I know what he’s like,” he said. “He’s gung ho.”
Mr. Warfield, who is currently writing a musical about Ireland’s Great Famine, is feeling positive.....
