Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
12
Oceanic salination
reconsidered
Sometime in July 1897 two men boarded the yacht Marling-Spike
carrying with them a range of tubes, bottles and nets and other
collecting paraphernalia. They set sail from the Bullock Harbour,
close to the small picturesque village of Dalkey, ten miles south of
Dublin, and steered the yacht southwards into Killiney Bay. They
would have passed through Dalkey Sound with the low Dalkey Island
on their left, on which was built a Martello tower. This robust,
circular construction was just one of many around the Irish coastline
built in the first decades of the nineteenth century as a first line of
defence against a Napoleonic invasion. The advance never came and
today the tower offers scant shelter against the frequent winter
storms for the feral goats that eke out a precarious existence there.
On its landward side, Killiney Bay is dominated by a granite crag,
topped with a monumental folly that overlooks the fine housing
belonging to professional gentlemen and their families. Living on
roads with names such as Sorrento Terrace and Vico Road, many are
unaware of the similarity of their view to that at the Bay of Naples.
The only geological feature missing is the dominant volcano; here the
residents can reflect instead on the nature of the distant Great Sugar
Loaf Mountain to the southwest. This is a mere pimple when com-
pared with Vesuvius, and is not even volcanic in origin: composed of
Cambrian quartzites, it has weathered to a fine conical shape, which
has often been misinterpreted as a volcano. Back in 1897, a black trail
of commuters would have walked daily down the hill to the railway,
where they would have caught the northbound train to Dublin that
began its journey from the holiday resort of Bray to the south. This
railway line is perched somewhat precariously on boulder clays depos-
ited on the retreat of various ice masses originating in the Irish
 
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