By Gil­lian O’Bri­en, Read­er in Mod­ern Irish His­tory, Liv­er­pool John Moores Uni­ver­sity, writ­ing for The Con­ver­sa­tion.



Spike Island—the former fort­ress and pris­on off the coast of County Cork in Ire­land — has been named Europe’s lead­ing tour­ist attrac­tion at the World Travel Awards. The island beat off com­pet­i­tion from Buck­ing­ham Palace, the Eif­fel Tower and Rome’s Colos­seum to win what is described as the “Oscars” of the travel industry. It is a win for the com­munity and also a win for so called “dark tour­ism”, whereby trav­el­lers seek some­thing a tad more macabre than the tra­di­tion­al trip to the sea­side.

There is no doubt Spike Island has a fas­cin­at­ing his­tory. Situ­ated in Cork Har­bour, one of the largest nat­ur­al har­bours in the world, it has been home to a mon­ast­ic set­tle­ment, a mil­it­ary fort­ress and a pris­on. Since the fort­ress reopened to vis­it­ors in June 2016, it has become a pop­u­lar tour­ist des­tin­a­tion, attract­ing over 45,000 vis­it­ors this year.

Vis­it­ors travel by boat from the town of Cobh to the island where they can explore the star-shaped fort which was home to thou­sands of sol­diers and pris­on­ers from the late 18th-cen­tury until 2004. There they learn about the his­tory of the island, from its place as a home to early Chris­ti­an monks, through the key stra­tegic role it played dur­ing the French Revolu­tion­ary Wars and the Napo­leon­ic Era, to its rein­carn­a­tion as an island pris­on in the 19th, 20th and 21st cen­tur­ies.

The growth of ‘dark tourism’

Spike Island is one of a grow­ing num­ber of attrac­tions in Ire­land that can be called “dark tour­ism” sites. Dark tour­ism is closely asso­ci­ated with death, suf­fer­ing and the macabre. The concept is far from new; Madame Tus­saud became fam­ous in Par­is dur­ing the French Revolu­tion when she cast wax­work death masks of the guil­lotined and by the 1830s she was exhib­it­ing wax­works of mur­der­ers in Lon­don.

In my book, Blood Runs Green, I wrote about the pub­lic fas­cin­a­tion with death, and par­tic­u­larly bru­tal death, in Gil­ded Age Amer­ica. In Chica­go in 1889, thou­sands of “dark tour­ists” paid a dime to vis­it the house where a man had been bludgeoned to death and a fur­ther dime to take away souven­ir shards of blood-stained wood (no one seemed to notice that far more splin­ters of wood were sold than had been neces­sary to build the house).

Aca­dem­ic stud­ies of “dark tour­ism” have ten­ded to focus on sites asso­ci­ated with the holo­caust; par­tic­u­larly con­cen­tra­tion camps such as Aus­chwitz. But some research has been con­duc­ted on pris­on islands, not­ably Rob­ben Island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, which was home to Nel­son Man­dela for 18 of his 27 years in pris­on. Oth­er stud­ies have looked at Alc­a­t­raz, the fam­ous pris­on island in San Fran­cisco Bay. Both sites have key dom­in­ant stor­ies: The image of Alc­a­t­raz is dom­in­ated by Hol­ly­wood vis­ions of the island pris­on, while Rob­ben Island is most closely asso­ci­ated with the polit­ic­al pris­on­ers of the apartheid regime. Both sites make efforts to expand the vis­it­or exper­i­ence bey­ond these nar­row his­tor­ies, but with lim­ited suc­cess in the pub­lic per­cep­tion.

Responsible tourism

Part of my role as the his­tor­ic­al advisor for the Spike Island Pro­ject was to con­sider issues asso­ci­ated with rep­res­ent­ing incar­cer­a­tion, pun­ish­ment and exe­cu­tion. His­tory should be neither san­it­ised nor sen­sa­tion­al­ised. Dark tour­ist sites are often temp­ted to provide the gory details of exe­cu­tions, high­light escape attempts and focus on the bru­tal­ity of jail­ers. But it is also import­ant to con­sider the vic­tims of crime and the ways in which their exper­i­ence might be mar­gin­al­ised when sites focus on the sen­sa­tion­al.

Our pro­ject iden­ti­fied four key nar­rat­ives that would allow the social, polit­ic­al and mil­it­ary his­tor­ies of the island to be told: Cork Har­bour, the Island Fort­ress, the Island Pris­on and the Island Home. Our inten­tion was not to priv­ilege one theme or story, but to offer vis­it­ors a multi-layered exper­i­ence that revealed a diversity of voices ran­ging right across the island’s past.

Tour­ism is a busi­ness and com­mer­cial real­it­ies are a factor in devel­op­ing any tour­ist site. Sites need to make money and it is the respons­ib­il­ity of the design team to make the con­tent as access­ible and as inter­est­ing as pos­sible. Unlike Alc­a­t­raz, Spike Island had few fam­ous pris­on­ers and has not been immor­tal­ised in Hol­ly­wood films. As the his­tor­i­an respons­ible for research­ing and writ­ing the island’s story, this was a good thing, as it enabled me to tell the whole story of the island as a place of refuge, defence and of incar­cer­a­tion.

Vis­it­ors can wander through the remains of the island vil­lage and ima­gine grow­ing up on an island com­plete with its own school, church, fort­ress and pris­on. They can walk the cor­ridors of the pris­on and stand in the cold, damp cells. They can patrol the peri­met­er of the fort­ress and ima­gine defend­ing Cork har­bour from a flo­tilla of invad­ing ships. These are the types of exper­i­ences that can­not be rep­lic­ated in a pur­pose-built museum.

The chal­lenge of telling com­plex and diverse stor­ies in a com­pel­ling and attract­ive way is a con­sid­er­able one and involves input from a lot of people. But I believe that Spike Island suc­cess­fully treads the fine line between edu­ca­tion, enter­tain­ment and sen­sa­tion. It is neither exploit­at­ive nor does it shy away from its dif­fi­cult past.

This art­icle by Gil­lian O’Bri­en, Read­er in Mod­ern Irish His­tory at Liv­er­pool John Moores Uni­ver­sity, was ori­gin­ally pub­lished on The Con­ver­sa­tion (CC BY-ND 4.0. The “GT” Blog used a dif­fer­ent head­line and images). The author was the his­tor­ic­al con­sult­ant for the devel­op­ment of Phase I of Fort­ress Spike Island.

Fea­tured image: The 24-acre star-shaped Fort Mitchel on Spike Island was at the bleed­ing edge of mil­it­ary tech­no­logy when it was com­pleted around 1850. The points of the star allowed defend­ers to arc fire over all parts of the island, mak­ing the whole island a kill zone. Source: Spike Island.