History of Portmagee

officer, Magee 'retired' to a life of merchant shipping between France, Portugal and Ireland. Thanks to the intricately chisled coast around the South West, his trade in contraband spirits, textiles and tea and tobacco was extremely hard to police and therefore extremely profitable. He married Mrs. Bridget Morgell, the widow of a rich Dingle merchant and also the daughter of the then MP for County Kerry, Mr. Thomas Crosby. Being related to the best smuggler in Ireland can't have sat too easily on Crosby's shoulders and there is some suspicion that Magee's death in a Lisbon monastery was due to some exile imposed by the powerful MP. However, his wife, and his sons continued the family business of smuggling.

The village also serves as a departure point for tourists travelling to visit 'Skellig Michael', an island off the coast featuring a 6th century monastic settlement. Skellig Michael (from SceiligMhichíl in the Irish language, meaning Michael's rock), also known as Great Skellig, is a steep rocky island in the Atlantic Ocean about 9 miles (14.5 kilometres) from the coast of County Kerry, Ireland. It is the larger of the two Skellig Islands. After probably being founded in the 7th century, for 600 years the island was a centre of monastic life for Irish Christian monks. The Gaelic monastery, which is situated almost at the summit