In the mid-nineteenth century, while the Shannon Commissioners were at work, the Shannon Estuary was seen as a part of the river, just as Lough Derg was, although nowadays the Shannon Foynes Port Company controls the estuary and Waterways Ireland (and the ESB) the river upstream from Limerick.
Kilbaha is the westernmost harbour on the north side of the Shannon Estuary and the closest to Loop Head. It exported turf (peat) and imported sea-manures; it was also a pilot station and a fishing port. Noel P Wilkins, in his recent biography of the engineer Alexander Nimmo (Irish Academic Press 2009), says that Kilbaha was the only place where Nimmo selected an unsuitable site for a harbour. Within a couple of years it had been abandoned and replaced by a pier. Read about it here http://wp.me/Ppxzo-PT. bjg
