Dead Man's Point By Gerald Creamer Dead Man's Point is the headland which juts out from the Rosses Point Village towards Coney Island. Local folklore attributes the name to an episode at the end of the last century when a foreign seaman died as his ship was entering the port and who was buried there by a ship's crew anxious not to miss the tide. In the old days, Dead Man's Point, with its secluded landing spot in front of Elsinore Lodge, was a favourite haunt of smugglers . Tobacco appears to have been the chief contraband.
Coney Island has still a link with the days of the tobacco smuggling.
On the northern side, under the beacons which face the strand at Rosses Point, is an area of shore called Poll a ' Tabac, Gaelic for the Tobacco Hole. A public inquiry in Sligo in 1880 established the existence of oath bound gangs of smugglers. Elsinore Lodge was built by a successful smuggler named John Black. He set several cannons outside of it, as thought to command the channel. The Middletons believed the house was haunted by smugglers.