The fourth phase was the occupation of a fortified station on some haven, so that the ships, drawn up on land, were secure from attack. The earliest of these Norse stations in Ireland were at Dublin and at Annagassan in Co. Louth. Annagassan, now a mere hamlet, was a port of note in ancient times. Its sandy estuary suited the shipping of that age. Irish folk-tales still describe the old way of bringing ships to land in such places. The ships were of very light draft. Those made in Ireland had the strong framework covered with hides not planks. They were run ashore in a sandy rivermouth and dragged up on land beyond the reach of the tide. What gave Annagassan importance was that at this point the old great northern highway, the Slighe Midhluachra, touched the coast. It is in describing the fortified stations of the Norsemen at Dublin and Annagassan, in the annals under the year 841, that we first find the Irish term _long-phort_. This word, about seventy years afterwards, has come to mean an entrenched or stockaded position for an army, a fortified camp; and its use in this sense shews us what was the character of these first Norse stations on the Irish mainland. The occupation of these fortified stations enabled the invaders to accumulate force for strong expeditions overland. Such expeditions were soon undertaken with success. Dublin was well chosen. The Liffey here was the boundary between two of the greater kingdoms--Leinster and Bregia. The Norsemen of Dublin were thus in a position to take advantage of the ancient hostility between the Leinstermen and the Ui Néill who had wrested the plain of Meath from Leinster and imposed a hated tribute on the Leinster kings. So, as a rule, we find the Norse of Dublin and the kings of Leinster in close alliance. The Irish annals indicate an earlier date for the centralising policy of the kings of Norway than Norwegian historians seem to accept. In 849, they tell us, eight years after the occupation of Dublin, the king of Norway (Lochlainn) sent a fleet to establish his authority over the Norse settlers in Ireland; and four years later, in 853, they say that Olaf, whom they call son of the king of Lochlainn, assumed kingship over the Norsemen in Ireland. He became joint king of Dublin with Ivar. Soon after this, in 856 and 857, the Gall-Ghaedhil or Norse-Irish, make their appearance in various parts of the island--in Meath and Ulster and Munster. These were the people of the generation following the Norse occupation of the Scottish islands and the Isle of Man. They spoke a broken Irish and no doubt also a broken Norse dialect.