Body of skipper found off Connemara coast

The body of a man believed to be the skipper of sunken trawler Saint Oliver has been located at Duck Island off the Connemara…

The body of a man believed to be the skipper of sunken trawler Saint Oliverhas been located at Duck Island off the Connemara coast.

Mr John Dirrane's boat ran aground a week ago on Friday and three other crew members were drowned.

The body was spotted by a local fisherman on the seabed at around 3 p.m. close to Duck Island. It will be removed to University Hospital Galway for a post-mortem later this evening.

Gale-force winds and rough seas hampered the search for the fisherman from Inis Mor, and the eight-man rescue team had been forced to postpone the operation earlier this week.

READ MORE

Some 40 miles of coastline were being searched, with efforts concentrated between the treacherous shores of Duck Island, where the bodies of two crewmen were recovered last Saturday, and on nearby Mweenish Island, where a third body was found.

The other men who perished in the wreck were named as Joe Connolly, a boat builder in his sixties, from Carna, Co Galway; Michael Faherty, from the Aran Islands; and 18-year-old Michael Mullin, from Cleggan, Co Galway.

The four-man crew had been taking the 85-foot vessel from a boatyard in Glinsk to the fishing port of Ros A Mhil when high seas threw it onto the rocks.