On a stormy Saturday, January 20th, 1884, a Scottish ship was swept into Brandon Bay in Co Kerry. The barque, Port Yarrock, had 20 British and Scandinavian crew on board, of whom eight were only 19 years old or under.
The cargo was refined copper ore and it was bound for Cobh (then Queenstown) from the US, with Antwerp being the final port of call.
The captain refused offers of assistance to tow the ship to the safe haven of Fenit and tried for Tralee. As his sick, starving and exhausted crew battled to keep the ship off the rocks, he wired his owners in Glasgow and a tug was promised from Liverpool.
By the time the tug arrived, nothing could be done. The weather was too bad to make an approach, and the ship dragged its anchors.
When the wind changed on Sunday evening, blowing southward across Brandon Bay, the ship was driven on to the sands of Kilcummin.
The Fenit lifeboat was unable to reach it, due to mountainous seas, and a breeches-buoy lifesaving apparatus from Dingle arrived too late.
On Monday, January 22nd, the savage seas smashed the ship in two and all hands were lost. Three bodies were washed ashore - the captain, the mate and a Norwegian seaman. Weeks passed before others were found, all unidentifiable. Seven of the 20 bodies were never recovered.
During those last agonising hours, many of the crew had written to their families describing their situation.
At the inquest which followed, there was great emphasis on the callousness and mismanagement which had contributed to the tragedy.
A British Board of Trade inquiry in Glasgow the following March severely condemned the owners and highlighted the undermanning of the ship - both in terms of numbers and the fact that many of the crew were no more than inexperienced boys.
Yet it was not until four years later, in 1897, that the Merchant Shipping Act was amended to include insufficient crew numbers as being among the reasons for preventing a ship from leaving port.
Other lessons were learned: a telegraph office was established at Castlegregory, Co Kerry, and the Fenit lifeboat was replaced by a larger craft. A coastguard station was also built at Brandon.
Largely forgotten, these events have been "rescued from obscurity" by a retired teacher from Kerry, Mrs Sheila Mulcahy, who trawled through the letters of one of the young apprentices, Philip Baines, as part of her research, and has now published a book on the harrowing episode, entitled A Gallant Barque.
Mrs Mulcahy grew up on the shores of Brandon Bay and left for secondary school in Killarney and university education in Cork. She studied French and Irish, lived in France for three years and also taught in Nigeria with her husband, Aidan, a fellow UCC graduate.
Forty years ago they returned to Sheila's old home and in 1961 they established Meanscoil an Leith-Triuigh to serve the northern half of the Dingle peninsula.
On retiring from teaching in 1993, she helped to organise the centenary commemoration of the wreck of the Port Yarrock, in January 1994. Among those who attended was a niece of Philip Baines.
Mrs Mulcahy's book includes photographs of some of the key figures and extracts from their letters, while an oil painting by Jack B. Yeats of the obelisk erected to the memory of the crew by their families is also reproduced.
It includes an account of the salvage of the copper ore, attempted by several but carried out with most success by the Cobh salvor, Henry Ensor.