Why did an experienced trawler crew lose their lives off a coastline they knew so well, asks Lorna Siggins, Marine Correspondent
A south-westerly force eight to nine gale was forecast, and the crew of the trawler Josie Connolly (66), Michael Faherty (41) and Michael Mullin (18) – knew it wouldn’t be pleasant, but skipper John Dirrane was under pressure to take advantage of a spring tide and move his 30-year-old vessel after the hull had been caulked in Connolly’s boatyard.
As one of Dirrane’s colleagues put it, "no one likes to be neaped in those small harbours, and John Dirrane might have had to wait two weeks, with lost fishing time, if he hadn’t gone when he did".
At around 7 p.m. last Friday, the Oliver Roundstone, Co Galway, to make the 20-mile journey to the fishing harbour of Rossaveal. When, two hours later, the vessel struck a reef near Duck Island off the west Connemara coastline, her crew clearly had no time to take to a life raft or even to send out aMayday on VHF radio.
The boat was lost with all four crew. Dirrane, in his late 30s, from Fearann an Choirce, and Faherty, from Eochaill, both on the Aran island of Inis Mór, were more than crewmates. They were close
friends who had fished together before Faherty had acquired his own vessel, Ready for larger white-fish vessels, and both men had opted to settle with their spouses in Inverin, east of Rossaveal on the Cois Fharraige road linking Galway city to south Connemara.
Tragically, Dirrane and his wife, Una, had lost one of their four children to a brain tumour several years ago. Deirdre Dirrane’s grave lies close to the plot at Knock, Inverin, where Faherty was buried this week, and her anniversary is this weekend.
Faherty’s wife, Carmel, is expecting their first child. At her husband’s funeral, she appealed for fishermen to wear lifejackets when going to sea; currently, lifejackets must be worn while working on deck. However, several of those involved in the that life-jackets may have not have helped to save the men in the sea around the reef that night.
Josie Connolly, the oldest crew member on board, was a highly experienced boat-builder and sailor and a former chair of the Galway Hooker Association. He and his wife, Eileen, married
only a few years ago. Connolly had run a successful scheme for young shipwrights, was a musician and photographer, and would have been most familiar with the route the vessel took to Rossaveal.
Michael Mullin, the youngest on board, was from Ballynew, near Cleggan, and had studied fishing and worked on vessels out of Rossaveal. In spite of a near miss some years before, he had hoped to pursue a career at sea.
It isn’t the most attractive career option, in spite of the technology which has revolutionised navigation, vessel design, fish-catching techniques and safety. High fuel prices, unpredictable markets, weather factors and a highly politicised, bureaucratic and inequitable EU management system have made it all but impossible for the average skipper to run a business and find crew – and many now depend on foreign nationals.
A stock monitoring system, which can result in detention, court appearances and lost fishing time, is regarded as one of the most penal in Europe. Crude new control measures, such as "days at sea", a method which could only have been devised by an official in a warm, environmentally controlled office, had a devastating impact on the north Co Donegal port of Greencastle when first introduced several years ago. It is feared it is only a matter of time before the "days at sea" measure is extended around the coast.
Most fishermen recognise that overfishing is an issue, and their representatives have argued long and hard for better policies on discards and closed areas, more research into factors such as climate change, and a more equitable monitoring and control system. There is also a strong perception within the industry, articulated by Lorcan Ó Cinneide of the Irish Fish Producers Organisation (IFPO) at an EU conference in Co Louth earlier this year, that well-meaning environmental lobbies have been hijacked by global business interests. The result, it is said, has been the loss of a valuable tuna fishery in the south-west ports of Castletownbere, Co Cork, and Dingle, Co Kerry.
Dingle fishing bears all the hallmarks of an industry in crisis, with most of the working vessels using its quay now of Spanish origin. Irish, British and French fishing organisations have been drawing up alternative management proposals on a transnational level, and there is also a hope
that the new regional advisory councils promised by the EU may offer stakeholders a voice.
John Dirrane, described as a "real go-getter" by an industry colleague, may not have been thinking of any of these matters as he set off for Rossaveal last Friday night. Yet, like most of his colleagues, his job would have involved dealing with increasingly hostile business environments both at sea and on shore.
St Oliver – St set out from Leitir Ard, south of Be . Inis Mór has no suitable harbour St Oliver rescue efforts acknowledge
WHAT HAPPENED TO from a unique event. Four years ago next week, another vessel was grounded on the Skerd Rocks, just several miles west of Duck Island.
"In between the waves, I tried to look up, calm down and organise myself," Galician fisherman Ricardo Arias Garcia recalled. "I saw another big wave coming. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When that wave had passed, I felt rocks beneath me. I dragged myself up along the rocks. I looked up and I saw the light of the helicopter."
The young man was in underpants and T-shirt – the clothes he would have been wearing in his bunk – when the Irish Coast Guard helicopter spotted him. Garcia was clinging to a rock in pitch darkness, waves pounding behind him on the hull of his fishing boat. However, unlike Dirrane and his colleagues, and the rest of his own crewmates, Garcia had luck on his side. He was the only one of the 13-strong crew on the British-registered Spanish vessel Disaster, then, is not rare on this treacherous part of the Connemara coast, known locally as "the jungle" for the number of reefs and rocks marked on its section of the Admiralty chart. The Skerds themselves inspired the song the St Oliver was far Arosa to survive.
Amhrán Bréagach Spanish Armada graveyards of 1588. Ironically, Garcia had refused to put on
a life-jacket – he was afraid that the bulky buoyancy aid might choke him in the water. His boat wasn’t equipped with survival suits or the waistcoat-style lifejackets that allow fishermen to work on deck; and the life raft inflated by his three African crewmates proved impossible to launch.
What then happened to the the boat named after the Irish saint and built in a BIM boatyard in Dingle in 1975? If there had been an engine failure near the rocks, the crew might have had time to issue a Mayday, and then to don survival gear and launch the life raft if the anchor wasn’t going to hold. A complete power blackout might have prevented this. The low-lying reef off Duck Island,
south of Mweenish Island, near Carna, might not have shown up on the radar.
The shelter-deck fitted to the 30-year-old boat might have partially obscured vision.
When the emergency position indicating radio beacon (EPIRB) began transmitting its signal, there was a 15-minute delay as two conflicting positions were being issued. This "echo" can often occur, before a second "pass" of the satellite confirms a position. The signal was picked up by RAF Kinloss in Scotland and relayed to Valentia Coast Guard, which contacted the rescue services. When the Shannonbased Irish Coast Guard Sikorsky helicopter located the vessel on rocks, it had already snapped in two, the bow broken by the force of its engines crashing into the reef.
FOR THE ARAN on this coastline, it was a particularly grim mission. Michael Faherty, whose body was recovered first in the early hours of Saturday morning, was a first cousin of John O’Donnell, the lifeboat’s coxswain, and was also related to Johnny Mulkerrins, its mechanic. As dawn approached, the offshore lifeboat crew was joined by the Costello Bay and Cleggan Coast Guard units, the Clifden in-shore lifeboat and the Air Corps Dauphin helicopter from Sligo. The bodies of Josie Connolly and Michael Mullin were found on the shore, even as fish-boxes and other gear from the vessel were swept up in the gales on Mweenish Island.
In continued gales and rain, hundreds of people turned out to help to look for the body of John Dirrane. The Naval Service and Garda divers were called in, and Mick McGarry, head of Malin Coast Guard, worked tirelessly with Sgt Kieran Fitzpatrick of Carna to co-ordinate the search.
Islanders from Aran took the ferry daily to Rossaveal to assist, while the Aran Coast Guard unit monitored Inis Mór’s northern shoreline. Father Peadar Ó Conghaile, of Carna, who held a special memorial mass for all four men on Monday night, said the people of Mweenish would give free bed and breakfast to the Aran islanders. It was one of many gestures of kindness during an exhausting week broken only by the funerals of the three men recovered.
There was a small glimmer of hope when Morse, an 11-year-old collie, and handler Henry Smith, from the Search and Rescue Dog Association, were flown out to the wreck by the Dublin Sikorsky helicopter. Cutting equipment was used to check out the scents picked up by the animal, while commercial divers continued to search the area – but to no avail.
Then, yesterday, Dirrane’s body was finally recovered off Duck Island. As the search concluded, thoughts turned also to the fate of the years ago and the 12 men who were lost. Nine of those 12 have been buried, but the bodies of the three Africans – one from Ghana, two from Sao Tomé – who tried to launch their life raft were never recovered. The next of kin of the men from Sao Tomé were never traced.