A trawler captain drowned after he returned to the wheelhouse of his boat to send a final May Day message, an inquest was told yesterday. Mr Danny "Boy" O'Driscoll (42) of Derrymihane West, Castletownbere, Co Cork drowned when his boat, the Exodus, sank after being hit by a Spanish boat, the Sea Horse, eight miles off Dursey Island in West Cork on March 9th, 1997.
Crewmen Mr Patrick O'Driscoll and Mr Redmond Kelly yesterday told an inquest in Bantry how their captain delayed his escape to send one last May Day call after they had been hit and water was flooding the engine room.
"Danny Boy got down the life raft but he ran back into the wheelhouse to make another May Day call he thought the Spanish were going away," said Mr O'Driscoll. He explained that the Spanish were actually turning their boat.
The collision happened as they were towing their nets off Dursey around 1.40 p.m. Conditions were perfect with excellent visibility. Mr Danny O'Driscoll was in the wheelhouse while he and Mr Kelly were in their bunks.
They felt a bang and came up on deck to discover they had been hit by a much larger steel Spanish boat.
"There was a big gash in our starboard side. Danny said to go up and get the life raft that she was sinking."
They threw down the life raft but Mr O'Driscoll went back to the wheelhouse and was trapped as the boat started to sink.
he was swimming but when the boat went down it sucked him down," he said, adding that Mr O'Driscoll surfaced again but wasn't moving. and Some of the Spanish crew recovered him and brought him aboard the Seahorse.
There was foam coming from his mouth and the Spaniards tried to revive him on board the ship by giving him mouth to mouth resuscitation but without success before he was airlifted by helicopter to Cork University Hospital.
Captain of the Sea Horse, Mr Francisco Cruces Iglesias, told gardai in a statement which was read to the inquest, that he was standing in the bridge when he first spotted the Exodus.
"The two vessels were navigating on parallel courses when suddenly the Sea Horse swung to port - through a breakdown in the steering equipment," said Capt Iglesias. He added that he had been about 0.2 miles or 400 yards from the Exodus. He changed from autopilot to manual when the steering equipment failed and he stopped and went full astern. There wasn't any time to sound a warning horn.
"The collision was inevitable," he said.
"If I hadn't seen the Exodus, it's evident that I would have split her in two," he said, as it was a wooden boat. Mr Patrick O'Driscoll said when he went into the wheelhouse of the Sea Horse to radio for help after they recovered Mr O'Driscoll's body, he noticed its radar was on standby which meant they had no screen to watch for other vessels.
Marine engineer Mr Frank Drummy said he bench tested a relay from the Spanish vessel's steerage in Bantry and found it to be fine. But he couldn't test it in the ship because the controls were damaged when it was being refitted by the ship's engineer.
Irish Naval Officer Lieut Cormac Rynne said it appeared the Spanish ship was navigating solely by GPS an electronic satellite navigation system which doesn't tell where other boats are and which doesn't remove the need for a proper bridge lookout system.
The Exodus was probably doing a maximum of four knots at the time while the Seahorse was doing around 11 knots, which given their respective locations before they became very close, would have given Capt Iglesias two-and-a-half minutes to react.
Lieut Rynne also suggested that had Capt Iglesias turned to his starboard rather than astern, then he might have had a better chance of avoiding the collision.
State Pathologist Dr John Harbison carried out a postmortem on Mr O'Driscoll's body and found foam in his lungs indicating he died from drowning. He found some bruising at the back of his skull which may have rendered him unconscious before he drowned.
The jury returned a verdict that Mr O'Driscoll died from drowning following immersion in sea water after a collision. They also recommended that a proper lookout be kept to avoid further such tragedies.