Cork’s coastal communities no strangers to maritime tragedy

Coastal communities along the west Cork shoreline are no strangers to tragedy. Search and rescue volunteers regularly step in to avert accidental drownings but the sea, as Baltimore RNLI's Kieran Cotter said on Wednesday, "can be very false".

At high tide in Baltimore during an evening stroll on Tuesday, Niamh O’Connor was knocked into the sea by the deceptive force of a wave. Her boyfriend and his father entered the water to save her. Conditions were misty and overcast.

It was during another family outing on a summers evening that teacher and poet John O’Leary (58) died despite his son Christopher’s best efforts to save him following an incident off the Beara Peninsula on August 14th last year.

Dinghy capsized

Mr O’Leary had moved to west Cork from Boston. The pair were thrown into the water after their sailing dinghy capsized. The teenager made it to shore to raise the alarm. Mr O’Leary’s body was later recovered from the sea.

Just 24 hours earlier, on another evening expedition amid “gusty but good sailing conditions” retired schoolmaster and safety conscious sailor Dougas Perrin (66) lost his life. His 24ft sailboat, the Zillah, capsized outside Schull Harbour on August 13th 2014. The former public school master from Oxfordshire, who had retired to live near Goleen, brought two friends out on a short sailing trip that turned to disaster. Marian Brown from Oxford and Patrick Anwyl, from London spent the night on an uninhabited island where they were spotted by the Schull Inshore Lifeboat crew the following morning. Mr Perrin’s body was later found drifting 200m off Sherkin Island.

The previous month, on July 2nd 2014, two divers died of complications resulting from a 44m dive to a WWII submarine off the west Cork coast. The pair, Stephen Clarke (65) from Broadwood Cottages, Vickerage Lane in Surrey and Jonathan Scott (61) from Peters Place, Morley, Perth, Australia were on a week-long diving holiday.

Experienced divers

Both experienced divers, they had completed a series of dives around the west Cork coast while building up to the pinnacle dive of their trip, a German U-boat U260 4km off Union Hall. The submarine was shot at by the RAF in 1945, abandoned by it's crew and is now a popular dive site attracting up to 200 divers annually.

Mr Clarke was found floating horizontally while Scott’s body was recovered from the sea bed following a dive search.

They died from drowning complicated by the effects of ‘the bends.’

In February 2014, amid powerful winter storms off the Cork coast, two Dutch tourists were swept into the sea at Eskraha on the Sheep’s Head Peninsula.

The body of Othman Rathmouni (33), from Amsterdam was winched from a a dangerous blowhole located 300m from the holiday home in which he was staying at Eskraha on February 10th.

He was guest of Roland Dekkers, a regular visitor to the region, who is believed to have been lost in similar circumstances but whose body has never been recovered. It's believed the two were swept into the sea as they walked along the coastline as windspeeds reached Force 11 and waves battered the coastline.

Summer heatwave

A number of others drowned across the State during a heatwave in 2013. Michael Power (21), from Eyeries on the Beara Peninsula was among those who lost their lives. He was reported missing on Sunday July 21st and his body was discovered at 3pm the following day about 2km off shore near Travarra, a small bay on the north shore of the peninsula.

But perhaps the most high profile sea tragedy in west Cork in recent years was the sinking of the Tit Bonhomme in Glandore Harbour on January 15th 2012. The loss of five of the six fishermen on board triggered a huge and long running search and rescue effort.

Skipper Michael Hayes (52), from Co Waterford, and four crew lost their lives when the 21-metre vessel went down in heavy seas after striking rocks at Adam Island.

The sole survivor, Egyptian fisherman Abdelbaky Mohamed swam to shore before he was airlifted to safety.

After a 26 day search, the bodies of Mr Hayes, Kevin Kershaw (21), from Clonakilty,Co Cork, and Egyptian crewmen Wael Mohamad (35), Attaia Shaban (26), and Said Mohamed (22), were finally recovered from within the bay.

On a visit to Union Hall some months later, President Michael D Higgins praised the local community for their efforts in the unprecedented 26-day recovery operation.