Saviours on the seas

It was a dreadful event, which struck lifeboat crews right around the coastline. One evening in November 1954, the Dun Laoghaire harbour master, Capt Reginal Kearon, went angling with two friends in a motor launch. Just a few days before, he had taken over the thankless task of secretary of the lifeboat.

The captain was a confident and experienced seaman. Before he left on his trip that day, he took tea with maritime historian, Dr John de Courcy Ireland. "Doc", as he is known, thought he had dissuaded him from going out. Some hours later, Dublin Harbour Office reported a launch in distress two hundred yards from Poolbeg lighthouse. The mechanic who received the details in Dun Laoghaire began hunting for the captain but no one knew where he was. The problem was that that captain had left strict instructions that the lifeboat was not to be launched without his express permission. After 45 minutes, the coxswain fired the maroons on his own initiative, and in 10 minutes the lifeboat, Dunleary II, was on the water. By then it was blowing Force 8 from the south of the station, and Force 9 in the bay.

It was early the following morning when the coxswain spotted the launch. There were unsuccessful attempts to drift a buoy and line down to it, and then it disappeared from view. Messages from shore informed him that the vessel had been seen to capsize. A long search that day yielded nothing.

When it was eventually found, Capt Kearon's body was given one of the largest funerals that Dun Laoghaire has ever known, with "old differences of creed, as always in the face of the sea's indifferent viciousness, completely vanishing", according to Dr Ireland. Recounting the story in his new history of Dublin Bay and its lifeboats, he says that it emerged that a rope had fouled the launch's propeller. A classic accident, and one that shows how one can never take the sea for granted.

The accident had a profound impact on Dr Ireland's life for several reasons. During a long meeting - at which the crew was severely censured and kept standing throughout the proceedings - the RNLI inspector, Commander Harvey, said he was considering shutting the Dun Laoghaire station down. Dr Ireland begged him to reconsider. The commander said he would, on one condition: that the "doc" take over the job of honorary secretary. The author agreed to, "thereby greatly altering the rhythm of his life".

As if such voluntary work over almost three decades wasn't enough, Dr Ireland kept meticulous records which serve this history well. He traces the station's progress from the humble start in 1803, through to one of its worst accidents when the vessel and entire crew were lost during a rescue on Christmas Eve, 1895, and up to the arrival of the current 14 metre Trent class Anna Livia. Why is this British-based voluntary institution one of our few all-island bodies? Because British ships continued to carry nearly all Irish trade after 1922, he points out. British ships passed in greater numbers than those of any other nation along this coast, and it was in that state's interest to maintain "good lighting" and a good rescue service.

At a time when satellite positioning can give a fix at sea within seconds, his account of life without a telephone is a salutary reminder of how difficult the job was back then. Although an ordinary telephone was installed in the station in 1959, Post Office regulations precluded them from having a radio telephone for communication at sea. Eventually, one was installed and used clandestinely for several months. But for a quarter of a century, the secretary had to rely heavily on the keeper at Baily lighthouse for information on the lifeboat - usually out in dreadful conditions - in the bay.

Those keepers have now gone with lighthouse automation, and the human eye - so vital for immediate information - is no longer there to assist. New technology does not always have its advantages, he reminds us, although he welcomes recent initiatives such as the reorganisation of the Irish Marine Emergency Service, initiated by Capt Peter Brown and continued with vigour by Capt Liam Kirwan.

Dr Ireland supervised 271 launchings in his time, and served laterally as president of the Dun Laoghaire RNLI branch. His praise is reserved for those many volunteers - "heroes who never seek glory", as local TD, Eamon Gilmore, says in his introduction. Although he has an armful of histories already behind him, luckily for us he has little interest in taking a rest.

Lorna Siggins is marine correspondent of The Irish Times

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