An Irishwoman's Diary

Probability theorists tend to be dismissive about the concept of coincidence

Probability theorists tend to be dismissive about the concept of coincidence. A notion, they sigh, just that - citing endless impossibilities to prove it. Take lottery numbers for instance, and the widely held belief that a careful elimination of previously successful combinations should yield winning results.

But lottery machines have no memory, random events are not evenly distributed and it is all down to "sample space" and "statistical clumps", the theorists argue.

But to apply some of these logical, mathematical theories to particular human situations, and it can leave one doubting, questioning. and slightly cold. In June 1985, for instance, a small lobster boat named The Pride of Bantry sank near the Saltee islands and its skipper died. His name was Patrick Coady, and his body wasn't found for 29 days.

Almost 21 years later, his son Steve was buried alongside his father in Rathdangan, Co Wexford. Steve had drowned also, having fallen between boat and pier in the Cornish port of Newlyn shortly after returning from a 10-day beam trawling trip.

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At his funeral, Steve's son Pat put his arm around a close friend and crewmate, John Burrell. "At least I won't go that way," he said. But Pat Coady, grandson of Patrick, son of Steve, was to experience two close encounters and a fatal third.

Like his father and grandfather, he had taken up fishing. On one trip, his boat sprang a leak as he was heading out from Kilmore Quay. A subsequent newspaper report on the rescue praised his actions, when he and his three crew mates made it in a liferaft to shore.

The second occasion was when he fell overboard in the middle of the night during a herring trip. One of his mates threw him a life-ring attached to a rope. Coady went under once, then twice. He was close to passing out when he managed to grasp the rope. "But what did he do the following evening?" writes RTÉ journalist Damien Tiernan. "He went straight back out fishing for herrings."

Tiernan, south-east correspondent, was on duty just a year ago, on January 10th, 2007, when Pat Coady went to sea again and didn't come home. Two fishing vessels had left Dunmore East, Co Waterford, taking advantage of a break in the weather after a lean, mean and gale-swept winter when the industry had lost its battle with the Government over stringent new legislation to try to enforce an already unworkable EU Common Fisheries Policy.

One boat was the French-built, 19-metre twin-rig trawler Père Charles, owned by Michael or "Mickey the Winch" Walsh, a respected industry representative. The other was Denis Harding's 25-metre Dutch-built Suzanna G. Much has been said and written about what happened off the south-east coast during that terrible week. However, as Tiernan was to discover afterwards in researching a book on it, Pat Coady wasn't even supposed to have been on board the boat that sank.

He had signed up for Harding's vessel, and spent the first half of the week on it. He switched to the Père Charles early on January 10th, when it transpired that this vessel, skippered by Tomáisín Hennessy, was a man short. Coady had never learned to swim. "If you go down out there," he told his mother, "you might as well not be able. It's not much good to you."

Tiernan reported extensively for several weeks on the search for Coady and his crewmates Tomáisín Hennessy, Tomáisín's uncle, Pat, Billy O'Connor and Ukrainian colleague Andrey Dyrin. He was just about to go on air on January 11th, the day after the Père Charles's disappearance, and was broadcasting from the steps of the Dunmore East Fishermen's Co-operative, when word came through that the Irish Coast Guard was searching for another vessel.

As with the Père Charles, no mayday alert had been reported, but the 22-metre wooden Honeydew II, skippered by Ger Bohan, was overdue in port in Kinsale. The Irish Coast Guard's Sikorsky helicopter, Rescue 117, had barely landed at Waterford after hours of searching for the Père Charles when it was airborne again.

By this time, two Lithuanians, Viktor Losev and Vladimir Kostvr, were applying the best of their army survival skills to their plight as they tried desperately to stay warm in a liferaft with a couple of plastic bags on head and feet. Their two fellow crew, Ger Bohan and Tomasz Jagly from Poland, were still on the Honeydew II when the hull, caught in a force 10 gale, was hit by a wall of water. The time Viktor Losev saw his skipper, he was in the wheelhouse, issuing the emergency alert on the VHF radio.

When Losev and Kostvr heard the helicopter, it flew over them, heading for the last known position of their vessel. They fired a flare, to no avail. Or was it? Irish Coast Guard winchman Neville Murphy was standing at the cockpit door of his aircraft, talking to his two pilots over the intercom. As he told Tiernan later, he had no reason to look behind, as it was totally dark. But he did, and spotted the red flash. "Lucky" is a word rescue men don't use lightly, Tiernan writes.

Tiernan records several more chance events, but also much heartbreak experienced by the families of those who are still grieving long after the RTÉ cameras have gone. He went to sea himself with Denis Harding to try to understand the motivations of those involved in a most dangerous occupation, one which sustains isolated communities but is no longer in favour with government.

A year and two salvage operations later, the bodies of seven fishermen have still not been found and the families of seven men experience the pain of "a love departed that has no grave".

Souls of the Sea, published by Hodder Headline, is dedicated to fishermen and fisherwomen and their families, and its author has donated a percentage of royalties to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.