The story below is a first hand account of how Tosh Lavery, a diver with the Garda Sub-Aqua Unit, discovered the body of Ted Carbery, Skipper of the Carraig Una trawler.
This is from Tosh’s book titled ‘Tosh – An amazing true story of life, death, danger and drama in the Garda Sub-Aqua Unit’ and is available in book shops and online. Here is a link to the Tosh’s book on Amazon.
The moment that Tosh describes in the story, where he surfaces with the body can actually be seen in the video, Lost at Sea, which is on this website.

Unfortunately only two bodies were ever found.  John Boyle’s was the second, and final, body to be recovered; almost 6 weeks after the tragedy.

“Johnny Mc Callig skipper of the 75ft trawler ‘Marie Angelique’ was in Donegal Bay on the 7th January 1977 searching for a net that he lost, one of his crew the late Conal Ban Gallagher RIP was on the deck & saw something floating in the distance, so they steamed towards it, they saw it was a body but their boat was too high to try to take it on board as they were afraid that the body could break so Johnny called the late Patsy Gallagher RIP Skipper of the 65ft ‘Loradon’ on the radio to steam to the location. The body had been floating and disappearing in the heavy swell, when the ‘Loradon’ came alongside the sea settled and the crew were able to lift the body on board on a blanket. The body was brought to Bruach Na Mara, Killybegs where the late Pa Sonny Boyle RIP identified it from dental records as his only son John Boyle RIP. The family were very thankful that after 45 days in the rough seas that John’s body was recovered and they had a grave to visit in the family plot in ‘Cille Bride’ Cemetery on Cruit Island.” – Ann Marie Carbery

The images below show some of the efforts of the divers, army, navy, air corps and local volunteers who searched for weeks to try to recover the bodies. These are taken from the video, Lost at Sea, which is on this website. More can be seen in the gallery page.