The cruel sea, that yesterday claimed another five Donegal fishermen, last night kept its secret of what happened yesterday morning in the calm waters off rugged Rathlin O’Beirne island.
The hull of the trawler Carraig Una was found on the wreckage-strewn shores but of the bodies of her crew there was no trace.
The five men that lost their lives in an almost identical repeat of the tragedy of January 1975, when the six-man crew of the Evelyn Marie drowned in an unsolved mystery wreck on the treacherous reef off the island.
Skipper of the Carraig Una, Ted Carbery (27), was married with a son and another child on the way. He lived in Burtonport. So did John Boyle (18), Doalty O’Donnell (23), and Michael Coyle (22), all single. The fifth man, Anthony McLaughlin (19), came from Malin Head, Co. Donegal.
It is understood that the Carraig Una skipper made contact with the Onedin trawler after his vessel had struck rocks minutes before 4 a.m. Distress flares were sent up–but it is not known which vessel fired these–and at 4.05 a.m. the Onedin skipper, Liam Duffy from Dungloe, flashed a warning message to the Malin Head Coast Life Saving Station in Donegal.
An official at the station said: “The message we got was that the Carraig Una was on the rocks on Rathlin O’Beirne. The Aranmore lifeboat was immediately launched”.
Two helicopters from the army base at Finner in Donegal were sent out and searched until dark over a wide area. Some 30 trawlers from ports on the Donegal coast sped to the island which can be seen clearly from the coast at Malin Mor.
The Garda Sub Aqua Club, which helped in the desperate search for the Evelyn Marie in January, 1975, also went to the scene of yesterday’s tragedy. The Carraig Una weighed 26 tons nett and 48 gross. She was built in Killybegs and launched in the port in 1963.
A full survey of Irish offshore waters was called for last night after the loss of the trawler. Mr. John Hughes, of the Maritime Institute of Ireland, claimed that nothing had been done to map the reefs, mudbanks and sandbanks that were an ever-present danger to the country’s fishermen.
He said the last survey of Ireland’s coastal waters had been made by the British Admiralty before the close of the century–and he called for an up-to-date survey.
From a newspaper article titled “The Cruel Sea” by Kevin Moore in Burtonport. Newspaper unknown.