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‘Doc On 1’ with Michael Gannon. Broadcast Friday the 13th Of September 2024 https://www.connemarafm.com/audio-page/
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‘Doc On 1’ with Michael Gannon. Broadcast Friday the 13th Of September 2024 https://www.connemarafm.com/audio-page/
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‘Doc On 1’ with Michael Gannon. Broadcast Friday the 13th Of September 2024 https://www.connemarafm.com/audio-page/
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In this radio broadcast, the presenter introduces a documentary about a boat called Sky Hope that got stuck in the village of Bailinanall in 1977. The boat was initially hailed as a hero for rescuing a smaller boat, but then became stranded. The crew had a fun time while waiting for help, but the situation turned tragic with the death of one crew member. The documentary includes interviews with local fishermen and descendants of those involved. The presenter also mentions that the radio station is located near the pier where the boat was stranded. The documentary explores the events and their impact on the community. Mharae! Mharae! Welcome to this afternoon's broadcasting here on Connemara Community Radio, 106.1 FM and 87.8 FM and of course online all over the world. My name is Michael Gannon and I'm here now to introduce to you our weekly DocOn1. We're back to the DocOn1 series or the documentary series for this winter. We'll be bringing you programmes from the RTE Archive and from various other sources, other radio stations, other podcasters from Ireland and indeed from abroad. Today we're going south. We're going to the Cerraig Gaeltacht, to Bailinanall actually, the very village where the studio of Radio Na Gaeltacht down south is based, Bailinanall, west of Dingle there on the Cork Green Peninsula. This is a documentary made just last year, 2023, by RTE, by the great documentary maker Roman Kelly. But it goes back to the events of 1977. In 1977, a boat, a big boat, a big boat called Sky Hope pulled into Bailinanall there. It actually started off by rescuing a small boat that had drifted out to sea. There was no one in it at the time but a local fishing boat. It rescued that boat and as a result of that the local men in West Kerry there, Pineman there, they invited the captain and that crew. They said, well if you're passing Bailinanall, come in. And a few days later they did that and they came in. They came in a bit too far, to be honest, because the Bailinanall pier is not built for these very large boats. And they went to ground there. And the story of what happened over the next week or two weeks is, first of all, quite a humorous one. They had a great time, the crew on board, while they were waiting to be helped and rescued and to be set out to sea again. A tugboat came across from Wales to engage in that work. But then, sadly, very sadly, the whole affair turned into a disaster really and resulted in a mysterious death of one of the crew of the Sky Hope. This is the story itself. It's told by, you'll recognise probably the narrator's voice, it's Sinéad Ní Uldacháin, a very well-known presenter on TG Cachal and Braidon a Gairdbucha and RTE1. And most of the story is told by local fishermen from West Kerry who were closely involved with the Sky Hope at the time. Also, we have the Welshmen, the Welshmen who came across from Holyhead, very experienced sailors and dockers to try and release, get the Sky Hope out to sea again. And then, finally, also some of the descendants of some of the people involved, because it does go back to 1977. It's a fascinating documentary, beautifully made, and a very sad story, but a story that is worth telling. And for us here in the documentary hour, I think we have a great draw for stories to do with the sea very naturally. Oh yes, and if she's got time today, Bal na nGáil, we'll go down to Bal na nGáil, or Bally David, as it's known in the English language, to this documentary on the Sky Hope. It's the middle of Storm Agnes. Early October 2023. And this is the pier at the village of Bal na nGáil, or Bally David, on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry. Despite the high winds and rough water, a group of women are having their morning swim. This isn't the first bit of craziness to happen here. Back in the late 70s, just where the women are swimming, a huge ship called Sky Hope tied up here. It became known as a thirsty ship, and into the pier here it brought fun and tragedy. In spite of that, Sky Hope has been forgotten about by many people locally. Although not at a building a short walk up from the pier, these are the local studios for the Irish language radio station Radio na Gaeilteachta. This morning, the newsreader is reading out the orange weather warning for Storm Agnes. While the radio station manager, Daro Cinnéide, has taken out the logbook for 1977. And if you look at October 1977... He's going through it, looking at the news of the time. And sure enough, there's a mention of Sky Hope. And a little note at the end of the page on October 1977. Máirú ar an mádh an Sky Hope. A killing on the boat, Sky Hope. Everything went wrong that could possibly go wrong. There was somebody attacked. I was eight months pregnant, and I was terrified. It was a comedy of errors. Which it was a comedy into... There was a tragedy. The form the window was in, because there was loss of life. The whole affair started, simply enough, one night on the first weekend of October 1977. The village of Ballinall is inside a large bay with a relatively narrow opening. Beyond that is the Atlantic Ocean. This night, a small fishing boat was tied up. Its crew had gone home for the evening. During the night, however, the boat broke its mooring and drifted out through the opening of the bay and out to sea. Christ Almighty, I'll tell you now. Paddy Mahony owned the boat, and he got a call in the morning from the service that monitors emergency radio channels, Valencia Radio. And they said the boat was being picked up by a ship that was going into Limerick. But there were no survivors. So I told him not to worry about the survivors. The survivors were in bed for themselves, fast asleep. The ship that picked up Paddy's boat was the Skyhope. A large cargo ship, about ten times as big as Paddy's fishing boat, which it had towed behind it. It was registered in Cyprus with a crew of over 20 from around the world. Two men on the crew who would make headlines two weeks later were Mohammed and Jose. Mohammed was an Egyptian war veteran who had fought in the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. Jose was a married man from Chile. Valencia Radio had one other piece of information for Paddy about the Skyhope. They said that the captain anyway wanted us to buy the boat back off him. The Skyhope captain was a 22-year-old Englishman, Dave Potter. And when Paddy and his crew drove up to Limerick to retrieve their boat and they got to meet him, they got a surprise. He had earrings and long hair and tattoos. You'd never take him as a captain. This is Tom Curran, one of the fishermen who worked with Paddy. Paddy said, how much am I going to give you for the rescue of the boat? And he said, I don't want anything. He said, give £50 to the crew because I had to go in and bail her out and stuff like that. So he did. Once the money was handed over, the Skyhope captain opened his drinks cabinet for the visiting Kerry men. And we had a great night on board. We had drinks and what have you. In the course of conversation, Dave Potter mentioned that Skyhope, when it left Limerick, was on its way south, back to Britain. The Kerry men then said that Skyhope would actually be passing their village. One of them said, when you're going back, call in, we'll have a drink. I didn't expect that he would. But he did. Because a few days later, a local fisherman, Sean E. Mac Owen, was out in his boat. And I saw the ship. It was the Skyhope. But shortly afterwards, I saw another boat going back and having a conversation with him. Tom Curran was one of those having the conversation with the Skyhope. We went aboard and over there, and they said, is there a pier? And I said, there is, yeah, but I don't think he was fit. This was hardly just enough for our small little boat, you know, that's all. Tom soon realised his job was to persuade the captain, Dave Potter, that Skyhope was too big for their little village pier. He failed. That will fit alright, he said. The local boats, like Sean E. and Tom's, were just over 20 feet long. This ship was over 200 foot long. And the next thing, the Skyhope decided to come across, stopped outside the pier. This pier was an old pier, just used by local fishing boats. Only about 150 feet long. So, not long enough for the Skyhope. Not only that, the Skyhope was much higher than the pier too. Padraig Frank remembers seeing the ship's size in relation to the streetlights running along the pier. The bow was as high as it was for the lights. Padraig Frank was a teenager back in 1977. Excited to see this huge ship come into the local pier, and eager to help tie it up. But he and his friend nearly got injured by doing that. That actually now is the ring that was pulled off. He's looking at a photo from the time, and at one of the big mooring rings for fishing boats to tie up to. What happened was that, as the Skyhope approached the pier, it crewed through a rope to the two boys standing there. They pulled the rope just a bit, but the rope threw up the big ring. But the ship was so big, and the wind was catching it, the rope strained and pulled hard on the heavy iron ring. And then we had to run, because the ring started stretching. And it just went... It broke like... Broke back into the water like... But although the mooring line had broken free, the Skyhope didn't go very far. The pier here is tidal, and there wasn't enough water for the Skyhope to float away. She stuck and hit the bottom like a stucco. Literally, she was longer than the pier. Her stern was halfway out, and her bow was literally coming in the door here to Rita Begley's pub. That's a massive big bow. And she was there for a few days. The Skyhope captain, Dave Potter, said they needed fresh water, and he got a lift into the nearest town, where he bought 100 foot of hosepipe, which was attached to a local tap to fill Skyhope's tanks. Then, when that was done, various efforts were made to refloat the ship. There were two tractors anyway. There was a pulley blocked down on the pier in high water, so they didn't even budge or anything. There were only two small local tractors. Then they decided to use Skyhope's own anchor to pull it off the seabed. Then they put an anchor with a local boat. The local boat dropped Skyhope's anchor out in the bay. Out from the pier. And then Skyhope's crew started its winch. To drag her off. This was to wind in the anchor chain and try to pull the ship off the sand. That worked. They managed to pull Skyhope away from the pier and started the propeller. But then the Skyhope crew let one of its ropes catch in its propeller, and it damaged it. And Skyhope lost power. And it began to drift. But this time, not onto the sandy beach at the pier. She went all the way back over there onto the rocks. And she broke the rudder and did a lot of other damage as well. Skyhope was stranded. Seanine McGoran remembers the reaction of the local fishermen. God almighty, what the hell is going on here? Who's in charge of it? The man in charge was the man with the long hair, tattoos and earrings. Skyhope's captain, Dave Potter. Captain Potter appeared to us to be as mad as a hatter. She was foolstering around the place running up and down. He seemed to be an Irish. I mean, if you would look at it, he was right in the head. He seemed to be oblivious to the dangers, to whatever. I mean, we were all born to respect the sea and to mind our boats and to mind whatever craft we had, which the man didn't give a care. Captain Potter may not have seemed to be a great sea captain, but he did seem to be a great host. And while it was stuck on the rocks, Skyhope's became a great party ship. We used to do a lot of drinking. We ate a lot of peas and cider at my time, so it was fun. Tom Curran really enjoyed the Skyhope's cruise company, but what he had gone to sea with them. No way, there was a bunch of... The Skyhope didn't just host locals on board. The locals returned the hospitality in the Kew Village pub, which were doing a roaring trade. There was cars every day coming to see the boat, you know. I mean, you must imagine, most of the people had never seen a ship. So all the older generation came to have a look at this monstrosity that was down the pier. And, of course, they all ended up having their stories and telling them what they thought of it inside the local pub. And in the pubs, too, were members of the Skyhope's crew. Exotic-looking men from places like South America, Africa and the Philippines. God, they all liked him to see those fellas at the pub. We weren't that used to foreign people at the time. And the music, God, it was a crutch that used to be going on. And we had failure with the amount of people. The village was strong with cars, pure with strong good people, day and night. They'd try and meet the crew. They had their good old time while it lasted. Until a tug came along from Hollyhead. This is Hollyhead in Wales, known for ferries to and from Ireland. Also home to Hollyhead Towing Company, which in 1977 had three young sailors working for it. My name is Patrick Pritchett, engineer. Roger Jones, I was one of the trainee seamen. John Griffith, deckhand. Six days after the Skyhope had beached at the pier, Roger, John and Patrick arrived into the bay and anchored offshore. They were on a specialist salvage ship with proper equipment and powerful enough to pull Skyhope off the rocks. We pulled him off, anchored him in the bay. The plan was to bring Skyhope around to a shipyard in Cork Harbour, but the weather was too bad to leave the bay and go out into the Atlantic. So the two ships remained anchored and tied to each other. In the meantime, the Skyhope captain, Dave Potter, came aboard the Welsh salvage ship. He came aboard for a beer, and I can remember I have a photograph taken of our cook, Medwin Jones, looking aghast at this man. The reason the Welsh men were aghast was because this captain's ship had gone aground not once, but twice. And the second time, he'd damaged his propeller and broken off his rudder, thereby disabling Skyhope. And yet, Dave Potter didn't give the impression of being too worried. He was very blase. Didn't think it was a problem. He'd find, you know, there was a solution. One solution Captain Potter was looking for was to the problem of salvage payments. The last thing a sea captain wants, other than shipwreck, is to be salvaged. His company was now going to have to pay the Welsh men, and his company's insurance premiums were going to go up too. So his solution to this particular problem was to get away from the Welsh salvage vessel. He told his crew to cast off the line tying Skyhope to the Welsh ship. He's going to head out to sea under his own steam. The Welsh men were stunned. The Skyhope didn't stand a chance at sea. With no rudder, and one anchor, and a damaged propeller, so they wouldn't have got far. They should have probably ended up on the rocks anyway. The Welsh ship found out what was happening, and reattached the towline more securely. There was no way it could go anywhere. And the two ships continued to sit, tied together, out in the bay, waiting for the weather to improve. Of course, that meant that for the crew of Skyhope, the party wasn't over, and they continued to go in and out of the pubs in the village. Except for Mohamed, the Egyptian. He stayed on board the ship. Perhaps as a Muslim, he didn't drink, although he also had mental troubles. It was said that after fighting in the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, he was suffering from PTSD. One of those who did visit the pubs was the Chilean, Jose. The locals recall him as being very young-looking, but he was in fact 36. This all went on for several days, the Welsh men waiting for the weather to lift, the Skyhope men in and out to the pubs. Then on the night of October 14th, 1977, things became crazy. The Welsh men on their ships became aware that the Skyhope crew was rowdy. Flares were being fired, lights were being flashed, they were singing on the radio, playing music on the VHF. The emergency monitoring service at Valencia told Skyhope to stop playing music on the marine distress channels. But they didn't. There was clearly a party going on. By 2am, the Skyhope party had turned sour. The music on the distress channels had stopped and was replaced with screams. From what we could gather, was that there had been a fight aboard. Then, someone came on the radio asking for help, saying that a man had been murdered on Skyhope. The Welsh men launched their lifeboats and went over to the Skyhope. They climbed up on board Skyhope. When they got on deck, they were met with a drunken, hysterical group, who rushed them into the ship's canteen. And there'd been a little bit of trouble. I've learned it mildly. Roger was just 20, and this was his first trip. What he was about to see was something a more experienced sailor might not witness in a lifetime at sea. The accommodation looked like a butcher shop. The first thing they noticed was the blood. Yeah, it was a bit of a bloodbath. In the canteen, there were two men at the table. Mohamed, the Egyptian war veteran, and Jose, the married man from Chile. Mohamed was tied to the table. He'd flipped his lid, for want of a better word. And he'd buried a meat cleaver in the cook's head. Jose was sitting there, quietly, holding a tea towel to the top of his head. He was bleeding profusely, as you can imagine. Very, very dazed and not with it. He did try saying something to me in his own language, which I didn't understand. But the only phrase he said in English was, I forgive him. One of the Welsh men went over and lifted the tea towel. John nearly threw up and said, you need to look at this. Jose's skull was split open. Brain sticking out, everything sticking out. His head was cleaved open, basically. And you could see the brain. And it was bleeding, and we put a tea towel on the end of it. That's all you could do at the time. Someone said there was an argument over a game of cards, and Mohamed had lost it and become violent. There was madness going on everywhere. But this guy was just sitting in the middle, completely calm, with a towel on his head. Clearly, now, I know that was shock. But he was just sitting there, and he just seemed to be, it was almost like he was a central figure in a mad play. Everybody else was going nuts, and he was just sitting quite calmly in the middle. Mohamed, the attacker, had his own injuries. He had a hole from one cheek to the next, where when we spoke to the crew as to how that had happened, one of the crew had seen him hit the guy with the cleaver, had gone outside, just found a crowbar, and just smashed it into his face to try and calm him down. And the crowbar had gone through one cheek and out the other. The man with the crowbar was Captain Dave Potter, but he was now nowhere to be seen. In searching for him, the Welsh men looked into his cabin. His cabin was just unrecognisable. It was just matchwood. Everything was smashed to bits. The Welsh men took a decision to get the injured Jose and his attacker, Mohamed, off Skyhope. Jose to hospital, and Mohamed to the guards. Mohamed, the Egyptian, we released him from the table, by which time he'd calmed down somewhat. They got a stretcher for Mohamed and tied him into it in case he became agitated again. Then they got both of them outside and eased them down into their lifeboat. The lifeboat was more than big enough for the stretcher and the casualties. It was 30 feet long. Anyway, they came down the ladder. There was a mad rush off the deck and these people just started to come down. Some of the Skyhope crew came charging over the side and down into the lifeboat. They weren't going to stay on board Skyhope any more. Originally, it was only supposed to be our boat's crew, which was the five, and there was only supposed to be seven of us in the boat. The Welsh men had no choice. They had to set off for the village with their casualties, but they weren't finished taking on crew from Skyhope. As they went around the front of Skyhope, under the tow rope tying it to their ship, from above them, they heard something. Yelling and screaming, and there was the master. He'd actually run to the bows of the ship and gone over the bow. The Skyhope captain, Dave Potter, was sitting on the tow rope. Like a swing. This fellow started screaming and shouting. We've put a torch up and he's sitting there swinging. So they manoeuvred the lifeboat underneath him. And he dropped into the boat. And the first thing he did when he stood up, he saw Mohammed, who was in the stretcher, unable to move. And he just pounced on him and started pummeling him. And myself and another guy dragged him off. There was chaos on the lifeboat. People were hysterical, still drunk, arguing amongst themselves. The attacker, Mohammed, was now untied from the stretcher. The Skyhope crew were clustered at the front of the lifeboat. And we were in open water with a heavy swell, which unfortunately was right on the nose. Their weight was pushing the front down into the water. That's when she started to take on water. Anyway, the next thing they were filling up with water. And then one big wave hit. And over we went. Eleven people were now in the water. And then John realised that one of his Welsh colleagues couldn't be seen anywhere. Pat was missing. I've got to find Pat. I looked around, there was no signs of any splashes. When the lifeboat turned over, all the others were thrown out into the sea, but it turned over on top of Pat. Because I wasn't quick enough to get out. He was underneath the upturned hull, breathing in a few inches of air trapped under there. It was scary, dark, small pockets of air, you know. And you thought, this is it, you know. John dived down under the boat to get him out. He had his chin in the water breathing, and I said, you know, we've got to get out of here. And he said, no, I'm OK. Pat didn't want to be rescued by John. He thought he was facing death and didn't want to fight it. I thought the boat was going to sink. So I thought, this is it, what's the point, you know, getting out? I thought the boat was full of water. I think, well, this is going to go now, you know, this is the end. John knew that Pat had a wife and small son back in Wales and thought of them as he insisted Pat go with him. And the one who said to him, if you continue to breathe, the water's going to rise, you're going to drown. That's when I grabbed him and we thought, I'll go out straight here. Pat agreed to swim out from under the boat, and he and John clambered up onto the upturned hull. It was October, it was the Atlantic, so it was cold. It was just horrendous. Eventually, everyone was pulled up onto the upside-down lifeboat. Eleven sailors. At the back, John was cradling the Chilean man with a wound in his head. At the other end, the man who made the wound, the agitated Egyptian man, Mohammed. He was sitting crouched down at the front of the upturned lifeboat. In between, everyone else, clinging to a hull that was just four inches high out of the water and being constantly washed away. I'm knocking everybody off. So everybody was getting completely worn out because you had to fight your way to get back on the boat, you know. They had no emergency radio, no flares, They had no emergency radio, no flares, just a torch. The Welshmen colleagues on their ship had no idea where they were in the water. There was a big searchlight, and the bulb had gone, and they didn't have a spare bulb. So we were sure if they had that searchlight, we could have picked us up from the search gate. So we were black. Thankfully, someone from the Welsh ship realised what was going on, and they launched another boat to go and help them. This was a small rubber dinghy with an outboard motor and two men on board. A smaller man standing at the front, and a larger, heavier man at the back, crouched over the outboard engine. So he came alongside us, to save you. Unfortunately, them not knowing the situation, they approached the lifeboat to the bow. On the bow, or front of the upturned lifeboat, was Mohammed, hunkered down. The two men in the rubber rescue boat had no idea about this man that they were approaching. They didn't know that he'd already had a violent outburst and hit one of his shipmates with a neat cleaver. And once the boat was near enough, he literally launched himself at the rubber boat. When he launched himself into the rubber dinghy, Mohammed bumped into the man standing in front, who stumbled backwards, and fell against the man at the back. The man at the back was heavy, and he fell on top of the small outboard motor. His weight pushed it down under the water. And plop! He dunked it, and that killed the engine. With his engine waterlogged, the rubber boat had no power and was carried away by the wind and the waves. We were screaming and shouting, he'll come back, he'll... Now the rescuers were gone, themselves needing rescue. So he was goodbye, and we were still stuck there. Everyone was still clinging to the lifeboat, and Jose, the Chilean man with the open wound in his skull, was lying in John's arms, still holding on to life. My concern for him was that he had the thing on his head and he was going to be weak. So I held him in my arms, just monitoring him, I was talking to him, he wasn't making much sense. It was now a quarter to three in the morning, and there were 13 sailors in danger, either at risk of being blown onto the rocks or out into the Atlantic. The Welsh men's crewmates on their ship didn't have any other small boats to launch, and they were still anchored and tied to Skyho. We sent a message to the emergency services through Valencia Radio, asking for help. That message was relayed to Gord D, who woke Gord at Tim Collins, who lived about 14km away from the village. I was in Dingle, the local guards from Valley Firch were there, and the traffic corps came out from Chile because they had a car full of guards floating around, so they came to the rescue as well. We could see the police cars going up and down, blue lights going up and down the road on the coast, and you're thinking, I wonder what they're doing, you know, as they come in to rescue us. There was a guard of Joe Curran, he was at the scene. The communications were poor at that time, radio communications, they were relying on phone calls. Even with phone calls though, the rescuers on shore were helpless. At the time, the Irish Air Corps didn't have night capability. The Welsh men on the upturned lifeboats though, still had a torch, which they kept on, and pointed towards any potential rescuers. They also talked about how they might save themselves. Roger said, I can swim, he said, to that cliff there. I said, I shouldn't go there if I was you Roger, you'd better stay in one piece on here, if you start swimming you're going to get tired, and usually down on headlands there's a bit tired in the running around. I said, you'd better stay here, so he stayed there, you know. The swell coming into the bay at the time was about a metre and a half, and it was pulling us out, we were heading towards the blasket, and when Roger said he'd swim, if Roger'd gone, he'd have died. It was three hours after the lifeboat first turned over, and even though it was the wrong way up, and had ten people hanging on to the hull, it had drifted over a mile out into the bay. The rubber dinghy, which was lighter, and still right side up, was a mile further out again. It looked like they were both heading out into the open sea. Either onto the flaskets, or we'd have rounded up, and just gone out to the Atlantic, and that's the big ocean, that's a big ocean, yeah. John Griffiths, the young Welsh sailor, had another, more pressing concern on the hull of the boat. He was cradling the injured sailor from Chile, José. John was about to get a life lesson few other 20-year-olds receive. Up to now, José had kept up a constant stream of talk. And then, he just suddenly stopped. John looked to one of the senior Welsh officers, and said, what do I do? And he came, and he felt his neck, looked for a pulse, a length forward, and just said, he's not breathing. And I said, OK, and he said, he's dead. And I said, right. And he said, we're going to have to put the body over the side. And I said, no, you're not, you're not doing it. Because I thought what Alan was going to do was throw the body to one side, and that was it. But what he did was, Alan tied his leg so that the body drifted behind the boat. So I was sat looking at the body of this guy, as he floated there, and it was pretty bad. And I was 20. I just felt lost, really. But also, I remember going through my head and thinking about my mum and my dad, and thinking, you know, all the girlfriends I've had, and thinking, you know, all that's gone now, and I'm going to die. But it was a very calm feeling that I was going to die, because it looked at your situation. You saw the foam breaking on the rocks, which was really quite high. I'm thinking, if we get in amongst that lot, that's it, we're dead. I'm thinking, if we get in amongst that lot, that's it, we're dead. End of. Back on shore, in the absence of the Valencia Lifeboat or Air Corps helicopter, the Gordie decided to get the help of local fishermen. Malcolm Foster and David Stokes, they were two Englishmen, they were fishing out of Bury David. Malcolm Foster's Danish wife, Beerta, remembers the call coming through to them from the guards at 20 to 6 that morning. I was eight months pregnant, and I was terrified that he should go out there, but I understood him. He said, it is my duty to do it. There are people who is needing me out there. There were 13 people out there needed him. So he went up, got some clothes on, and he called David Stokes. Malcolm and David headed down to the pier, and on the way, they met Billy Granville, a hotelier. He'd been woken by the commotion at the pier, and he decided to get up and investigate. All three then got into Malcolm's fishing boat and headed out to try and find the sailors from the Welsh ship and the Skyhope. There's a rock there beyond the mouth of the harbour called the Black Rock. They came across the overturned boat. Over 40 years after the Skyhope disaster, the Welshmen are quite matter-of-fact and factual when they talk about it, until one of them, Roger, takes out a school copybook. It's my diary, which started on the 8th of October 1977. And as he reads about the moment they saw Malcolm Foster's fishing boat coming towards them, he's reminded of how terrified his 20-year-old self had been sitting out in the bay. Sometime later, someone saw another light coming from inside the bay. It's a boat shot at someone, but it did not turn to look because we had seen so many lights, which were shore lights. This time, though, it was a boat, and as he drew clearer, everyone started cheering and shouting. The next thing, the boat was alongside, through the line. After four hours drifting out in the bay, clinging on to the lifeboat, being washed off and clambering on again, and waiting and waiting for help to come, the rescue by the fishermen was swift and brusque. They came up, and the first thing I remember was just getting grabbed from the back of the neck and pulled aboard this fishing boat by these two guys, and they did that with all of us. Hands like shovels, I'm honest to God. Literally, the way he dragged us out of the boat was like pulling salmon out of a net. He just got over the back of your shirt or whatever he could, and whoosh, you were over. And he did that with all of us. The massive bodies all flapping around. Honestly, unbelievable. They saved our lives. Malcolm Foster and his crew lifted Jose's body out of the water and laid it reverentially on the deck of the fishing boat. Then they went farther out and found the other three men in the rubber dinghy, took it in tow, and headed back to the pier. And we reached the pier at Ballydavid about half past eight. We could hardly walk. My legs and feet were numb. Police everywhere. There must have been about 12 policemen down there who were all waiting for us, I think, and they didn't know what was going on, and they were thinking of arresting us all. We were all suspects. The guardie sergeant was named Tim Collins. They were dishevelled and ragged and bearded, and, you know, they were a pretty motley group now. And as far as I can gather, very few had English. So that presented a fierce problem in the investigation. The guards faced confusion. Which of the men were the crew of the Skyhope? Which were the crew of the Welsh ship? Who had hit the Chilean man in the head with a meat cleaver? And who had driven a crowbar through the cheeks of the Egyptian man? There were so many there going and coming, I couldn't differentiate who were the Welsh or who were the foreigners. They were all foreigners for me at the time. Jose and Mohamed were put into an ambulance and the rest of us were taken to Dingle Hospital in the squad cars. And the nearest hospital was run by Catholic sisters. Well, there was nuns there at that time, yes. I think there was a sister of Columba, a very domineering person. She ran the show like a nun, and she ran it her way. In the old days, to restore your blood circulation, they stripped you naked and you'd go from a hot bath into a cold bath and a hot bath. And it was by sisters, and I'm 20 years old, I'm getting handled by two Catholic sisters, and you're getting thrown from one bath. I remember the performance because I refused to get undressed. And the simple reason why was because my grandfather had been at sea all his life, and my mother gave me a pair of ladies' tights. And she said, when you go to work on deck, put these on under your overalls because they surprisingly keep you warm. And, of course, I didn't want to get undressed because I had a pair of ladies' frigging tights on. I still remember to this day, arguing with the nuns about whether to take my trousers off. But I had to in the end. I mean, I couldn't even stand up properly. So they took my trousers off, and I remember a couple of nuns giggling going down the hall, saying, take these tights on. What the hell they thought, I don't know. Meanwhile, back at the village, the locals were catching up on the night's events. I remember the following morning, there were helicopters flying around the place, and squad cars, and what have you. Sean E. MacOwen's fishing boat was engaged by the authorities. They would bring over the Gardaí, and the forensic who came down from Dublin with their briefcases. So there was eight cars of detectives about to cross in my boat, to the Skye Ho, tied up his outer, boarding ladder was set down, and we clambered aboard anyway, and went in to the galley, and all I remember was the galley was full of splatters of blood. There was blood everywhere. Gardaí Joe Kern was one of those assigned to the Skye Ho that day. It was dirty and blood all over the place, and it wasn't a nice place to be at the time anyway. It was at the time that your man was assaulted, and the cause of death wasn't known, so they just preserved the scene. An inquest was about to take place for the death of the Chilean sailor, José. But back in Dingle, at the hospital where the Welshmen were, one of the staff had already decided who had killed the Chilean. She'd been treating the Egyptian sailor, Mohamed, upstairs in a room on his own. She'd seen the wounds from the crowbar in his cheeks, and was aware of his agitated mental state. She came downstairs and burst into the room where the Welshmen were being kept. You're murderous. You're murderous, you lot. I said, well, no, we'll save them. That man up there, he's a gentleman. He's a lovely man. The other fellow with the cleaver, the Egyptian, he's a lovely man. You charmed him, didn't you? Yeah, he was a charmer. He was kept in a separate room from us, so the minister had an inkling he was bad, really. I think the police, I think they had an idea that he was to do with what happened. Or that Tim Collins was part of the investigation into Jose's death. The Egyptian, Mohamed, he found out was Mohamed Goma. I don't get a whole lot of English, actually. The Chilean, he was, you could say, murdered by the Egyptian fella. But at the inquest a few days later, the state pathologist didn't agree. He testified that froth had exuded from Jose's mouth and nose, strong evidence that death was due to drowning. The pathologist went on to say that there was no evidence that the head injury had contributed to his death. The coroner advised the jury to return a verdict of accidental drowning, which they did. I don't know, it's hard to figure it out, like, you know. But it resulted in that there was no prosecution against the Egyptian, and the Egyptian then was finally deported. The Chilean's full name was Jose Manuel Meado Alarcón. His body was taken to Shannon Airport, where a mass was said for him, before it was flown to Valparaiso in Chile, where he had been married with two children. The Welshmen themselves returned home, and after a break from the sea, went back to ships. The crew of the Skyhope dispersed. Captain Dave Potter got himself another ship. My dad sort of carried on being at sea. This is Dave Potter's son, Stephen. He was well known for his work as a captain and that. He could control the ship and that, and he bought and sold ships. It's just one of them things, he always thought he could do everything with Dad. He'd have a go at everything. Dave Potter died in May 2023. He was 68. Five months after the Skyhope disaster, in March 1978, the three rescuers in the fishing boat were awarded bravery medals. Malcolm Foster, Dave Stokes and Billy Granville. All three men have since died. But Malcolm Foster actually refused to accept his medal. His widow, Beerta. At that time he got angry, because that was no reason to give me a medal, he said. You know, anybody should have done the same. Malcolm and Beerta moved to rural Denmark. One day she got a call from the Irish Embassy in Copenhagen. She told her that if she managed to get Malcolm to the Embassy, they'd have a surprise medal ceremony for him. And we did. And I tell you, we had the most fantastic day at the Embassy. Even the Ambassador got a little bit drunk. It was really a party we made. A week after José Meado died, Skyhope died too. In the edition of the Cork Evening Echo for October 21st, 1977, there's a small line in the shipping news section. It reads, Arrivals, Raleigh-David, Skyhope, for repairs. But it wasn't for repairs. Skyhope was actually broken up for scrap. The name Skyhope lived on in West Kerry in horse racing and poetry. Paddy Mahoney, the man whose fishing boat first broke free and was picked up by Skyhope, said that there was a racehorse named Skyhope. It didn't do very well. You know, we used to have our own local races. I think he won one or two of those races. That was about it. And the manager of the radio station, Daryl Kinnaide, recalls a poem written by a local schoolteacher, Kivino Kinnaide. It's entitled Skyhope. It talks about a huge ship coming in from the Black Rock. Off the deck were men, yellow and white. Both Skyhope and its crew were thirsty. The ship drank from a local well, the men from a local pub. You've been listening there to a documentary on the Skyhope, a boat that went aground at the pier, at Betty David Pier, called the Waddingall, down in Kerry in 1977, and was a very exotic event for the local people at the time, but sadly, as you heard there, turned very, very sad and unfortunate for all involved, but in particular for the man from Chile who lost his life there. He was brought home to Chile, as you heard there, through Shannon Airport, home to his widow and two children who survived that. It's a very sad story to hear of someone passing away so tragically and in such mysterious circumstances so far away from home. That's this week's documentary. You heard a few familiar voices there and maybe a few familiar tunes throughout that programme. Dara O'Conaghy is the manager of Radio La Gaeilge Tuachta in Kerry, in Munster, indeed, West Kerry, the studio there in Ballymall. Dara, of course, was the All-Ireland winning captain for Kerry back maybe in the early 2000s. Dara probably has, I'd say, three or four All-Ireland medals in his pocket, a wonderful presenter and broadcaster and a great footballer, and maybe he'll go into management one of the days. You heard the concertina playing there of Cormach Ó Beidleach at one or two points throughout the programme, and it's not the ordinary concertina that we know. Cormach plays a very special concertina. It's like a bass concertina. It's a slightly bigger instrument, and it has a very, very deep sound. I think he's the only man that I know that plays it. I never saw it before. Cormach brought it on the scene. But a beautiful instrument. Now, the Beidleachs will be on their way to Clifton Arts Festival the week after next. Not Cormach now, but Bryndón. Bryndón, his father, and Clíoma Ní Beidleach, who is either his sister or, if not, then his first cousin. They'll be up for Clifton Arts Festival, and they're one of many, many events that will have a strong Irish language element to them throughout Clifton Arts Week. I don't have time to run through them all now, but I'll bring you one or two, just to get you started, maybe the first three or four days. In the first three days alone, on the 19th, which is day two of the Arts Festival, we have the great Seán Máith Aileach event, a feature, a staple of the Arts Festival. Johnnie Wharton-Larry, my cousin, from Clifton Arts, and Caitríona Michael-Watergough, not long now, from North Head, Górna. They'll be there. Tí Damhnaidh will be there as well. They'll be both there at 2pm, as the usual time for that, on the 19th, Thursday the 19th. Now, on the 20th, there's a special event to mark the great poet Ní Chomach Saibhne, who lived and wrote and composed and wandered around Connemara from the years 1760 to 1820, and who is one of the descendants of the many Sweneys around Connemara to this day. Ní Chomach Saibhne will be remembered and celebrated in an event at 5pm on the 20th, and that's in the Clifton Station House Theatre, which is, of course, John Sweney's hotel, and John, a descendant of Ní Chomach Saibhne and his brothers Taddy and Tarloch. On the 21st, Carrie is coming up to us, Muireann McAuley, who is a wonderful singer. Muireann would live very close to Bailinang All, where we were for the documentary this week. Muireann is coming up, and she'll be playing with Dónal O'Connor, Dónal, a man from the Coulee Peninsula, and a great fiddle player. They'll be playing on the 21st. And also on the 21st, we have Cantaidí Conamáide, the Connemara Choir, will be singing both in Irish and English, and perhaps some other languages as well. That's only the first two or three days of the festival. Many more events, and we'll bring you those in more detail next week, na Chomach Saibhne. I don't know if I'll be able to play that song again, because when we were in Bailinang All, we were singing in English at the time. So maybe I won't be able to play that song this week, but if I do, I'll be able to play that song in two or three other weeks. I'll leave you with a couple of quotes from the great fiddler himself, Brendan O'Begley, who will be coming to us next week, or the week after, or the day after next week, before the end of the festival. These are portraits that he recorded in our Letterfrack studio in the year 2023. I know one of them is called Bang the Door, and he'll tell you the reason why himself. Bang the Door Bang the Door Bang the Door Bang the Door Bang the Door I can see you counting. See you focusing. Could this be here then? One day, I was sitting in my house, and I thought, but we had a ball, and we had to go, and the door opened, and it opened wide, and I was so focused on the ball, that no-one was focusing on me. And I thought, I'm so focused, I put together myself. I had this friend of mine in the house, and we were having an argument, and eventually, she left the house in a huff, and she banged the door, and I was never so happy to have the house to myself. So I called that polka Bang the Door. She gets a good kick out of that story, I tell her. Friday It's Friday.
