IN Kildavnet cemetery, on Achill Island, lie 32 burial plots. Once, 32 voyagers bound for Scotland, they never saw the Mull of Kintyre, never dug muck on a tatie plot. Their last snatch of life was on a Galway hooker to Westport which capsized in a jibe in Clew Bay.
That was 1894. A century and a bit later, a strange craft has dropped anchor at Kildavnet a craft that might have saved them all if such an accident happened today. This month, Achill has opened its first lifeboat station on a one year trial, after a long campaign.
No one particular incident sparked it oft, according to Garda Eamonn Berry of Achill Sound though he has witnessed many in Clew Bay. Sea tragedies have been a fact of life on Ireland's largest island. In 1979 when the Purteen fishing boat, Lios Carra, sank off Dooega Head with the loss of three crew the late John Healy campaigned for an improvement in rescue services through the pages of The Irish Times.
Up until eight years ago, the west coast had been poorly served by the institution. The "black hole" referred to by Healy and others ran from north of Galway Bay to south Donegal, with no offshore station in between the Aran island of Inis Mor the service's busiest beat and Arranmore, off Burtonport. Yet the lifeboat was the one fund raising effort that united coastal communities everywhere.
On a clear winter's day just over eight years ago, something happened to change all that. A well known Donegal skipper, John Oglesby, bled to death as a result of a deck accident within sight of the Mayo coastline. He was brought ashore at Ballyglass Pier in Broadhaven Bay.
It was one accident too many for Derryborn Joan McGinley, mother of four and wife of a fisherman. She held a public meeting, formed a committee and within three years a medium range helicopter was stationed at Shannon and an Air Corps Dauphin was deployed to Finner Camp. Within one year (1989), the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) opened Mayo's first offshore station. It seemed as if half the western seaboard streamed out over Gubaknockan headland to greet the Ballyglass and Belmullet crew when their vessel steamed into Broadhaven Bay.
The Achill islanders are pinching themselves at their good fortune now. It did take some work. Following a public meeting in Ted Lavelle's in January, 1994, a committee was formed, under the chairmanship of former fisherman, Michael Patten of Saile. A working group conducted research, and a bound 185 page submission was presented to the RNLI within six months. A fund raising committee chaired by Michael Anthony Lavelle activated a specific programme of events to bolster the case.
"We were delighted when Ballyglass got its boat. We all felt safer at sea. But it has much ground to cover. It can still take four hours' steaming for it to reach Clew Bay," Bob Kingston, the Achill lifeboat's acting secretary and launching authority, points out. Kingston knows the Achill coastline, all 80 miles of it. The architect is also a cartographer and historian, author of the Achill Island Map and The Deserted Village.
With a population of just 2,500, Achill has produced one of the country's most successful fishing skippers, Kevin McHugh of Bull's Mouth, but its own fleet of around 30 boats struggles to make a living in hazardous conditions. These waters are fished by boats from Donegal, from Galway, from the other islands, and then there is the growing leisure industry to think of," Kingston says. The new Clare Island ferry, carrying 90 passengers, will be plying shallow waters during tours of the bay.
The island has a coast and cliff rescue unit and a sub-aqua unit, but it has never before had a lifeboat station. Between 1989 and 1994, the Clew Bay area alone recorded 107 search and rescue incidents. The honeybee" Garda Berry's term for the Shannon based Sikorsky run by Irish Helicopters is already much in demand right around the 2,700 mile coast.
After several meetings with the RNLI, a letter came from its headquarters in Poole. A 44 foot all weather Waveney class craft with top speed of 15.5 knots and 190 mile range would be deployed on a one year evaluation. Over 100 islanders volunteered for the crew panel. Ten were selected.
The first five, including two fishermen, a butcher, and a fish tan worker, went to Dorset for a week's training in sea safety, boat handling, helicopter exercises, electronics and suchlike, while Bob Kingston, Anthony Gielty and Paddy Kilbane were appointed launching and first and second deputy launching authority respectively. The five followed a shepherd, an electrical engineer, two fish farm workers and a painter and sweep. Stephen McNulty is the one paid member, as full time mechanic.
The panel trained on the lifeboat, the Helen Torn ho/I, which originally cost £250 000, and had been stationed in Skegness. Another 12 will train at home following the boat's arrival in Achill last week. There is a sense of competition. At least two women are expected to be contenders for the crew.
Kildavnet is not only central, in sea terms, but is a recognised anchorage on the Admiralty charts. Call out will be by a paging system, but the station hopes to use the traditional method which the RNLI had intended to phase out. There is nothing quite like the shooting of maroons, they agree, for alerting a community.
"Not that we're wishing for it," says Bob Kingston. "But, yes, if we're called upon, we'll be trained and we'll be ready."
