The vessel involved in this story is one of the Limerick Steamship Company's, the Lanahrone. I felt a strong personal connection to this ship which, looking back, was a lucky ship considering all she went through-the Spanish Civil War and World War II, not to mention the hard knocks in the average life of a sea-going vessel.
Captain Frank Forde's book The Long Watch, gives an enlightening account of ships sailing under the Tricolour and the men who manned them. These of course included the Limerick Steamship Company, with a very detailed account of the Lanahone and of her sister company ships, who were not all lucky enough to be afloat at the end of 1945.

My first sighting of the Lanahrone was as a young boy during the Spanish Civil War when she docked in my home port of Sligo. As most of my family were involved in pilotage in the port, I was privileged to be allowed to visit her there. She was built the year I was born, and I felt a sort of kinship to her. I can still remember seeing shrapnel, collected in a Spanish port, embedded in the starboard bridge ladder.
Fate played her role, and by 1948 I had joined the Lanahone in Liverpool as an AB (able-bodied seaman). I was very content with this move, my first vessel flying the Irish flag. In the August of 1949 we were on passage from Antwerp to Galway, approximately abeam of Loop Head. It was during the night watch that we got an abrupt call to get up on deck quickly, as there was a plane down on the water somewhere north of our course. The information came from Valentia Radio and a trawler, Stalberg, out of Milford Haven. The trawler was fishing and, despite the early morning darkness, spotted the plane which appeared to be in trouble. Shortly afterwards, the plane ditched. Stalberg hauled its nets and proceeded with great caution to the area. One can only imagine the confusion as eventually he manoeuvred among the survivors, by now in rubber boats.

The pilot of the plane informed the skipper that everybody had got out of the plane, wearing their lifejackets. At this point the trawler had 49 people on board, with seven still unaccounted for. The skipper of the trawler suggested to Captain Jackie Hanrahan of the Lanahrone that he would proceed with all haste to Galway, stopping at Kilronan to pick up the doctor as some of the survivors required medical attention. The Lanahone was then left to look for casualties in the water, with lookouts posted all round the ship. We soon found four bodies. At first we thought they were still alive - the lifejackets gave them so much buoyancy we expected them to shout to us. Sadly this was not the case, as we realised shortly afterwards.

The captain tried to manoeuvre the ship, and we had hoped to be able to open the port cattle doors, but the vessel was so heavily laden that it wasn't possible to retrieve them this way. It was decided that we would have to lower one of the lifeboats. The port lifeboat was then lowered in a brisk force four wind. A Board of Trade surveyor would not have been too impressed with our departure from the ship. The Lanahrone had a belting extending round two thirds of the ship and, although there were slip plates where the boats were lowered, we were not even unhooked from the falls when the sea threw us against the belting, severely damaging the gunwale and shipping some water as well.

Finally we got clear of the ship and went to retrieve the bodies. To our horror, we discovered that the sharks had beaten us to it. The water was by now red, and the blood was driving the sharks into a frenzy. We reckoned they were about seven or eight feet long, and were not happy that we wanted to deprive them of their meal. We realised that we were also in danger, as we could not avoid getting blood on our hands in our efforts to get these poor chaps into the boat. I was belting them with the tiller, but it had no effect on them as their jaws came level with the gunwaile. Eventually our battle was ended, and we made our slow, sad progress back to the ship, a damaged lifeboat with several inches of bloody saltwater, four bodies, and six exhausted seamen.

Our boat was hoisted, and we laid out the bodies on the boat deck. The ship was still stopped when the shout went up that there was another body on the port side. Two of us grabbed boat hooks and got down on the main deck by the port cattle door. We struggled to bring this poor chap, who had met the same tragic fate as his compatriots, on board. Unfortunately, this sight was too much for my shipmate, and he had to leave me. Luckily the second mate, Paddy Histon, a native of Tarbert, saw what was happening and rushed to help me bring another poor soul on board.

By now I had lost all idea of time. If the Lanahrone's log book is still around today there would be a lot of blanks to be filled in. We were just drifting now, a gloomy air settling over our normally happy ship, as we searched for the last two bodies. We had almost given up when we saw them, only yards apart. The captain gathered us together and reminded us that these were also some mothers' sons, and that the code of the sea should prevail. It was decided to use the damaged boat rather than risk anything happening to the starboard boat. We got enough volunteers together to man the lifeboat, and finally got the last two victims into it. The weather was getting worse, and this time when we returned it proved too difficult to hoist the boat. We had missed the tide at Galway, and so we towed the lifeboat to our anchor off Mutton Island. Here, in quiet waters, we were able to hoist the boat, and put the bodies on the boatdeck.

We had previously moved the first four adjacent to where the gangway would be. As if we had not had enough, when the two doctors came aboard, they requested that all the bodies be placed together. After we had done that, they pronounced them dead, and left in the port launch.

When there was sufficient water, we docked in Galway that evening. A great crowd had gathered at the docks. How they knew, in those pre-tv days, we couldn't imagine. There were several ambulances waiting shoreside. I presume they were voluntary aid services, such as St John's Ambulance Brigade. As soon as the gangway was out, they came aboard. When the tarpaulin, with which we had covered the bodies to offer them some bit of dignity, was pulled back the ambulance personnel were so shocked that it fell to us to move the bodies one last time to the ambulances.

Gradually the crowds dispersed. We didn't get any information on the pilot, crew, or other survivors of the crash. I don't remember the name of the skipper of the Stalberg. He came aboard our vessel and met the Second Engineer, Paddy Miller. He wanted to meet with us sailors, because he said we had had the hardest job. Someone from Shannon Airport had given him twenty pounds (the daily newspaper cost 1½ d then), and he wanted us to join him in Kelly's Pub to help dispose of it. Needless to say, Galway was a wild town that night. This was 1949, after all, and nobody thought about the traumatic effect such a day would have on us.

Research of the Irish Press of 15 August 1949 and internet has yielded some information. On board the plane were Captain Edward Bessey, 9 crew and either 38 or 49 passengers (depending on source ). The passengers were displaced persons flying from Rome via Shannon, final destination Venezuela. There was some speculation that one person aboard who held a private plane license might have been at the controls. Communication in 1949 was obviously not what it is today. It would also appear that Kilronan Lifeboat was not alerted. The Aviation Safety Network gives details of the plane, a Douglas C-54A-DO from Transocean Air Lines. It says that one crew member and seven passengers died, and that the probable cause was 'The failure of the captain to exercise the proper supervision over his crew during flight planning and while en route.'

We were two or three days in Galway working cargo and getting our boat repaired. As we were going south to our next port of call, Limerick, the Aran Islanders waved to us from their currachs as they towed the now empty life floats from the doomed airliner.

This all happened 56 years ago, and even then was not much featured in the media. Perhaps the fate of displaced persons was not very newsworthy. I have often wondered what became of the survivors after their unwilling dip in the Atlantic. Our rôle in this drama was never really acknowledged, but those people owed their lives to an old trawler and an Irish cargo ship.

David Gillen joined Irish Lights in 1950 as an Able Seaman on ss Granuaile and was later promoted Quartermaster. After nearly ten years he moved to Irish Shipping when he gained his Certificates of Competency. He then joined B&I Line as Second Mate and later was Master on cargo, ro-ro, and passenger ships, retiring from mv Connacht in 1986.