The never-ending lure of the cruel sea
John Meagher talks to Irish seafarers about what compels them to sail again in the face of so many tragedies
Naval divers search for missing fishermen off the Cork coast as a trawler sets out to sea
Joefy Murphy was just five years old when he witnessed his first tragedy at sea. He was standing at Dunmore East harbour when he saw a boat capsize before his eyes. "I can still see its upturned red hull in my mind as clearly as if it was yesterday."
Although the incident happened close to land, assistance couldn't be given in time and several people on the vessel drowned.
"The conditions were bad," the Waterford man says. "They'd been told not to go out but they took the chance. You can never, ever forget the power of the sea."
Fast forward almost 55 years and Murphy -- a former commercial fisherman and now the coxswain of the Dunmore East Lifeboat -- has become all too familiar with fatalities at sea.
"When you live in a fishing community like this, tragedies like the one that happened this week off the coast at Union Hall really hit home," he says.
"Incidents like that occur every so often -- and sometimes there's a spate of them -- but you just never get used to it and it's devastating for the families and friends left behind.
"But the sad reality is that these awful incidents have become part of life in many coastal towns in this country."
Death, Joefy Murphy says, can hang over a community in a way that is unique to fishing ports. Anyone in Glandore and Union Hall in west Cork this week will have seen, at first-hand, how much anguish the sinking of the 'Tit Bonhomme' has caused.
Adverse conditions hampered the search operation and it wasn't until Thursday that bodies of some of the crew were found.
So what compels men -- and it's almost always men -- to take on the arduous, physically demanding job of commercial fishing? "People are either drawn to the sea or they're not," Murphy says. "Fishing certainly isn't for everyone, but those who have made it their life's work, in most cases I can think of, wouldn't want to do anything else."
Johnny Walsh, a commercial fisherman from Kinsale, Co Cork, has been working on the boats since he left school at 17. He now skippers his own craft and his passion for the work is palpable.
"There is great freedom about being on the open sea," he says, speaking to Weekend Review from his trawler as he, his crew and his mackerel haul make their way to the port at Ardglass, Co Down.
"And that buzz when you make a great catch never goes away. I suppose anglers feel the same way when they've been standing by the bank of a river all day and they finally catch a fish. They might be doing it all their lives, but that thrill remains."
Walsh admits that the life of the fisherman would hold little appeal for most people. "I know people who think I'm mad to do this, especially when a trawler goes down.
"I'd be lying if I said it wasn't hard to watch the television news on the boat over the last few days and see the reports from Union Hall.
"The fishing community in this country is small and we all tend to know each other, so it's really tough when other fishermen die at sea."
Johnny Walsh is married with three children, but he hasn't seen his family since he put to sea on January 4 and he won't see them again until he gets back to Kinsale around the middle of February.
"We tend to be away at sea for long stretches, calling to different ports with our haul along the way.
"Of course, that way of life can be tough for our families and for us. But that's the nature of the work -- and when we are back on land we make sure to make the most of it and see as much of our families as possible.
"We appreciate all the more the time that we do have off the boats."
All commercial fishermen -- sooner or later -- experience a big storm and they have to summon all their training, experience, instinct and courage to get through it.
"You just have to ride it out," Walsh says, simply. "You have to be cautious and not take any risks, but of course the first time you experience really tough weather conditions your heart is in your mouth and your legs are like jelly. But it's those very times when you need a cool head."
Joefy Murphy is also no stranger to the often treacherous conditions in the seas around Ireland.
"It goes with the terrain," he says. "I remember years ago when I'd be on tuna trawlers for three-week stretches at a time and we'd be hundreds of miles from land.
"You'd often hit really rough weather then, but when you experience it enough you start to get used to it. But you can never get complacent -- that's when it can get dangerous."
A subtext to the harrowing story of 'Tit Bonhomme' is the fact that several of the crew members were Egyptian.
For anyone unfamiliar with the commercial fishing trade, that might have seemed curious -- yet there is nothing unusual about it.
And it's a rare boat, these days, that doesn't employ eastern European, Egyptian of Filipino workers.
"In the Celtic Tiger years a lot of local lads simply didn't want to know," Johnny Walsh says. "They'd look at what we do and think they'd probably make more money on the building sites and know that they'd be in their own beds every night.
"So, when that happened, we had to look elsewhere for staff and, to be honest, without the foreign-national lads, I don't know what we would do to find crew."
Staffing isn't the only worry that consumes men like Walsh. Rising fuel costs eat into margins, making the pressure to fish productively (but within strict EU quotas) all the more pressing.
"Diesel costs alone are about €1,500-a-day and the figure is rising," he says. "You really have to graft hard to make a good living."
Joefy Murphy also had financial concerns when he fished commercially.
"You'd be out all the time trying to repay a quarter-of-a-million pound loan at an interest rate of 19pc. When you've those sort of repayments to worry about, you don't tend to be too bothered by a bit of bad weather."
Murphy left commercial fishing behind in 1995 -- the new quota system had made the trade unsustainable to many.
But his work with the Dunmore East Lifeboat means his love of the sea -- its vastness and complexity -- remains undimmed.
"Even though I've lost good friends at sea, I don't hate it," he says. "I don't think any true seaman could ever say they hate the sea. I've nothing but respect for it and you really have to respect it whenever you go out on it."
But the pain never goes away, and a prominent memorial in Murphy's home town offers a reminder of the sea's devastating power.
"Say a prayer for the souls of the sea who'll never reach the land," the legend reads.
"They say as many men lie there as there are grains of sand. They'll haul their nets, hoist their sails, set their course no more. Say a prayer for the souls of the sea who rest off Dunmore."
Originally published in
