Skipper’s body finally found by local fisherman

THE body of a skipper was found yesterday, one week after his trawler ran aground and his three crew lost their lives off the coast of Galway.

John Dirrane’s body was spotted by a local fisherman on the seabed at around 3pm, close to Duck Island off the Connemara coast.

Local divers brought the body to shore before it was taken to University College Hospital, Galway.

He was the fourth crew member and owner of a trawler which was smashed to pieces on a reef off the coast last Friday.

Gale-force winds and rough seas hampered the search for the fisherman from Inis Mor, and the eight-man rescue team had been forced to postpone the operation earlier this week.

Some 40 miles of coastline was being searched, with efforts concentrated between the treacherous shores of Duck Island, where the bodies of two crewmen were recovered last Saturday, and on nearby Mweenish Island, where a third body was found.

The other men who died in the wreck were Joe Connolly, a boat builder in his 60s from Carna, Co Galway, Michael Faherty, from the Aran Islands, and 18-year-old Michael Mullin, from Cleggan, Co Galway.

Their 85ft timber-framed trawler, the Saint Oliver, was smashed during a storm.

The four-man crew had been taking the vessel from a boatyard in Glinsk to the fishing port of Ros A Mhil.