‘This place won’t be the same without them’

TO ANYONE who lived in Glengarriff, they were known as the “gentlemen’s fishing club”.

Richard, Mike, Ziggy and Eddie loved and lived for the sea. They also loved life and would always be in the middle of whatever debate, argument, joke or sing-song was raging in the local bars. “They were the town characters. This place won’t be the same without them,” said one young woman who was attempting to console a distraught elderly man outside the Maple Leaf bar on Main Street.

Yesterday, the Beara Peninsula village was full of tourists, armed with maps and cameras, who were blissfully unaware of the collective heartache the town was suffering.

However, red eyes were commonplace in shops and bars and locals spoke of little else. Anyone who drank in the Cottage or Maple Leaf bars knew the foursome and the fishing trip planned for last Monday.

“They were so excited about this trip that you would think that they were going off fishing for tuna for a week. It was the excitement of all going together, I suppose. They were lifelong friends and could spend hours talking jargon: talking about the sea and about fishing. It was always ‘We’ll catch the big one’ this time. They were the most jovial people that you could come across. We are all stunned,” said one older lady who is friends with the fishermen’s wives.

A cruise liner was due into Bantry Bay yesterday making local man, Richard Harman’s absence even more difficult for friends to deal with. “Richard would have been out with his jaunting car taking the tourists wherever they wanted to go, up, down and across the peninsula,” the lady said.

“If any tourist had a query about where to fish in the bay or what was the best bait, we’d just send them down to Richard. I can just see him there now, standing at the bar, swilling the whiskey in his glass. I still can’t believe he’s gone.”

Richard was well known for his ‘recitations’, bursting into poetry whenever the occasion saw fit — such as last Sunday when there was a music session on Main Street.

“He was the kind of guy,” said Pat Somers in the Cottage Bar, “that when he walked in, you’d turn off the television. He wanted to be the entertainment.”

Pat said everyone in his bar and restaurant are shell-shocked — most especially by the randomness of the accident.

Huge sympathy was also with Eddie Dzito, with everyone worried about how the 46-year-old American will cope with being the only man who survived. Eddie was being looked after at home yesterday by his wife and described as being “in a deep state of shock” by locals who dropped in to offer their condolences.

“For them to have died at sea is shocking as they were all so experienced. This is a huge shock. We’d all heard about this trip so when the news first started to trickle through, we knew who it was,” Pat said.

“It’s so sad really, and it brings back so many memories of other fishing tragedies in this town. There have been so many between Bantry and Castletownbere.”

Mike McCarthy, from Bantry, said the town is “just devastated”.

“They were the town characters. We are just shocked. Good, honest men gone like that?” he said. “This is desperate.”

In every bar in Glengarriff there were groups of huddled men drinking all day yesterday and there was only one conversation.

Jimmy Whooley said the tragedy only happened 400 metres from where he was harvesting hay.

“I wouldn’t be in this pub at this time of day if it wasn’t for this. It was the only thing I could do today,” he whispered.

Terry Downey is best friends with William Harman, Richard’s son. He said the initial shock is still there, nearly 24 hours later.

“You know he was the kind of guy that whether you liked him or not, you’d have to like him,” he said. “I can’t believe what has happened. I really can’t”.