Davy Jones’s locker sent up a WWII mine

THE other night in the pub in the quiet seaside village of Courtmacsherry (in September, it returns to its native peace) we had young Brian O’Donovan tell us about what he and his brother Barry, joint skippers of their trawler Sea Venture, caught in their nets a few nights before. He made a great job of the telling. The item wasn’t exactly nature, although it was encrusted with nature. It was a World War II mine.

I take the liberty of retelling the story second-hand and hope my birder and butterfly readers, and my editor, will bear with me. The story has everything to do with that absolutely outdoor element, the sea.

It must indeed be an anxious moment to find an egg-shaped pod, with a few spikes protruding from it, suddenly appear over the side of one’s 15m boat. That means you and your brother cannot be more than 14m from it, short of jumping overboard and swimming.

It hangs in the net as it winds onto the spool on the overhead gantry. It may knock against the gantry legs should there be a sudden tilt of the boat, a rogue wave or a big swell. Happily, it was a calm sea, so they left it hanging there and, as dawn slowly came up, they had a chance to view it more closely.

They had been at sea for two days, without sleep for 20 hours, and the last thing they needed was anything that would delay them getting themselves and their fish back to port.

Also, behind the inconvenient metal object, in the bag of the net, was a big haul of fish. What was to become of their hard-earned bobs if they cut the cables and dropped the whole rig into the sea? It was an option that men less brave than the O’Donovan brothers might have chosen. Send the thing back to Davy Jones’s locker where it had, clearly, resided for decades and present the insurance company with a bill for the lost tackle. But there would be the endless forms and the hassle of sourcing and temporarily financing new nets. Better call the coastguard, they thought.

Meanwhile, we’ll let it back a bit into the sea, tow it slowly just off the stern and say a few prayers.

They called the coastguard and a woman in Haulbowline began to direct ops like a flight controller in an airport or a NASA expert talking a spaceship down.

“Go inshore. Go to Coolim Cliffs and stand off, a naval vessel is en route and will be with you in two hours” etc, but, as Brian explained, the current, given the state of the tide, would carry them over rocky ground. How amazed were the silent listeners at the knowledge the O’Donovans have of the local sea. Every rock, they seemed to know, every current and sandbar. He explained the sea bed as if it was as visible as the floor of the pub.

Time passed as they manoeuvred, negotiating with Central Command at Haulbowline. Then, a navy frigate hove into view on the horizon and before long two naval personnel scudded toward them in a rubber rib and climbed aboard the Sea Venture.

“Haul the item out of the water and let’s have a look.” This done, they examined its rear end. A square hole retreated into darkness, weed and barnacle encrusted.

The overall appearance was unfamiliar. It had spikes, yes, but it didn’t have the metal band around the midriff usual in sea mines and it had an angle bracket on one side as if it might have been bolted to something. “Could it be the boiler of an ould ship?” one listener asked.

Some such function seemed to be the naval officers’ conclusion and they were about to declare it harmless and the O’Donovans were thinking wouldn’t it make a grand conversation piece for a pub when, “Hold it there a minute!,” one officer said.

As the winch lifted, the experts had a change of opinion. “It’s a mine.”

The question was how to render it harmless. Dropping it back as was wouldn’t do — a trawler like themselves might haul it up in rough weather and a knock against the side could set it off. It could wash up on a beach or slam into a pier or marina. The tricky bit was how to get it out of the net and onto the boat where a buoy could be attached so it could be jettisoned into the deep water, drop to 20m at the end of a cable and be exploded by the navy divers, for so they were.

We marvelled once more as Brian explained how his brother managed the winch while he arranged four upended fish boxes on the deck as a platform to drop the bomb onto.

The mine was lowered in the net from the gantry, balanced on the fish boxes and the net cut free. A cable was attached with a big buoy at the end. It took all the strength of the four men to push it overboard.

Afterwards, the navy men plunged in and wired it for a controlled explosion. A few minutes later, 65ft below the surface, it blew.

Some poor fish must have sustained fearful headaches but worse tragedy was averted.