Mayo memories: Torpedoed survivors landed in Achill and Belmullet
By Tom Gillespie
‘MORE survivors land at Achill’ was a headline in The Connaught Telegraph on August 31, 1940, with the sub-heading ‘Had given up hope of rescue’.
The article read: A lifeboat from the Ville de Grand, with 13 men on board, came into Keel, Achill Island, shortly after midnight on Saturday, August 24, 1940, after six days and seven nights at sea.
The Ville de Grand, a 7,900-ton Belgian cargo steamer, had been torpedoed 200 miles off the Mayo coast on August 18.
The chief officer and 11 other members of the same crew landed at Annagh Head, Belmullet, on the previous Wednesday. The captain and 27 others were still missing.
The story of the arrival of the lifeboat at Keel is a fine example of the efficiency and cooperation between the coast watching force, the gardaí, and the local security force, the Connaught Telegraph reporter wrote.
Within a few seconds after the boat sending out a distress racket, the coast watchers had signalled back, and soon four fishermen in a curragh - Pat Mangan and Pat McNamara, Crampaun, and John Cafferkey and Michael Lavelle, Keel, were pulling seaward to tow in the heavy lifeboat with its burden of exhausted men.
They had been pulling all day against the heavy tide off the island, without making any headway, and it was nearly night when they were sighted.
They stumbled out of the boat wearing lifebelts, their feet swollen and a week’s growth of beard on their faces. Some were without boots, others with garments wound about their heads, unable to walk without assistance. One of them could not walk at all.
They were all brought to the Civic Guard Barracks, where they were given sandwiches and tea. The majority of them were then transferred to Achill Sound where they were put to bed and received medical attention.
On Sunday all of them were up and about except one young man, who was still suffering from the effects of the fumes from the explosion when the ship was torpedoed. He was a Belgian named Jacobs, and it appears that his mother, a patient in the hospital in Louvain, was killed when the hospital was bombed. She had only gone to hospital three days before.
The hero of the rescued men was the Second Mate of the ship, a fine-looking young Norwegian. His name was Ove Arthur Skaug (24).
The lifeboat, a curious flat-bottomed boat, with high box sides, very safe in a tough sea, was without a rudder.
He steered it with an oar during the whole week, and he rigged up a blanket on the boat hook as a sail. He had a compass, but no sextant, and none of them had the least idea of where they were. When they saw the high headlands of Achill they thought they were off the north of Scotland.
They had plenty of ‘hard tack’ and some bully beef, but the water had given out before they sighted land. The mate said they had given up hope of rescue.
Three times they had sighted aeroplanes quite near them, but these did not seem to notice them.
Once they saw a big ship 20 miles off and signalled to her, but the weather was so bad that she did not see them.
They had four days of violent storm and continuous rain, so that their clothes were frozen, and they themselves frozen with the cold at night. They slept in snatches, leaving two to keep watch.
“We have eyes like cats now,” said one of them; “we can see at night.”
The day before they sighted land they saw a submarine quite near them. “We took down the sail quickly and kept it in the bottom of the boat,” said one of them. “We were taking no chances.”
Both the mate and the Belgian engineer, Joseph Goet, of Antwerp, were well-groomed and attired in a golden-braided uniform. It was the second time that Mr. Goet had been torpedoed. His boat was torpedoed during the First World War, in 1916, so that was the second time he had lost all his property.
All the men were very touched by the kindness and hospitality they received at Achill.
They had a large quantity of American cigarettes, which the stewards pitched out to them as the boat was going down, and they were greatly sought as souvenirs by the islanders and visitors.
Crowds visited the lifeboat all day on Sunday, picking up ‘hard tack’ biscuits as souvenirs.
On board the lifeboat were five Belgians, one New Zealander, one Swiss, one Dutch Colonial, two Scotsmen, one of whom was named Flynn, who married a girl from Dungloe, Donegal, named Boyle, whom he met in New York, one French Canadian and two Norwegians.
The unescorted steamer, en route from Liverpool to New York, with a general cargo, was torpedoed and sunk by U-48 about 400 km northwest of Eagle Island, Belmullet, on Monday, August 19, 1940. The master, Raoul Carlier, and 13 crew members, including Irishman Christian Copley (43), a fireman, were lost in the lifeboat which was never found.
Without a compass and guided by the sun and the moon, the first group of survivors from the Ville de Grand sailed their lifeboat through heavy seas until they touched the Mayo coast at Annagh Head at 6.30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, August 21, 1940 - 55 hours after they were torpedoed.
Out of the lifeboat climbed 12 weary sailors, 10 Belgians and two Dutch. They had voyaged some 230 miles in their little craft before landing at Annagh.