The Margaret Ann cut through the black waters of Tramore Bay, her diesel engine throbbing like a steady heartbeat in the pre-dawn darkness. Skipper Frank MacDonald stood at the wheel, his calloused hands guiding the fifty-foot trawler with the ease of a seasoned sailor with thirty years’ experience at sea. Below deck, the scent of frying chips mixed with the ever-present tang of salt and diesel. Eighteen-year-old Jimmy Power turned the golden slices in the pan, while his brother Buddy coiled ropes nearby with the quiet efficiency that came from a lifetime around boats.

It had been a frustrating night. Three hours earlier, their nets had bulged with a catch worth £100, only to tear open under the weight, their hard-won prize disappearing into the dark water. Now, as they prepared a late supper, none suspected that this routine fishing trip would become a fight for survival.

The First Whiff of Disaster

Jimmy wrinkled his nose. “You smell that?” he asked Buddy. A strange, acrid odour drifted through the cabin, sharper than the usual engine smells.

Before Buddy could answer, Frank came barrelling up from below, his face ashen. “The engine room’s on fire!” he shouted.

Tom Doyle, who had been checking their remaining gear, dropped everything. The four men scrambled for the fire extinguisher mounted near the wheelhouse. Buddy grabbed it first, yanking the pin and squeezing the lever. Nothing happened. He tried again, slamming it against his palm. “It’s jammed!”

Already, tendrils of smoke curled up through the deck plates. The smell of burning oil grew stronger, carried on gusts of hot air that made their eyes water. Frank made a quick decision. “We need to head for Brownstown Rocks. It’s our closest shelter!”

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

As Frank swung the wheel, the first flames burst through the engine room hatch. The fire spread with terrifying speed, fuelled by oil and diesel that had soaked into the vessel’s timbers over the years. Within minutes, the wheelhouse windows glowed orange with reflected flames.

Tom peered through the smoke. “Frank, the current’s pushing us straight onto those rocks!”

The skipper cursed as he saw the danger. One wrong move and they would be smashed against the jagged outcrops. He spun the wheel again. “Then we’ll make for Saleen Strand!”

The Margaret Ann surged forward, flames now licking at the wheelhouse roof. The men pulled on lifejackets with shaking hands, each knowing what the others were thinking. Two large oil tanks and compressed-air cylinders sat just feet from the inferno. If those exploded, their chances of escape would be slim.

The Raft

Jimmy and Buddy worked frantically, lashing together wooden deck planks and empty air tanks with whatever rope they could find. The makeshift raft looked pitifully inadequate, but it was their only hope.

At 1.40 a.m., the trawler shuddered violently as she struck a sandbar about 100 yards from shore. The impact threw them all off balance. “Launch the raft now!” Frank shouted.

Tom and Jimmy went first, paddling furiously through the smoke-choked air. The raft sat dangerously low in the water, each wave threatening to wash them off. After what felt like an eternity, they reached a second sandbar and collapsed onto the wet sand.

Back on the Margaret Ann, flames now engulfed the entire superstructure. Frank and Buddy pulled the raft back using the attached rope, their silhouettes outlined against the hellish glow. As they climbed aboard, a tremendous whoomph sounded as the wheelhouse collapsed inwards in a shower of sparks.

The Long Wade

Buddy and Frank made their way to Tom and Jimmy on the sandbar. For ten heart-stopping minutes, the four men clung to the raft as waves threatened to tear them from it. Their ordeal was far from over. Between them and Saleen Strand lay a treacherous stretch of water, waist-deep in places and over their heads in others.

Buddy took the lead, probing ahead with an oar. “This way!” he called, only to curse moments later as the bottom dropped away unexpectedly. The cold seawater sapped their strength, each step becoming a battle against the sucking sand beneath their boots.

Jimmy later recalled, “We’d go left and the water got deeper. We’d go right and it was the same thing. It was like the sea itself was against us.”

After an hour of exhausting effort, they finally stumbled onto Saleen Strand and collapsed on the beach. Help, however, still lay four miles away at Ballymacaw.

The Kindness of Neighbours

Dawn was breaking as the bedraggled fishermen reached the village. Nicholas Murphy, the local shopkeeper, took one look at their smoke-stained faces and immediately put the kettle on. As they sat in his warm kitchen, wrapped in borrowed blankets and sipping sweet tea, the reality of their escape began to sink in.

Buddy examined his blistered hands. “The lights had been flickering for hours,” he murmured. “Must’ve been an electrical fault.”

Frank stared into his tea, thinking of the Margaret Ann, his livelihood for fifteen years, now just a burnt-out hulk on the sandbar. Her replacement value might be put at £1,700, but no money could replace the memories or the years of trust built between man and vessel.

Echoes of the Past

For the Power brothers, the trauma cut deeper. Just the previous week, their father, Connie, had descended the cliffs at Dunmore East to recover the body of John Byrne, one of the five Co. Donegal fishermen who lost their lives when the trawler Jack Buchan capsized in heavy seas. Now they had stared into the same abyss.

As news of their escape spread through Dunmore East, other fishermen nodded grimly. They all knew the risks. The sea gave bounty but demanded respect. Frank MacDonald had earned his stripes anew that night, bringing his crew home against seemingly impossible odds.

In the days that followed, investigators would comb the wreckage, debating whether an electrical fault or some other cause had started the fire. But for the four survivors, the cause mattered less than the simple fact that they had lived to tell the tale.

As Frank told the Cork Examiner reporter before heading home to his worried wife: “The sea tests every fisherman sooner or later. Last night, she tested us hard. But by God’s grace and a bit of quick thinking, we’re here to see another sunrise.”

Epilogue

The remains of the Margaret Ann became a temporary landmark on the sandbar, a cautionary reminder for passing vessels. Frank MacDonald would return to the sea within months, though some said he never quite looked at his new trawler in the same way. The Power brothers and Tom Doyle continued fishing, their bond strengthened by shared survival. In Dunmore East’s seaside pubs, their story joined the oral history of the village, another chapter in the eternal dance between man and ocean.