The Government's decision to abandon its closure of Malin Head coastguard station will preserve the hard-won expertise and intimate local knowledge of the staff, a combination that saves lives
THE COAST GUARDS AT Malin Head in Co Donegal have had plenty to celebrate in the run-up to this Christmas. First the Government announced that it had abandoned plans to close their station, and then the missing trawler they had been searching for all last weekend returned to shore, all aboard safe and well. Happy endings.
"The Coast Guard station is to Malin Head what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris and the walls are to Derry," says Charlie O'Donnell, chairman of the local community association. "But we are remote up here in Donegal. They thought they could get rid of us with no fuss. We have to be thankful this has foundered."
The former fisherman, who now works for the local fisherman's co-op and is based on the pier at Malin Head, led a vigorous cross-Border campaign to save the station, at Ireland's most northerly point. The then minister for transport Noel Dempsey announced last year he was shutting the stations at Malin and Valentia, at the opposite end of the country, and proposed transferring their work to a west-coast site, possibly at Shannon.
"I think it was economic meltdown that saved us. They realised the folly of paying out millions to replace a service that has been working well for more than 100 years," says O'Donnell.
The new plan will see maritime safety matters dealt with from Dublin, with Malin and Valentia co-ordinating rescue operations as before. They will be re-equipped with the latest touch-screen computer technology.
Malin covers the north and west coasts from Lough Foyle down to Clifden, while Valentia covers from Clifden to Youghal on the south coast. Dublin covers from Youghal round the east to Carlingford. The Coast Guard also covers the inland lakes and waterways. The Border runs invisibly through the middle of Lough Foyle, but according to station director Mick McCaffrey the Coast Guard service has always operated without regard to national boundaries.
"We have excellent liaison with the coastguards at Belfast and at Clyde in Scotland," he says. "Since the British army left, Northern Ireland has no search and rescue helicopter so they'd usually call us if they needed one. A few weeks ago we sent a helicopter to rescue a windsurfer on the Antrim coast.
"Just yesterday we got a call from Belfast to say a man was injured in Killeter forest in Fermanagh, and they needed a helicopter to lift him out. So we sent the Sligo helicopter. You do have boundaries, but they are not set in stone."
THE LIFEBOATS THAT are at the disposal of the Coast Guard are operated by the Royal National Lifeboats Association (RNLI) with volunteer crews. If a rescue is needed far out to sea, they will get an Air Corps plane to assist the helicopter. The 80 or so coastguards are assisted by local teams of volunteers. There are 18 staff at Malin Head and the station is manned 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. As well as planning and co-ordinating rescues, they broadcast the shipping forecast from the British Met Office and the high-seas forecast for ships up to 1,300km out.
"This reprieve is the best Christmas present I could have had," says radio officer Derek Flanagan. "I was a fisherman before, and I came ashore to teach at the national fishery college in Greencastle. I joined the Coast Guard for the stability of the job - just before the closure plan was announced."
While some of the station's staff would have been offered redeployment elsewhere, Patsy Canning, who used to have his own fishing trawler, says there had been talk of "natural wastage".
Derek Flanagan says that some of the older and more experienced staff would have left, taking with them hard-won expertise and intimate local knowledge - and that combination is what saves lives.
The operations room at Malin is equipped with a sophisticated bank of computers that can be programmed to locate a search area once an incident is reported, but the knowledge local coastguards bring of tides and winds and how they work together along the coastline often makes all the difference. Earlier this year, four divers were reported missing off Malin Head. The computer suggested a search area, but coastguards urged searchers to also pay attention to an area further north, and this was where they were found.
"We knew the tide had started to go east," says Canning. "They were in the sound at Inishtrahull, five or six miles from where they should have surfaced." In freezing seas, time is of the essence for survival.
Phillip Martin, skipper of the small trawler Horizon, has no doubt that he and his crew of six owe their lives to the coastguards and the rescue crews they dispatched when he sent out a Mayday call last March. "We were going to fish for crab," he says. "Conditions were bad and we were waiting in the lough to hear the forecast when we hit the rocks. There was a high tide and a swell in a northeast wind. The vessel was starting to lose power. The coastguards knew immediately I was in a handling - a bad situation. They knew exactly where I was and what was likely to happen."
The boat was jammed against a cliff at Saldana Point in Lough Swilly. The lifeboats couldn't get in close enough, and the helicopter had difficulty, but was able to lower a man on a winch to lift the crew to safety. The boat is still on the rocks, where the coastguards monitor it for any potential damage to the environment.
Not everyone is grateful. Mick McCaffrey recalls sending a lifeboat out to assist a party that had reported being in difficulties off a beach on the north coast. "When the lifeboat got there, these guys roundly abused the crew for taking so long," he says. It turned out these particular ingrates were former inmates of Long Kesh. "They thought it was just like jail, there would be someone right outside the door," he says. "We move as fast as we can but a rescue operation can take time."
The station at Malin keeps track of local fishing vessels, and the ferries to the islands inform the coastguards of their movements. However, an increasing number of incidents involve those who go out to sea for pleasure. (The coastguards strongly disapprove of airbeds and the like on the Atlantic coast.) "We can't advise - we can only inform," says Patsy Canning. "We got a call one day from a man informing us he was taking a party of divers out. I said to him, 'You are aware of the forecast, aren't you?' There was a force 10 gale imminent. 'Oh yes,' he said. My colleague said to me: 'If it wasn't for clowns like that, there'd be no need for us.'"
There's been a coastguard operation at Malin since 1805, when Lloyd's of London built a signal tower at Banba's Crown, just north of the current station in Co Donegal. It operated on semaphore and a telescope until 1902, when Marconi supplied Malin and five other stations with radio equipment. "Malin is the only one of those stations still in operation," says radio officer Finbar O'Connor. "In 1912, the Titanic did its sea trials and tested its radio equipment with Malin Head."
The current station, in its sturdy white buildings, was put up by the British in 1913. (Soldiers were billeted there during both World Wars.) "We used the Morse code to deal with the big liners from England going to the US, and the cargo ships heading for the Great Lakes," says Patsy Canning.
The last Morse transmission was in 1988. "We also used to work the big Grimsby trawlers going up to Iceland," says Mick McCaffrey. "We used to get telex messages back from the crew to back horses for them."