The grieving father of a fisherman lost at sea was "very heavily intoxicated" when he went down to Ardglass harbour in a severe storm and was struck by a freak wave and drowned, an inquest in Belfast has heard.
Paul Bogues (47) died almost a year after his son was lost at sea the previous January after his trawler went down outside the Co Down harbour.
An inquest heard that Mr Bogues, a psychiatric nurse who lived in Belfast, regularly made a pilgrimage to the harbour searching for his son Connor.
He also visited a shrine at the harbour to Connor (26) and fellow fisherman Donal Gibson (22), who drowned alongside him.
On the night Mr Bogues was killed in December last year, he apparently hoped the storm might lead to the sea giving up the body of his son.
The inquest heard that despite efforts to stop him, Mr Bogues was standing on the top of the outer wall of the harbour looking out at the stormy seas when he was struck by a huge wave. He fell 15 feet to a lower level, fractured his skull and drowned.
Coroner John Leckey said: "One tragedy within one family is at times almost too much to bear. A double tragedy is, for many of us, beyond comprehension." He said a postmortem showed Mr Bogues was "very heavily intoxicated" when he died. There were also traces of Diazepam and other drugs in his blood .
Mr Leckey said: "Not only would judgment be affected but the ability to save oneself in such a situation must have been impaired."
Fishermen Haydn Willis and Jason Parker told the inquest how they saw the wave hit and went to help Mr Bogues. They and another fisherman, Kenneth McGowan, were all washed along the harbour wall at a time as more huge waves hit.
Eventually they managed to get the unconscious man into the back of a van and drive to safety where they waited for an ambulance to arrive. He was later declared dead at the Downe Hospital in Downpatrick.