ONE of the survivors of the Exodus sinking, Mr Redmond Kelly, yesterday described how the 16 metre trawler filled with water almost immediately after the alarm was raised.
Mr Kelly, who was clearly distressed, said that after he and fellow crew member, Mr Patrick O'Driscoll, made it out of the accommodation area on board the Exodus, they saw that the trawler was holed on the port side.
"After the bang, we got out as fast as we could. We launched the raft and got into it and we were shouting for the skipper, who had gone to the wheelhouse. The Spanish launched a life raft too, and we were still shouting `Danno, Danno' all the time.
"At first we couldn't see him and then we did see him in the water but he was closer to the Spanish vessel than he was to us."
Later yesterday, he and Mr O'Driscoll visited the family of the drowned skipper, Mr Danny O'Driscoll, in Castletownbere.
Mrs Rosemary O'Driscoll, the sister of the skipper, also spoke yesterday about the tragedy. "The family heard about it from another fisherman who picked it up on radio and broke the news to us. We're very shocked. It's hard to believe it. My mother, who was 81 years of age, can't understand it. She doesn't want to believe it. She wants to think that he's still out fishing."
Last evening, the Minister for the Marine, Mr Barrett, sympathised with the O'Driscoll family and said that every effort would be made to establish the facts about the collision as soon as possible.