Irish Coast

In Lackan, County Mavo, Ireland, a Catholic priest, one Father Quinn, listening drowsily to his radio. The weather reports were coming in: ". . . rains over Holland . . . cold days marching southward through France. . . ." As he reached to turn off the loud speaker, its hoarse voice growled a terrible threat: "High wind and rain ... a hurricane . . . tempest will reach the west coast of Ireland tonight. . . ." Father Quinn thought of the fishermen who went out upon Galway Bay in wretched, unsubstantial tarred-canvas boats-- the only boats they could afford. Hatless, he raced out of his house and down to the shore to give warning. From the shore he looked out at the midget fleet, already almost invisible on the quiet swell. . . .

That night, the legends of the sea, so long tamed, so long unremembered except in the late talk at coast town barrooms, leapt up out of the racing mountains of the bay. A tremendous wind walked through the black towers of the rain, a hungry foam covered the teeth of the Irish rocks; all night long the clouds, like vague white tigers, galloped across wild hills. The next morning, under a bright sun and a wind still swift, the storm's damage was revealed. Sweeping westward through England, it had demolished houses in Lancashire; in Ireland cables had been broken, trees torn up, the grandstand at the Tramore racetrack shattered; there had been a flood at Limerick. Over the west coast airplanes hunted for signs of wreckage or the bodies of the 50 fishermen of Killala, Cleggan Bay, Inishkea. The sea, as if offering an ironic apology, rolled up eight corpses on the sand. To the men who had drowned, Father Quinn granted conditional absolution. He tried to comfort 200 members of their families, and he listened to an improbable story which was being told in all the villages. Some fishermen said that early in the week a white ship had overtaken their fleet in Baffin Bay. Making no answer to their hails, she had lingered near their boats until the sunrise, vanishing then in a flash of light. Terrified, the men in the little boats had put for home before a gathering wind; warned of disaster, they had stayed ashore the night of the storm.