The Tullaghmurray Lass was a prawn fishing boat based in Kilkeel, County Down, Northern Ireland.
On 14 February 2002 the Tullaghmurray Lass left Kilkeel Harbour to fish for prawns. When the boat failed to return when expected a huge search mission was organised involving local fishing boats, the RNLI, HM Coastguard, the Royal Navy and the Irish Navy. (including two helicopters, a Hawker-Siddeley Nimrod and the minesweeper HMS Bridport)
The extensive search continued for two months, the issue being raised in the Northern Ireland Assembly. [1] Eventually the main body of the wreckage and the bodies of the three crew were recovered. [2] The three victims were from the same family. Michael Greene (53), his son (33) and grandson (8), both of whom were also called Michael, died in the accident. Initial reports suggested that the sinking was caused by a collision with a larger vessel. [3] [4] However the official inquest found that a gas explosion on the boat causing huge damage caused it to sink. [5] In the same year another Kilkeel boat was lost in Carlingford Lough, causing one death. The accidents raised safety fears on the Kilkeel fleet. In 2006 the death of two further fishermen aboard the Greenhill from nearby port Ardglass raised further concerns. [6]
Kilkeel is a small town, civil parish and townland in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is the southernmost town in Northern Ireland. It lies within the historic barony of Mourne. Kilkeel town is the main fishing port on the Down coast, and its harbour is home to the largest fishing fleet in Northern Ireland. It had a population of 6,541 people at the 2011 Census. The town contains the ruins of a 14th-century church and fort, winding streets and terraced shops. It lies just south of the Mourne Mountains.
Newry and Mourne District Council was a local council in Northern Ireland. It merged with Down District Council in May 2015 under local government reorganisation in Northern Ireland to become Newry, Mourne and Down District Council.
Annalong is a seaside village in County Down, Northern Ireland at the foot of the Mourne Mountains. It is situated in the civil parish of Kilkeel and the historic barony of Mourne. It had a population of 1,805 people at the 2001 Census and lies within the Newry and Mourne District Council area. The village was once engaged in exporting dressed granite and is now a fishing and holiday resort. Annalong Primary School is in the village and Annalong Community Development Association was established in 1994.
The nuclear-powered Project 949A Antey submarine Kursk sank in an accident on 12 August 2000 in the Barents Sea, during the first major Russian naval exercise in more than 10 years, and all 118 personnel on board were killed. The crews of nearby ships felt the initial explosion and a second, much larger, explosion, but the Russian Navy did not realise that an accident had occurred and did not initiate a search for the sub for more than six hours. The submarine's emergency rescue buoy had been intentionally disabled during an earlier mission and it took more than 16 hours to locate the sunken boat.
The SS Connemara was a twin screw steamer, 272 feet long, 35 broad and 14 deep with a gross register tonnage of 1106. She sank on the night of 3 November 1916 at the entrance to Carlingford Lough, Louth, Ireland after being hit amidships by the coalship Retriever. 97 lives were lost that night and the only survivor was James Boyle – a fireman on the Retriever and former caretaker of Warrenpoint Town Hall and a non-swimmer.
Events during the year 2002 in Northern Ireland.
The Solway Harvester was a scallop dredger from Kirkcudbright, Scotland which sank off the coast of Douglas, Isle of Man in heavy seas on 11 January 2000 with the loss of all seven crew members.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) carried out two bomb attacks against British coal ships in February 1981 and February 1982 at Lough Foyle, a large inlet between County Londonderry in Northern Ireland and County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland. The IRA used hijacked pilot boats to board the ships. Both vessels were sunk, but their crews reached the coastline safely in lifeboats.
MFV Bugaled Breizh is a French trawler from Loctudy, Finistère, whose sinking with all hands in 90 metres of water on 15 January 2004 remains unresolved. While it appeared possible that the ship was pulled under by a submarine, a specific submarine could not be identified from among the number of submarines of several nations operating in the general vicinity of the accident site. Moreover, the condition of the ship's recovered trawling equipment was reported by a technical inquiry to not be consistent with a submarine entanglement.
On 27 March 2009, at least one boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy capsized. The boat is believed to have been carrying 250 migrants from Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine and Nigeria. A rescue attempt involving the Italian and Libyan navies rescued 21 survivors from the boat and retrieved 21 bodies. A further 77 bodies subsequently washed up on the shores of Libya before rescue efforts were called off. Two other boats also went missing between Libya and Italy, carrying around 250 more people between them. A fourth boat, carrying 350 people, was rescued by an Italian merchant ship on 29 March in the same area of sea.
The sinking of MV Dumai Express 10 occurred on the morning of 22 November 2009 when a ferry carrying more than 300 people sank near the island of Iyu Kecil in Karimun Regency, Riau Islands during bad weather. Eyewitnesses reported that massive waves had struck the ferry repeatedly, causing the starboard side of the ship to crack. Subsequently, a considerable amount of water poured into the deck. By 9:55 a.m. the ferry was fully submerged.
ROKS Cheonan (PCC-772) was a Pohang-class corvette of the Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN), commissioned in 1989. On 26 March 2010, she broke in two and sank near the sea border with North Korea, killing 46 sailors. An investigation conducted by an international team of experts from South Korea, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Sweden concluded that Cheonan was sunk by a torpedo launched by a North Korean Yeono-class miniature submarine.
On 3 October 2013, a boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. It was reported that the boat had sailed from Misrata, Libya, but that many of the migrants were originally from Eritrea, Somalia and Ghana. An emergency response involving the Italian Coast Guard resulted in the rescue of 155 survivors. On 12 October it was reported that the confirmed death toll after searching the boat was 359, but that further bodies were still missing; a figure of "more than 360" deaths was later reported.
On 15 May 2014, the double-decker ferry MV Miraj-4 capsized in the Meghna River, 50 kilometres (31 mi) southeast of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Between 150 and 200 people were on board at the time, of whom about 75 survived. As of 17 May, the official death toll stood at 54 with an unknown number of people missing.
The Russian-flagged fishing trawler Dalniy Vostok sank on 1 April 2015, off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula in the Sea of Okhotsk. Fifty-seven of the ship's 132 crew members were confirmed dead, with rescue operations underway for survivors. The freezer trawler sank 183 nautical miles west of Krutogorovsky, a settlement in Kamchatka's Sobolevsky District.
Hableány was a 27-metre (89 ft) river cruiser operated on the Danube river in Budapest, Hungary. On a rainy night, at 9:05 pm of 29 May 2019, the 135-metre (443 ft) Viking Sigyn collided with Hableány from behind under the Margaret Bridge near the Parliament Building. Hableány sunk in 7 seconds. The heavy rainfall and the resulting strong currents hampered rescue efforts, with some bodies found 100 km downstream. With 2 Hungarian crew and 33 South Korean tourists on board, 7 tourists were rescued at the scene; all others were later found to be dead.
The fishing vessel Antares was a pelagic trawler based in Carradale, Kintyre in the United Kingdom. She was fishing off the coast of the Isle of Arran on 22 November 1990 when she foundered with the loss of four crew members after her trawl line was snagged by Royal Navy Trafalgar class nuclear powered submarine HMS Trenchant. An investigation by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch concluded that the accident had been caused by "a partial breakdown in both the structure and the standards of watchkeeping on board Trenchant".