DISASTERS: Riders to the Sea

To the people of the isles and headlands of the west coast of Ireland, where giant Atlantic combers thunder at the base of eroded cliffs, the ocean is an enemy. Many a fisherman has come back to port wrapped “in the half of a red sail, and the water dripping out of it.”

In Galway black-shawled women last week knelt on the grey cobblestones telling their beads. The men stood by in silence, their weathered faces turned to the driving rain, as the black-and-red-hulled French trawler, Jules Verne, steamed slowly into harbor, its flag at half-mast. Only the tolling of bells, the slopping sound of water against pilings, the bitter wind singing in the telegraph wires broke the silence as the first bodies were brought ashore. They were wrapped, not in half a red sail, but in blue blankets and blue plastic shrouds, and Monsignor George Quinn whispered the prayers for the dead over each of them. Mourned a woman in the crowd: “Three of my own were brought back the same way. May God and his Holy Mother have mercy on their souls.”

Off at Dawn. The night before, KLM Flight 607E, a two-month-old Super Constellation en route from Amsterdam to New York, had put down at Shannon Airport, and its passengers had trooped into the lounges and duty-free shops to sip Irish coffee, have a last buying spree, scribble a few final postcards. On board the economy flight when it took to the air again were its crew of eight and 91 passengers, including three babies in arms, a honeymoon couple, 13 members of the Church of the Brethren from Lancaster County, Pa., three Polish immigrants to the U.S., an Israeli and his wife on the way to see their American grandchildren in The Bronx and six swordsmen of the Egyptian fencing team bound for an international meet in Philadelphia.

Thirty-five minutes after take-off at 4:05 a.m., Flight 607E radioed a routine report that it was about 100 miles out over the Atlantic. When a next report, due every 5° of longitude, did not come in, a “phase of uncertainty” was declared, during which all stations and planes were urged to look and listen for the plane. Half an hour later, an emergency was declared. Ten hours passed before an R.A.F. Coastal Command plane, scouring the sea some 40 minutes out from the Irish coast, spotted traces of oil. Coming down to 100 ft., the pilot saw the dreadful midden of disaster: partly inflated rubber life rafts, remnants of cabin furnishings, handbags, bodies, floating luggage.

To the Rescue. Ships of all sorts and all nations converged on the scene. The Irish ferryboat, Naomh Eanna, put ashore 300 holiday excursionists at Galway and headed out into the Atlantic. A Canadian destroyer and an Irish corvette turned their prows to the disaster area. The Jules Verne radioed: “We now have aboard eleven bodies: seven women, two men, a little girl and a little boy.”

No one could say what force had hurled the Constellation to its death, although burns on the recovered bodies and metal fragments embedded in some suggested an explosion before the plane hit the sea. Only one little boy wore a life jacket, perhaps at the urging of an anxious parent. Flyers at Shannon speculated that a propeller might have sheared off, plowed into the packed cabin and perhaps ignited the fuel tanks which had been filled to capacity before takeoff.