Murlough, Co. Donegal By Jon Sass Near the summit of Croaghan Hill, Murlough, Co. Donegal, are the remains of possibly the most advanced windmill in Ireland. It was built in […]
Read More →Above: Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone—
inflicted the heaviest defeat ever suffered by the English in Ireland at the Battle of the Yellow Ford.
Above: The KLM Super Constellation Hugo de Groot, which crashed 160km off the coast of Galway on 14 August 1958.
The KLM Super Constellation Hugo de Groot, en routefrom Amsterdam to New York, crashed at dawn some 160km off the Galway coast just half an hour after refuelling at Shannon—one of the worst air disasters ever off these islands. There were no survivors. All 91 passengers (Dutch, British, US, Polish and Israeli nationals), along with a United Arab Republic fencing team and the crew of eight, lost their lives. A subsequent inquest agreed verdicts of death from multiple injuries, haemorrhages and fractures owing to violent impact but failed to produce any evidence as to the cause. Only 34 bodies were recovered, including that of a fourteen-month-old baby. Just twelve, including the baby, were identified, of whom eleven were repatriated. In the search-and-rescue mission, the RAF was assisted by the Irish naval service, the Aran Islands ferry Naomh Éanna, lifeboats from the Aran Islands and Fenit, and several fishing vessels. It was a traumatic event for the people of the West, and of Galway in particular, with the sombre transfer of the bodies ashore at Galway docks, the round-the-clock post-mortems at the Regional Hospital, the religious services for six denominations and, five days later, the funeral of the remaining 23 to Bohermore cemetery, the largest the city had ever seen. On the 50th anniversary of the disaster in 2008 a KLM representative paid tribute to the people of Galway for their outstanding assistance at that time. Wreaths were laid on the mass grave of the unidentified victims and on a separate grave nearby—that of baby Bernadette de Kock Van Leeuwen.