The Plassey on Inisheer

I was out on Inisheer for the first time last August and of course, I made my way out to the Plassey. It is a shipwreck perched on the rocks on the east side of the island near the lake (it is the dark short line in this Google Map of Inisheer).

By pure coincidence, two days later, I was flicking through TV channels and came across the tail-end of an excellent TG4 documentary (made in 2004) about the night the Plassey was wrecked. It was  a cargo ship owned by a Limerick shipping company¹ carrying a mixed cargo which included, amongst other things, copper pipes, toilet fittings and a leisure craft for use on Lough Corrib. In March 1960, a storm drove the ship onto rocks off the shore of Inisheer. Locals managed to get a rope from shore onto the ship (fired by rocket) and used a breech buoy system to haul the 11-man crew to safety – the local had to wade into the rough sea to fetch the crew ashore. The documentary followed one of the few remaining crew as he returned to Inisheer for the first time since the shipwreck to meet a couple of the men who had fetched him ashore 44 years earlier.

Here’s a short gallery of pictures of the Plassey shipwreck.

¹The company in question was the Limerick Steamship Company [long since defunct] – the company name is still retained on the facade on one of the restored buildings in Galway Harbour.