SERIOUS ACCIDENT AT KILLYBEGS

On Friday night, November 11, 1898, a fisherman, John Byrne of Bavin, Kilcar, met with a serious accident at the new boatslip in Killybegs.  Mr Byrne, with a number of other fishermen from Teelin, Kilcar, St John’s Point, etc., was engaged in fishing herring in and around Killybegs Harbour. About nine o’clock that night he returned from shooting his nets, moored his boat to the slip, and started for his boarding-house.  The night was pitch dark, so much so that Byrne could not find his way, and before he had gone twenty yards he accidentally fell over the side of the slip, falling a distance of about twenty-five feet.  He sustained serious injuries to his back and ankle.  It was nothing short of a miracle that he was not killed there and then, as the portion of the shore on which he fell was covered with broken bottles, delph, and scraps of iron, which found their way there from some of the neighbouring public houses.  That was the second accident of the kind which happened there within a few years, a respected merchant, Michael McGill, having lost his life in this very spot in February 1892.  Owing to the absence of a light on the slip, even on the darkest winter night, the place was exceedingly dangerous when so many fishermen were passing to and fro at all hours of the night.  The slip was subject to dues, and it was left to the fishermen to insist on a lamp being placed somewhere upon it.