The Keeragh Islands (

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

: ''Oileáin na gCaorach'') are a pair of small islets located approximately 1.5 km (1 mile) off the coast of Bannow in south County Wexford, Ireland (GPS: Latitude: 52.1983, Longitude: -6.73778). They are a designated Special Protection Area due to their importance as a breeding ground for

great cormorant The great cormorant (''Phalacrocorax carbo''), known as the black shag in New Zealand and formerly also known as the great black cormorant across the Northern Hemisphere, the black cormorant in Australia, and the large cormorant in India, is a w ...

s. The islets are surrounded by a treacherous rocky reef – the ruin on the larger island was built around 1800 for survivors of shipwrecks, but is now very dilapidated.

Fethard lifeboat disaster

On 20 February 1914 the ''Mexico'', a Norwegian

barque A barque, barc, or bark is a type of sailing vessel with three or more masts having the fore- and mainmasts rigged square and only the mizzen (the aftmost mast) rigged fore and aft. Sometimes, the mizzen is only partly fore-and-aft rigged, b ...

, ran aground in stormy seas on the reef near the Keeraghs. The Fethard lifeboat was launched, but both vessels were smashed to pieces by mighty waves. Nine of the fourteen lifeboat crew were swept to their deaths; the remaining five joined the eight surviving Norwegian sailors on the exposed reef, where they remained miserably clinging to rocks while the storm continued unabated. Several attempts to rescue them were foiled before two brave men, Bill Duggan and Jim Wickham of the Rosslare Fort lifeboat, took a dinghy and ferried the survivors two at a time from their ice cold rocks. The operation needed 6 trips in stormy seas to bring all to safety, but on the second of these, the dinghy was holed. For the remaining trips the sea was kept out by a loaf of bread wrapped in oilskins, plugged into the opening.http://www.plimsoll.org/resources/SCCLibraries/WreckReports2002/20242.asp

References

{{reflist Islands of County Wexford Special Protection Areas in the Republic of Ireland Uninhabited islands of Ireland