The Lusitania – The Cape Clear Connection

Readers will be interested in another connection which has come to light in a recent article in The Sunday Times by Margarette Driscoll. These concerns the Coughlan family, John & Katie and their three children, pictured across who were returning to Ireland to take over the family farm near Crookhaven. The husband was lost and the little girl was sadly drowned after being washed by a wave from her mother’s arms. Katie endured three hours in the water before being picked up but the two others survived, quite probably due to self-sacrifice on the part of their father John who like others would have seen his children take priority on the lifeboats on the heroic principal of ‘women and children first’. Katie later married fisherman Joseph O’Driscoll, from Cape Clear, in a made match and the couple settled on Brow Head Crookhaven.  Joseph and his brother John came from the house today known as ‘Tír na n Óg’ which overlooks South Harbour and is also the former Telegraph Station.