Over a hundred years ago, on St. Martin’s Eve, there was a storm. Not just any old storm, but the biggest storm that had ever been recorded in the area before or since. Obviously, back in those days, the weather warning system wasn’t exactly perfect. Nonetheless, it was clear that a storm was on the way: the air was thick with it, the sky was clouding over, and the winds were whipping up the tide.
But times were hard. People needed food, money. A group of fishermen – some thirty in total – decided to brave the waters. The captain of the trawler The Merrow was one of the men determined that they should set sail. John Kilgannon, his name was. Some of his crew mutinied; refused to cast off. Not just because of the storm, either – all those in Wexford grew up with an ancient warning. Upon St. Martin’s Eve no net shall be let down; No fisherman of Wexford shall, upon that holy day, Set sail or cast a line within the scope of Wexford Bay. Kilgannon, just one of many who set off on that fateful day, claimed it to be nothing more than a story.
No-one knows what happened out in the bay that evening. But the town was pummelled by winds, rain, the swell of the sea and lightning strikes. Some would later claim they could hear the screams of men over the storm, but others said it was merely the call of the wind.
The next day, the people of Wexford awoke to a scene of devastation. Buildings had collapsed, roads and homes were flooded and dead fish littered the land around, picked up by the ghastly winds. But it was only when the townsfolk reached the harbour that the full cost of the previous night revealed itself.
The sodden corpses of the fishermen littered the shore, many with terrible injuries. It took hours for the wives of the men to find their husbands and begin to grieve.
However, amongst the sea of corpses, one fisherman was unaccounted for. John Kilgannon was not among the dead. And his wife Kathleen never came to find him. The Kilgannon house, on a hill just outside the town, had been nearly completely destroyed by the storm. Kathleen was killed by a fallen wall. She was given a burial nearby.
But what of John? Well, he was never found. But some say that his ghost still haunts the area every St. Martin’s Eve, trying desperately to get home.
Shane Rynhart 