One day I got a telephone call from a man called King, whose accent was so Irish, I could hardly make out a word that he was saying. The basis of the conversation was this. He was brought up on a tiny island off the West Coast of County Mayo in the Republic Ireland, called Inishboffin. He was now living on the Wirral somewhere.

He told me that as a little boy, he saw a huge anchor lying on the beach. He said it was very old, and had been dragged ashore by a large fishing boat, which had caught it in her nets, long before he was born. He said that the anchor was approximately the length of three full-grown men, and that it had a large circular iron ring at the top of the stock. He added that local stories spoke of an armada wreck in the vicinity.

I did some research at the library and established that the type of anchor he'd described went out of production in most European countries in 1812. The anchor then, if he'd described it to me correctly was pre 1812 at least. It was arranged that I should make a visit to the island with my  friend Ben Gould, who would take his diving suit and air bottle with him and attempt to make a trial dive in the area to have a look around. Ben had a chemist's shop in the Bowering Park district of Liverpool. He owned a substantial sea going yacht, which he kept berthed in the Liverpool docks. Small in stature, but very strong, Ben was a friendly, animated secular Jewish man with long grey mutton-chop side-whiskers and watery pale-blue eyes.

On the Friday evening of 11th of December 1969, Ben and I drove in my red Rover car through the dock gates to board the Irish car-ferry. After a good night's sleep aboard ship we awoke in Dublin and drove straight across Ireland due west to the town of Castlebar in County Mayo. We strolled round the old market town and booked into a pub for the night. That evening in the bar, we joined in the singing of 'rebel songs', drank Guinness and Irish whisky. The people were charming, friendly drinking companions. The town was packed that Saturday night, for the annual pilgrimage up Croagh Patrick [2510ft] was to take place the next day. This is when Catholic people climb the steep mountain on their knees to worship at the summit shrine.

The next day we continued on our way through Westport, then Leenaune, to the tiny coastal village of Cleggan in Connemara. We drew up outside the one and only pub in the village, and entered the low-ceilinged room. Two men sat amongst a pile of beer barrels covered with turf. 'Top of the mornin!' the tall one said, 'And what will ye be havin'?' We made ourselves comfortable after the long drive and were soon deep in conversation with the two Irishmen. Outside the sky had turned dark, precipitous clouds boiled up in the west and a harsh wind whistled through the thatched roof of the small building. We said that I was a writer specialising in stories about shipwrecks. Did they know of any in the area? Why yes they said, The Blue Funnel ship The Barrister  (built in 1939) was lying on the bottom off the south end of Inishshark.

The older man said that when he was a young man in January 1941. He'd gone to the vessel in a storm with his nephew in his currach [a leather-skinned boat built over a wooden frame] and brought ashore the captain and first mate, for which he received an amount of money from the shipping line.

They'd taken the cold, shivering, exhausted seamen into their humble cottage. It was then that they were told the story about the Free French gold that went down with the ship, locked in the ship's strongroom. According to the old man, the first officer of The Barrister said that they were carrying gold belonging to the Free French government from Algiers on route to The Clyde. There had been a U-boat scare, and the convoy had been ordered to split up. The Barrister had changed course to evade the underwater attackers and had been blown onto the rocks by the fierce westerly gales that had suddenly sprung up. No lives were lost and the local fishermen managed to get all the crew off safely. Thanks to the brave efforts of our friend at the bar, the captain and the first officer were the last to leave the stricken vessel just before she sank.

At this point, we made sure that our two companions were well supplied with large quantities of Guinness, which was drawn off directly by the use of a wooden peg with a turn-screw that had been inserted into the barrel. This was getting interesting. They said that in spite of the fact that Ireland was a neutral country during the war, a convoy of British Navy lorries with navy divers turned up in the village a few days later and commenced hard-suited diving operations immediately. At this point, they became a little vague. They said that the weather had been atrocious at the time. The military party had stayed for three days then gone away. They did not know whether the army men had retrieved the gold bullion or not. Through the dirty windowpane, we could see the blue grey island of Inishboffin a few miles out at sea momentarily revealed behind the scudding grey clouds. The ferocious Atlantic waves crashed into the harbour walls of the tiny fishing village. Dark water heaved itself high into the air, to crash with a roar onto the bottoms of the upturned boats lying on the quayside. Gobbets of salt water froth slid down the glass before our eyes.

The next day, we awoke to find that the island of Inishboffin had emerged from the gloom and formed a beckoning backdrop to the sea, which had metamorphosed into a choppy sunlit carpet of greenness. A local fisherman agreed to take us across to the island and drop us at the jetty that dominates the small curving bay. Forty-five minutes after we climbed about his stout little vessel, we were easing our way into the harbour under the great Cromwellian fort that soared above us on the rocky promontory.

The harbour is very small and lies in the shadow of and impressive castle ruin that was used in the 16th Century by Grace O'Malley the pirate queen and then by Cromwell as a prison.   We climbed the barnacle-encrusted ladder of the islands tiny jetty. A beautful wind-swept island covered in a profusion of wild flowers.  Many are the legends are associated with its name. Inishboffin means The Island of the White Cow in Erse. Local tradition says that in times of distress the cow is supposed to appear driven by an old woman.  Though it is a rather remote place to get to - it is well worth a visit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t17tby50wM

We decided to explore the three-mile long by one and a half-mile wide landmass. It's hard to believe that this little blob of land played such an important part in the Civil War, but Royalists took refuge here until they were forced to surrender to the Parliamentarians in 1653 - the last on the West coast to do so. For a time, Cromwell's castle was used to imprison Catholic clergy for their religious beliefs. Their sentence was deportation, often to work on plantations in the West Indies. The fort was also used as a defence against French pirates and marauders, but was finally abandoned in the eighteenth century. The reason that Inishboffin has such an active past is explained by its natural harbour. It's big, safe, and sheltered from the Atlantic storms. Conceivably the surfeit of shipping in the past could provide another answer to Mr King's anchor?  Maybe it had been lost from a Cromwellian galleon, a Royalist vessel, or a French buccaneer?  TempoWeb's *Dive Ireland* website reports that:

"The strategic importance of these islands ensured that they attracted the attentions of both National and English forces during the major upheavals caused by the 1641 Rebellion. During this time Inishbofin became a pivotal stronghold in the West and was the last to fall.Royalist forces held out here with French aid from the Duke of Lorraine and made a last ditch campaign of resistance. After some initial success, which included retaking the Aran Islands, the resistance finally crumbled and the islands surrendered in somewhat controversial circumstances. The Cromwellian regime built the imposing and wonderfully intact Star-Shaped artillery fort at the mouth of the harbour, circa 1656. It is known locally as Cromwell's Barracks and Don Bosco's fort. The latter is reputed to have been a Spanish pirate and ally of Graine Uaile. Together the pair kept out intruders from the harbour. Being raiders, they could also use the same technique to trap merchandised ships in the harbour and avail of their treasures for themselves. To the east lies an impressive cresent shaped medieval harbour, which still stands over 3m in height at low tide. With the Cromwellian occupation the islands entered a new and somewhat bizarre stage. The Fort was used as a penal holding for Catholic priests and many remained until the restoration of Charles 11. During the Jacobite wars the fort was again in Irish hands and held out until after the battle of Aughrim in 1691, when they surrendered on good terms to the Williamite forces." ( http://www.inishbofin.com/index.html)

Wandering along the seashore near to the jetty, we came across the huge black anchor lying not far from the shoreline. The wooden crossbar described by Mr King had rotted away long ago, but the metal monster had survived the years. The years of exposure had slimmed down the shank and flukes considerably. Multiple corrosive layers of black rust had fallen away like the skins of an onion. I made precise measurements that confirmed the anchor's antiquity. It was an object of great antiquity, perhaps sixteenth or seventeenth century. Our researches indicated that a Flemish hulk, a military transport vessel called the Falco Blanco [The White Falcon] which had been attached to the armada, had gone down in this area. Could this be her anchor? Galway: It is said that the Falco Blanco (300 tons/103 men/16 guns) and the Concepcion of Biscay (225 men, 18 guns) and another unknown ship entered Galway Bay. The Falco Blanco was grounded at Barna, five km west of Galway city, and most of those on board made it to shore. The Concepcion was grounded at Carna 30 km further west, having been lured to shore by the bonfires of a party of wreckers from the O'Flaherty clan. Perhaps it was completely unconnected with the Falco Blanco after all?

We walked toward the west of the island and clambered up the hill of Cnoc Mor. The view across the glittering sea towards the mainland was spectacular. To our east lay white sands and the wide restless Atlantic Ocean. It was time for a few quiet moments of introspection. Each person with his own thoughts. Nothing broke the silence but the birdsong, or the sudden rustle as a rabbit broke from cover. Far below us, a solitary grey horse stood knee high in grass thick with yellow flowers.

We booked into the only hotel on the island. That night we sang along with a guitar-playing young priest in the cosy bar. The weather was too bad for Ben to do an initial survey-dive. Time had run out for us. Sadly we said farewell to the magical Celtic paradise and headed back on the A59 to Dublin.

Upon reaching the Irish capital, we had a couple of hours before it was time to board the ferry back across to England, so we thought that we might as well call into The Irish Keeper of Lights' office in the city. We were anxious to check out the old man's story about the sinking of the Blue Funnel steamer The Barrister. The office is the Irish equivalent of our Trinity House. A friendly officer consulted the records for 1941.

'No, I am afraid not Sir, we've no record of such a vessel foundering in that period.' He said, 'Furthermore', he continued, 'I've checked a year on either side - 1940 & 1942. He'd no entry for that named vessel whatsoever.'

We glanced at each other and smiled wryly. 'The old man had got his free supply of Guinness on the strength of a fairytale! Good Luck to him,' we laughed. The experience was worth eight pints anyway!' After a few weeks at home, I got to thinking about the old man's story. I rang Alfred Holt Shipping Company Ltd, owners of the famous Blue Funnel Line. In response to my enquiry, that found an old-timer in the office. Before I'd finished telling him the complete tale, he cut in excitedly -

'Yes, we did have a Barrister - in fact we've had five Barristers - one after the other. There was a Barrister- and yes, it did go down off the Mayo coast in 1941. It sank in very deep water, so it wouldn't be recorded in The Keeper of Lights Dublin records, because it did not constitute a danger to shipping, and that is the criteria for a mention in the wreck maps and records!'

My next move was to write to The Central Records of Shipping and Seaman in Llantrissant in Wales. For a small charge, they sent me a crew list for the vessel on her last fateful journey. Although it was over thirty years after the event, I supposed that some of the ship's company must still be alive - but where? One of the ordinary seamen had an unusual set of initials that would make things easy. As it was a Liverpool registered vessel, there was a good likelihood that many of the sailors were Liverpool men. I reached for the telephone book and looked up the name. It was there. I rang the number and waited breathlessly. A man's voice answered -

          'Yes?' He said.

          'If I mentioned The Barrister 1941, would that mean anything to you?' I said.

          'Not half!' he replied. 'I was shipwrecked on her off the coast of Ireland during the war!'

           I gave him the old story about being a writer.

           'If I come round with a bottle of Scotch, would you like to talk to me about it?'

           Too true,' he replied, 'You can come straight away if you're free.'

I soon found the house, which lay in a street in Liverpool's Dingle area. We sat for two hours. The old sailor talked excitedly of his life in those days - the days of his youth. He told me about the last voyage of The Barrister. They'd been ordered to call at Algiers and pick up a secret cargo. The whole crew was frightened, because the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea was a favourite hunting ground for the dreaded U-boats. On the trip to Glasgow, they made it across to the coast of Ireland with the intention of sneaking round the north coast, the south again to the Clyde. However, before they got that far they were driven on to the remorseless rocks of Inish Shark - just like El Falco Blanco!

He made me a pencil drawing of the ship including its interior layout.

'If anyone ever does dive on the vessel,' he said, 'could you ask them to get my wallet and my new Wellington boots out of my locker.' He drew the position of the locker and the strong room. I thanked him profusely and said my farewells.

Back at my office aboard Clubship Landfall, I excitedly rang Ben Gould to break the good news to him.

Sadly soon afterwards received news from the Irish authorities that Irish Diving teams were to be given priority. That was the end of the treasure hunting! It was time to concentrate on our club business again!

As a postscript to this memoir, I must add that poor Ben died not many years after this.