Stolen ferry retrieved after high-speed chase

Irish police were yesterday questioning a man arrested after a passenger ferry was stolen at a pier on Arranmore Island off Donegal. He was captured after a search which included a chase across the waves by seamen in a dinghy when the ferry, the Realt na Maidne (Morning Star), was spotted from her island home by owner’s wife Louise Boyle.

The hunt for the stolen ferry also involved Malin Head coast guard who called in a rescue helicopter from Strandhill, Co Sligo. The drama started at 7.20am when ferry boss Seamus Boyle arrived at the island pier to travel with other passengers to the mainland at Burtonport on his way to his other job as a soldier.

The Realt na Maidne was missing so he crossed to the mainland on his Arranmore Charters company back-up ferry, the Girl Gray . The alarm was raised when there was no sign of the missing vessel on the mainland. Back on Arranmore, Louise Boyle phoned gardaí and then set about scanning the surrounding seas with high-powered binoculars from her front door.



She said: “Suddenly I spotted the missing ferry away in the distance. It might have been up to six or seven miles away. It was moving quite leisurely at the time.” Her husband’s business partner Martin Gallagher and two friends from the Arranmore lifeboat crew boarded a dinghy which is used as an inshore lifeboat and set off in pursuit of the stolen ferry which is powered by twin 275hp engines and is capable of speeds up to 38 knots.

Louise said: “They got to within about 500 yards of the Realt na Maidne and whoever was on board must have spotted them then for he just put the foot down and the ferry disappeared off behind a peninsula.” But by now word had spread and other people were watching from the island and the mainland. Mr Boyle, the ferry co-owner, said: “He rammed the pursuing dinghy and then hit a rock while going in and out of rocks before beaching the ferry and making a run for it but he was caught by some local boys who held him until the gardaí arrived.”

A man in his 30s was arrested at about 8.30am. A Garda file will be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The ferry was towed to Burtonport. Gardaí said there was considerable damage done to it.