#islandnation – DAH DIT, DAH DIT...The distance which Morse Code could travel was highlighted to me at Valentia Coastal Radio Station when the centenary of its operation was marked writes Tom MacSweeney.
John Draper now in charge of the station recorded for THIS ISLAND NATION the story of Paddy Burke who was on duty watch in Valentia in October of 1942 during World War Two when at 0500 hours he picked up a very weak message in Morse Code, so weak, so faint that he turned off all the machinery making noise in the station at the time in order to hear it and to track it down, which he did. It came from a Second Officer named Smith of the SS GH Jones which had been torpedoed. He was one of 40 crewmen aboard a lifeboat 250 miles South West of the Azores, about 1,250 nautical miles away from Valentia, but Paddy Burke had heard them. He alerted the Royal Navy in London and a destroyer was despatched to rescue them which it did. The Second Officer's hand was so badly injured that it was becoming gangrenous but he had kept sending the message.
Thirty years later a man arrived at the station who introduced himself as the Second Officer who had made that fateful contact with Valentia. Now Capt.Smith he met Paddy Burke who had heard his call for help and they recalled that moment when a Radio Officer on the Kerry island performed his duty to the highest humanitarian and professional standards.
"Paddy is deceased but that story is part of the history of Valentia," John Draper said "and it underlines the professionalism and dedication to duty always shown by the operators at Valentia."
Walking along the corridors of the station and seeing the photographs of rescues they have been involved in and the thanks sent to them by those whom they helped is to realise how vital this station is to safety at sea.
I was pleasantly surprised to receive an invitation to the commemoration as I would have questioned in recent years the attempts by Coast Guard management to close it and Malin Head and to centralise the operations of both stations in Dublin.
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