Unsung Heroes: Austie Bourke – The fight for survival
Murrisk Harbour, where Austie Bourke left in 1947 on a journey which saw him and two others lost at sea for three weeks before being miraciously found alive off the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. Several people tried to break the news to Maria Bourke but she was having none of it. Her husband was surely dead, they tried to gently tell her. Lost at sea for three weeks, he could not have survived. It was past the stage for them of hoping he would be found alive and slimmer by the day were the chances of even finding a body. But nobody knew Austin ‘Austie’ Bourke like Maria and her faith in him was not founded in denial; rather it was rooted in her knowledge of him always returning to his beloved Murrisk during a lifetime of peril at sea. “No storm could beat my husband,” she insisted, 73 years ago this month. Maria Bourke was right. >click to read< 10:03
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