“This is the wrong time for some fool to send out an SOS”

The two radio officers, faces red with perspiration and anxiety, sit in the sweltering radio room of the passenger ship. The Chief R/O uses his tapered nail-bitten fingers to delicately rotate the tuning control on one of the big marine receivers. Even though it is nine o’clock at night the equatorial heat is claustrophobic. There is no air-conditioning on the Amra, sailing along off the coast of Somaliland, bound for Mombasa, Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam from Bombay.

The Chief is in a bad temper. He has been severely reprimanded by the Captain for unseemly behaviour with a lady passenger in the first-class bar; she had objected to his alcohol-driven impulse to thrust his hand under her skirt. In a vicious rage he has flung things violently about his cabin and, in doing so, lost his full set of dentures. Now the mouth on his gin-soaked face is a mean, sunken slot.

“Radio Brazzaville must be there somewhere. I tuned it in last night,” impatiently says The Squinting Eye. He is very much the pimply-faced junior, on his first ship and first voyage.
“Don’t try to hassle me. I was at sea long before you ever heard of a Morse key.”
“The All Ireland will be over by the time….”
“Shut your trap, for Christ’s sake.”

As the tuning marker glides slowly along the long yellow dial an incongruous procession of sounds fill the air; balalaika music from Moscow, the sonorous measured tones from the Voice of America, the melodic sound of Georges Guétary singing on Radio France International, followed by a speaking voice that sounds like elastic being rapidly twanged, that may be Hindi or Urdu.

“Hold on, hold on!” yells the Chief. He turns up the volume control and, like the genie out of the bottle, the voice of Mícheál O’Hehir floods into the radio room. Curses and blasphemies of relief and excitement. The Chief has been so long east of Suez that he has lost much contact with Ireland and has only a tenuous knowledge of the hurling scene. But he is as elated as I am; I have seen both teams in action several times just before being posted to Eastern service with the Marconi company.

This is 1956. It is many years and many miles away from the era of satellite TV and the Internet which today make seeing and hearing the All Ireland a commonplace experience even in the most remote corners of the globe.
In those bad old days Raidio Éireann, which never broadcast on world-spanning short wave, had an arrangement with the colonial administration in the French Congo to rebroadcast the All Ireland from Brazzaville’s powerful transmitter. This was sent out onto the airwaves on the Mondays after the big game. In distant and sometimes lonely corners of the earth, Irish people sat round radio sets, patiently trying to tune in the oft-wavering signals from equatorial Africa.

I told the Chief about the two great sides that squared up to one another for that titanic hurling final of 1956. Stalwarts like the Rackard brothers and Ned Wheeler were among the many accomplished and powerful hurlers on the Wexford side. Cork had the stellar Christy Ring in action, along with outstanding players like Willie John Daly and Josie Hartnett.

When the Artane Boys Band finished the national anthem, the roar of over 80,000 spectators came pouring out of the receiver in a huge landslide of sound. As the match got under way the rapid-fire commentary transported us back to a scene remote from the teeming streets of Bombay (since renamed Mumbai). The mind’s eye pictured vividly the see-saw of the game, the shoulder to shoulder races for the ball, the rapid swing of hurleys, the ball soaring through the air with the packed stands as background.

The thunderous applause that greeted the goals scored by Wexford and by Cork made the loudspeaker vibrate. The names of the players rang out in the tropic night: Nick O’Donnell, Jimmy Brohan, Tim Flood, Matt Fouhy. The occasional Lascar seaman, padding barefooted past the door on the way to or from the bridge-deck above, glanced in with curious dark-brown eyes.

Wexford were well on top in the early part of the second half. Then Christy Ring scored a goal from a 21 yard free. Just at that moment several large locust-like creatures flew into the radio room, whizzing round the lights, flitting from bulkhead to bulkhead. We were near the coast and these repulsive creatures often flew far out to sea.

“Get out, you fuckers,” shouted the Chief. He grabbed the radio log-book and used it as a swatter. I put the telegram receipt book to the same use. We flailed furiously about at these elusive African interlopers, accompanied by the urgent high-pitched voice of Michéal O’Hehir. It was as if we too were playing at Croke Park. Eventually we scored several hits apiece, squashing these large insects, and driving the survivors out the door into the night.

In the final quarter Wexford were ahead but Paddy Barry brought the sides level with a goal and then Christy Ring put Cork ahead with a point. The perspiration poured off us as we listened with absolute intensity to every puck of this great game. Wexford powered back and were ahead with only a few minutes to go.

We nearly missed the legendary save by the Wexford goalkeeper Art Foley when Ring, for once breaking free from Bobby Rackard, fired a shot at goal. Just before that pivotal moment Radio Brazzaville faded. It may have been the heat in the receiver that caused the signal to go out of tune. Another station that sounded very like All India Radio came into being. Míchéal O’Hehir’s voice was replaced by that of Lata Mangeshkar, then and for many decades one of India’s most popular female vocalists. “Indian whore,” said the Chief in a low, vindictive voice.

Then, biting his lips with concentration, with the sensitive skill born of years of experience, he turned the tuning control slowly and coaxed Radio Brazzaville and the All Ireland final back into the receiver and the radio room of the Amra. After Foley’s save Wexford surged forward and the redoubtable Nick Rackard wrapped it up with a thundering goal and Tom Dixon added a point just before the final whistle blew. We were both limp, drained of energy.

“I’ll die if I don’t get a drink right away,“ said the Chief. Even though we were supposed to be keeping radio watch on 500 kc/s, the international distress frequency, we abandoned the radio room and repaired to the Chief chaotic cabin.

“No bugger has the right to send out an SOS when the All Ireland is on,” said the Chief with a sour grin as he poured himself a large gin.

Related Topic:
Wexford v Cork 1956 All Ireland Final