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GREYSTONES ARCHAEOLOGICAL & HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL      VOLUME 8

          survivors on board, which it did. This lifeboat then rescued a lone
          occupant of lifeboat No. 5 and then rescued another man from a
          raft. HMS Contest managed to rescue six men in a lifeboat and
          then  two  men  from  separate  rafts.  The  trawler  Eastcoates
          recovered seven people from the sea, six of whom were dead
          and appeared to have died as the result of bring choked by their
          lifebelts.  The  Portpatrick  lifeboat  rescued  two  individuals from
          separate  rafts.  All  the  survivors  were  landed  in  Donaghadee
          where  the  voluntary  services  looked  after  them  but  some
          declined offers of accommodation and opted to go home to their
          families to recover from their ordeal.

              The following day the grim task of recovering the bodies from
          the  sea  was  undertaken  by  various  vessels  and  these  were
          released for burial as they were identified. Some relatives had to
          wait some time to receive the remains of loved ones for burial as
          eight bodies were later recovered off the Isle of Man, three off
          Londonderry/Derry, and two off the Scottish coast.

              The final death toll was 128, including Walter D. Smiles, M.P.
          for North Down, Major Maynard Sinclair, Minister for Finance and
          Deputy Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, and a Mr. Sweeney
          from Dublin, the only confirmed casualty from the Republic of
          Ireland. 44 survived: 10 crew and 34 passengers.

          The Formal Inquiry


              Given the scale of this tragedy, there were calls for a public
          inquiry into the loss of the M.V. Princess Victoria and this opened
                rd
          on 23  March 1953 in Crumlin Road Courthouse, Belfast, before
          Mr. John H. Campbell, Q.C., R.M., and sat for twenty-five days
          resulting ultimately in a 30,000 word report.


              The Inquiry Report concluded that:


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