On August 27, 1979, Lord Louis Mountbatten was enjoying the last days of his holiday at Classiebawn Castle, Mullaghmore, Co. Sligo – a place he had been visiting for many years.
It was an idyllic warm sunny day and the sea was calm, prompting the earl and some of his party to set out on his fishing boat, Shadow V, to pull up some lobster pots they’d laid days earlier.
Locals in Mullaghmore can still remember the sound of the enormous blast as the small vessel was blown to smithereens just as it left the harbour, killing the queen’s cousin instantly.
It was a devastating blow to the British establishment and a stunning and sickening success for the IRA.
Also killed were Lady Doreen Brabourne, the 83-year-old mother-in-law of the earl’s daughter; his 14-year-old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull; and Fermanagh schoolboy Paul Maxwell, who was working as a boat boy while on holiday with his parents.
Nicholas’s twin brother, Timothy, and the boys’ parents, Patricia and John Brabourne, were seriously injured.
Their murder happened on one of the bloodiest days of the Troubles. As news of the assassination reverberated worldwide, 18 British soldiers were blown up in an IRA ambush at Warrenpoint, Co. Down, which became known as the Narrow Water massacre.
Thomas McMahon was sentenced to life for Mountbatten’s murder but served just 18 years before his release in 1998 under the Good Friday Agreement. Another man, Francis McGirl was tried but acquitted. He died in an apparent accident at his home in 1995.
Thirty-six years after the horrific bombing, then Prince Charles (now King Charles III) paid an emotional visit to the picturesque harbour where his beloved great uncle was murdered.
Several hundred locals lined the streets of Mullaghmore on the day he visited in 2015. He made a poignant walkabout as he remembered ‘the grandfather I never had’.
He said the murders had given him a deep understanding of the pain suffered by victims of the 30-year Troubles.
He said at the time: ‘In August 1979, my much-loved great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, was killed alongside his young grandson and my godson, Nicholas, and his friend, Paul Maxwell, and Nicholas’s grandmother, the Dowager, Lady Brabourne.’
‘At the time I could not imagine how we would come to terms with the anguish of such a deep loss since, for me, Lord Mountbatten represented the grandfather I never had,’ he said.
‘So it seemed as if the foundations of all that we held dear in life had been torn apart irreparably.’
A letter released just last year showed the ‘bitter anger’ felt by the UK royal family afterwards.
The framed letter, written by Queen Elizabeth II to the former US ambassador to the UK, Walter Annenberg, read: ‘Thank you for your kind letter of sympathy on the tragic death of Dickie Mountbatten, which we greatly appreciated.’
‘He was a splendid person and will be much missed.’
In her own handwriting she added: ‘Now that a little time has passed and we are able to see beyond the bitter anger of such senseless waste of life and the fact that we must not be intimidated by such horrible people, you may rest assured we have taken into account anxieties like yours.’
The letter signs off with ‘Elizabeth R’. The loss was enormous for everyone involved, not least the mother and father of 15-year-old Paul Maxwell.
A pupil at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Paul was by all accounts a friendly, kind and gentle boy with friends from both sides of the religious divide in the North.
A friend of the family had suggested him as a boat boy for the earl. His father, John, used the tragedy to become one of the driving forces behind integrated education in the North. Paul’s mother Mary Hornsey, now aged over 80, recalled only last year being in the village of Mullaghmore on the day of the bombing, and hearing the detonation.
Paul was a crew member on the boat and she was sitting on the patio of a cottage on what was an ‘absolutely beautiful day’ when ‘we heard this enormous bang’.
She said: ‘I knew immediately – I knew – that Paul was dead. I said to my husband: Paul’s dead. He said: Don’t be silly. I said: He is.’
Speaking to this newspaper in 2015, Mrs Hornsey also called for the perpetrators of the bombing to finally say sorry for the act that murdered her son – an apology for which she is still awaiting.
She said that Thomas McMahon is very lucky that he hasn’t had to endure the pain she has experienced.
‘I would like him to apologise, yes I would,’ Mrs Hornsey said.
‘I feel that if he has a conscience, [then] he must have a great deal on his conscience because he killed two innocent boys. ‘What cause is great enough to warrant the slaughter of innocent children?’ she asked.
‘It’s hard to know what is in Mr McMahon’s heart. If he were to lose one of his own children in such a sudden barbaric way, then maybe he would realise what an awful, heinous act he committed in taking my son from me. I would like to ask him why he murdered my son – what purpose did it serve?’ the heartbroken Mrs Hornsey added.
Thomas McMahon served just 18 years in prison for his part in the atrocity, having been released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
Since his release, he has lived with his wife in his native Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan, where he works as a carpenter.
McMahon was not there when the MoS called to his home this week, but he has refused to speak with the MoS when repeatedly approached over the years.
