James is still alive, despite the reports!
February 1977
Sixty-nine year old James Murphy could borrow a line from Mark Twain, and say ‘reports of my death are greatly exaggerated’.
It comes after he got a shock when he opened his newspaper last week and saw a report of his apparent drowning back in 1927!
James, who lives in the John Street flats in Wexford, was reading our ‘Looking Back’ column when he saw a story in the ‘50 Years Ago’ section that told of a tragic drowning at sea when a young man fell from the steamer ship, The Emilie Dunford.
Yet James is still very much alive and well, and says that the 1927 report was wrong, as it was actually his brother Willie, who was then 20 years old, who drowned. Willie had joined the steamer at Swansea and days later his parents at Watery Lane, King Street, were reading the first letter home from him when the news of his death arrived on the wire.
James Murphy is called ‘Docker’ by many of his friends, but when he walked into Quigley’s Bar on John Street last Thursday night, that nickname had changed to ‘Ghost’ on account of last week’s report!
If James created a record by reading about his own death fifty years after it was said to have happened, then he feels his family has created another, this time by actually preventing deaths.
‘A few years ago, an English newspaper had a story about a Liverpool man who had saved seventeen people from drowning by jumping in after them, and they wondered was it a world record,’ says James.
‘But my father alone saved more than that, and in fact, I’d say that between us, our family holds the real world record.’
And James’s boast is not an idle one. His father Murth Murphy saved twenty-five lives. His brother Johnny, who now lives at Antelope Road, Maudlintown, saved six, and James himself saved eight. And James’s son Willie, a well-known boxer and now living in Wales, follows in the family tradition, and has himself saved two people from drowning.
The entire forty-one rescues were in Wexford Harbour, with the Murphys diving in to help the stricken without any hesitation.
‘We were all strong swimmers,’ says James, ‘and we never thought twice about jumping in to save people. It was always just the right thing to do, and thankfully, we managed between us to save many lives.’
The amazing feats by the Murphy family did not go unnoticed and over the years, James received honorary certificates for three of his rescues.
On one occasion, about forty years ago, he also received a pecuniary award of £1 from the then Mayor of Wexford, Dick Corish.
James still recalls fondly how he met three of his friends that night, and they repaired to a bar with the money. And with a pint at the time costing just 6d, they managed to drink ten pints each!