Qualla: MV Ranga

MV Ranga: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wyssalex, CC BY 3.0. Her name changed at sea. She had left Vigo in northwest Spain as the Berta de Perez and somewhere on the open water became the Ranga, the renaming a paperwork detail for her Icelandic charter to Hafskip. She was 1,586 tonnes of new container ship, on her maiden voyage from Vigo to Reykjavík under Captain Miguel Ángel Díaz Madariaga, fifteen men aboard. On 11 March 1982, off the southwest coast of Ireland, the storm took her engines. With no power and no propulsion, she drifted toward the cliffs at Dunmore Head, the westernmost point of mainland Ireland. By morning she was on the rocks, broken in two, leaking oil into the surf below Coumeenoole Beach.

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Image: Wyssalex | CC BY 3.0

MV Ranga: Fifteen Men on a Wire

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Barbara Walsh from Ireland, CC BY 2.0. Dunmore Head is not a forgiving piece of coast — sheer Devonian sandstone cliffs dropping straight to the Atlantic. When the Ranga went aground close by, no boat could safely approach her in the storm. The Dingle Fire Brigade, the Garda Síochána, and local emergency services asse...

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Image: Barbara Walsh from Ireland | CC BY 2.0

MV Ranga: The Ship That Refused to Be Salvaged

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cargoking, CC BY 3.0. The Ranga did not last long once she was abandoned. The storm tore her in two — the bow on one section of rock, the stern with its superstructure on another. Oil leaked from her ruptured tanks for days, fouling the coast where the seals haul out and the gannets dive. In 1989 a sa...

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Image: Cargoking | CC BY 3.0

MV Ranga: What the Sea Kept

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Osioni, CC BY-SA 3.0. The bow of the Ranga is still there. Walk the cliff path from the Slea Head Drive near Coumeenoole and you can see it — a rusted hulk wedged into the rocks at the base of the headland, the sea breaking white around it on most days, the red-orange of corrosion bright against the d...

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Image: Osioni | CC BY-SA 3.0

MV Ranga: Coast of Wrecks

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eddi Laumanns aka RX-Guru, CC BY 3.0. The Dingle Peninsula coast has been chewing up ships for centuries. In 1588 it was Spanish galleons from the Armada, blown north and west by storms and breaking apart on these same rocks. Local boatmen know the names of half a dozen wrecks within a few miles of Dunmore Head, some...

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Image: Eddi Laumanns aka RX-Guru | CC BY 3.0