THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM AT MEDJUGORJE
• It’s well known that those who decide to visit Medjugorje for the first time, and sometimes when even making a return visit, are often plagued by obstacles to prevent them travelling to the shrine of the Queen of Peace. Sickness, money problems, family or working difficulties are just some of many issues that crop up to deter the pilgrim from travelling. But none can be more unusual or fearful as the experience of John and Anita Rowland when they decided to embark on a pilgrimage back in 1988.
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• “Our story of Medjugorje began in 1988 when my wife Anita and I watched an Everyman documentary on tv about the village and the events there. It told of six children who had visions of Our Lady that had started in 1981 and were continuing ever since. We talked about the programme and agreed that one day we would like to visit this small village in Yugoslavia and see for ourselves.
“A few weeks later when I was working on a building site in London, I spotted a Yugo Tours travel shop on the opposite side of the road. That lunchtime, I went in and asked about Medjugorje and was informed that Medjugorje could be reached by bus from Dubrovnik. Sometime later I asked a good friend of mine at church, St John Fisher in Bexley, if he knew of this special place called Medjugorje, and he told me that he had been there very recently. He stayed with a farming family near the base of Mt Krizevac and suggested I write to the family if we wanted to go, but avoid weekends because it was so busy there.
“Anita and I decided to go that same year, 1988. We travelled to Dubrovnik with plans to spend a week’s holiday beside the sea before continuing to Medjugorje and staying another week there.
“On our first Saturday in Yugoslavia we decided to spend the day on the local beach behind the hotel. It was a lovely sunny day and we took our four-year-old son for a paddle in the sea before settling back down at our place on the beach. We watched an old man moving around on the beach asking people if they would like to go on his motorboat to a small island along the coast, called Lupud. We decided to join the other nine people who had settled on the excursion and the promise of visiting an old Franciscan monastery located in the hills of the island.
“Thirty minutes later we all set off in the motorboat, a 15-footer. It had a half-covered wheel-housing with a British Perkins engine; we joked how good it was. After placing his hat on my son’s head the captain then invited me to steer the boat, saying to keep clear of anything in the water. The rest of the passengers included a mum and dad, their daughter and her friend, their nan, Anita, myself and our son Christopher.
“We passed a few small islands before we reached Lupud. The Franciscan church could be seen at the top of the wooded hill, and the beaches beneath looked inviting.
“We were all told by the captain to return by 4.00pm, but if the weather changed then to get back for 3.30pm instead. So we proceeded up the hill to visit the church which was still in use. However, the monastery was overgrown. After that we moved to a small restaurant close to the beach for lunch and later relaxed on the sands and enjoyed the fine weather. We all returned to the boat on time and set off for the mainland.
“We were about 25 minutes into the journey when the weather turned. The sea began to get very choppy and rougher by the minute, until our little boat was being rocked from side to side, almost vertically. For the first time in my life I thought, “Is this it?” There was only one life belt on the boat, which the captain was sitting on, as all passengers began to get more and more frightened. The two girls began screaming that we were all going to die. I told them to stop as they were making everyone feel worse.
“As it seemed that I was the fittest passenger, I kept throwing my weight to the side of the boat to try and counter it tipping over. By now the girls were crying and they took the life belt from under the captain. By now the waves were about 25ft high, crashing down on us all of the time. The boat rope became loose and went overboard. The captain told me to try and pull it in because if it got caught in the boat’s propeller, we would be lost. I managed to pull it in and tie it safely.
“Then we spotted another boat about 400 yards in front, and it seemed we were catching up with it. I told everyone that we were getting closer and could see it was a motorboat, about 45ft long. We got to within 50 or 60 feet of it when we realised it was actually sinking! It was going down backwards with its front sticking up as we watched it sink beneath the water.
“And then we began to notice red objects bobbing in the water and suddenly realised they were people. We started to pull them out of the water. The third person we pulled onboard was a seaman from the boat that had sunk and I asked him to help me pull the others in. We pulled 14 people out of the water that day, and the extra weight helped to stabilise the boat.
“Luckily another boat arrived at the scene, and came beside us. It was larger, probably a 50-footer, and started to take others from the sea. Someone shouted from the big boat asking if we had his father with us. We did not. The missing man was the captain of the sunken boat.
“The weather was still very bad and our captain said we still had to try and make it to the coast. We managed to get to another island and sheltered there for two hours until the hurricane winds and sea began to calm. We got all the people off who had been in the water and took care of them.
“When the weather had calmed we set off again for the Dubrovnik beach, but when we arrived, there was no sign of the jetty as it had been swamped. So the captain decided to head for the old city harbour where we disembarked and walked slowly and in silence into the city to get a bus back to our hotel further along the shore.
“When we reached the hotel, the manager had already heard about what had happened on the radio and said they had never ever suffered such extreme weather and that he thought we were all on the boat that had sank. We had supper and went to bed exhausted. We discovered at breakfast in the morning that six people from the sunken boat had drowned, including the captain. The others were Austrian tourists. The boat, named the Bodium is still at the bottom of the sea.
“The following day we set off in our hire car for Medjugorje, After a long drive we arrived at the farm at the foot of Krizevac and then went to St James church to thank God and Our Lady for us being there, and we prayed for the people who had drowned. For the first time ever, Anita and I prayed together.We still send cards to the people we met on that fateful day, and have never forgotten the reliability of the our boat’s British Perkins engine that kept going throughout all the heavy weather.”​
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JOHN ROWLAND
