HMS Maidstone was an old an ex-Royal Navy Ship, pressed back into service to hold republican internees in the early 1970s.
Conditions onboard were cramped, dark and grim. Eventually, in April 1972 – in response to protests over poor conditions, prisoners were moved to Long Kesh.
But in January 1972, a group of IRA prisoners decided to make an escape attempt after someone noticed a seal swimming through the barbed wire surrounding the ship.
They greased themselves in butter and boot polish to squeeze out the portholes of the ship and swam 270 meters through an ice-cold Belfast Lough in a bid to escape the floating prison.
The near naked men then hijacked a double-decker bus before slipping across the border.
Unsurprisingly, this was a propaganda coup for the IRA, with the escapees nicknamed in Republican circles as ‘The Magnificent Seven’ even appearing at a news conference in Dublin.
Naturally, the escape was also a massive embarrasment for the British government and the security forces.
Ciarán Dunbar is joined by James Durney, author of ‘Jailbreak: Great Irish Republican escapes’.
The IRA’s ‘swim to freedom’ from Belfast’s infamous prison ship
