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Hi,
I don't have the answer about the cost of Revenge. £28.000 give or take is a figure I have seen various times and that the purchaser was Northfleet Enterprises of Liberia. Almost certainly a non existent entity. I was not at all involved in 1980 but Robb Eden was very close to the action then, so maybe go with his £50.000. Conversely he also said that he with others flew to Inverness to get to Hull to look at the ship Lord Nelson. This makes no sense so maybe with the passage of 44 years he is muddling things up.

I think though that it is hugely unlikely that Ronan's father cleared the ship yard costs.

Ronan always sought his father's approval but never got it due to the huge gulf in how his father went about things and how he did. As an example Aodoghan wrote to Ronan in late 1977 with the following comments.

' I think it is clear to me that if we are to remain on speaking terms we must avoid any further discussion about your business projects which are merely attempts by you to get money'.

Aodoghan goes on to value the port of Greenore conservatively at £700.000 and that to sell it for £300.000 (as Ronan may have suggested ) would be a give away. He then reminds Ronan, almost with contempt,that many years previously Ronan after an evening the Wicklow Hotel tried to sell the port to a man called Stanley for £50.000.

What O'Rahiily Jnr did concerning his father was to play on his wish to have Ronan take on some sort of normal and legitimate employment or business. In this particular exchange he was trying to blag money to throw at ' Caroline Homes '. as in 'look Dad, a proper business venture'.

Aodoghan shuts him down by saying :

' If there was a serious prospect of getting you settled in some modest legitimate activity I would certainly consider this. But what I am asked to do is make an act of faith in what I am convinced is chasing a ' will-o-the-wisp '.

Ronan imagined ( or said ) that he had a Patent on some magic sort of cement that the homes were to be made of, providing him with Royalties of £300.000 per annum.

Again Aodogham slaps him down by reminding him :

' I cannot overlook that all this happened before. You said you could get a footing in a legitimate fim enterprise for an investment of £17.000 ( £40.00 in todays money i.e. 1977 ). The money was to be repaid in a matter of months. But when I raised that matter, you told me that the £17.000 only paid one weeks wages for a film crew. What you told me when I gave you the money was a quite different story'.

So it is vanishingly slight to think that Aodoghan cleared the shipyard costs.

What I believe happened is that he raised a marine mortgage with Messrs MRK Marine Finance of Switzerland in the sum of £750.000 ( or maybe $ ) but halted repayments as soon as Revenge went in to International Waters. The debt was still outstanding in 2012.

So in the dark days of 1990/91 when conditons were so bad that I was begging to bring Revenge inshore basically ' anywhere ' to stop the ongoing horror, Ronan insisted that the ship stay at sea ' at all costs'. The idealists such as Steve Conway and Neil Gates inagined that a triumphant return to air was about to happen, but Ronan was trying to keep the ship away from creditors.
Then there was a shipwreck and several people nearly died. THe responsibility would have been mine.

PM.