Shannon Goss, 26, was married for only a year before she lost her engagement ring in the sea at Templetown Beach, Dundalk. Five months later, the ring has finally been found and returned to her – the very day she was supposed to collect a replacement.
Shannon works in Ó’Fiaich College and was at a summer camp the day she lost her ring. They took the students to Templetown Beach for the day and were playing ball in the water. Shannon cannot swim, so ordinarily, she says, she would only go up to her knees in the water. On this occasion, however, the water was chest high.
Shannon’s wedding and engagement rings flew off her fingers as she lost her balance in the water. “I saw the rings come off my finger and into the water and I panicked!” Shannon says. “I was trying not to cry and stay calm, but I was absolutely freaking out! We all stood still, trying our best to see if we could spot the rings.”
Unsurprisingly, no one could see the rings because of the water level, and the group had no goggles. Shannon got out of the water while two of her work colleagues, Brendan O’Malley and Jamie King, sent students to ask other beachgoers if they had any goggles. Thankfully, someone did, so Brendan and Jamie stayed in the water for over an hour, taking turns with the goggles to search for Shannon’s rings.
In the moment, Shannon says she thought there was no way that she would get her rings back. But after about an hour, while Shannon was on the phone with her husband Eamonn, her colleagues shouted to her that they’d found her wedding ring.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Shannon states. “That built up the hopes that there was a possibility the engagement ring would turn up too.”
Shannon and husband Eamonn held off on the purchase of a new engagement ring until Christmastime in the hope that her ring would be recovered. Local metal detectorists searched for the ring the day and weekend after it was lost, with no joy. An appeal was put in a metal detectors group on Facebook in September, Shannon says, as she still had a little bit of faith that it would be found someday.
Eventually, Shannon and her husband purchased a new ring online on the 3rd of November and were due to collect it from a shop in Belfast on Sunday the 10th. However, they decided to hold off picking up the ring until the end of the month due to a conflict with plans they had already made for the Sunday. Shannon says when she and Eamonn were buying the ring, she said to him, “Imagine my ring was found after buying this”, still clinging onto the little hope she had left.
On Sunday the 10th of November, Shannon and her mother were on a video call with Shannon’s sister, and she received the photo of her lost ring from James Nolan, a metal detectorist. “I cried, absolutely bawled my eyes out,” Shannon says. “Eamonn was in bed and woke up to me crying, holding the phone with the photo of my ring. He thought something bad was after happening, I was crying that much! It nearly didn’t feel real!”
Shannon’s beloved engagement ring was returned to her in perfect condition, no diamonds missing and no damage to the ring itself at all. She has expressed deep gratitude to all of those who helped her look for her ring.
