In 1979 he was lucky to escape with his life when he was one of the
seven people on board Earl Mountbatten's small fishing boat the Shadow
V, in the harbour of Mullaghmore Bay, County Sligo, when it was blown
up by a bomb planted beneath the steering wheel and remotely set off by
the Provisional IRA. Mountbatten, Brabourne's mother, the Dowager Lady
Brabourne, his 14-year-old son Nicholas and a local boy working as crew
were killed, and Brabourne, his wife and another son, Tim, were all
badly injured.