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Tag Archives: Canadian Militia


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Birth of Charles McGuinness, Sailor & Adventurer

Charles John McGuinness, sailor and adventurer, is born on March 6, 1893, in Derry, County Londonderry.

McGuinness is the elder of two sons of John McGuinness, sea captain and harbourmaster who is born in the United States, and Margaret McGuinness (née Hernand) from Donegal, County Donegal.

In 1908, at the age of 15, McGuinness leaves home, stowing away in a ship and traveling extensively throughout the world for several years. At the age of 17 he is involved in the first of several shipwrecks, drifting for two weeks on a lifeboat before being rescued near Tahiti. He works as a pearl fisher in the South Seas for a year before resuming his nautical career.

In 1913, McGuinness travels through Canada, working as a panhandler and briefly joining the Canadian Militia. In August 1914, following the outbreak of World War I, he joins the British navy, serving in Admiral Reginald Bacon‘s Dover Patrol and in Cameroon. After learning of the 1916 Easter Rising, he deserts the British navy but later joins the South African Army, in which he fights in east Africa. He is captured by the German Schutztruppe of Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck but manages to escape by trekking through the jungle.

Disillusioned with the war, McGuinness resumes his travels. In 1920, he returns to Derry and joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA), leading a flying column in northwest Ireland. McGuinness, who reputedly introduces the first monkey to Derry, is viewed locally as an eccentric adventurer but is much celebrated for his instrumental role in the daring escape of Frank Carty, the IRA Sligo Brigade commander, from Derry jail.

Wanted for the murder of Inspector Robert Johnson in Glasgow, a charge he denies, McGuinness is captured by the British army in June 1921 after a failed bank raid in Glenties, County Donegal, but escapes from Derry’s Ebrington Barracks before his identity is established. Shortly after the truce in July 1921 he is sent by Liam Mellows to Germany, from where he smuggles arms to Ireland. After the treaty split, he continues to smuggle arms for the republican side but leaves the IRA, having become disillusioned with its incompetence. He claims to have been arrested in Berlin in 1922 for conspiring with Bulgarian revolutionaries, and released on condition that he leaves the state.

McGuinness emigrates to New York in 1923 where, following an alleged spell of employment by Chiang Kai-shek‘s forces in China, he establishes himself as a building contractor. In 1928, he joins Admiral Richard E. Byrd‘s expedition to the Antarctic, serving as a navigation officer. At a reception on his return in 1929, he presents the mayor of New York City, Jimmy Walker, with an Irish tricolour which, he claims, Byrd had flown over the South Pole. He is not, as he claims, awarded a congressional medal by the secretary of the navy.

In 1930, McGuinness embarks on a new career, smuggling rum between Canada and the United States (his memoirs of which are subsequently published in the American press under the pseudonym “Night-Hawk”). After losing his fortune when his boat and cargo are impounded in the summer of 1931, he travels to the Soviet Union to observe communism at first hand. He remains in the Soviet Union around two years, where he claims to work as a harbourmaster in Murmansk, and forms an unfavourable opinion of the Soviet Union.

McGuinness’s autobiography, Nomad, is published in 1934. His publisher, Methuen Publishing, is sued for considerable damages by the notorious Alderman John William Nixon, MP, as a result of McGuinness’s veiled reference to him as the former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detective inspector who led a murder gang in Belfast in 1922, believed responsible for the murder of the McMahon family.

In late 1936, McGuinness joins the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War but soon deserts after disagreements with the authorities. He returns to Ireland, where he pens a sensational exposé of the International Brigades, I fought with the Reds, which is published by the Irish Independent. He also writes colourful accounts of life under communism, such as Behind the Iron Curtain, under the pseudonym “Peter Dawson.”

In 1942, while serving as chief petty officer in the marine service at Haulbowline, McGuinness offers to assist the German legation by smuggling spies out of Ireland. Despite his British naval service, he is virulently anti-British. According to local legend he has the sole of both feet tattooed with the Union Jack so wherever he goes he is safe in the knowledge that he is “trampling on the butcher’s apron.” He is arrested and sentenced to seven years imprisonment but is released shortly after the end of the Emergency.

McGuinness is believed to have died on December 4, 1947, when he supposedly drowns alongside four other crew members of the schooner Isaalt that he is piloting on Ballymoney Strand near Gorey, County Wexford. Two members of the crew survive, managing to swim ashore, the ship is a mere 100 metres from land. However, members of McGuinness’ family express doubt over the years. A nephew claims to have encountered McGuinness on the London Underground in 1955. Upon their gazes meeting, McGuinness is reported to smile and say four simple words: “You never saw me.”

(From: “McGuinness, Charles John” by Fearghal McGarry, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Frederick William Hall, Victoria Cross Recipient

Frederick William Hall, VC, a Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces, is born in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, on February 21, 1885.

Hall’s father is a British Army soldier from London. Hall emigrates to Canada approximately 1910, and lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Hall is working as a clerk in Winnipeg when World War I starts. He enlists in the 8th Canadian Infantry Battalion (90th Winnipeg Rifles) at Valcartier Camp, Quebec, on September 26, 1914. He already has military experience. In addition to serving in the 106th Winnipeg Light Infantry of the Canadian Militia, he spends over 12 years in the British Army’s Cameronians (Scottish Rifles). He sees service in India and is awarded the Army Long Service and Good Conduct Medal. A teetotaller, He is a member of the British Army’s Temperance Association while with the Cameronians.

Hall is 30 years old, and a company sergeant major in the 8th Battalion (90th Winnipeg Rifles), Canadian Expeditionary Force, during World War I when he performs a deed for which he is awarded the Victoria Cross. The citation in The London Gazette reads: 

“No. 1539 Colour Serjeant Frederick William Hall, 8th Canadian Battalion. On 24th April, 1915, in the neighbourhood of Ypres, when a wounded man who was lying some 15 yards from the trench called for help, Company Serjeant Major Hall endeavoured to reach him in the face of a very heavy enfilade fire which was being poured in by the enemy. The first attempt failed, and a Non-commissioned Officer and private soldier who were attempting to give assistance were both wounded. Company Serjeant Major Hall then made a second most gallant attempt, and was in the act of lifting up the wounded man to bring him in when he fell mortally wounded in the head.”

During the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium, Hall discovers a number of men are missing. On the ridge above he can hear moans from the wounded men. Under cover of darkness, he goes to the top of the ridge on two separate occasions and returns each time with a wounded man.

By nine o’clock on the morning of April 24 there are still men missing. In full daylight and under sustained and intense enemy fire, Hall, Corporal Payne and Private Rogerson crawl out toward the wounded. Payne and Rogerson are both wounded, but return to the shelter of the front line. When a wounded man who is lying some 15 yards from the trench calls for help, Hall endeavours to reach him in the face of heavy fire by the enemy but is shot in the head. The soldier he was attempting to help, Private Arthur Edwin Clarkson, is also killed.

Hall has no known grave. His name is on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres, Belgium, honouring 56,000 troops from Britain, Australia, Canada and India whose final resting place in the Ypres Salient is unknown. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records that he is the son of Mary Hall, of Leytonstone, London, and the late Bombardier F. Hall.

Hall lives on Pine Street in Winnipeg. In 1925, Pine Street is renamed Valour Road because three Victoria Cross recipients resided on the same 700 block of that street: Hall, Leo Clarke and Robert Shankland. It is believed to be the only street in the Commonwealth of Nations to have three Victoria Cross recipients live on it. A bronze plaque is mounted on a street lamp at the corner of Portage Avenue and Valour Road to tell the tale of the three men.

Hill is also remembered in St. Helens, Merseyside, where he lives at the time of the 1891 United Kingdom census and uses as his home address until he leaves for Canada in 1910.

Hill’s medals are in the Canadian War Museum. The museum has acquired all three Valour Road Victoria Cross medals and they are on permanent display in Ottawa.