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Birth of William Brown, Commander in the Argentine Navy

William Brown, Irish sailor, merchant, and naval commander who serves in the Argentine Navy during the wars of the early 19th century, is born on June 22, 1777, in Foxford, County Mayo. He is also known in Spanish as Guillermo Brown or Almirante Brown.

Comparatively little is known of his early life, and it has been suggested that he was illegitimate and took his mother’s surname and that his father’s surname was actually Gannon. He emigrates with his father to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1793, eventually settling in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A short time after their arrival, the friend who had invited them and offered them food and hospitality dies of yellow fever. Several days later, his father also succumbs to the same disease.

One morning, while Brown is wandering along the banks of the Delaware River, he meets the captain of a ship then moored in port. The captain inquires if he wants employment and Brown agrees. The captain engages him as a cabin boy, thereby setting him on the naval promotion ladder, where he works his way to the captaincy of a merchant ship. After ten years at sea, where he develops his skills as a sailor and reaches the rank of captain, Brown is press-ganged into a Royal Navy warship. British impressment of American sailors is one of the primary issues leading to the War of 1812.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Brown escapes the ship he is serving on, a galley, and scuttles the vessel. However, the French do not believe he had assisted them and imprison him in Lorient. On being transferred to Metz, he escapes, disguised in a French officer’s uniform. However, he is recaptured and is imprisoned in the fortress of Verdun. In 1809, he escapes from there in the company of a British Army officer named Clutchwell, and eventually reaches German territory.

Returning to England, Brown renounces his maritime career and on July 29, 1809, he marries Elizabeth Chitty, daughter of an English shipping magnate, in Kent. As he is a Catholic and she a Protestant, they agree to raise their sons as Catholics and their daughters as Protestants. Despite lengthy periods of enforced separation, they have nine children. He leaves the same year for the Río de la Plata on board Belmond and sets himself up as a merchant in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Late in 1811 Brown settles in Buenos Aires just as a criollo rebellion against Spanish colonial rule in Argentina is gaining strength. By April 1812, he is developing a coastal shipping business in fruit and hides. As the Spanish naval blockade of 1812–14 begins to choke trade, he is first commissioned by the patriot government as a privateer licensed to raid Spanish merchantmen, and then, on March 1, 1814, invited to take charge of a small rebel naval squadron to contest Spanish control of the Río de la Plata estuary. Leading a fleet of nineteen ships, he fixes with great speed on a set of wartime naval routines and signaling methods, and organises a system of discipline, founding the navy on principles that pay exceptional attention to the welfare of ordinary seamen.

In early March 1814, Brown shows personal courage and incisive skill in outwitting and defeating a more powerful Spanish force near Martín García Island, thereby dividing the Spanish blockade. A Spanish attempt in May 1814 to break his blockade of Montevideo is decisively crushed by him and his makeshift navy, and the Spanish strongholds on the Atlantic coast collapse, ending open war. In 1815 and 1816, however, he carries out skirmishing raids on military and commercial targets belonging to Spanish South American possessions, until detained by a British colonial governor in Barbados in July 1816 for alleged infringements of international rules of trade.

Illness, and a tortuous but ultimately successful appeal process, take up most of 1817–18, but when Brown returns to Argentina in October 1818, political enemies set in motion a prosecution for alleged disobedience of orders. Cashiered in August 1819, then restored in rank but forced to retire, he attempts suicide the following month. Convalescence and resumption of his trading concern occupies him for several years.

A repentant government renews Brown’s command of the navy in December 1825, when war breaks out with Brazil. Though vastly outnumbered by the Brazilian fleet, he shows audacity and great finesse in a number of successful engagements in the Plate estuary in 1826, roving up the Brazilian coast on occasion to create great confusion. In February 1827, he triumphs in a series of actions known as the Battle of Juncal. After another year of commercial privateering against the Brazilian merchant fleet, he is one of two delegates selected to sign peace terms with Brazil in October 1828.

Retiring from active service that month, Brown tries to remain neutral as civil war erupts in Argentina, but reluctantly accepts the post of governor of Buenos Aires under General Juan Lavalle from December 1828 to May 1829, when he resigns in disgust at government excesses. During 1829–37 he holds aloof from the despotic government of Juan Manuel de Rosas. After French and British encroachments on the region in the later 1830s, he offers to take charge of the navy again to protect national independence and is available to defend Argentine interests when war breaks out with a French-backed Uruguay in early 1841. Though exasperated by a long and “stupid war,” he blockades the Uruguayan navy effectively until French and British fleets intervene in July 1845 with overwhelming force to capture his squadron and bring the war to an end.

Idolised by the Argentinian population for his high-principled and humane advocacy of independent democracy, Brown passes his last years trading and farming a country estate. In late 1847, he journeys to Ireland, hoping to find relations in Mayo, and is shocked by the hunger and destitution of the Great Famine.

Brown dies on March 3, 1857, at his home in Buenos Aires and is buried with full military honours. The Argentine government issues a comuniqué: “With a life of permanent service to the national wars that our homeland has fought since its independence, William Brown symbolized the naval glory of the Argentine Republic.” During his burial, General Bartolomé Mitre famously says: “Brown in his lifetime, standing on the quarterdeck of his ship, was worth a fleet to us.” His grave is currently located in the La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.


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Birth of Patrick Kelly, Provisional Irish Republican Army Commander

Patrick Joseph Kelly, commander of the East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army during the mid-1980s, is born in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, on March 19, 1957. He holds the position until his death in a Special Air Service (SAS) ambush at Loughgall, County Armagh in May 1987.

Kelly is the oldest child in a Roman Catholic family of five. He lives in Carrickfergus until he is sixteen, at which time the family returns to live in Dungannon. His uncle is the Irish Republican activist and elected official Liam Kelly.

Kelly becomes a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army at the beginning of the 1970s and becomes one of the most experienced IRA men in County Tyrone. He is arrested in February 1982 based on testimony from an informant named Patrick McGurk but is released in October 1983 due to lack of evidence, after a trial that lasts fifteen minutes.

In 1985, Kelly becomes brigade commander in East Tyrone and begins developing tactics for attacking isolated Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) bases in his area. Under his leadership the East Tyrone Brigade becomes the most active IRA unit.

In 1986, Kelly attends the IRA Army Convention where the main topic of discussion is the principle of abstentionism. Gerry Adams and others argue that the abstentionist rule should be dropped and the Provisional movement should become involved in constitutional politics. Kelly votes against dropping the rule, and a rift with the majority of the IRA Army Council ensues.

Kelly is killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) on May 8, 1987, while he is participating in an attack on Loughgall police station, in which seven other IRA men, Pádraig McKearney, Declan Arthurs, Seamus Donnelly, Tony Gormley, Eugene Kelly, Jim Lynagh, and Gerard O’Callaghan, also die. His funeral in Dungannon is one of the largest in Tyrone during the Troubles.

Kelly is buried in Edendork Cemetery, two miles from his home in Dungannon.


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USS Nathanael Greene Runs Aground in the Irish Sea

USS Nathanael Greene (SSBN-636), a James Madison-class fleet ballistic missile submarine, runs aground in the Irish Sea on March 13, 1986, suffering severe damage to her rudder and ballast tanks. She is the third ship of the United States Navy to be named for Major General Nathanael Greene (1746–1786), who served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.

Nathanael Greene‘s keel is laid down on May 21, 1962, at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. The construction of the ship is supervised by Commander Lawrence Dennis Ballou. She is launched on May 12, 1964, sponsored by Mrs. Neander W. Wade, a descendant of Nathanael Greene, and commissioned on December 19, 1964, with Commander Robert E. Crispin in command of the Blue Crew and Commander William M. Cossaboom in command of the Gold Crew.

Nathanael Greene departs Portsmouth for shakedown on December 30, 1964, with her Gold Crew embarked. It is relieved on February 1, 1965, by the Blue Crew. Her shakedown period is followed by repairs and alterations at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, after which the submarine, with her Blue Crew embarked, departs the shipyard for ballistic missile loading and her initial Polaris missile deterrent patrol.

In 1970-71 Nathanael Greene is refueled and receives its conversion to launch Poseidon missiles at Newport News Shipbuilding. Following Yard period and shakedown, she proceeds to Cape Canaveral for a test missile launch. In March 1972, she departs for her first deterrent patrol following conversion ending up in Holy Loch, Scotland.

On January 29, 1970, while making a surface run into port in thick fog, Nathanael Greene runs aground in about sixteen feet of water. She is refloated after about seven hours.

On August 11, 1984, Nathanael Greene loses her propeller in the Irish Sea. While proceeding back to Holy Loch at about 3 knots using her secondary propulsion motor, a transit of about 5 or 6 days, she is redirected to Her Majesty’s Naval Base, Clyde at Faslane as the U.S. dry dock in Holy Loch is fully committed and unavailable, while Admiralty Floating Dock No. 60 at Faslane is available. While in the Faslane dry dock, a fire occurs in one of the dock’s enclosed machinery spaces on August 18, 1984. The fire is quickly extinguished and does not affect the Nathanael Greene. While in dry dock, it is established that the main shaft had broken with the loss of about a third of its length along with the propeller. Repairs are completed in about twelve days and the Nathanael Green is undocked on September 3, 1984.

On March 13, 1986, Nathanael Greene runs aground in the Irish Sea, suffering severe damage to her rudder and ballast tanks. Her grounding is a serious accident involving a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. She is deactivated while still in commission in May 1987. Her early deactivation is decided both as a result of the damage sustained in the accident as well as in accordance with the limitations set by the SALT II Treaty.

Nathanael Greene is decommissioned on December 15, 1986, and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register (NVR) on January 31, 1987. Her removal from service allows the United States to comply easily with the ballistic missile limits of the SALT II strategic arms limitation treaty.

Nathanael Greene enters the Ship-Submarine Recycling Program (SRP), the process that the United States Navy uses to dispose of decommissioned nuclear vessels, at Bremerton, Washington, on September 1, 1998. Her scrapping is completed on October 20, 2000.

Nathanael Greene‘s sail has been restored and is now on display in Port Canaveral, Florida, as a memorial to the original 41 for Freedom fleet ballistic missile submarines.

(Pictured: USS Nathanael Greene (SSBN-636), probably during her sea trials off New England in the mid-1960s.)


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Death of William Brown, Commander in the Argentine Navy

William Brown, Irish sailor, merchant, and naval commander who serves in the Argentine Navy during the wars of the early 19th century, dies in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on March 3, 1857. He is also known in Spanish as Guillermo Brown or Almirante Brown.

Brown is born on June 22, 1777, in Foxford, County Mayo. Comparatively little is known of his early life, and it has been suggested that he was illegitimate and took his mother’s surname and that his father’s surname was actually Gannon. He emigrates with his father to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1793, eventually settling in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A short time after their arrival, the friend who had invited them and offered them food and hospitality dies of yellow fever. Several days later, his father also succumbs to the same disease.

One morning, while Brown is wandering along the banks of the Delaware River, he meets the captain of a ship then moored in port. The captain inquires if he wants employment and Brown agrees. The captain engages him as a cabin boy, thereby setting him on the naval promotion ladder, where he works his way to the captaincy of a merchant ship. After ten years at sea, where he develops his skills as a sailor and reaches the rank of captain, Brown is press-ganged into a Royal Navy warship. British impressment of American sailors is one of the primary issues leading to the War of 1812.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Brown escapes the ship he is serving on, a galley, and scuttles the vessel. However, the French do not believe he had assisted them and imprison him in Lorient. On being transferred to Metz, he escapes, disguised in a French officer’s uniform. However, he is recaptured and is imprisoned in the fortress of Verdun. In 1809, he escapes from there in the company of a British Army officer named Clutchwell, and eventually reaches German territory.

Returning to England, Brown renounces his maritime career and on July 29, 1809, he marries Elizabeth Chitty, daughter of an English shipping magnate, in Kent. As he is a Catholic and she a Protestant, they agree to raise their sons as Catholics and their daughters as Protestants. Despite lengthy periods of enforced separation, they have nine children. He leaves the same year for the Río de la Plata on board Belmond and sets himself up as a merchant in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Late in 1811 Brown settles in Buenos Aires just as a criollo rebellion against Spanish colonial rule in Argentina is gaining strength. By April 1812, he is developing a coastal shipping business in fruit and hides. As the Spanish naval blockade of 1812–14 begins to choke trade, he is first commissioned by the patriot government as a privateer licensed to raid Spanish merchantmen, and then, on March 1, 1814, invited to take charge of a small rebel naval squadron to contest Spanish control of the Río de la Plata estuary. Leading a fleet of nineteen ships, he fixes with great speed on a set of wartime naval routines and signaling methods, and organises a system of discipline, founding the navy on principles that pay exceptional attention to the welfare of ordinary seamen.

In early March 1814, Brown shows personal courage and incisive skill in outwitting and defeating a more powerful Spanish force near Martín García Island, thereby dividing the Spanish blockade. A Spanish attempt in May 1814 to break his blockade of Montevideo is decisively crushed by him and his makeshift navy, and the Spanish strongholds on the Atlantic coast collapse, ending open war. In 1815 and 1816, however, he carries out skirmishing raids on military and commercial targets belonging to Spanish South American possessions, until detained by a British colonial governor in Barbados in July 1816 for alleged infringements of international rules of trade.

Illness, and a tortuous but ultimately successful appeal process, take up most of 1817–18, but when Brown returns to Argentina in October 1818, political enemies set in motion a prosecution for alleged disobedience of orders. Cashiered in August 1819, then restored in rank but forced to retire, he attempts suicide the following month. Convalescence and resumption of his trading concern occupies him for several years.

A repentant government renews Brown’s command of the navy in December 1825, when war breaks out with Brazil. Though vastly outnumbered by the Brazilian fleet, he shows audacity and great finesse in a number of successful engagements in the Plate estuary in 1826, roving up the Brazilian coast on occasion to create great confusion. In February 1827, he triumphs in a series of actions known as the Battle of Juncal. After another year of commercial privateering against the Brazilian merchant fleet, he is one of two delegates selected to sign peace terms with Brazil in October 1828.

Retiring from active service that month, Brown tries to remain neutral as civil war erupts in Argentina, but reluctantly accepts the post of governor of Buenos Aires under General Juan Lavalle from December 1828 to May 1829, when he resigns in disgust at government excesses. During 1829–37 he holds aloof from the despotic government of Juan Manuel de Rosas. After French and British encroachments on the region in the later 1830s, he offers to take charge of the navy again to protect national independence and is available to defend Argentine interests when war breaks out with a French-backed Uruguay in early 1841. Though exasperated by a long and “stupid war,” he blockades the Uruguayan navy effectively until French and British fleets intervene in July 1845 with overwhelming force to capture his squadron and bring the war to an end.

Idolised by the Argentinian population for his high-principled and humane advocacy of independent democracy, Brown passes his last years trading and farming a country estate. In late 1847, he journeys to Ireland, hoping to find relations in Mayo, and is shocked by the hunger and destitution of the Great Famine.

Brown dies on March 3, 1857, at his home in Buenos Aires and is buried with full military honours. The Argentine government issues a comuniqué: “With a life of permanent service to the national wars that our homeland has fought since its independence, William Brown symbolized the naval glory of the Argentine Republic.” During his burial, General Bartolomé Mitre famously says: “Brown in his lifetime, standing on the quarterdeck of his ship, was worth a fleet to us.” His grave is currently located in the La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.


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Death of Victoria Cross Recipient Charles Davis Lucas

Charles Davis Lucas, Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, dies in Great Culverden, Kent, England on August 7, 1914.

Lucas is born in Druminargal House, Poyntzpass, County Armagh, in what is now Northern Ireland, on February 19, 1834. He enlists in the Royal Navy in 1848 at the age of 13, serves aboard HMS Vengeance, and sees action in the Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852–53 aboard the frigate HMS Fox at Rangoon, Pegu, and Dalla. By age 20, he has become a mate.

On June 21, 1854, in the Baltic Sea during the Crimean War, HMS Hecla, along with two other ships, is bombarding Bomarsund, a fort in the Åland Islands off Finland. The fire is returned from the fort, and, at the height of the action, a live shell lands on HMS Hecla‘s upper deck with its fuse still hissing. All hands are ordered to fling themselves flat on the deck, but 20-year-old Lucas with great presence of mind runs forward and hurls the shell into the sea where it explodes with a tremendous roar before it hits the water. Thanks to his action no one on board is killed or seriously wounded by the shell and, accordingly, he is immediately promoted to lieutenant by his commanding officer. His act of bravery is the first to be rewarded with the Victoria Cross in 1857.

In 1879 Lucas marries Frances Russell Hall, daughter of Admiral William Hutcheon Hall, who had been captain of HMS Hecla in 1854. The couple has three daughters together. Lucas serves for a time as Justice of the Peace for both Kent and Argyllshire.

Lucas’s later career includes service on HMS Calcutta, HMS Powerful, HMS Cressy, HMS Edinburgh, HMS Liffey and HMS Indus. He is promoted to commander in 1862 and commands the experimental armoured gunboat HMS Vixen in 1867. He is promoted to captain in 1867, before retiring on October 1, 1873. He is later promoted to rear admiral on the retired list in 1885. During his career he receives the India General Service Medal with the bar Pegu 1852, the Baltic Medal 1854–55, and the Royal Humane Society Lifesaving Medal.

Lucas dies in Great Culverden, Kent on August 7, 1914. He is buried at St. Lawrence’s Church, Mereworth, Maidstone, Kent.

Lucas’s campaign medals, including his Victoria Cross, are displayed at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. They are not the original medals, which were left on a train and never recovered. Replacement copies were made, though the reverse of the Victoria Cross copy is uninscribed.


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Heroic Act of Charles Davis Lucas Earns First Victoria Cross

Charles Davis Lucas, a 20-year-old mate on the HMS Hecla in the Royal Navy, hurls a Russian shell, its fuse still burning, from the deck of his ship on June 21, 1854, during the Crimean War. For this action, he becomes the first recipient of the Victoria Cross in 1857.

Lucas is born in Druminargal House, Poyntzpass, County Armagh, on February 19, 1834. He enlists in the Royal Navy in 1848 at the age of 13, serves aboard HMS Vengeance, and sees action in the Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852–53 aboard the frigate HMS Fox at Rangoon, Pegu, and Dalla. By age 20, he has become a mate.

On June 21, 1854, in the Baltic Sea, HMS Hecla, along with two other ships, is bombarding Bomarsund, a fort in the Åland Islands off Finland. The fire is returned from the fort, and, at the height of the action, a live shell lands on HMS Hecla‘s upper deck with its fuse still hissing. All hands are ordered to fling themselves flat on the deck, but Lucas with great presence of mind runs forward and hurls the shell into the sea where it explodes with a tremendous roar before it hits the water. Thanks to Lucas’s action no one on board is killed or seriously wounded by the shell and, accordingly, he is immediately promoted to lieutenant by his commanding officer. His act of bravery is the first to be rewarded with the Victoria Cross.

His later career includes service on HMS Calcutta, HMS Powerful, HMS Cressy, HMS Edinburgh, HMS Liffey and HMS Indus. He is promoted to commander in 1862 and commands the experimental armoured gunboat HMS Vixen in 1867. He is promoted to captain in 1867, before retiring on October 1, 1873. He is later promoted to rear admiral on the retired list in 1885. During his career he receives the India General Service Medal with the bar Pegu 1852, the Baltic Medal 1854–55, and the Royal Humane Society Lifesaving Medal.

In 1879 he marries Frances Russell Hall, daughter of Admiral William Hutcheon Hall, who had been captain of HMS Hecla in 1854. The couple has three daughters together. Lucas serves for a time as Justice of the Peace for both Kent and Argyllshire, and dies in Great Culverden, Kent on August 7, 1914. He is buried at St. Lawrence Church, Mereworth, Maidstone, Kent.

Lucas’s campaign medals, including his Victoria Cross, are displayed at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. They are not the original medals, which were left on a train and never recovered. Replacement copies were made, though the reverse of the Victoria Cross copy is uninscribed.