The German merchant steam ship SS Libau, also known as SS Castro and masquerading under the cover name of SS Aud, sets sail from the Baltic port of Lübeck on April 9, 1916, loaded with guns and ammunition for the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) as part of the preparation for the Easter Rising.
Masquerading as SS Aud, an existing Norwegian vessel of similar appearance, SS Libau sets sail from the port of Lübeck, under the command of Karl Spindler, bound for the southwest coast of Ireland. Under Spindler is a crew of 22 men, all of whom are volunteers. SS Libau, laden with an estimated twenty thousand rifles, one million rounds of ammunition, ten machine guns, and explosives under a camouflage of a timber cargo, evade patrols of both the British 10th Cruiser Squadron and local Auxiliary patrols.
After surviving violent storms off Rockall, SS Libau arrives in Tralee Bay on April 20. There they are due to meet Roger Casement and others, with Casement having been landed nearby by the German submarine U-19. The SS Libau has no communications equipment aboard, giving them no means of contacting the Irish while en route. As a result, they are unaware that the date for its arrival off Fenit has been altered from Thursday, April 20 to Sunday, April 23.
One of the two cars carrying Volunteers who are supposed to meet SS Libau crash into the River Laune, many miles away, at Ballykissane pier, Killorglin, resulting in the death of three of the four occupants of the car. This leads to no hope of an organised transfer of arms and the gun-running plan nears an end.
SS Libau, attempting to escape the area, is trapped by a blockade of British ships. Captain Spindler allows himself to be escorted towards Cork Harbour, in the company of the Acacia-class sloopHMS Bluebell. The German crew then scuttles the ship. Spindler and his crew are interned for the duration of the war. Roger Casement and his companions are captured in an old ringfort or rath between Ardfert and Tralee.
A number of rifles are recovered from SS Libau before the vessel is scuttled. Several examples exist in various museums in Britain and Ireland. Among these are the Cork Public Museum in Fitzgerald’s Park in Cork, a museum in Lurgan County Armagh, the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, and the Imperial War Museum in London.
The Irish Republican Brotherhood is founded in Dublin by James Stephens in 1858. After the end of the American Civil War, the IRB hopes to recruit willing Irish veterans of that war for an insurrection in Ireland aimed at the foundation of an Irish Republic.
In 1865, the Fenians begin preparing for a rebellion by collecting firearms and recruiting men willing to fight. In September 1865, the British move to close down the Fenian newspaper The Irish People and arrest many of the leadership. In 1866, habeas corpus is suspended in Ireland and there are hundreds more arrests of Fenian activists.
In early 1867, prior to the March 5 rising, Thomas J. Kelly, Stephens’ successor as leader of the IRB, tries to launch an insurrection but it proves uncoordinated and fizzles in a series of skirmishes. In February 1867, there is an unsuccessful rising in County Kerry.
The largest of the March 5 engagements takes place at Tallaght, when several hundred Fenians, on their way to the meeting point at Tallaght Hill, are attacked by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) near the police barracks and are driven away after a firefight. A total of twelve people are killed across the country on this day. When it becomes apparent that the coordinated rising that had been planned is not transpiring, most rebels simply go home.
The rising fails as a result of lack of arms and planning, but also because of the British authorities’ effective use of informers. Most of the Fenian leadership is arrested before the rebellion takes place.
Though the Rising of 1867 is unsuccessful, they proclaim an Irish Republic, almost 50 years before the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in Easter 1916. This proclamation sheds some light on early Fenianism as it is centered with the ideas of republican democracy but is, however, flavoured with socialist ideals and a class revolution rather than a nationalist revolution per se. The proclamation claims that their war is “against the aristocratic locusts, whether English or Irish” which denotes that their ideology at this time is in some way embedded in class differences against the landed aristocracy rather than merely against British rule.
The rising itself is a total military failure, but it does have some political benefits for the Fenian movement. There are large protests in Ireland against the execution of Fenian prisoners, many of whose death sentences are, as a result, reprieved. In 1873, the Irish Republican Brotherhood adopts a new constitution, which states that armed rebellion will not be pursued again until it has mass backing from the people. The Fenians cooperate with the Irish National Land League in the land agitation from the 1870s onwards and in the rise of the Irish Parliamentary Party. Not all Fenians agree with the new policy and several breakaway groups emerge that continue to believe in the use of political violence in pursuit of republican objectives.
In 1910, he becomes manager of the radical newspaper Irish Freedom, which he founds along with Bulmer Hobson and Denis McCullough. He also becomes a national organiser for the IRB and is taken under the wing of veteran Fenian Tom Clarke and the two become nearly inseparable. Shortly afterward, Mac Diarmada is stricken with polio and is forced to walk with a cane.
In November 1913, Mac Diarmada is one of the original members of the Irish Volunteers and continues to work to bring the organisation under IRB control. Mac Diarmada is arrested in Tuam, County Galway, in May 1915 under the Defense of the Realm Act 1914 for giving a speech against enlisting into the British Army.
Following his release in September 1915, Mac Diarmada joins the secret Military Committee of the IRB, which is responsible for planning the rising.
Due to his disability, Mac Diarmada has little participation in the fighting of Easter week but is stationed at the headquarters in the General Post Office (GPO), as one of the Provisional Republican Government. Following the surrender on April 29, 1916, he nearly escapes execution by blending in with the large body of prisoners but is eventually identified by Daniel Hoey of G Division. Following a May 9 court-martial, Mac Diarmada, at the age of 33, is executed by firing squad in Kilmainham Gaol. Before his execution, Mac Diarmada writes, “I feel happiness the like of which I have never experienced. I die that the Irish nation might live!”
In September 1919, Hoey is shot dead by Michael Collins‘s Squad. Likewise, the British Officer who ordered Mac Diarmada to be shot rather than imprisoned, is also killed in Cork on Collins’s order during the Irish War of Independence.
Mac Diarmada will be portrayed by actor Colin Morgan in the 2016 Irish historical biopic drama film, The Rising, written by Kevin McCann and Colin Broderick.
Treacy leaves school at the age of 14 and works as farmer while also developing deep patriotic convictions. He is a member of the Gaelic League, and of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) from 1911 and the Irish Volunteers from 1913.
He is picked up in the mass arrests following the Easter Rising in 1916. He spends much of the following two years in prison, where he goes on hunger strike on several occasions.
In 1918, Treacy is appointed Vice Officer-Commanding of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, which becomes the Irish Republican Army in 1919.
On January 21, 1919, Treacy and Dan Breen, together with Seán Hogan, Séamus Robinson, and five other volunteers, help to ignite the conflict that is to become the Irish War of Independence. They ambush and shoot dead Constables Patrick MacDonnell and James O’Connell of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), who are guarding a transport of gelignite explosives, during the Soloheadbeg Ambush near Treacy’s home. Treacy leads the planning of the ambush and briefs the brigade’s OC Robinson on his return from prison in late 1918. Robinson supports the plans and agrees they will not go to GHQ for permission to undertake the attack.
As a result of the Soloheadbeg Ambush, South Tipperary is placed under martial law and declared a Special Military Area under the Defence of the Realm Act. After Soloheadbeg ambush party member Seán Hogan is arrested on May 12, 1919, Treacy, Breen, and Séamus Robinson are joined by five men from the IRA’s East Limerick Brigade to organise Hogan’s rescue. Hogan is brought to the train which is intended to take him from Thurles to Cork city on May 13, 1919. As the train steams across the Tipperary border and into County Limerick, the IRA party boards the train in Knocklong. A close-range struggle ensues on the train. Treacy and Breen are seriously wounded in the gunfight and two RIC men die, but Hogan is rescued. His rescuers rush him into the village of Knocklong where a butcher cuts off his handcuffs using a cleaver.
A search for Treacy and the others is mounted across Ireland. Treacy leaves Tipperary for Dublin to avoid capture. In Dublin, Michael Collins employs Treacy on assassination operations with “the Squad“. In the summer of 1920, he returns to Tipperary and organises several attacks on RIC barracks before again moving his base of operations to Dublin.
By spring 1920 the political police of both the Crimes Special Branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and G-Division (Special Branch) of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) have been effectively neutalised by IRA counterintelligence operatives working for Michael Collins. The British thoroughly reorganise their administration at Dublin Castle and begin to import dozens of professional secret service agents from all parts of the British Empire into Ireland to track down IRA operatives and Sinn Féin leaders.
On October 11, 1920, Treacy and Breen are holed up in a safe house on the north side of Dublin when it is raided by a police unit. In the ensuing shootout, two senior British officers are wounded and die the next day while Treacy and Breen are wounded, Breen seriously. Treacy and Breen manage to escape through a window and shoot their way through the police cordon.
Treacy is discovered at the Republican Outfitters shop at 94 Talbot Street on October 14 a British Secret Service surveillance team led by Major Carew and Lt. Gilbert Price. They were stalking him in hopes that he would lead them to Collins or to other high-value IRA targets. Treacy realises that he is being followed and runs for his bicycle but grabs the wrong bike, taking one that is far too big for him, and falls. Price draws his pistol and closes in on Treacy. Treacy draws his parabellum automatic pistol and shoots Price and another British agent before he is hit in the head, dying instantly.
Treacy is buried at Kilfeacle graveyard where, despite a large presence of British military personnel, a volley of shots is fired over the grave.
The Ballycotton lifeboat Mary Stanford returns to its home port in East Cork on February 11, 1936, following what is likely the most famous sea rescue in Irish maritime history.
Riding at anchor, the Daunt rock lightshipComet, with a crew of eight, breaks from her mooring off Roberts Head on the southern coast of Ireland on the morning of February 8, 1936, during a three-day gale. The seas are so mountainous that spray is flying over the lantern of the 196-foot-tall lighthouse.
In one of the most exhausting and gallant services in the history of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI), Patrick “Patsy” Sliney, Coxswain of the Mary Stanford, and a crew of six take to the sea in response to an SOS call from the Comet.
The Mary Stanford makes several attempts to get a steel cable aboard the Comet, but on every attempt, a terrible wave crashes the ships further apart and the cable snaps. When darkness falls, the Mary Stanford heads for Cobh to get stronger cables. Early the following morning, the Mary Stanford returns to Daunt rock. The sea is just as stormy and a thick fog has set in, making it impossible to affect a rescue. The Mary Stanford remains in the storm all day and all night.
That evening, as the storm increases, the Comet drifts dangerously close to Daunt rock. When she is just 60 yards from the rock, Sliney decides the only option, albeit a dangerous one, is to try and get alongside the Comet so the crew can jump for the lifeboat. On the first attempt, one man jumps to safety aboard the Mary Stanford. No one is able to jump on the second attempt but on the third attempt five men are successfully rescued. A fourth and fifth attempt are unsuccessful as no one is able to jump to the Mary Stanford. Two men remain on board the Comet, clinging to the rails and too exhausted to jump. As the Mary Stanford comes alongside on the sixth attempt, the two are seized by the lifeboat crew and dragged aboard.
The Mary Stanford is away from its Ballycotton station for 79 hours and at sea for 49 hours. The crew has no food for 25 hours and they only have three hours sleep. All suffer from colds, saltwater burns, and hunger.
A Gold Medal is awarded by the RNLI to Sliney, Silver Medals to Second Coxswain John Lane Walsh and Motor Mechanic Thomas Sliney, and Bronze Medals to Crew Members Michael Coffey Walsh, John Shea Sliney, William Sliney, and Thomas Walsh for their service.
MacCurtain is born at Ballyknockane in the Parish of Mourne Abbey on March 20, 1884. He attends Burnfort National School until the family moves to Blackpool on the north side of Cork city in 1897, where he attends The North Monastery School. He becomes active in numerous cultural and political movements and joins the Blackpool branch of the Gaelic League, becoming its secretary in 1902. He works in his early career as a clerk and in his free time teaches the Irish language. He joins the Fianna Éireann in 1911 and is a founding member of the Irish Volunteers.
At the outset of the Easter Rising in April 1916, MacCurtain commands a force of up to 1,000 men of the Irish Volunteers who assemble at various locations around County Cork. MacCurtain and his officers await orders from the volunteer leadership in Dublin, but conflicting instructions and confusion prevail, and the Cork volunteers never entered the fray. A tense week-long stand-off develops when British forces surround the volunteer hall. A negotiated agreement leads to the surrender of the volunteers’ arms to then Lord Mayor of Cork Thomas Butterfield on the understanding that they will be returned. The weapons are not returned and MacCurtain is jailed in the Frongoch Prisoner of War camp in Wales. Eighteen months later, after the general amnesty of participants in the Rising, MacCurtain returns to active duty as a Commandant of what is now the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
By 1918, MacCurtain is a brigade commander in the IRA. During the Conscription Crisis in the autumn 1918, he actively encourages the hiring of the women of Cumann na mBan to cater for Volunteers. MacCurtain is personally involved with Michael Collins‘ Squad that attempts to assassinate Lord John French, whose car is missed as the convoy passes through the ambush positions. Despite the setback he remains brigadier of No.1 Cork when he is elected the Sinn Féin councillor for NW Ward No. 3 of Cork in the January 1920 council elections and is chosen by his fellow councillors to be the Lord Mayor. He begins a process of political reform within the city.
On his 36th birthday, March 20, 1920, MacCurtain is shot dead in front of his wife and son by a group of men with blackened faces in retaliation for the shooting of a policeman. MacCurtain’s house in the city’s Blackpool area is also ransacked. The assassins are found to be members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) by the official inquest into the event.
The killing causes widespread public outrage. The coroner’s inquest passes a verdict of wilful murder against British Prime Minister Lloyd George and against certain members of the RIC. Michael Collins later orders his personal assassination squad to hunt down and kill the police officers involved in the attack. RIC District Inspector Oswald Swanzy, who had ordered the attack, is fatally shot with MacCurtain’s own revolver while leaving a Protestant church in Lisburn, County Antrim on August 22, 1920, sparking a “pogrom” against the Catholic residents of the town. MacCurtain is buried in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork.
Mother Mary Frances Aikenhead, founder of the Catholic religious institute, the Religious Sisters of Charity, and of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, is born in Daunt’s Square off Grand Parade, County Cork, on January 19, 1787.
Aikenhead is baptised in the Anglican Communion on April 4, 1787. Since she is quite frail and possibly asthmatic, it was recommended that she be fostered with a nanny named Mary Rourke who lives on higher ground on Eason’s Hill, Shandon, Cork. It is believed that she is secretly baptised a Catholic by Mary Rourke, who is a devout Catholic. Aikenhead’s parents visit every week until 1793 when her father, Dr. David Aikenhead, decides he wants her to rejoin the family in Daunt’s Square.
By the early 1790s, Aikenhead’s father has become imbibed by the principles of the United Irishmen. On one occasion Lord Edward FitzGerald, disguised as a Quaker, seeks refuge in the Aikenhead home. He is enjoying dinner with the family when the house is surrounded by troops. Fitzgerald manages to slip away but the house is searched but no incriminating documents are found.
On June 6, 1802, at age of fifteen, Aikenhead is officially baptised a Roman Catholic. In 1808, she goes to stay with her friend Anne O’Brien in Dublin. Here she witnesses widespread unemployment and poverty and soon begins to accompany her friend in visiting the poor and sick in their homes. After many years in charity work and feeling the call to religious life, she looks in vain for a religious institute devoted to outside charitable work.
Aikenhead is chosen by Archbishop Murray, Bishop Coadjutor of Dublin, to carry out his plan of founding a congregation of the Sisters of Charity in Ireland. From 1812 – 1815 she is a novitiate in the Convent of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin at Micklegate Bar, York. It is there she assumes the name Sister Mary Augustine, which she keeps for the rest of her life.
On September 1, 1815, the initial members of the Convent of the Institute take their vows and Sister Mary Augustine is appointed Superior-General. The following sixteen years are filled with arduous work – organizing the community and extending its sphere of labor to every phase of charity, chiefly hospital and rescue work.
In 1831, overexertion and disease take a toll Sister Mary Augustine’s health, leaving her an invalid. Her activity is unceasing, however, as she directs her sisters in their work during the plague of 1832, places them in charge of new institutions, and sends them on missions to France and Australia. She also founds St. Margaret’s Hospice, which has been known as St. Margaret of Scotland Hospice since 1950.
Sister Mary Augustine dies in Dublin on July 22, 1858 at 71 years of age. She leaves her institute in a flourishing condition, in charge of ten institutions, besides innumerable missions and branches of charitable work. She is buried in the cemetery adjacent to St. Mary Magdalen’s, Donnybrook.
Due to public outcry for clemency, the men’s sentences are commuted to deportation for life. MacManus, along with O’Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, and Patrick O’Donoghue, is transported to Van Diemen’s Land in Tasmania, Australia in 1849. They are assigned to different settlements to reduce their collaboration in the new land; however, the Irish men continue to meet secretly.
In 1852 MacManus and Meagher escape from Australia and make their way to San Francisco, California, where MacManus settles. Meagher goes on to New York City. Like other immigrants, the Irish revolutionaries carry their issues to the United States. A Captain Ellis, of a ship that is supposed to carry O’Brien to freedom, also emigrates to San Francisco. MacManus holds a lynch court of Ellis among Irish emigrants for his betrayal of O’Brien in his escape attempt from Van Diemen’s Land. The court-martial acquits Ellis for lack of evidence.
Failing to re-establish his career as a shipping agent, MacManus lives in San Francisco and dies in poverty in 1861. It is after his death, however, that he performs his most valuable service to the cause of Irish freedom. On learning of his death, American Fenian leaders decide to return his body to Ireland for burial. This foreshadows the treatment given to Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa at his famous funeral in 1915. Crowds of Irish gather in New York as Archbishop John Hughes, like MacManus born in Ulster, blesses MacManus’ body. Thousands greet his body when it arrives in Cork and crowds gather at rail stations all the way to Dublin.
The church, in the person of Archbishop of DublinPaul Cullen, refuses permission for his body to lie-in-state at any church in Dublin. Thus, for a week MacManus’ body lies in the Mechanics’ Institute, while thousands pass by paying their respects. But Father Patrick Lavelle, a Fenian supporter, defies Cullen and performs the funeral ceremony on November 10, 1861. A crowd estimated at 50,000 follow the casket to Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery, and hundreds of thousands line the streets. The MacManus funeral is a seminal moment for the Fenian movement. It invigorates the nationalist movement in Ireland, just as Rossa’s funeral does 54 years later.
MacManus is notable for his statement in court in 1848 where he explains his actions by saying, “It was not because I loved England less, but because I loved Ireland more.”
The explosion and resulting fire claim the lives of 50 people including 42 French nationals, 7 Irish nationals, and 1 United Kingdom national. Only 27 bodies are recovered. A further fatality occurs during the salvage operation with the loss of a Dutch diver.
On November 24, 1978, the Betelgeuse leaves Ras Tanura in the Persian Gulf bound for Leixões, Portugal, with a full cargo of crude oil. Originally the Betelgeuse is to call at Sines, Portugal, to lighten the load of the ship but poor weather conditions prevent the vessel from entering the harbour. Plans are further frustrated at Leixões as a ship has run aground across the harbour entrance preventing the Betelgeuse from berthing there to discharge her cargo. The Betelgeuse is then instructed to sail for Whiddy Island, Ireland.
The Betelgeuse first puts in at Vigo, Spain, to change some of her crew and then sails for Whiddy Island on December 30, 1978. During the passage the vessel encounters heavy weather in the Bay of Biscay and, after reporting a leakage of oil, is instructed to head towards Brest, France, at reduced speed. However, the origin of the leak is discovered and stopped. The vessel proceeds on its original planned course, arriving in Bantry Bay on January 4, 1979.
On the evening of January 6, 1979, the Betelgeuse has completed berthing at the offshore jetty in around 98 feet of water. At 11:30 PM the vessel commences discharging its 114,000 tonnes of mixed Arabian crude oil. This process is expected to take about 36 hours.
At about 1:00 AM on Monday, January 8, a rumbling noise is heard from the vessel followed shortly by a huge explosion within its hull. The force of the explosion blows men from the jetty into the sea. Local residents report seeing the Betelgeuse engulfed in a ball of fire a few moments later. A series of further explosions follow, breaking the vessel in half. Much of the oil cargo still on board ignites. The concrete unloading jetty crumbles and firefighters, arriving on the scene from several neighbouring towns, are unable to get near the vessel. The firefighters concentrate their efforts on preventing the fire from spreading to the tanks of the storage farm and on containing the oil spillage.
About 12 hours after the explosion the Betelgeuse sinks at her moorings in 130 feet of water, which largely extinguishes the main body of the fire. In spite of this, rescue workers are not able to approach the wreck for two weeks due to clouds of toxic and inflammable gas surrounding it. After two weeks, it is possible to start recovering bodies from the wreck and pumping off the remainder of the oil cargo that is still on board.
A number of memorial services have been held to commemorate anniversaries of the incident. A memorial sculpture, incorporating the ship’s bell which was recovered from the wreck, has been erected in the hillside graveyard overlooking the harbor. The bodies of two unidentified casualties from the incident are interred nearby.
seamus dubhghaill 