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Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Royal Navy


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Death of Antarctic Explorer Tom Crean

Tom Crean

Thomas “Tom” Crean, Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer, dies on July 27, 1938 from complications of appendicitis.

Crean was born 1877 in the farming area of Gurtuchrane near the village of Annascaul on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry. He leaves the family farm to enlist in the Royal Navy at the age of fifteen. In 1901, while serving on Ringarooma in New Zealand, he volunteers to join Captain Robert Falcon Scott‘s 1901–04 Discovery Expedition to Antarctica, thus beginning his exploring career.

He is a member of three major expeditions to Antarctica during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Captain Scott’s 1911–13 Terra Nova Expedition. This sees the race to reach the South Pole lost to Roald Amundsen and ends in the deaths of Scott and his polar party. During this expedition, Crean’s 35 statute miles solo walk across the Ross Ice Shelf to save the life of Edward Evans leads to him receiving the Albert Medal for Lifesaving.

After his Terra Nova experience, Crean’s third and final Antarctic venture is as second officer on Ernest Shackleton‘s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, on Endurance. After Endurance becomes beset in the pack ice and sinks, Crean and the ship’s company spend months drifting on the ice before a journey in boats to Elephant Island. He is a member of the crew which makes an open boat journey of 800 nautical miles from Elephant Island to South Georgia, to seek aid for the stranded party.

Crean’s contributions to these expeditions seals his reputation as a polar explorer and earns him a total of three Polar medals. After the Endurance expedition, he returns to the navy. When his naval career ends in 1920 he moves back to County Kerry. In his home town of Annascaul, Crean and his wife Ellen live quietly and unobtrusively and open a pub called The South Pole Inn.

In 1938 Crean becomes ill with a ruptured appendix. He is taken to the nearest hospital in Tralee, but as no surgeon is available to operate, he is transferred to the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork where his appendix is removed. Because of the delay of the operation an infection develops and after a week in the hospital he dies on July 27, 1938, shortly after his sixty-first birthday. He is buried in his family’s tomb at the cemetery in Ballynacourty.

Crean’s name is commemorated in at least two places – 8,630 foot Mount Crean in Victoria Land and the Crean Glacier on South Georgia. A one-man play, Tom Crean – Antarctic Explorer, has been widely performed since 2001 by its author Aidan Dooley, including a special showing at the South Pole Inn, Annascaul, in October 2001. In July 2003, a bronze statue of Crean is unveiled across from his pub in Annascaul. It depicts him leaning against a crate whilst holding a pair of hiking poles in one hand and two of his beloved sled dog pups in the other.


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Postponement of the Easter Rising

general-post-office

On Saturday, April 22, 1916, the Easter Rising, originally planned for the following day, Easter Sunday, is postponed for one day.

At dawn a messenger from the Kerry Volunteers arrives in Dublin and informs James Connolly, Commandant of the Dublin Brigade, that Roger Casement had been arrested in County Kerry the previous day during a failed attempt to smuggle arms into Ireland on board the German ship Aud. A meeting of the Military Council is hastily organised, and the decision is made not to inform Chief-of-Staff of the Irish Volunteers, Eoin MacNeill, about Casement’s arrest.

Later in the morning, after attempting to escape the area, Karl Spindler, captain of the Aud, makes the decision to scuttle his ship after it is intercepted by the Royal Navy. Although Spindler and the crew are rescued, the armaments on board the Aud are lost. By early afternoon the Military Council is made aware of the loss of their arms shipment.

At 6:00 PM, Sean Fitzgibbon, Colm O’Loughlin, and Michael Joseph O’Rahilly arrive at Woodtown Park and inform MacNeill of the arrests and the loss of the Aud. After confronting Patrick Pearse at St. Enda’s School, a bilingual school for boys founded by Pearse, MacNeill and others, including O’Rahilly and Bulmer Hobson, gather at the house of Seumas O’Kelly on Rathgar Road and a decision is made to issue countermanding orders cancelling the Rising planned for Easter Sunday. To make sure that the countermanding order is received and understood, James Ryan is sent overnight to Cork, Colm O’Loughlin to Dundalk and Coalisland, Sean Fitzgibbon to Waterford, and Min Ryan to Wexford. O’Rahilly travels to Limerick, Kerry, Cork, and Tipperary. This succeeds in delaying the rising for only one day, although it greatly reduces the number of Volunteers who turn out.

During the evening, Major-General Sir Lovick Friend, General Officer Commanding of British forces in Ireland, travels to London on leave in wake of the capture of the Aud believing that any potential insurgency has been stopped. Chief Secretary Augustine Birrell is also in London having attended a Cabinet meeting. Both men remain in London through Easter, leaving Under Secretary Matthew Nathan as the most senior British official remaining in Dublin. Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Ivor Churchill Guest, 1st Viscount Wimborne, urges Nathan to order the arrest of a large number of rebel leaders however he is unwilling to do so without the authorisation of Chief Secretary Birrell.


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Roger Casement’s Remains Returned to the Republic of Ireland

roger-casement

Irish patriot Roger Casement‘s body is returned to Ireland from the United Kingdom on February 23, 1965, forty-nine years after his execution for treason.

In October 1914, Roger Casement sails for Germany where he spends most of his time seeking to recruit an Irish Brigade from among more than 2,000 Irish prisoners-of-war taken in the early months of World War I and held in the prison camp of Limburg an der Lahn. His plan is that they will be trained to fight against Britain in the cause of Irish independence.

In April 1916, Germany offers the Irish 20,000 Mosin–Nagant 1891 rifles, ten machine guns and accompanying ammunition, but no German officers. It is a fraction of the quantity of arms that Casement has hoped. Casement does not learn of the Easter Rising until after the plan is fully developed. The German weapons never land in Ireland as the Royal Navy intercepts the ship transporting them.

In the early hours of April 21, 1916, three days before the beginning of the rising, Casement is taken by a German submarine and is put ashore at Banna Strand in Tralee Bay, County Kerry. Suffering from a recurrence of malaria and too weak to travel, he is discovered at McKenna’s Fort in Rathoneen, Ardfert, and arrested on charges of treason, sabotage, and espionage against the Crown. He is imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Casement’s trial for treason is highly publicized and he is ultimately convicted and sentenced to be hanged. He unsuccessfully appeals the conviction and death sentence. Among the many people who plead for clemency are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, W. B. Yeats, and George Bernard Shaw.

On the day of his execution, Casement is again received into the Catholic Church at his request. He is attended by two Irish Catholic priests, Dean Timothy Ring and Father James Carey, from the East London parish of St. Mary and St. Michael’s. Casement is hanged at Pentonville Prison in London on August 3, 1916. His body is buried in quicklime in the prison cemetery at the rear of the prison.

roger-casement-glasnevin-grave

During the decades after his execution, many formal requests for repatriation of Casement’s remains are refused by the U.K. government. Finally, February 23, 1965, Casement’s remains are repatriated to the Republic of Ireland. Casement’s last wish, to be buried at Murlough Bay on the North Antrim coast, in what is now Northern Ireland, may never be satisfied as U.K. Prime Minister Harold Wilson‘s government releases the remains only on condition that they cannot be brought into Northern Ireland, as “the government feared that a reburial there could provoke Catholic celebrations and Protestant reactions.”

Casement’s remains lay in state at Arbour Hill in Dublin for five days, during which time an estimated half a million people file past his coffin. After a state funeral on March 1, the remains are buried with full military honours in the Republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, with other militant republican heroes. The President of the Republic of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, who is in his mid-eighties and the last surviving leader of the Easter Rising, defies the advice of his doctors and attends the ceremony, along with an estimated 30,000 others.