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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 Otto Moses Jaffe, Lord Mayor of Belfast

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Sir Otto Moses Jaffe, German-born British businessman who is twice elected Lord Mayor of Belfast, is born in Hamburg on August 13, 1846. He is the first non-Protestant to hold the office of Lord Mayor of Belfast.

Jaffe is born into a Jewish family, one of four boys and five girls born to Daniel Joseph and Frederiké Jaffe. In 1852, his parents bring their family to Belfast. His father, along with his older brothers, Martin, John and Alfred, set up a business exporting linen. He is educated at Mr. Tate’s school in Holywood, County Down, and later in Hamburg and Switzerland.

Jaffe marries Paula Hertz, daughter of Moritz Hertz from Braunschweig, on March 8, 1879. They have two sons, Arthur Daniel and William Edward Berthold Jaffe. Daniel Joseph Jaffé is his nephew, son of his brother Martin.

From 1867 to 1877 Jaffe lives and works in New York. In 1877, his brothers retire so he returns to Belfast to head the family business, The Jaffe Brothers, at Bedford Street. He builds it up to become the largest linen exporter in Ireland. He is a member of the Belfast Harbour Commission and becomes a naturalised citizen in 1888. In 1894, he successfully agitates for the reporting and destruction of shipwrecks in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Jaffe is a Justice of the Peace, a governor of the Royal Hospital, a member of the Irish Technical Education Board and a member of the Senate of Queen’s College, which later becomes Queen’s University Belfast. He is the German consul in Belfast. He is an active member of the committee which gets the Public Libraries Act extended to Belfast, leading to the first free library being established there. In 1910 he erects the Jaffe Spinning Mill on the Newtownards Road, also known as Strand Spinning. This provides work for 350 people, rising to 650 in 1914 when the company expands to make munitions. He is lavishly charitable and contributes to Queen’s College.

Jaffe takes a keen interest in the Jewish community of Belfast. He is life-president of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation, which worships at the Great Victoria Street, Belfast synagogue. His father established it on July 7, 1871. Between 1871 and 1903 the congregation increases from fifty-five to over a thousand. He pays most of the £4,000 cost of building the synagogue in Annesley Street. He opens it in 1904 wearing his mayoral regalia. Three years later with his wife, they set up the Jaffe Public Elementary School on the Cliftonville Road.

Jaffe is a member of the Irish Unionist Party. He represents St. Anne’s Ward for the Belfast Corporation in 1894 and is elected Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1899. As mayor, he launches an appeal for the dependents of soldiers fighting in the Second Boer War. On March 5, 1900, he is knighted at Dublin Castle by George Cadogan, 5th Earl Cadogan, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. In 1901 he is High Sheriff of Belfast and in 1904 is again elected Lord Mayor.

The outbreak of war sees anti-German sentiment and when the RMS Lusitania passenger liner is torpedoed by a German U-boat of the coast of County Cork on May 7, 1915, resulting in the death of 1,000 people, anti-German feeling in Britain and Ireland rise to breaking point. Even though he is loyal to the Crown, and his eldest son Arthur and his nephew are serving in the British Army, Jaffe is accused of being a German spy. Society women refuse support for the Children’s Hospital so long as Jaffe and his wife remain on the board. He is “overwhelmed with pain and sorrow.”

After twenty-five years of service, Jaffe resigns his post as Alderman of Windsor Ward for Belfast City Council in June 1916 when he is almost 70 years of age and takes up residence in London, where he dies on April 29, 1929. Lady Jaffe is too ill to attend his funeral, and she dies a few months later, in August 1929.