Mitchel is born in Camnish, near Dungiven, County Derry on November 3, 1815, the son of a Presbyterian minister. At the age of four, he is sent to a classical school, run by an old minister named Moor, nicknamed “Gospel Moor” by the students. He reads books from a very early age. When a little over five years old, he is introduced to Latin grammar by his teacher and makes quick progress. In 1830, not yet 15 years old, he enters Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) and obtains a law degree in 1834.
In the spring of 1836, Mitchel meets Jane Verner, the only daughter of Captain James Verner. Though both families are opposed to the relationship, they become engaged in the autumn and are married on February 3, 1837, by the Rev. David Babington in Drumcree Church, the parish church of Drumcree.
Mitchel works in a law office in Banbridge, County Down, where he eventually comes into conflict with the local Orange Order. He meets Thomas Davis and Charles Gavan Duffy during visits to Dublin. He joins the Young Ireland movement and begins to write for The Nation. Deeply affected by the misery and death caused by the Great Famine, he becomes convinced that nothing will ever come of the constitutional efforts to gain Irish freedom. He then forms his own paper, United Irishman, to advocate passive resistance by Ireland’s starving masses.
In May 1848, the British tire of Mitchel’s open defiance. Ever the legal innovators in Ireland, they invent a crime especially for the Young Irelanders – felony-treason. They arrest him for violating this new law and close down his paper. A rigged jury convicts him, and he is deported first to Bermuda and then to Australia. However, on June 8, 1853, he escapes to the United States.
Mitchel works as a journalist in New York City and then moves to the South. When the American Civil War erupts, he is a strong supporter of the Southern cause, seeing parallels with the position of the Irish. His family fully backs his commitment to the Southern cause. He loses two sons in the war, one at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 and another at the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1864, and another son loses an arm. His outspoken support of the Confederacy causes him to be jailed for a time at Fort Monroe, where one of his fellow prisoners is Confederate PresidentJefferson Davis.
In 1874, the British allow Mitchel to return to Ireland and in 1875 he is elected in a by-election to be a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom representing the Tipperary constituency. However, his election is invalidated on the grounds that he is a convicted felon. He contests the seat again in the resulting by-election and is again elected, this time with an increased vote.
Unfortunately, Mitchel, one of the staunchest enemies to English rule of Ireland in history, dies in Newry on March 20, 1875, and is buried there. Thirty-eight years later, his grandson, John Purroy Mitchel, is elected Mayor of New York City.
Campbell is born in Belfast on July 15, 1879, into a Catholic and Irish nationalist family from County Down. He is educated at St. Malachy’s College, Belfast. After working for his father he teaches for a while. He travels to Dublin in 1902, meeting leading nationalist figures. His literary activities begin with songs, as a collector in Antrim, County Antrim and working with the composer Herbert Hughes. He is then a founder of the Ulster Literary Theatre in 1904. He contributes a play, The Little Cowherd of Slainge, and several articles to its journal Uladh edited by Bulmer Hobson. The Little Cowherd of Slainge is performed by the Ulster Literary Theatre at the Clarence Place Hall in Belfast on May 4, 1905, along with Lewis Purcell’s The Enthusiast.
Campbell moves to Dublin in 1905 and, failing to find work, moves to London the following year where he is involved in Irish literary activities while working as a teacher. He marries Nancy Maude in 1910, and they move shortly thereafter to Dublin, and then later to County Wicklow. His play Judgement is performed at the Abbey Theatre in April 1912.
Campbell takes part as a supporter in the Easter Rising of 1916, doing rescue work. The following year he publishes a translation from Irish of the short stories of Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the Rising.
Campbell becomes a Sinn FéinCouncillor in Wicklow in 1921. Later in the Irish Civil War he is on the Republican side, and is interned in 1922-23. His marriage breaks up, and he emigrates to the United States in 1925 where he settles in New York City. He lectures at Fordham University, and works in academic Irish studies, founding the University’s School of Irish Studies in 1928, which lasts four years. He is the editor of The Irish Review (1934), a short lived “magazine of Irish expression.” The business manager is George Lennon, former Officer Commanding of the County WaterfordFlying Column during the Irish War of Independence. The managing editor is Lennon’s brother-in-law, George H. Sherwood.
Campbell returns to Ireland in 1939, settling at Glencree, County Wicklow. He dies at Lacken Daragh, Enniskerry, County Wicklow on June 6, 1944.
Chicago May, the nickname of Mary Anne Duignan, an Irish-born criminal who becomes notorious in the United States, United Kingdom and France, dies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 30, 1929. She refers to herself as the “queen of crooks” and sometimes uses the name May Churchill.
Duignan is born in Edenmore, Ballinamuck, County Longford, on December 26, 1871. In 1890, at the age of 19, she steals the proceeds earned by her parents from a recent cattle fair and runs away to Liverpool, England where she buys new clothes and books a ticket to America. Upon arrival in New York City she supports herself by prostitution and picking pockets.
She moves to Chicago to take advantage of the large influx of visitors at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. She teams up with another prostitute. One robs customers while the other is having sex with them. She returns to New York City, where she works as a dancer, but is soon arrested for stealing a wallet, earning her first jail sentence. She briefly marries friend Jim Sharpe but the couple soon separates. After this, she calls herself May Churchill Sharpe. She soon establishes herself with the local criminal underworld, becoming involved in various crimes, mostly of a petty nature, including fraud, assault, brawling, drunk and disorderly behaviour, beggary and pickpocketing.
Duignan has various criminal lovers, but she graduates from petty criminality to major crime when she meets Eddie Guerin, who organises a robbery of the American Express office in Paris. She is imprisoned for her role in the crime. She operates her schemes on four continents and in nine countries. She reaches the height of her career in England when she is taken up by aristocrat Sir Sidney Hamilton Gore, who supposedly proposes marriage to her, shortly before he shoots himself.
After Guerin escapes from a French prison island, he makes his way to London where he meets Duignan again, but the relationship turns sour. She takes up with a burglar named Charley Smith. In 1907, during an altercation with Guerin, Smith shoots him, wounding him in the foot. Smith and Duignan are both accused of attempted murder. She is convicted and sentenced to 15 years. She is released in 1917, and returns to the United States.
By the 1920s, Duignan is living in Detroit and has become destitute. No longer young, she is reduced to propositioning men on the streets and is repeatedly arrested for soliciting and common prostitution. She hopes to make money from her former notoriety by writing magazine articles and an autobiography with the help of a journalist, which is published in 1928 as Chicago May, Her Story, by the Queen of Crooks. Her former lover Guerin publishes his own life story at the same time, under the title I Was a Bandit. She dies at the age of 58 in Philadelphia on May 30, 1929.
O’Grady is the son of Admiral Hayes O’Grady and his wife, Susan Finucane. His father is one of the chiefs of the Cinél Donnghaile, the collective name of the O’Gradys. He is a nephew of Standish O’Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore, and a cousin of the novelist Standish James O’Grady, with whom he is sometimes confused. As a child he is fostered in Coonagh, County Limerick, an Irish-speaking area. There he learns Irish and comes into contact with the Gaelic manuscript tradition, listening to stories read aloud from manuscripts in farmers’ houses during wakes or while carding wool. He maintains this interest in the literary tradition throughout his life.
O’Grady receives his secondary education in Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, his name appearing in the school register for August 1846. Subsequently he attends Trinity College Dublin (TCD) from 1850 to 1854 but does not graduate. He is critical of an education system that makes no mention of Irish history and legend. During his student days he becomes a friend of the leading scholars and antiquarians, John O’Donovan, George Petrie and Eugene O’Curry, as well as the bookseller and publisher, John O’Daly. At this time he begins copying Gaelic manuscripts under their direction. He purchases from O’Daly in 1853 a collection in Irish of “tales and other pieces, in prose and verse” which he presents to the British Museum in 1892. He is a founding member of the Ossianic Society in 1853 and becomes its president in 1856. O’Curry attacks him publicly in a review in TheTablet, questioning his ability as a scholar. The publication of the society’s third volume prompts the review.
In 1857 O’Grady moves to the United States where he remains for thirty years. In 1901 he contributes an essay on Anglo-Irish Aristocracy to a collection entitled Ideals in Ireland edited by Augusta, Lady Gregory.
O’Grady is a bachelor all his life and dies on October 16, 1915, in his home in Ballinruan, Hale, Cheshire, England. He is buried in Altrincham cemetery.
McDonald was born Patrick Joseph McDonnell in Killard, County Clare, on July 29, 1878. When his sister lands at Ellis Island after her sea voyage from Ireland, immigration officials pin a name tag on her with her name spelled “McDonald.” Taking no chances of being deported, she and all the McDonnells who come after her, accept the name McDonald.
McDonald competes for the United States in the 1912 Summer Olympics held in Stockholm, Sweden, in the shot put where he once again defeats Rose and wins the gold medal. He also takes part in the shot put competition where the distance thrown with each hand is added together. This is the only time this event is held in the Olympic program, and he finishes second behind Rose.
McDonald continues to be a nationally competitive athlete well into his 50s. At the age of 54, he beats his old rival Matt McGrath to win the weight throw for distance at the 1933 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. It is his 26th senior national championship meet, and the Omaha World-Herald notes that he has gray hair at the time of his last victory.
O’Reilly is one of six children of James P. O’Reilly, shopkeeper and musician, and Catherine O’Reilly (née Donegan). The family moves to Dublin when he is nine years old. He is educated at the Christian Brothers school in James’s Street, where he excels at Gaelic football and develops an interest in drama and music. Toward the end of his schooldays, he begins to participate in athletics, particularly the high jump, and is coached by Jack Sweeney, a leading athletics coach.
Always a man of many talents and interests, after leaving school O’Reilly combines working in the insurance business with an athletics career with Donore Harriers and evening drama classes. He wins several Irish titles, including the high jump, javelin, and decathlon, and sets a national record in the high jump. In 1954 he wins the British AAA Championships high jump title, beating the Commonwealth champion into second place, and setting a championship record of 6 ft. 5 in. (1.96 m). As a result, he secures a United States athletics scholarship to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he takes a degree in liberal arts, majoring in speech and drama. While at Michigan he improves his Irish record to 6 ft. 7 in. (2.007 m). His athletic career, however, is dogged with bad luck. He is selected to compete in the high jump at the European Athletics Championships in Bern, Switzerland, in 1954 but fractures an ankle in practice and fails to advance beyond the qualifying round. Although he competes at international level for ten years (1952–62), he is unlucky to never take part in the Olympic Games. A victim of sporting politics in 1952, as an NCAA athlete he is not entitled to compete. He is selected for the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne but is unable to attend when, at the last minute, his club cannot provide the finance for him to attend. Earlier that year he wins the Big Ten Conference high jump title.
On leaving Michigan O’Reilly moves to New York City, where he embarks on an acting career with the Irish Players, but he returns to Dublin in 1959, where, after brief spells working as a teacher and for an advertising agency, he applies to Ireland’s new television station for a position. He is looking for an acting job but ends up being offered a position as a presenter, joining Teilifís Éireann in 1961 as an announcer/interviewer. His relaxed and unobtrusive style appeals to viewers and his light entertainment show, The Life of O’Reilly, is the most popular programme on Irish television in the day, eclipsing even a fledgling The Late Late Show. It is as a sports presenter and commentator, however, that O’Reilly is primarily remembered, as he becomes the face of sport on RTÉ Television for many years. He attends five Olympic Games as a broadcaster, from Mexico in 1968 to Los Angeles in 1984, commentating on athletics and gymnastics. The first presenter of RTÉ’s flagship Saturday afternoon sports programme Sports Stadium in 1984, he continues to present it over its fourteen-year life, co-presenting the final programme in December 1997. He also is the regular presenter of RTÉ’s Wimbledon Championships tennis coverage for many years, the sports results on news broadcasts on TV and radio, and Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio, as well as commentating on individual sports such as ice-skating.
Although sports presenting is a natural progression for an athlete with his talents, O’Reilly’s real love is the arts. He continues to act, playing the part of Detective Inspector Michael Roarke in the classic children’s film Flight of the Doves (1971) with Ron Moody and Willie Rushton. He is also an accomplished singer and songwriter, and writes and performs his own one-man show, Across the Spectrum, comprising his own poems and songs in 1992. As well as a book of poems, The Great Explosion (1977), he releases a number of albums and tops the charts with his own song, “The Ballad of Michael Collins,” in 1981. He has a great admiration for Michael Collins, and this leads to his becoming the first non-political figure to give the oration at the annual Collins commemoration at Béal na Bláth, County Cork, in 1981. He also writes the song “Let the Nations Play” (1985), inspired by the boycotts of the Olympic games of 1980 and 1984, and the song is adopted as an anthem of the international Olympic movement.
Tall and slim in build, O’Relly is affable, modest, and self-deprecating in character. His relaxed style is no mere public affectation. He often exasperates colleagues by turning up just in time for broadcasts, and his ability to ad-lib is important in a live television environment. He once describes himself as “a champion high-jumper who could enunciate properly and keep my hair neatly combed” (The Irish Times, April 7, 2001). Despite the disappointments in his sporting career, he maintains that his other interests more than compensated. In relation to the Olympics he is quoted as saying, “If you asked me whether I’d have preferred to win a medal or have written the song, I’d honestly say I would have preferred to have written the song” (Longford Leader, April 6, 2001).
O’Reilly lives in Ranelagh, Dublin, and is married twice. He meets his first wife Linda Herbst (née Kuhl) in New York in the late 1950s. His second marriage is to Johanna Lowry. He has four children. After a lengthy illness, he dies on April 1, 2001, in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Fairview, Dublin. He is buried at Mount Venus cemetery, Rathfarnham.
(From: “O’Reilly, Brendan” by Jim Shanahan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Kickham’s father, John Kickham, is the proprietor of the principal drapery in the locality and is held in high esteem for his patriotic spirit. His mother, Anne O’Mahony, is related to the Fenian leader John O’Mahony. He grows up largely deaf and almost blind, the result of an explosion with a powder flask when he is thirteen. He is educated locally, where it is intended that he study for the medical profession. During his boyhood the campaign for a repeal of the Acts of Union 1800 between Great Britain and Ireland is at its height, and he soon becomes versed in its arguments and is inspired by its principles. He often hears the issues discussed in his father’s shop and at home amongst all his friends and acquaintances.
From a young age Kickham is imbued with these patriotic ideals. He becomes acquainted with the teaching of the Young Irelanders through their newspaper The Nation from its foundation in October 1842. His father read the paper aloud every week for the family. Like all the young people of the time, and a great many of the old ones, his sympathies are with the Young Irelanders on their secession from the Repeal Association.
When he is 22 years old, Kickham contributes The Harvest Moon sung to the air of “The Young May Moon,” to The Nation on August 17, 1850. Other verses are to follow, but the finest of his poems according to A. M. O’Sullivan, appear in other journals. Rory of the Hill, The Irish Peasant Girl, and Home Longings, better known as Slievenamon, are published in the Celt. The First Felon appears in the Irishman. Patrick Sheehan, the story of an old soldier, is published in the Kilkenny Journal, and becomes very popular as an anti-recruiting song.
Kickham begins to write for a number of papers, including The Nation, but also the Celt, the Irishman, the Shamrock, and becomes one of the leading writers of The Irish People, the Fenian newspaper, in which many of his poems appear. His writings are signed using his initials, his full name, or the pseudonyms, “Slievenamon” and “Momonia.”
Kickham is the leading member of the Confederation Club in Mullinahone, which he is instrumental in founding. When the revolutionary spirit begins to grip the people in 1848, he turns out with a freshly made pike to join William Smith O’Brien and John Blake Dillon when they arrive in Mullinahone in July 1848. On hearing of the progress of O’Brien through the country, he sets to work manufacturing pikes and is in the forge when news reaches him that the leaders are looking for him. It is here that he meets James Stephens for the first time. At O’Brien’s request, he rings the chapel bell to summon the people and before midnight a Brigade has answered the summons. He later writes a detailed account about this period which brings his connection with the attempted Rising of 1848 to a close.
After the failed 1848 uprising at Ballingarry, Kickham has to hide for some time, as a result of the part he had played in rousing the people of his native village to action. When the excitement has subsided, he returns to his father’s house and resumes his interests in the sports of fishing and fowling and spends much of his time in literary pursuits. Some of the authors in which he is well versed are Alfred Tennyson and Charles Dickens and he greatly admires George Eliot, and after William Shakespeare, is Robert Burns.
In the autumn of 1857, a messenger arrives from New York with a message for James Stephens from members of the Emmet Monument Association, calling on him to get up an organization in Ireland. On December 23, Stephens dispatches Joseph Denieffe to the United States with his reply and outlines his conditions and his requirements from the organisation in America. Denieffe returnd on March 17, 1858, with the acceptance of Stephens’ terms and £80. That evening the Irish Republican Brotherhood commences. Those present in Langan’s, lathe-maker and timber merchant, 16 Lombard Street, for that first meeting are Stephens, Kickham, Thomas Clarke Luby, Peter Langan, Denieffe and Garrett O’Shaughnessy. Later it includes members of the Phoenix National and Literary Society, which is formed in 1856 by Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in Skibbereen, County Cork.
In mid-1863, Stephens informs his colleagues that he wishes to start a newspaper, with financial aid from O’Mahony and the Fenian Brotherhood in America. The offices are established at 12 Parliament Street, almost at the gates of Dublin Castle. The first issue of The Irish People appears on November 28, 1863. The staff of the paper along with Kickham are Luby and Denis Dowling Mulcahy as the editorial staff, O’Donovan Rossa and James O’Connor in charge of the business office, with John Haltigan being the printer. John O’Leary is brought from London to take charge in the role of Editor. Shortly after the establishment of the paper, Stephens departs on an America tour, and to attend to organizational matters. Before leaving, he entrusts to Luby a document containing secret resolutions on the Committee of Organization or Executive of the IRB. Though Luby intimates its existence to O’Leary, he does not inform Kickham as there seems no necessity. This document later forms the basis of the prosecution against the staff of The Irish People.
Kickham’s first contribution to The Irish People, entitled Leaves from a Journal, appears in the third issue and is based on a journal he kept on his way to America in 1863. This article leaves no doubt as to his literary capacity according to O’Leary. It falls to Kickham, as a good Catholic, to tackle the priests, though not exclusively with articles such as “Two Sets of Principles,” a rebuff to the doctrines laid down by Lord Carlisle, and “A Retrospect,” dealing with the tenant-right movement chiefly but also the events of the recent past and their bearing on the present. Kickham articulates the attitude held by the IRB in relation to priests, or more particularly in politics.
On July 15, 1865, American-made plans for a rising in Ireland are discovered when the emissary loses them at Kingstown railway station. They find their way to Dublin Castle and to Superintendent Daniel Ryan, head of G Division. Ryan has an informer within the offices of The Irish People named Pierce Nagle. He supplies Ryan with an “action this year” message on its way to the IRB unit in Tipperary. With this information, Ryan raids the offices of The Irish People on September 15, followed by the arrests of O’Leary, Luby, and O’Donovan Rossa. Kickham is caught after a month on the run. Stephens is also caught but with the support of Fenian prison warders John J. Breslin and Daniel Byrne is less than a fortnight in Richmond Bridewell when he vanishes and escapes to France. The last issue of The Irish People is dated September 16, 1865.
On November 11, 1865, Kickham is convicted of treason. Judge William Keogh, with many expressions of sympathy for the prisoner, and many compliments in reference to his intellectual attainments, sentences him to fourteen years’ penal servitude. The prisoners’ refusal to disown their opposition to British rule in any way, even when facing charges of life-imprisonment, earn them the nickname of “the bold Fenian men.” Kickham spends time from 1866 until his release in the Woking Convict Invalid Prison.
Kickham is given a free pardon from Queen Victoria on February 24, 1869, because of ill-health, and upon his release he is made Chairman of the Supreme Council of the IRB and the unchallenged leader of the reorganized movement. He is an effective orator and chairman of meetings despite his physical handicaps. He wears an ear trumpet and can only read when he holds books or papers within a few inches of his eyes. For many years he carries on conversations by means of the deaf and dumb alphabet.
Kickham is the author of three well-known stories, dealing sympathetically with Irish life and manners and the simple faith, the joys and sorrows, the quaint customs and the insuppressible humour of the peasantry. Knocknagow is deemed one of the finest tales of peasant life ever written. Sally Cavanagh is a touching story illustrating the evils of landlordism and emigration. For the Old Land deals with the fortunes of a small farmer’s family.
Kickham dies on August 22, 1882, at the house of James O’Connor, a former member of the IRB and afterward MP for West Wicklow, 2 Montpelier Place, Blackrock, Dublin, where he had been living for many years, and had been cared for by the poet Rose Kavanagh. He is buried in Mullinahone, County Tipperary.
Maturin is born on February 15, 1847, at All Saints’ vicarage, Grangegorman, Dublin, the third of the ten children of the Rev. William Basil Maturin and his wife, Jane Cooke (née Beatty). The Maturins, a prominent Anglo-Irish family of Huguenot ancestry, have produced many influential Church of Ireland clergymen over the generations, the most notable being Maturin’s grandfather, the writer Charles Robert Maturin. His own father, whose tractarian convictions are considered too “high church” for many in Dublin, is a somewhat controversial figure in the church. Religion plays a huge part in the Maturin children’s lives. Two of his brothers enter the church and two sisters become nuns. As a young man, he assists in training the choir and playing the organ at his father’s church. Educated at home and at a Dublin day school, he goes on to attend Trinity College Dublin (TCD), from where he graduates BA in 1870.
Though he initially intends to make a career in the army as an engineer, a severe attack of scarlet fever around 1868, and the death of his brother Arthur, changes his outlook on life, and he decides to become a clergyman. He is ordained a deacon in 1870 and later that year goes as a curate to Peterstow, Herefordshire, England, where his father’s friend Dr. John Jebb is rector. He subsequently joins the Society of St. John the Evangelist, entering the novitiate at Cowley, Oxford, in February 1873. As a Cowley father he is sent in 1876 to establish a mission in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he works as an assistant priest and, from 1881, as rector of Saint Clement’s Church. Though he proves to be an effective clergyman and popular preacher, his growing religious doubts and increasing interest in Catholicism results in his returning to Oxford in 1888. Then follows a six-month visit in 1889–90 to a society house in Cape Town, South Africa. He returns to Britain, where he preaches, and conducts retreats around the country and occasionally on the continent. In 1896 he produces the first in a series of religious publications, Some Principles and Practices of Spiritual Life.
Maturin’s continuing religious anxieties eventually lead to his conversion to Catholicism on March 5, 1897, at the JesuitBeaumont College outside London. He then studies theology at the Canadian College, Rome, and is ordained there in 1898. Following his return to England he lives initially at Archbishop’s House, Westminster, and undertakes missionary work. He then serves at St. Mary’s, Cadogan Street, in 1901. He becomes parish priest of Pimlico and, in 1905, having joined the newly established Society of Westminster Diocesan Missionaries, organises the opening of St. Margaret’s chapel on St. Leonard’s Street, where huge crowds come to hear his sermons. As a Catholic priest, he returns to Ireland on several occasions, and frequently preaches at the Carmelite church, Clarendon Street, Dublin. His attempt, at the age of sixty-three, to enter into monastic life at the Benedictinemonastery at Downside, in 1910, proves unsuccessful. He returns to London and begins working in St. James’s, Spanish Place, while maintaining his preaching commitments. He continues to write, publishing Self-Knowledge and Self-Discipline (1905), Laws of the Spiritual Life (1907) and his autobiographical The Price of Unity (1912), in which he traces his gradual move toward Catholicism. His sermons, like his approach when hearing confessions, are said to have much appeal for their integrity. Despite his influence as a preacher, he seems often feel that his life and vocation lack real purpose and at times he suffers from depression.
After a brief visit to the United States in 1913, Maturin accepts the post of Catholic chaplain at the University of Oxford in 1914. He travels to New York in 1915 and, after preaching there throughout the spring, boards the RMS Lusitania in May to return to England. The liner is torpedoed and sinks on May 7, 1915, off the southern coast of Ireland. He assists his fellow passengers in the last minutes, and it is presumed that he refuses a life jacket, as they are in short supply. His body washes ashore. A service is held for him at Westminster Cathedral.
Maturin’s friend Wilfrid Philip Ward edits a collection of his spiritual writings, Sermons and Sermon Notes, in 1916.
(From: “Maturin, Basil William” by Frances Clarke, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
The U-20, a GermanU-boat under the command of KapitänleutnantWalther Schwieger, sinks the British steamship Centurion off the southeast coast of Ireland on May 6, 1915. This tragic event has far-reaching consequences and shapes the course of World War I.
The Centurion is traveling through the waters southeast of Ireland when a torpedo fired from the U-20 hits the vessel, causing it to rapidly sink. This act of aggression results in the loss of many innocent lives and sends shockwaves throughout the world.
At the time of the incident, World War I is in full swing. Germany, engaged in submarine warfare, seeks to disrupt British supply lines and cut off its access to vital resources. The sinking of merchant ships, regardless of their civilian nature, is part of Germany’s strategy to weaken the enemy. The attack on the Centurion is just one of many instances in which German submarines target and sink British vessels.
A difference in this particular incident as opposed to other similar incidents is the widespread outrage it triggers. The Centurion is an unarmed cargo ship carrying civilian goods, and its destruction is seen as a ruthless and unjustifiable act. The loss of civilian lives and the callousness with which the submarine attack is executed causes public opinion to turn against Germany.
The sinking highlights the growing concern over unrestricted submarine warfare and its impact on civilian populations. It pushes the United States, which at the time is neutral, closer to entering the war on the side of the Allies. The incident also plays a significant role in shaping public opinion in other neutral countries, putting pressure on Germany to reconsider its aggressive tactics.
In response to international outrage, Germany initially defends its actions, arguing that the Centurion was carrying contraband cargo. However, under mounting pressure, the German government eventually backs down and pledges to modify its submarine warfare policies to reduce the risk to civilian lives. This move is meant to appease neutral countries and prevent the United States from entering the war.
The sinking of the Centurion has a lasting impact on maritime warfare. The incident leads to the introduction of new rules of engagement, such as the requirement for submarines to surface and warn civilian vessels before attacking. These rules aim to minimize civilian casualties and reduce the risk of similar tragedies occurring in the future.
Moreover, the sinking serves as a catalyst for technological advancements in submarine warfare. Navies worldwide realize the need for more sophisticated anti-submarine measures and began developing detection systems and tactics to counter the stealth of submarines. This incident marks a turning point in the evolution of naval warfare, as nations seek to adapt and respond to the new challenges posed by underwater vessels.
The following day, May 7, 1915, the U-20 sinks the British ocean linerRMS Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland. The liner sinks in eighteen minutes with 1,197 casualties. The wreck lies in 300 feet of water.
On November 4, 1916, U-20 becomes grounded on the Danish coast south of Vrist, after suffering damage to its engines. Her crew attempts to destroy her with explosives the following day, succeeding only in damaging the boat’s bow but making it effectively inoperative as a warship.
The U-20 remains on the beach until 1925 when the Danish government blows it up in a “spectacular explosion.” The Danish navy removes the deck gun and makes it unserviceable by cutting holes in vital parts. The gun is kept in the naval stores at Holmen, Copenhagen for almost 80 years. The conning tower is removed and placed on the front lawn of the local museum Strandingsmuseum St. George Thorsminde, where it remains today.
(Pictured: The U-20, second from left, at Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, on February 17, 1914)
Coogan’s particular focus is on Ireland’s nationalist/independence movement in the 20th century, a period of unprecedented political upheaval. He blames the Troubles in Northern Ireland on “Paisleyism.”
In 2000, Irish writer and editor Ruth Dudley Edwards is awarded £25,000 damages and a public apology by the High Court in London against Coogan for factual errors in references to her in his book Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora (2000). In the book, he writes that Dudley Edwards had “groveled to and hypocritically ingratiated herself with the English establishment to further her writing career.” He also alleges that Dudley Edwards “had abused the position of chairwoman of the British Association for Irish Studies (BAIS) by trying to impose her political views on it” and that her commission to write True Brits had been awarded because of political favouritism.
When TaoiseachEnda Kenny causes confusion following a speech at Béal na Bláth by incorrectly claiming Michael Collins had brought Lenin to Ireland, Coogan comments, “Those were the days when bishops were bishops and Lenin was a communist. How would that have gone down with the churchyard collections?”
Coogan has been criticised by the Irish historians Liam Kennedy and Diarmaid Ferriter, as well as Cormac Ó Gráda, for a supposed lack of thoroughness in his research and bias:
“Well, I waited in this book to hear some great revelation, and it just isn’t there. It’s anticlimactic. I could not see the great plot, and indeed there is no serious historian who … I can’t think of a single historian who has researched the Famine in depth – and Tim Pat has not researched it in depth” (The Famine Plot).
“Coogan is not remotely interested in looking at what others have written on 20th-century Irish history…. he does not appear interested in context and shows scant regard for evidence. He does not attempt to offer any sustained analysis in relation to the challenges of state building, the meaning of sovereignty, economic and cultural transformations, or comparative perspectives on the evolution of Irish society. There is no indication whatsoever that Coogan has engaged with the abundant archival material relating to the subject matter he pronounces on. There is no rhyme or reason when it comes to the citation of the many quotations he uses; the vast majority are not referenced. For the 300-page text, 21 endnotes are cited and six of them relate to Coogan’s previous books, a reminder that much of this tome consists of recycled material…. Tim Pat Coogan… he is a decent, compassionate man who has made a significant contribution to Irish life. But he has not read up on Irish history; indeed, such is the paucity of his research efforts that this book amounts to a travesty of 20th-century Irish history” (1916: The Mornings After).
seamus dubhghaill 