Rebels

by Peter De Rosa

  Molly O’Reilly, a striking redhead from the Women’s Section of the Irish Citizen Army stood in the centre of the Place to receive from Connolly, a green flag, emblazoned with a harp but no crown.

  ‘I hand you this flag,’ he intoned, ‘as the sacred emblem of Ireland’s unconquered soul.’

  The bugles rang out and the battalion presented arms. Molly carried the flag into the Hall and up to the roof from where it was flown from the flag staff. Pistols were fired in the air by trigger-happy members of the Citizen Army.

  Clarke and McDermott were there and, with the rising a week away, were less than enthusiastic at this needless act of provocation.

  In Dublin Castle, they had more immediate problems.

  Stafford, General Officer commanding Queenstown, called Major Price, Military Intelligence Officer.

  ‘Listen carefully, Price. I’ve a piece of news from Admiral Bayly. One, possibly two German subs and a vessel containing arms have left Germany for Ireland.’

  Price thanked the General for the information and immediately phoned General Friend who was in London.

  ‘Good God!’ said Friend. ‘What a roundabout way to get intelligence. We’ve had stuff like this before.’

  ‘Do you want me to take any action, sir?’

  ‘Just keep on the alert, Major. If there were any hard evidence, the Admiralty would have let me know direct.’

  From four in the afternoon, as the Aud steamed south-west, it ran into heavy fog. Spindler could hardly believe his luck.

  He had been delayed on the edge of the Polar Sea because of the crystal-clear sky and gentle swell of the sea. Hardly ideal weather for running a blockade. Even in peacetime, a ship emerging from that far north would have aroused suspicion.

  By 6 p.m., so dense had the fog become, visibility was down to only three ships’ lengths. Every available man was on the look-out, some with binoculars screwed into their eyes. The sea was rising; big white caps were breaking over the bow. Tension mounted as they approached the enemy’s line.

  Spindler had never known time pass so slowly. To his fifth enquiry in as many minutes, the bosun answered, ‘It is 7.15 p.m., Herr Kapitän.’

  That was when Spindler saw a great black-grey mass loom ahead only two cable-lengths from the Aud.

  ‘Hard a-port … Maximum speed. Emergency stations!’

  It was a 10,000 tonner of the British Tenth Cruiser Squadron, the Orcoma. Both ships continued parallel at 200 yards’ distance. The powerful British ship reduced speed to keep alongside.

  Aboard the Aud, emergency procedures went into operation. As many of the crew as could be spared went below. Anything with German markings was transferred to the Conjuror’s Box. On the bridge, Spindler, knowing binoculars were trained on him, spat his lungs out.

  ‘Someone get that bloody dog to bark,’ he yelled.

  The crew smoked like chimneys, allowing themselves only an occasional almost scornful glance at the British ship.

  From the Aud’s chart house, the second officer reported through the window, ‘More and more British sailors on deck, eyeing us. Several large guns pointed at us, fore and aft.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ groaned Spindler.

  ‘You were right,’ the second officer said, grinning, ‘about when we would meet up with them.’

  ‘Damn it,’ returned Spindler, ‘do they intend escorting us to the Faroes?’

  He peered at his watch. It was 7.30 p.m. For normality’s sake, he ordered seven-bells to be clearly stuck. It seemed to have an effect. The number leaning over the rails of the cruiser dwindled. It was cold and wet, and nearly time for a change of watch. Perhaps they had visions of steaming grog below.

  ‘Light masthead light and side lights,’ Spindler ordered.

  By now, there were only a few on the cruiser’s bridge. At eight-bells, a new watch took over.

  ‘God in heaven,’ Spindler muttered, ‘if only I had a torpedo.’

  With the wind rising to force 5 or 6, the cruiser, having kept pace for nearly an hour, increased speed. Big waves boomed over her bows and poured in great streams out of her forward scuttles.

  What now? thought Spindler.

  To his surprise, the cruiser took a SSE course and disappeared into the fog.

  There were whoops of delight aboard the Aud. They had beaten the blockade.

  Spindler ordered, ‘Full-speed ahead.’

  James Connolly’s play, Under Which Flag, was having its first performance that night at Liberty Hall, with Sean Connolly of the Abbey Theatre in the lead role. It was about an Irishman torn between serving in the Irish and the British army.

  In between rehearsals, Connolly gave his final lecture on guerilla warfare.

  ‘Listen, comrades,’ he concluded, ‘it’ll be a thousand to one in the enemy’s favour. But if we win, remember this: never surrender your weapons. We may need them another day to fight not only for political but for economic liberty as well.’

  Less than a mile away, in Parnell Square Hall, there was a concert organized by the Cumann na mBan the women’s branch of the Volunteers. At the last minute, Hobson was a substitute speaker.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you,’ he said, ‘that a minority of the Volunteers are drifting into confrontation with the rest of us.’

  The audience looked at each other, shrugging.

  Hobson went on, ‘We really do have to perfect our organization and preserve it for a Peace Conference when this war ends. We don’t want one more forlorn failure.’ He said with emphasis, ‘No man has the right to sacrifice others to make for himself a bloody niche in history.’

  Most present were deeply disturbed. For the first time, they gathered there was some sort of rift in the leadership of their movement.

  A messenger was soon on his way to Clarke and McDermott.

  ‘Jasus,’ said McDermott. ‘First Connolly waving a fecking green flag at the British and now Hobson dividing the Volunteers.’

  Clarke stroked his large left ear. ‘We shall have to deal with Hobson, Sean. We can’t have him shooting his mouth off like this with the rising only a week away.’

  Under Which Flag, playing to a capacity audience, reached its climax at 11 p.m.

  Sean Connolly ran the Green Flag which had been raised over the Hall that afternoon on a pole centre-stage, saying, ‘Under this flag only will I serve. Under this flag, if need be, will I die.’

  The curtain fell to tumultuous applause, with the Countess Markievicz and her companions, Dr Kathleen Lynn and Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, leaping to their feet in the front row.

  ‘Bravo,’ the Countess cried, clapping her big smooth hands, ‘absolutely divine.’

  Sean Connolly took several curtain calls and after calls of ‘Author! Author!’, Connolly appeared, as happy as a performing seal.

  ‘The next act of the play,’ he said, ‘will be written by all of us together.’

  In the noisier theatre of the North Sea, Spindler was grateful no destroyer was tailing them. But with each passing minute, the wind and sea were rising. Fog yielded to squally rain. The barometer was dropping like a shot bird. The Aud’s speed in a strong north-westerly dropped from 10 knots to 5. Then to 4.

  On the Monday of Holy Week, the seven-man Military Council met at Liberty Hall and elected themselves the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic. All of them were IRB men. Pearse was voted President.

  They went through the Proclamation they were to issue at the rising. Pearse had composed it but he integrated Connolly’s social concerns, in particular the equality of all citizens, including women.

  General Friend, still in London, wrote to Dublin Castle, asking Nathan what he thought of General Stafford’s phone call to Price.

  Nathan was mystified. He had not heard rumours of projected landings on the south-west coast. In fact, he was so convinced things were quiet that he had invited his sister-in-law, Estelle, to bring her two children to his lodge with young Dorothy Stepford, niece of Mrs Green, for Easter.
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  It was news to Birrell, too. He had been contemplating visiting Aran. He helped himself to a big dose of bicarbonate of soda.

  Room 40 did not intercept the IRB message to the German authorities that arms were not to come ashore before Easter Sunday night. Even the IRB did not know that it had arrived too late to alter the Aud’s plans.

  Admiral Bayly’s command was meanwhile keeping a close look-out for a vessel carrying German arms and flying a neutral flag. Trawlers had been warned to watch the entire west coast from the Aran Islands to the Kenmare River in the south. In between were Shannon, Tralee Bay, and Dingle Bay.

  Bayly ordered out the Gloucester, a light cruiser, and four destroyers from the Grand Fleet, as well as a few sloops. All were on red alert. But they still had no precise information where the arms were to come ashore. Bayly hoped that Stafford, in conjunction with the Royal Irish Constabulary, would help him there.

  Nathan called in Chamberlain, the Inspector-General of the RIC.

  ‘There’s probably nothing in this,’ he said, ‘but Stafford has put the south and west on the alert. Do what you can to help out.’

  He also warned Edgeworth-Johnstone, head of the DMP, to keep his eyes skinned and get what information he could from his informers in the Volunteers about a possible insurrection.

  Edgeworth-Johnstone said, ‘I’ve already asked them, sir, and they tell me there is not a single sign of one.’

  ‘I didn’t think there would be,’ Nathan said.

  On the 17th, as it turned south, the U-19 ran into high seas and a storm force 10. Casement was throwing up badly as the submarine corkscrewed through the water.

  Around the Aud, too, seas were rising and the barometer falling. Spindler knew that if the cargo broke loose, it would be impossible to do anything about it. If he opened the hatches, the holds would flood instantly.

  For two days, he had not been able to make a single astronomical observation. Currents around Iceland were bound to have taken him off course but he did not know by how much. To avoid having to nose into every bay on the west of Ireland to find Tralee, he would have to fix his position in the next day or two.

  He decided to head for Rockall, two hundred miles west of the Scottish coast. It was a sandbank with a diameter of three miles from east to west. At the western end was a rock, the only visible portion of a terrifying reef on which dozens of ships perished each year. No scientific survey had yet been made.

  Graveyard or not, Spindler had to risk an approach from the west. Even a distant sighting would enable him to set a course.

  In the last hours of the 17th, the Aud took a battering. Winds reached force 11, there were giant hailstones and mountainous seas with darkness of biblical intensity over the deep.

  A ship passed them, a 12,000-tonner. It was an unlit British cruiser on patrol. Spindler held his breath. Mercifully, due to the storm, he guessed, it missed them. Odd, though, that the entire crew were asleep on a night like that.

  The winds did not abate. He would like to have lain- to but the schedule was too tight. A storm like that might last for four days. He had oil jetted on to the water to reduce the roll and make the combers break before reaching the stern.

  A new day dawned, grey and wrinkly. They were heading west for Rockall and possible disaster. Seagulls would indicate the reef but, in the storm, would they see that lonely jutting rock in time?

  From 8 o’clock he had men tied to the rails and heaving over the lead. There was no other way of knowing when they were closing on the sandbank’s outer edge. They should, with luck, see the rock when two miles away at – he glanced at his watch – maybe 1 p.m.

  10 a.m., 11 a.m., midday. Crew members, mercilessly buffeted against the rail, kept calling out, ‘No bottom!’ The reliable sounding-machine was not giving any signal.

  Above the sea’s din, Spindler called out weakly through a megaphone, ‘More oil on the sea from the bow.’

  Suddenly a wild shout: ‘Bottom! Sixty-three fathoms!’

  Spindler, his neck tense as a log, responded with an instant roar, ‘Reduce speed. Sharp look-out.’

  As the moments ticked by, he was horrified to find there was no consistency in the levels being called out. One minute it was 70, the next it was 28.

  It seemed they were being slowly, irrevocably, drawn on to the reef like so many vessels before.

  The sea crashed, the air vibrated. Visibility was less than a thousand yards. To starboard, the Aud had to weather enormous breakers, foam-topped like boiling milk.

  ‘Hard a-port!’ he yelled, his tattered voice no louder than a whisper in the wind. ‘Hard over!’

  Waves house-high, with blinding spray, broke over the gallant ship and the sea gushed up as from a geyser. Water squeezed in through every crack with hose-like pressure.

  Detecting breakers and the direction of the reef in conditions like this was impossible. Spindler half-expected the deck to collapse or a hatch to cave in. Would the steering gear withstand the onslaught? Things were made worse by the Aud sloping to starboard like the roof of a Swiss chalet. He thought she would be sucked down into the deep. Each time she nosed up again, he wanted to cheer.

  A couple of hundred yards to starboard, two gulls appeared. The skipper’s elation was dashed by the Quartermaster yelling, ‘The compass. It’s gone mad.’

  Spindler checked, only to see the card wheeling faster and faster. The compass said north, then immediately after south-west, refusing to steady. The only way he had left by which to judge direction was by watching the seas breaking over him. And still the soundsmen gave inconsistent readings.

  More birds appeared, fifty, a hundred, whole flocks whirling, fluttering, veering on stiff wings, their screechings lost in the louder howl of the wind.

  Nearby lay rocks and destruction.

  He yelled, pointing, ‘Hard a-port! Quick, man, quick!’

  The words were drowned out but Mathieson had sized up the situation for himself and whipped the wheel round, just clearing the reefs. Next moment, the Aud was caught in the overpowering grip of a whirlpool.

  Spindler felt that with the engines at full-steam they were being sucked down and down. For his men’s sake, he tried to keep the terror out of his face.

  Hailstones two inches in diameter rattled down on the ship as the seas rose mast-high around it. The Aud shuddered in every plank. The leadsmen, with life-lines around them, their oilskins streaming, kept to their posts, calling out, ’28, 23, 15.’

  Then came a violent shock suggesting the ship was aground. The hull shook and quivered for several seconds. Spindler expected the mast, even the funnel, to come crashing down. With engines turning at full-speed, the Aud was stationary.

  In the engine-room, the Chief shot a glance at the telegraph clock. One second the black hand pointed to FULL, the next to STOP. At his elbow, the voice-pipe was whistling.

  ‘Chief,’ he heard Spindler call, but he was already rushing up the ladder to report, ‘No water in the engine-room.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  As the Chief, purple-faced and perspiring, disappeared, taking the iron steps two at a time, Spindler put the boat over to port, then to starboard. It did not budge.

  Glancing aft, he happened to see what the problem was. The deck was invisible. Huge green waves had come aft and poured down the well-deck, flooding it to the bulwark rail. The scuttles were jammed, the scuppers, too, blocked up. The pent-up mass of water made the ship too heavy to move!

  ‘Anyone overboard?’

  ‘All accounted for, sir.’

  He waited for the water to clear, then tried the helm again. The Aud answered.

  In the engine-room, the gong sounded as the black hand jumped to FULL again.

  Spindler, feeling the piston-rods sliding in and out, wanted to scream in delight. He had only to hold to a north-easterly course for a few more minutes and they would clear the reef and be on their way to Tralee.

  At Volunteer HQ, Pearse asked Sean Fitzgibbon to go on a mi
ssion to Stack in Tralee and to Mick Colivet in Limerick.

  Fitzgibbon was so surprised to hear of German arms being landed in the west that he asked, ‘Does MacNeill approve of this?’

  ‘Would I tell you to do something the Chief of Staff disapproved of?’ answered Pearse, evasively.

  Fitzgibbon shrugged. His instinct was to check with MacNeill before leaving but he had a train to catch if the orders were to reach the west in time.

  Wimborne, back from England on the 17th, heard from Nathan the next day of Stafford’s communiqué.

  ‘What’s his source?’

  Nathan had to admit he did not know.

  ‘None of this makes sense,’ the Viceroy said. ‘A rising on Easter Eve? That’s a mere four days away. There are Volunteer manoeuvres planned for Easter Sunday. Anything from those informers in their ranks?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Nathan. ‘It sounds like a terrible mix-up. Someone somewhere has heard of the manoeuvres and confused them with a real rising.’

  ‘And what’s all this,’ Wimborne went on, ‘about an arms ship? Where’s it supposed to be coming from?’ Getting no reaction from Nathan. ‘Can only be America.’

  They called in the Inspector-General of the RIC and all three concluded that these were nothing but rumours. If the source was Stafford, how on earth would he know more than RIC under-cover agents who had infiltrated the Volunteers?

  ‘It can’t be important,’ Wimborne said. ‘If it were, surely the War Office in London would have informed you directly. Incidentally, where is our Commander-in-Chief?’

  ‘In London,’ said Nathan.

  ‘There you are, then,’ said Wimborne. ‘If this were serious, wouldn’t Sir John French send Friend back at once?’

  They called in Major Price. He was usually the most suspicious of all personnel in the Castle, yet even he felt it advisable in the circumstances to adopt a softly-softly approach to the troublemakers.