Naval vessels and newfangled airships provided escorts if important individuals were on board a ferry, or very large troop contingents, as happened on 24 July 1918, when the us Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, travelled from Dublin to Holyhead on the Leinster. Roosevelt was one of many senior American political, military and naval personnel to use the mail boat. While far from luxurious by modern standards, it was the preferred mode of travel for senior British officers, politicians and even enlisted men anxious to avoid the cramped conditions on troop transports.
In recognition of the threat posed to the mail boats they were provided with 12-pounder guns that could engage a submarine on something like equal terms if subjected to surface attack. While this provided no protection against underwater attacks, it shortened German submarine cruises by forcing them to use up their limited supplies of torpedoes.
In many ways the Leinster was living on borrowed time. As the longest-serving mail boat on the Dublin–Holyhead route it had experienced the first of several narrow escapes in January 1915.18 The last near miss had been on 27 December 1917, when u-100 could fire off only one torpedo, because its tubes were blocked with debris. It was after the tubes were cleared that it claimed the coal ship Adela. The Leinster’s sister ships, Ulster, Munster and Connacht, all of which were used extensively as troop ships in 1917, had their own narrow escapes; and the Connacht’s luck had run out on 3 March 1917, when it was sunk while ‘trooping’ in the English Channel.19
It was UB-123, one of the most up-to-date submarines and one of the last to come from the German yards, that claimed the Leinster. It was actually the larger vessel of the two, at 3,000 tons to the 2,641 tons of its victim. It could range as far as the east coast of America; but the convoy system had made for dangerous prey in the Atlantic.
The 10th of October was overcast with a heavy sea running when the Leinster passed the South Burford buoy at 9:37 a.m. At 9:45 a passenger spotted the first torpedo crossing the Leinster’s bows. Captain William Birch, a very experienced sailor and commodore of the City of Dublin line, ordered a sharp turn south, away from the attacking submarine. If successful, the manoeuvre would have brought the ship on a return course for the safety of Kingstown. But the Leinster was struck by a second torpedo on the port bow before it could complete the manoeuvre. It exploded in the ship’s post office, killing all but one of the twenty-two sorters.
The sole survivor was J. J. Higgins, who was momentarily stunned. He recalled later:
The torpedo exploded in the middle of the Post Office, destroying the floor and the stairs, the only means of escape. All the men working in the fore part of the office were either killed instantly by the explosion or engulfed by the falling structure and drowned by the tons of water pouring in through the hole in the side of the ship.
Higgins swam towards a large hole above, where the top of the stairs had been, and hung on to some loose wiring until the water rose to a point where he could clamber out. Realising that there would not be enough places in the lifeboats for ‘the mass of people’ on deck, and expecting help to arrive before the ship sank, he returned to the uppermost section of the post office to retrieve a lifebelt. When he returned on deck he saw that
one of the forward lifeboats was being lowered and [I] concluded that this was an opportunity not to be overlooked … We were only a few yards away when the second torpedo struck the Leinster and she was practically broken in two pieces, the whole centre being blown sky high.
The lifeboat, being so near the sinking ship, it was in danger of being drawn into the vortex; and it was only the good seamanship of the crew that saved the boat. After being adrift for some hours we were rescued by a British destroyer.20
The debris from the second explosion posed a further threat to survivors. John Hood, a commercial traveller, said it came
tumbling down all around us. We feared our boat would be swamped but fortunately got away, rowing through a great deal of wreckage, mingled with which there were many bodies.
While almost all those still on board when the second torpedo struck died, there were some extraordinary escapes. Mrs Leo Plunkett of Lansdowne Road (whose husband was a lieutenant in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in France) survived, while her sister-in-law, Sheila Plunkett, drowned. Both women were standing on the deck when the explosion flung them into the sea. Mrs Plunkett told reporters: ‘Miss Plunkett’s lifebelt was so insecurely fixed that it fell off at the moment she was washed overboard, and to add to her helpless plight she was unable to swim.’
Hannah Doe of Camden Buildings was on the promenade deck when she was ‘pitched into the sea.’ Her leg was injured by wreckage, and although she made it to a life raft she was twice washed off. She received no help from anyone on the raft until an officer in the water shouted to the men on board to help her. She reported seeing numerous bodies floating around her.
Pressure on space aboard lifeboats and life rafts was intense. Some of them had been destroyed or thrown too far away by the explosions to be of any use. Some women survivors had ‘anything but praise for the conduct of some of the male sex,’ the Irish Independent reported. An exception was Captain Robert Lee of the Royal Army Medical Corps, who had been returning from leave to join his unit in France. He gave up his place on a life raft to a woman and subsequently perished.21
Ironically, the sinking of the Leinster occurred on the same day that the new Chancellor of Germany, Prince Max of Baden, made his inaugural address to the Reichstag and used it to appeal for peace on the basis of President Woodrow Wilson’s ‘Fourteen Points’. German armies were in retreat on the western front, and it was only a matter of time before the allied armies reached Germany itself.
Most public events in Dublin, including the Phoenix Park Races, were cancelled for the weekend following the sinking. Survivors flooded into Dublin’s hospitals, and worried relations flocked to the mortuary at St Michael’s Hospital in Kingstown to identify the dead. Among them was the Dublin retailer Edward Lee in search of his doctor son.
The Irish Times expressed the hope that after such an outrage ‘Germany has no longer any dupes in Ireland. Many Irishmen are fools, but we do not think that many of them are callous renegades from all instincts of patriotism.’ It was ‘incredible’ that any Irishman ‘should wish or dare to claim political alliances with the murderers of Irish women and children.’22
However, the advanced nationalist press would have none of it. One pamphlet entitled Who Sunk the Leinster? claimed that the two explosions could be explained by the vessel hitting a mine of the ‘duplex kind’ used by the Royal Navy. Even publications that accepted that it was the Germans, such as the new bulletin of the Irish Volunteers, An tÓglach, put the primary blame on the British government for using mail ships to carry troops. Reports of people being abandoned were deftly rationalised by nationalist propagandists, who explained that the culprits were British soldiers. The author of Who Sunk the Leinster? claimed that nine hundred British soldiers had been on board and they had driven back women and children from the lifeboats at gunpoint, shouting, ‘To ’ell with the bloody Hirish.’23
The Royal Navy never responded to the claims about the ‘duplex mine’, nor explained why the Leinster’s sister ship Ulster, which was on its way from Holyhead to Kingstown and in sight when the attack occurred, did not come to assist.24 One reason was undoubtedly the need to maintain operational security; but some of the explanations, such as the direction to merchant vessels not to go to the assistance of other ships under attack in case they too became targets, would have won no kudos. At the subsequent inquiry, members of the crew of both ships were instructed not to mention the large number of soldiers carried by mail boats. As the assistant purser on the Ulster, Bill Sweeney, said in an interview sixty-one years later, that ‘was giving information to the enemy.’
What is without question is that if the German submarine commander, Robert Ramm, had not fired the third torpedo the number of deaths on the Leinster would have been much lower. Ho
wever, despite the efforts of Admiralty censors, German intelligence would have known from even a cursory examination of Irish newspapers that the mail boats were regularly used as troop carriers. The Irish Times had published enthusiastic reports about ‘daily drafts of newly enlisted men’ being seen off by ‘sweethearts, wives and mothers.’ The paper even warned Belfast that it ‘had better look to its laurels if Dublin intends, as seems likely, to keep the steady forwarding of daily drafts of newly joined men across the Channel.’25
Unfortunately, the sinking of the Leinster marked a critical stage in the decline and fall of the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, reputedly the oldest steamship company in the world, having begun its cross-channel service in 1816. The London and North-Western Railway had been competing with it for the mail contract since the late 1840s, when the Admiralty had ceased providing the service. With berths in Dublin port, the LNWR could provide a direct capital-to-capital service, but the City of Dublin usually won the contract, through superior lobbying prowess. However, its hostility to unions, which led to the bitter dispute of 1915–16 with the ITGWU and the consequent serious disruption to services, had severely tried the patience of Dublin Castle.26 It also meant that it enjoyed precious little sympathy from nationalist politicians.
This did not prevent howls of outrage when the government reorganised cross-channel traffic because of the exigencies of war and shipping shortages in 1917 and the City of Dublin line was placed under the control of its rival. The LNWR employed the City of Dublin vessels for the least remunerative and most dangerous work, including troop transport. As the LNWR now had the government contracts, the City of Dublin line had to seek remuneration from its rival.27 Disputes over amounts due ended up in the courts and, combined with the loss of half its mail-boat fleet, saw the rapid demise of the City of Dublin line in the 1920s, when it was finally absorbed into the British and Irish Steam Packet Company. It was one of many situations in which advanced nationalists received no favours from their ‘gallant allies’ in Europe.
Perversely, despite the food shortages, the war had a relatively benign effect on some of Dublin’s poorest and most vulnerable children. Annual reports by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children reported that the number of complaints and the number of children neglected or ill treated dropped to lower levels than ever recorded before. It was a trend in Britain as well.
There had been a sharp drop in complaints and confirmed cases of cruelty during the 1913 Lock-out. In 1914 the NSPCC reported that, although money had been scarce in the previous months because of the strikes and disturbances, ‘the children, owing to various agencies, received a sufficiency of food more regularly than usual.’ In other words, the strikers’ children were better fed on British trade union food shipments than when their fathers and mothers were working.
As can be seen from table 13, the number of complaints rose again after the lock-out and continued rising in the early months of the war. This may well have been due to the social disruption caused by the war itself. Among complaints up to 31 March 1916 were ‘many cases of soldiers’ wives and children with whom we have been asked to keep in touch during the war.’
Table 13
Complaints of cruelty to children, 1912–25
While the 1914 report used the word ‘complaints’, it also suggested that some contacts were primarily expressions of concern about how young mothers were coping on their own, especially in the first year of the war, when delays were reported in the payment of separation allowances. Quite a number of complaints appear to have come from fathers serving in the forces. The report stated:
It is of common occurrence for soldiers on furlough [leave] or serving abroad, either to come direct to the office in Molesworth Street, or write asking us to see to their children’s welfare during their absence, and it gives us much pleasure … that from time to time we have been able to send these men reassuring and satisfactory reports as to the ways things are going on with their respective families.
No doubt in some instances suspicious husbands were also using the NSPCC to check on their wives as well as their children.
The importance of NSPCC work for the morale of the armed forces was publicly acknowledged by the military establishment. Recognising the enormous strains the war imposed on the society, the Army Council praised its ‘depleted and overworked staff’ for their commitment
to continue in the interest of soldiers’ families … The timely intervention of your society has been instrumental in saving many families from dire distress and has at the same time relieved many fighting men of anxiety for the welfare of their children.
Although there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of the profligacy of ‘separation women’ in Dublin, the NSPCC reports provide little evidence of it. However, the figures in table 14 do show that significantly more women than men were offenders during the war years, a reversal of the usual pattern; but this could be expected in wartime.
Table 14
Inquiries concerning soldiers’ families, 1914–2128
Between August 1914 and March 1917 the NSPCC carried out 14,746 inquiries concerning soldiers’ families, covering 33,234 children. Warnings and various interventions, mainly in the form of supervised visits, were usually successful, but in 116 cases the society had to take over the administration of separation allowances for the children, who were either found foster homes or put in institutions.
What is more striking is the rapid fall in the number of cruelty cases during the war years and the upward trend afterwards. The post-war reversal of the trend was entirely attributed to men, suggesting that offenders were returning soldiers, many of whom probably had physical or mental health problems. The number of women offenders continued to fall, suggesting that the educational and preventive work of the NSPCC was having significant long-term benefits.
The society itself was unequivocal about the reasons for the decline in the number of cases of ill treatment, neglect and abuse of children during the war years. In a report for the year April 1917 to March 1918 it attributed the decrease to
uniformly more employment and better wages. The bulk of the cases under investigation this year relate chiefly to the families of soldiers and sailors on active service. Most of these families are better off financially than they have ever been, and consequently the homes are better provided with food and clothing than during normal conditions in times of peace when there were no funds or separation allowances available.
The society also felt that
restrictions on the sale of alcohol and its prohibitive cost—apart from the question of adulteration of spirits—has materially assisted the cause of sobriety. Experience tends to show that the women generally are more abstemious than the men, and lapses appear to be most frequent in homecomings of husbands on leave.
The relations that developed between the NSPCC inspector (the ‘cruelty man’) and the families he visited could become quite close. The same annual report cites the case of a soldier killed at the front who appointed an NSPCC inspector executor of his will and guardian of his children. The inspector had been instrumental in having the dead man’s wife committed to prison for six months for neglect. ‘The woman has happily made good,’ the report said.
The affinity of the society with the armed forces may well have been at least partly due to the dominance of women from upper and middle-class unionist families on its ruling bodies and local committees. The Marquis and Marchioness of Aberdeen continued to serve as principal patrons throughout the war years, despite their departure from the Viceregal Lodge in 1915; but the other long-serving patrons were from leading unionist aristocratic dynasties, such as the Dowager Duchess of Abercorn, the Marchioness of Londonderry, Viscountess Powerscourt, Viscountess Midleton and Viscountess Wolseley.
With the end of the war the NSPCC reported that the corruption of morals was on the rise, and it found itself having to act as intermediary in disbursing weekly and monthly payments to separation women whose
husbands were now living apart from them and to take control of pensions in the case of some widows with child dependants.29
It is not widely known that only 100,000 veterans of the Great War returned to civilian life in Ireland between the armistice in 1918 and the early summer of 1920—fewer than half of those who enlisted.30 Some 30,000 had died, but others decided, for whatever reasons, not to return to Ireland or, if they did come home, to leave again.
For their families, the reasons for the absence of those men was less important than the absence itself. It is no wonder that many women felt themselves abandoned, including the unmarried mothers to whom the government decided to award separation allowances from 1916 onwards, especially as those payments would cease with demobilisation. Even a war widow with a pension was far from secure, for the War Office took a dim view of what it regarded as illicit liaisons, and any woman who fell under suspicion of ‘immoral behaviour’ could find her pension confiscated. Such rigour not only reflected the official mores of the time but saved the British exchequer considerable sums of money.
During the war Dublin Corporation took some modest measures to protect child welfare under the Employment of Children Acts. These might more accurately have been named the Self-Employment of Children Acts, for they related primarily to illicit street trading and to begging. There was a crackdown on both in 1914, and the by-laws were thoroughly overhauled in 1915. From 1 August 1915 only children aged fourteen and over could legally trade on the streets; and to do so they had to have a licence in the form of a badge, worn where it could be easily seen. They could lose the licence if they were reported to be trading during school hours, and they were barred from trading in streets where prostitutes or thieves were known to reside. Nor could they obstruct the footpath or annoy members of the public. Girls were not allowed to sell newspapers, one of the staples of their male counterparts.
A City in Wartime Page 37
