Captivating tale of Atlantic battle victims brought ashore
This fascinating, well-written book should interest those in coastal areas who heard stories of the 2,230 survivors, from the sinking of 75 ships, brought ashore in Ireland during World War II.
Within hours of Britain’s declaration of war, the Athenia was torpedoed in the Atlantic with 1,102 passengers on board.
Fortunately the ship remained afloat long enough for the 990 surviving crew and passengers to board lifeboats. The Norwegian tanker, Knute Nelson, picked up 449 of the survivors and landed them at Galway, while other ships brought the remaining survivors to British ports.
Mark McShane provides captivating information on the various survivors who landed in places like Ballycotton, Baltimore, Berehaven, Cobh, Crookhaven, Courtmacsherry, Kinsale, and Schull in Cork, or Ballydavid, Ballinskellig, Caherdaniel, Cahirciveen, Fenit, Portmagee, and Valentia in Kerry, and Dunmore East and Passage East in Waterford, as well as many places in Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Clare and Wexford.
“Although we are not immediately in the operation of the land conflict,” de Valera told the Dáil on September 29, 1939, “we are in the centre of the sea conflict.”
Five days later the U-35 landed 28 Greek survivors from the freighter Diamantis in Ventry harbour. .
The Battle of the Atlantic could be divided into different key stages. From September 1939 to June 1940 there was considerable activity off the south and southwest coasts of Ireland.
But following the fall of France in June of 1940, the southern approaches to Britain became too vulnerable to attack from u-boats in the Bay of Biscay and aircraft based in France. As a result the shipping was diverted around Northern Ireland.
During 1942 and 1943 the Allies improved their protection measures and forced the Germans to operate their u-boats further out in the Atlantic. Having broken the German codes, the Allies were generally able to avoid those areas where the u-boats were concentrated.
Most ships were sunk nearer to Newfoundland than Ireland, with the result that there was a dramatic decline in the number of survivors arriving in Ireland. In fact, 88% of the ships from which survivors were landed in Ireland, were sunk before the end of 1941.
The survivors of only four merchant navy crews were landed in Ireland during 1942 and 1943, only one with 34 men on board had to sail the full distance to reach safety. The other three with a total of 100 men were rescued at sea by Irish ships returning home.
All but one of the 214 survivors to reach Ireland in the last 18 months of the war were German sailors rescued in the Bay of Biscay by the Irish ship Kerlogue, or survivors of the U-260, which sank off the Cork cost. Unlike all Allied sailors, who were promptly freed, all of the German sailors were interned for the duration of the war, but that is another story.
* Ryle Dwyer is author of Behind the Green Curtain: Ireland’s Phoney Neutrality during World War II, published in paperback by Gill & Macmillan.
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