Irish Mercantile Marine during World War II
[1][note 1] Irish merchant shipping saw to it that vital imports continued to arrive and exports, mainly food supplies to Great Britain, were delivered.
[2] Nonetheless, twenty percent of seamen serving in Irish ships perished, victims of a war not their own: attacked by both sides, though predominantly by the Axis powers.
In his Saint Patrick's Day address in 1940, Taoiseach Éamon de Valera lamented: "No country had ever been more effectively blockaded because of the activities of belligerents and our lack of ships..." Ireland was a net food exporter.
[16] There were several reasons for this decline:[17] a consequence of the war of independence, a policy of self-sufficiency, the economic depression, the lack of investment[18] and government neglect.
(This is the origin of the term "Tariff Jews", Seán Lemass from 1932 helped Jewish entrepreneurs[note 10] to set up manufacturing businesses[40]) These industries proved valuable in the war years.
All were required by UK law to fly the Red Ensign, but some, such as the Wexford Steamship Company ships, had always travelled under the tricolour.
[58] The L&NWR ferries Cambria, Hibernia and Scotia[note 15] were Irish-registered and sailed between Dún Laoghaire and Holyhead, under the Red Ensign.
[73]The drop in numbers in 1943 may be the result of smuggling Under the "cattle-coal pact",[74] the British set up a central authority for the purchase of cattle, under John Maynard Keynes.
[66] Studies are inconclusive on how vital Irish food exports were to Britain,[79] due to the difficulties in accounting for the effect of smuggling,[80] the unreliability of statistics,[81] and wartime censorship.
A series of orders for compulsory tillage were enacted,[note 20] with the threat that those who did not put their fields to wheat would have their land confiscated.
The production of town gas, manufactured from imported coal, was so adversely affected that regulations were brought in limiting its use, enforced by the "Glimmer Man".
[103] In spite of Captain William Trowsdale's protestation that they were Irish, U-38 said that they "were sorry" but they would sink Inverliffey as she was carrying petrol to England, considered contraband to the Germans.
[note 27] Vizeadmiral Karl Dönitz issued a standing order to U-boats on 4 September 1940, which defined belligerent, neutral and friendly powers.
[118] When U-46 sank Luimneach on the Lisbon run, her commander recorded in his war diary "flying a British or Irish flag".
Rough seas prevented Elm's crew from pulling their rowboat alongside the submarine to present their papers, so the interview was conducted by shouting.
When their families made life insurance claims, they were refused, because at their time of death they were not crew of City of Waterford, but passengers of Walmer Castle.
[132][note 29] Two Limerick Steamship Company ships, Lanahrone and Clonlara were part of the "nightmare convoy"[133] OG 71, which left Liverpool on 13 August 1941.
[135] On 19 August in separate attacks the Norwegian destroyer HNoMS Bath was drawn away from the convoy and sunk by U-204,[136] and three minutes later U-559 sank the British merchant ship Alva.
[135] Ship-owners, on the advice of their masters, decided not to sail their vessels in British convoys and by the early months of 1942 the practice had ceased.
[74] Initially Germany respected the neutrality of Irish vessels, apologising for the first attack on the collier Kerry Head and paying compensation.
Meath suffered such a fate; while she was being inspected by the British Naval Control Service, she was struck by a magnetic mine, drowning seven hundred cattle, and destroying both vessels.
Germany acknowledged the attack but refused to pay compensation for the damage as she was in "the blockaded area",[157] "through which the Irish had been offered free passage but on terms which were rejected".
In November 1939, Roosevelt signed the Fourth Neutrality Act forbidding American ships from entering the "war zone",[164] which was defined as a line drawn from Spain to Iceland.
[166] Kerlogue eventually managed to limp back to Cobh, and when the coal she was transporting was discharged, shell fragments of British origin were found within.
[168] The Lisbon run was undertaken by small coastal trading vessels, commonly called coasters, which were not designed for deep-sea navigation.
[48] Small, and having low freeboard (frequently around one foot (30 cm)) these ships were designed never to be out of sight of land, and to be able to make quickly to a harbour when the weather turned foul.
Philip Noel-Baker (Churchill's Parliamentary Secretary) was able to tell the British parliament that "no United Kingdom or Allied ship has been lost while carrying a full cargo of goods either to or from Eire on an ocean voyage.
Frank Aiken, the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures in the Irish government, negotiated the bareboat chartering of two oil-burning steamships from the United States Maritime Commission's reserve fleet.
Even though the Irish government paid for her purchase and for the repairs she was requisitioned by the British Ministry of War Transport and renamed Empire Don.
"a very significant gesture by our British friends towards recognising the debt of honour owed to all shipmates irrespective of nationality who lost their lives in the Second World War.
