Dan "Sandow" O'Donovan
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Daniel O'Donovan (circa 1893–31 August 1975) was born near Skibbereen, County Cork, one of seven surviving children of John and Elizabeth O'Donovan (née Connolly).
The family moved to Cork City around 1910 and Dan was an early recruit to the Irish Volunteers. He paraded with the Cork Volunteers at the funeral of fellow West Cork man Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa in Dublin in 1915.
He was later a prominent officer of the Cork No. 1 Brigade of the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence. On 3 September 1917 he led a successful raid for arms at Cork Grammar School, a school for the sons of the ascendancy class and which had its own armoury, and which provided many recruits for the British Army.
O'Donovan acquired the nickname "Sandow" around this time, possibly for his athletic frame and sporting prowess and presumably from the German-American wrestler Eugene Sandow.
O'Donovan led or participated in many daring raids against British forces in his native Cork including the capture of Blarney Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks on 1 June 1920. He was also involved in the assassination of Colonel Gerard Bryce Ferguson Smyth at the Cork and County Club in Cork on 17 July 1920. Some weeks earlier Smyth had gained notoriety when members off the RIC in Listowel, County Kerry mutinied rather than carry out his orders to "shoot to kill" all persons with their hands in their pockets or who were suspected rebels.
Under the command of Seán O'Hegarty, O'Donovan and others organised the Coolavokig Ambush at Coolavokig/Coolnacahera, near Macroom, County Cork in February 1921. He was also involved in the capture of a British naval tender, the "Upnor" at Cobh (then Queenstown).
After the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, O'Donovan took the anti-treaty side in the Irish Civil War. He was involved in an attack on British naval personnel at Queenstown, using IRA men dressed as members of the Free State Army in an attempt to re-open the fight with the British and bring the anti- and pro-Treaty sides together.
On 22 August 1922 O'Donovan chaired a meeting of surviving IRA officers in Long's Bar (The Diamond), Béal na mBláth, County Cork. Present were senior national figures including Liam Lynch, Tom Barry and Éamon De Valera. Later the same day General Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Free State army and Chairman of the Provisional Government of Southern Ireland was killed in an ambush a mere half mile away.
In later years Dan O'Donovan worked with the Irish Sugar Company in North Cork and lived with his family in Mallow.
Dan "Sandow" O'Donovan is buried in St. Finbarr's Cemetery, Cork.
