Dan "Sandow" O'Donovan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2007) |
Daniel "Sandow" O'Donovan (b. circa 1895, near Tragumna, Skibbereen, Co. Cork. – d. Mallow, Co. Cork, July 31, 1975) was a leading member of the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence.
His family moved to Cork City around 1910, when he was a teenager, and Dan O'Donovan was an early recruit to the Irish Volunteers. He paraded with the Cork Volunteers at the funeral of Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa in Dublin in 1915, at which Patrick Pearse gave his famous oratory ending with "Ireland unfree shall never be at peace".
He was later a prominent officer of Cork's #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 Protestant school which maintained its own armoury due to the recurrent threat of insurrection, particularly following the Easter Rising of 1916. O'Donovan acquired the nickname "Sandow" around this time because of his resemblance to the German wrestler Eugen Sandow.
O'Donovan led or participated in many daring raids against British forces in County Cork, including the capture of Blarney's Royal Irish Constabulary barracks on 1 June 1920. He was also involved in the assassination of Colonel Gerald Bryce Ferguson Smyth at the Cork and County Club on 17 July 1920. Some weeks earlier members of the RIC, led by Jeremiah Mee, in Listowel, County Kerry mutinied rather than carry out his orders, which allegedly were to "shoot to kill" all persons with their hands in their pockets or who were suspected rebels, although whether this was actually his directive or whether his actual words were traduced to justify the mutiny remains the subject of debate.
Under the command of Seán O'Hegarty, O'Donovan and others organised the Coolavokig Ambush near Macroom in February 1921. He was also involved in the seizure of a large cache of guns and ammunition from the British navaltender, the "Upnor", off the coast of County Cork, having commandeered a smaller vessel at Cobh (then known as Queenstown).[1]
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 another attack on British naval personnel, also at Queenstown/Cobh, this time using IRA men dressed in Free State Army military uniforms in an attempt to bring the pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty sides together to re-open the fight against the British.
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 that 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 half mile away.
In later years O'Donovan worked with the Irish Sugar Company in North Cork where he managed Ballybeg Quarry, near Buttevant, which the company owned.
Dan "Sandow" O'Donovan died in 1975 and was interred in a family plot at St. Finnbarr's Cemetery, Cork City.
[edit] References
- ^ see account in Seán O'Hegarty O/C First Cork Brigade IRA, Girvin, Aubane Historical Society, 2007.
