RMS Leinster
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Adjacent to the National Maritime Museum.
RMS Leinster (RMS stands for Royal Mail Ship), operated by the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, served as the Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire)-Holyhead mailboat until she was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine UB-123 on 10 October 1918, while bound for Holyhead. She went down just outside Dublin Bay at a point four miles east of the Kish light. Over 500 people perished in the sinking — the greatest single loss of life in the Irish Sea.
The official death toll was 501. However research by Roy Stokes ("Death in the Irish Sea: The Sinking of RMS Leinster") and Philip Lecane ("Torpedoed! The RMS Leinster Disaster") suggests the actual total was probably slightly higher.
The Leinster, under the command of Captain William Birch, was 2640 tons burthen, had twin screw propellers, 9,000 horsepower triple expansion steam engines and was capable of 24 knots. She had previously been attacked but the torpedoes missed their target.
Her journal shows that she carried 77 crew and 694 passengers on her final voyage. The passengers included 22 postal sorters manning an onboard mail-room and just under 500 military personnel. The latter comprised of army, naval, airforce and nursing personnel from Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. Just before 10 a.m., while east of the Kish Bank, passengers on the Leinster saw a torpedo approach from the port side. It missed the ship, passing in front of the bow. Shortly afterwards a second torpedo struck the ship forward on the port side, in the vicinity of the mail-room. Captain Birch ordered the ship to make a u-turn, in an attempt to return to Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire). The ship began to settle slowly by the bow. Then a third torpedo stuck the Leinster. There was a huge explosion and the ship sank quickly. Some lifeboats had been launched and survivors also clung to life-rafts. British destroyers HMS Lively, HMS Mallard and HMS Seal picked up survivors after the Leinster sank. Captain Birch was among those lost in the sinking. Wounded in the initial attack, he was drowned when the lifeboat he was in became swamped in heavy seas and capsized while trying to transfer survivors to HMS Lively.
Among the civilian passengers lost in the sinking were socially prominent people such as Lady Phyllis Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Abercorn, as well as the less socially prominent such as Gerald Palmer (15), a boy with a physical disability, from "The Cripples Home" in Bray, Co. Wicklow and Catherine Gould and five of her six children. (A Limerick paper described then as "humble decent people.")
Survivors were brought to Kingstown harbour (now Dun Laoghaire). One of the rescue ships was the armed yacht and former fishery protection vessel HMS Helga. Stationed in Kingstown harbour at the time of the sinking, she had shelled Dublin during the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin two years earlier. She was later bought and renamed the LÉ Muirchú by the Irish Free State government as one of its first fishery protection vessels.
According to research the UB-123 was lost in a minefield in the North Sea on her way back to Germany, on or about 19 October 1918. The bodies of her commander Oberleutnant zur See Robert Ramm (27) and his crew of two officers and thirty three men were never recovered.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Roy Stokes Death in the Irish Sea: The Sinking of RMS Leinster and Philip Lecane Torpedoed! The RMS Leinster Disaster
[edit] Further reading
- Bourke, Edward J. Shipwrecks of the Irish Coast: 1105-1993, published by the author, Dublin 1994.
- de Courcy Ireland, John "Ireland and the Irish in Maritime History", Glendale Press, Dublin 1986.
- Higgins, John (Jack) The Sinking of the R.M.S. Leinster Recalled; article in the Postal Worker (Vol 14, No 11, Novemebr 1936), the official publication of the Post Office Workers Union, written by the only survivor from the ships mailroom.
- Lecane, Philip Torpedoed!: The R.M.S. Leinster Disaster, Published by Periscope Publishing Ltd, Cornwall TR18 2AW, Softback,ISBN 1-904381-29-4 [www.periscopepublishing.com]. Published in Ireland, hardback, ISBN 1-904381-30-8
- Stokes, Roy Death in the Irish Sea: The Sinking of RMS Leinster, Collins Press, Cork 1998. ISBN 1-898256-52-7
