A Personal 100th Anniversary

I have been researching my grandfather's story.  His ship sank 100 years ago, and I visited Collingwood Dock, Liverpool 100 years to the minute from when his ship, SS Liverpool, last departed.  
More photos here.

This is his story:

Another 1916 Centenary: “A barbarous outrage of the sea”
 
One hundred years ago, the citizens of Sligo received devastating news.
 
On Tuesday 19th December 1916, at 5:10pm, the SS Liverpool sailed from Collingwood Dock, Liverpool, bound for Sligo.  She was carrying a general cargo of goods destined for the Christmas market in Sligo and various towns all over the West of Ireland.  Weather conditions were good and the sea was calm.  At 11:30pm, 11 miles off the coast of the Isle of Man, she hit a German mine, causing heavy damage to the bow, where the crew quarters were located.
 
Three men lost their lives.  Daniel Garvey, aged 44, was from Finisklin, Sligo.  He was a winchman or “donkey engine man” and was presumed drowned.  James Costello, aged 31, from Riverside, Sligo was a fireman and was killed by the explosion.  Both men left a wife and children.  John Patrick Gillen, the only passenger, drowned.  He was a Rosses Point seaman and was returning home for the Christmas holidays, having just been paid off after a long voyage on a foreign vessel. John Patrick, aged 48, was single and the brother of Owen, Master Pilot to Sligo Harbour Board. 
 
Despite the damage, Captain Francis Devaney managed to attract the attention of a nearby steamer, the SS Ruby of Glasgow.  The Ruby attempted to tow her stern-first (backwards) to Douglas, then Belfast as weather conditions had deteriorated.  This was to no avail - at 5:40am she sank approximately 3 miles south-east from Langness, Isle of Man.
 
The mine had been laid the previous day by U-80, a modern minelaying U-boat, commanded by the 34 year old Kapitänleutnant Alfred von Glasenapp.  This was his third kill – he would achieve 52 by the end of the war.  The Kaiserliche Marine (German Imperial Navy) was conducting a policy of "unrestricted submarine warfare” - sinking merchant shipping on sight and without warning - in a failed attempt to starve Britain into submission.  The British were blockading German ports with much better effect. 
 
The SS Ruby had two brothers from Rosses Point as crew: Patrick (Mate) and John (Cook) Bartley.  She landed 14 survivors at Clydebank on the evening of Friday 23rd December.  Nine were from Rosses Point and Sligo, including Michael McLoughlin (McLaughlin), the First Mate.
 
Michael was my grandfather.  He was 30 years old, born in Raughley, and later lived in Wallasey, Galway, Rosses Point and Dublin, where he died in 1969.  He obtained his “Certificate of Competency as Second Mate” in Glasgow in 1909.  He had been a Pilot for Sligo Harbour, a family tradition: his father (also Michael, born c1837) and Bernard, his 2-year-old younger brother, were also Pilots.  After the war, he commanded Sligo Steam Navigation Company ships: SS Tartar, SS Carrickfergus and the SS Sligo in December 1930.  Following the liquidation of the Sligo Steam Navigation Company in 1936, he became Master of the Galway Bay tender, Dun Aengus.  The Dun Aengus sailed between the Galway mainland and Inis Mór in the Aran Islands.
 
My grandfather died when I was a few months old.  As a child, I had understood that he was the ‘captain' on a ship that was ‘torpedoed' during ‘the war’, which I had assumed was WW II until I uncovered his Master Mariner records in the UK National Archives.  Clearly, a few facts were obscured during the decades.


I discovered rudimentary details about the “ill-fated Liverpool” via the Rosses Point Heritage site.  I contacted Willie Murphy, who runs the association.  He is the grand-nephew of Captain Francis Devaney and James Kilgallen, survivors of the SS Liverpool.  I was then able to contact Adrian Corkill, a SCUBA diver from the Isle of Man.  He discovered the wreck in December 1996, and was the first person to dive on her, suffering narcosis as a result.  He has written several books, including “Shipwrecks of the Isle of Man” and “Hostile Sea”, which have an incredible amount of detail on the SS Liverpool.  I obtained much of my understanding about the Liverpool from his research.  I was also able to contact Dave Copley, another Manx SCUBA diver.  He has made many dives to the Liverpool, and even recovered the ship’s bell.  He told me that the wreck as one of his favourites and describes the stern as ‘beautiful’.
 
The Liverpool was a 686-ton, 205ft steel steamer, built in Liverpool in 1892, specifically for trade between Liverpool, Glasgow and Sligo.  She was designed to sit below the harbour wall level in Sligo. Her owner was the Sligo Steam Navigation Company and her home port was Sligo.  She had strong connections with W B Yeats and Jack Yeats.  Jack Yeats once sketched the Liverpool as she left Sligo.  He took the 30-hour sailing when travelling from England. 
 
Incredibly, the Sligo Steam Navigation Company lost half of their ships to U-boats during World War I. On 23rd September 1915, at 9:45am, the 4,791-ton horse transporter SS Anglo-Colombian was captured by U-41.  She was 79 miles SE of Fastnet Rock, sailing from Quebec to Avonmouth.  This was the early stage of the war, and the Germans were displaying some humanity.  The commander of the U-boat, the 32-year-old Kapitänleutnant Claus Hansen, checked the manifest and ordered her crew (none from Sligo) to their lifeboats. He then sank the Anglo Columbian with an expensive torpedo, rather than the economical deck gun.  The cargo was 800 horses – he wanted the animals to die quickly.  U-41, in turn, was sunk by the HMS Baralong the following day, in very dubious circumstances.  The Baralong was a secret Q-ship (a codename from her home port of Queenstown), a heavily armed merchant ship with concealed weaponry, designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. She was flying neutral United States colours.  There were 35 dead, including Hansen, and only 2 survivors.
 
I write this on Remembrance Day, nearly 100 years to the day since the sinking.  The SS Liverpool was a small vessel and only 1 of 7 ships sunk that day.  Others without family connections may wish to mark this anniversary to remember the 17,000 sailors who lost their lives, and the 5,000 ships sunk by the German U-boat campaign. The devastation caused by mines resulted in 2,000 dead merchant seamen and the loss of 260 merchant ships and 90 fishing vessels.  Thirty vessels were sunk and more than 400 sailors died around the Isle of Man alone. The carnage wasn’t one sided: 5,000 German submariners died and 178 U-boats were lost during the war.
 
Daniel Garvey and James Costello are remembered at the Tower Hill Memorial in London.  This is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission war memorial and commemorates those from the Merchant Navy and fishing fleets who died during both world wars and have "no grave but the sea".
 
In August 1918, five survivors of the Liverpool were awarded with a government-issued ‘small torpedo badge’ at the Boardroom of the Harbour Office, Sligo Town Hall.  This was to recognise “their survival while on ships sunk through enemy action, and as a recognition of their faithful service in the Mercantile Marine under the present dangerous conditions”.
 
Upon receiving his badge, Captain Devaney “paid tribute to the steady nerve of the men under the circumstances, and their coolness throughout.  There was nothing in the nature of a panic. Their great regret was to have lost their ship”.
 
My grandfather, Captain McLaughlin said “the tragedies of the past did not in the least deter them from carrying out their duties to the future despite the Submarine campaign”.
 
I can think of no better words to conclude than those of Mr. A. Jackson, Chairman of the Sligo Steam Navigation Company, who presented the badges: “I think those of us who live on dry land can never fully realise what this warfare on sea means. The lives of numbers of men have been taken without a moment's notice, sometimes in the dead of night, without warning - men not actually engaged in warfare”. He “sincerely hoped that when the war was over, the services rendered by these men in the present great crisis would not be forgotten”.  He expressed the “hope that for the sake of humanity they had heard the last of these barbarous outrages of the sea.”
 
The survivors of the Liverpool were:
1. Captain Francis Devaney, Rosses Point, Sligo (Master), Age 48
2. Michael McLoughlin, Raughley (First Mate), Age 30
3. John Moffatt, Sligo (Second Mate), Age 22
4. T. Boyd, Manchester (Chief Engineer) 
5. Ivor Thomas, Rosses Point (Second Engineer), Age 25
6. John Smyth, Armagh (Fireman), Age 41
7. James “Jimmy” Kilgallon, Rosses Point (Able Seaman), Age 31
8. James “Jimmy” McGowan, Rosses Point (Able Seaman), Age 41
9. Alexander Petrie, Sligo (Able Seaman), Age 44
10. J McGowan, Sligo (Steward)
11. William? Moffatt, Sligo (Able Seaman), Age 24
12. James Burns, Wexford (Fireman), Age 43
13. Joseph Smith, Omeath/Armagh (Fireman) Age 40
14. William Bannon, Omeath, Co. Louth (Fireman) Age 28
 
References:
 
1.     Rosses Point Heritage Association
·       rossespointshanty.com/Heritage/menace.htm
·       rossespointshanty.com/Heritage/sligo.htm
·       rossespointshanty.com/Heritage/wreckof.htm
2.     Hostile Sea, Adrian Corkill, ISBN: 978-0-9540115-2-9 
3.     Shipwrecks of the Isle of Man, Adrian Corkill, ISBN: 0752426982
4.     Memory Harbour: The Port of Sligo, John  McTiernan, ISBN: 095205941X 
5.     Wreck Site
·       wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?10320
6.     Diver Net
·       divernet.com/wreck-tours/p301635-wreck-tour-78the-liverpool.html
7.     Sligo Champion, 06/10/2004
·       independent.ie/regionals/sligochampion/news/loss-of-ss-liverpool-in-1916-remembered-27540203.html
8.     vimeo.com
·       vimeo.com/74570167
9.     youtube
·       youtube.com/watch?v=T8N8DPcd3ZE
10.  uboat.net
·       uboat.net/wwi/ships_hit/search.php
11.  Naval-History.net
·       naval-history.net/WW1LossesBrMS1918.htm
12.  Commonwealth War Graves Commission website
·       cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/90002/TOWER%20HILL%20MEMORIAL
media.cwgc.org/media/231265/the_merchant_navy_memorial__tower_hilll__ww1_.pdf
13.  Irish National Archives
·       census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai003261349/
14.  UK National Archives
·       nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/officers-merchant-navy
15.  Crew List Index Project
·       crewlist.org.uk/data/viewimages.php?year=1900&name=LIVERPOOL&page=210&imagesource=CLIP%C2%A0images
16.  National Maritime Museum (UK)
·       1915crewlists.rmg.co.uk/document/171487
17.  Irish Mariners website

·       irishmariners.ie/searchdatabase.php 
2.       ancestry.co.uk
·       ancestry.co.uk/s51675/t26514/rd.ashx
 Jack B. Yeats: A Biography - Hilary Pyle
 Smoke and Mirrors: Q-Ships against the U-Boats in the First World War - Deborah Lake
 The German Submarine War 1914-1918 - R.H. Gibson, Maurice Prendergast