A Story of Enniscrone, Warfare and Two Ships (By Sam Moore

By Sam Moore

HMS Majestic (Image: www.navyphotos.co.uk/navyphotos) Two stories from different periods, and different events, both link to a time when the world was at war. The Majestic, a Royal Navy battleship sunk by a German U-boat at Gallipoli in 1915 and a merchant steam ship, the Clan Menzies, sunk by a U-boat in 1940 off the coast of Co. Donegal, both have associations with Enniscrone, Co. Sligo.

The Royal Navy’s Atlantic Fleet, comprising eight battleships and nine cruisers had been expected in Blacksod Bay, Co. Mayo, in early August 1906, but this was abandoned due to operational issues and on Tuesday 2nd August 1906 the fleet had been spotted in convoy by Enniscrone Coastguards 24 km (15 miles) off the coast. Unexpectedly, the Majestic, a 49,000 ton, 126m (413 ft) long, heavily armed battleship with 757 men on board came close to Enniscrone. This must have been extraordinary to see such an enormous ship with a crew that was more than double the entire population of Enniscrone (there were 307 people living there in 1901). The Majestic anchored off Enniscrone from 7pm on the Tuesday until 3pm on the Wednesday and it was during this time that many people from Enniscrone and the surrounding area were able to go onboard. This visit to Killala Bay occurred eight years before the outbreak of the Great War. Large crowds of people crossed by boat from Enniscrone and were welcomed aboard by Captain Robert G. Fraser. The Majestic was one of the Royal Navy’s Atlantic Fleet, whose task was to cruise between its base at Gibraltar and the base at Berehaven Harbour in Castletownbere, Co. Cork. Captain Fraser informed the reporter from the Western People newspaper that it was leaving Enniscrone to put in at Blacksod Bay on Wednesday night.

While in Killala Bay the Majestic was followed by a coal transport ship called Arrows, a collier from Cardiff, which was used to refuel the vessel. The two boats were connected by a long rope and 51 tons of coal an hour were transferred. The remainder of the fleet had gone on to Shannon after being at Lough Foyle and the newspaper report at the time marvelled at its scale and the fact that the Majestic could communicate with the fleet by means of ‘the Marconi system of wireless telegraphy’. The Majestic was to meet up with the fleet in Shannon on the following Thursday morning and was then to proceed to Kingstown (the previous name for Dún Laoghaire in Dublin).

The Majestic was a battleship of the Royal Navy, and the lead ship of the Majestic class. She served as the flagship of the Channel Squadron for eight years after being built in Portsmouth Royal Dockyard and was launched by Princess Louise (the third child and the eldest daughter of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra) on 31st January 1895. The battleship went in and out of reserve until the Great War. She was despatched to the Dardanelles on 24th February 1915 (Dardanelles, was formerly known as Hellespont - the strait connecting the Aegean to the Sea of Marmara). Attempts were made by submarines to pass through the Dardanelles and

Helles, Gallipoli, Turkey (Image: navyphotos.co.uk /Navyphotos)

disrupt Ottoman (Turkish) Empire shipping in the Sea of Marmara.

On the morning of 26th February 1915, the Majestic bombarded the Ottoman Turkish inner forts at the Dardanelles and later that day the Majestic was one of the first Allied heavy ships to enter the Turkish Straits during the campaign there. She supported and participated in the final attempt to force the straits by naval power alone on 18th March 1915 but was hit four times and returned to the base at Tenedos (an island in the Aegean) with one dead and some wounded crew members. The battleship returned to action within days and by 25th April 1915 Majestic was shelling the coastal defences and providing support to the landing of troops at Gallipoli. By the 25th May, the ship had become the flagship of Admiral Nicholson, commanding the squadrons as well as supporting the troops ashore off Cape Helles (a rocky headland on the south-western tip of Gallipoli). Around 6.45am on 27th May 1915, Commander Otto Hersing of the German submarine U-21 fired a single torpedo through a defensive screen of destroyers and anti-torpedo nets, striking Majestic and causing a huge explosion. Within nine minutes the ship had capsized in 16m (54 feet) of water, killing 49 men.

Enniscrone was also connected to another story concerning a ship that was sunk by a U-boat; this time during World War Two when a British cargo steamer called the Clan Menzies was sunk by Commander Otto Kretschmer of the U-boat U-99 on 29th July 1940. Out of the 88 survivors, 52 had been rescued by the Kyleclare, a vessel of the Limerick Steamship Company west of the Black Rock, Co. Mayo, just west of Blacksod Bay. The Kyleclare was captained by John McKeegan from Cushendall, Co. Antrim and was almost sunk itself after being bombed by a German Dornier bomber near Antwerp on 8th May 1940. It had rescued 20 survivors off another ship, the Moyalla, near Cape Clear, Co. Cork just two weeks previous to its rescue of the Clan Menzies. Captain McKeegan received formal thanks in Ennisrcone for bringing the men to safety by Sir John Maffey, the British representative in Ireland and Seán MacEntee, the Irish Minister for Industry and Commerce.

The Clan Menzies was a 7,336-ton cargo steamship that was launched in 1938 from the Greenock Dockyard on the Clyde in Scotland and was owned by Clan Line Steamers Ltd of London. The ship was en route to Liverpool after a voyage from Sydney and Melbourne, Australia and Panama when the torpedo struck. It was carrying 4,000 tons of wheat, 2,000 tons of dried fruit, 1,500 tons of zinc and 840 tons of general cargo. At 2.15 am on 29 July 1940, the unescorted Clan Menzies, mastered by William John Hughes, was hit aft off the coast of Co. Clare by a G7e torpedo from U-99. It drifted north and sank about 250 miles west of Co. Donegal. Out of the 94 crew - six died, three were British, and the remainder were from India. The 52 rescued men were brought to Enniscrone and looked after and were eventually escorted to Northern Ireland to return home. The remaining 36 crew had been taken ashore in Donegal.

The story of Clan Menzies is just one small incident in a brutal war. When World War Two broke out in September 1939, Taoiseach Eamon de Valera and the Irish Government maintained a policy of neutrality as the best way to protect the country. Britain was concerned with the fleets of U-boats patrolling the Atlantic; a concern that was validated after the sinking of the passenger liner Athenia on 3rd September 1939, immediately after war was declared. The sinking of the Athenia caused 123 people out of the 1,418 passengers and crew to lose their lives some 250 miles west of Inishtrahull, Co. Donegal. With the occupation of France in 1940 the German Navy, or Kriegsmarine, intensified attacks on merchant convoys off the coast of Ireland, particularly in the 250 square miles off Donegal during the so-called Battle of the Atlantic. In 1940, an average of two ships a day went down at the hands of the Kriegsmarine U-boats or Focke-Wulf Condor bombers. As a result of the Battle of the Atlantic, it was recorded that before March 1944, 16 Irish ships were sunk with a loss of 135 mariners. By the end of the war the Battle of the Atlantic had resulted in 3,500 Allied merchant ships and 175 Allied warships being sunk and some 72,200 Allied naval and merchant seamen losing their lives. The Germans lost 783 U-boats and approximately 30,000 sailors were killed. This was three-quarters of Germany’s 40,000-man U-boat fleet.

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