In 1943, the MV Kerlogue, carrying a cargo of oranges, defied the
barbarity of war and risked being attacked to rescue 168 German survivors of a
naval battle in Bay of Biscay, says Richard Fitzpatrick.
SUNDAY
is the 70th anniversary of a remarkable episode in Irish maritime history. On
the morning of Dec 29, 1943, a small, 142-foot-long Irish coaster, the MV
Kerlogue, which was carrying a cargo of oranges from Lisbon to Dublin on behalf
of the Wexford Steamship Company, steered towards the aftermath of a naval
battle in the Bay of Biscay.
The
battle had been over in minutes. Two Royal Navy cruisers had shelled a flotilla
of German ships from distance, sinking a Narvik-class German destroyer and two
torpedo boats. More than 700 Germans — some dead, others burnt and injured —
were floundering in the ocean. The survivors clung to debris and upturned
lifeboats in choppy, wintry seas.
A
German warplane flew over the MV Kerlogue, dropping flares on its starboard
side to alert it to the carnage nearby. The MV Kerlogue had reasons to
disregard the plea. The Battle of the Atlantic was raging. People on land could
see naval battles off the coasts of Cork, Kerry and Donegal. Dead bodies often
washed up on Irish shores.
Ireland,
or Éire, was neutral during the Second World War, but Irish merchant seamen
were at peril: 149 men, of 800 on Irish ships, died, a higher fatality rate
than in many combat units.
“Irish
ships sometimes operated in convoy; sometimes they didn’t,” says Michael
Kennedy, author of Guarding Neutral Ireland. “They were old ships, under a
neutral state. Nobody really respects a neutral. The Allies didn’t want us in
their convoys, although we straggled along with them; to the Germans, we were
just another target to torpedo.
“Many
of the Irish ships that went down were caught by torpedoes, because the Germans
either went, ‘what the hell, sink them.’ Or they didn’t recognise what ‘EIRE’
written on the side of the ship meant.”
Months
earlier, in October 1943, two unidentified planes had attacked the MV Kerlogue,
130 miles south of Ireland, even though it had sailed under lights, with an
Irish flag, and had ‘EIRE’ painted in white letters on its deck and sides. For
25 minutes, cannon shells rained down on it. Several crew members were injured,
including its captain, who fractured both his legs. The boat’s superstructure
was destroyed, its lifeboats mangled. Water flowed into the engine room, but
the pumps kept enough water at bay until the ship hobbled into Cork harbour.
Ironically,
it was the boat’s cargo of British coal that saved it. The coal absorbed the
cannon fire, and protected the hull. The flight logs of the planes, which were
later identified as RAF Mosquitoes, are an example of the disorientation of a
war: “Sighted and attacked, with cannon, 1,500-ton merchant vessel flying
French flag and word ‘EMPO’ clearly discerned on starboard side — the word
‘France’ also on her bows. The vessel, which returned fire with cannon without
effect, was left circling with smoke issuing from it.”
News
of the botched attack reached the British war cabinet. It refused to accept
responsibility, claiming the MV Kerlogue was off course. It did, however,
sanction ex-gratia payments to the injured men.
When,
two months after this attack, a patched-up MV Kerlogue responded to the
Germans’ distress signal in the Bay of Biscay, its crew of 11 arrived at a
horrific scene. It was 11am. For 10 hours, they hauled German bodies from the
sea.
The
Kerlogue bobbled in the heavy seas. Waves were as high as its masthead, which
gave its crew a natural dropping mechanism for scooping men onto the boat with
their bare hands and with grappling hooks. It was a harrowing chore. Dead men
had to be thrown back overboard to make room.
Gary
Roche, the father of Dick Roche, the former government minister and Fianna Fáil
TD for Wicklow, was one of the Kerlogue’s crew members. He was blighted by
nightmares from the episode.
“My
father didn’t speak about it an awful lot,” says Dick. “It was a very painful
memory for him. The thing that haunted him, he told me, was the men they had to
leave in the water when Captain Tom Donoghue told them they had to head back.
He very graphically described all the men, who were barely hanging onto life at
that stage, and calling ‘comrade, comrade.’ I know that image stayed with him
through his life.”
They
had 168 Germans on the Kerlogue — in stores, along the alleyways, on the
bridge, in the wheelhouse. There were 57 in the engine room, packed so tightly
that the chief engineer was unable to move around to work the engines; he had
to send signals across the engine room to the bedraggled Germans to carry out
procedures.
Given
the huge swells, the stability of the boat, which was low-lying, was
challenged. “I remember, when I was a kid,” says Dick, “looking at photographs
of the Kerlogue and asking, ‘Is that boat sinking?’ She was so deep in the
water. It takes a lot of courage to cross the Bay of Biscay in winter in a tiny
coaster.”
Spare
clothes were given to the Germans. There was no doctor on board. Gary Roche
administered first aid. “They ran out of gauze, so they had to use the gauze
they used for greasing the engines,” says Dick. “They took it off the rolls and
dipped it into seawater, which had salt in it that helped to ease the pain of
the wounds.” The oranges were plundered to make hot drinks, to succour the
wounded.
To
avoid detection by Allied planes, the Germans had to be kept below deck during
daylight.
There
was a rumour, denied by Captain Donoghue, that the Germans tried to overpower
the crew, and redirect the boat towards Brest or La Rochelle. “I’m just
guessing here,” says Kennedy, “but it was a chance to get out of the war as
well for the Germans. A U-boat later in the war — in 1945, the U-260 — was sunk
off the coastline, near Courtmacsherry, and the men were told, ‘Sorry, lads, we
hit a mine.’ But the officers said: ‘We hit something. The ship’s not badly
damaged, but sink her, because if we go home the chances are we’ll be out on
another patrol and we’ll be dead. The war’s nearly over. We’ll spend the rest
of it in Ireland.’ Also, you have to take into account how exhausted the
survivors were.”
The
Kerlogue resisted radio calls from the British to land at Fishguard. By the
time it reached Cork, four of the Germans had died.
Emergency
services treated the survivors in Cobh, before moving them onto hospital, and
to internment at the Curragh, Co Kildare.
Two
of the Germans died while interned, and are buried at the German war cemetery
in Glencree, Co Wicklow.
The
Nazi German minister in Dublin, Dr Eduard Hempel, wrote a letter to Captain
Donoghue, applauding him and his crew for their “exemplary deed, worthy of the
great tradition of Irish gallantry and humanity,” and he sent a letter of
thanks to the hospital matron at the Military Hospital, Cork Barracks.
A
silver cup was also presented to Captain Donoghue, with the inscription ‘Bay of
Biscay’.
Written By Richard Fitzpatrick
