Ireland’s US Navy ‘war brides’
Published in Issue 4 (July/August 2017), News, Volume 25US Military in Ireland Centenary Project.
By Damian Shiels
Above: Veronica Dillon from Whitegate, Co. Cork, daughter of an RIC constable. She was 21 years old when she had this picture taken for her application in 1919. In it she wears a US Navy sweetheart pin given to her by her New Yorker husband, Frank Harris, a US Navy chief electrician. Veronica spent the remainder of her life in the United States. (National Archives and Records Administration)
The arrival of large numbers of Americans in early twentieth-century Ireland represented a major culture shock for both the sailors and the locals, something on which numerous servicemen commented in their letters home. William Hoffman of the USS Oklahoma in Bantry Bay confided to his father that ‘the people seem odd and talk funny … you can’t hardly understand a word they say’, while Thomas Bedner of the US naval base at Aghada remarked that ‘we take long walks and visit some of the queer old villages … in some of the places they never saw a “Yank” before. As soon as they see one or a group of us passing there is a general popping of heads out of windows as if there was a circus coming.’ Aside from the cultural differences, Americans also remarked on the poverty. Lt John Herlihy from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, told his brother that ‘after seeing how people have to live in this part of the world and what little they have to be glad about I am fully convinced that a man in the States even working for a salary is better off than a man with money over here …’.
The combination of cultural, financial and, increasingly, political differences led to growing hostility towards the Americans. Warnings from the pulpit spoke of how the sailors were ‘preying upon the purity of our daughters’. This animosity spilled over in Cork City, where a series of violent attacks on US sailors and their Irish girlfriends took place. These incidents led the US Navy to permanently ban the majority of their servicemen from entering the city. Even that was no guarantee of avoiding confrontation; on another occasion a group of women who travelled to Queenstown (Cobh) to meet American sailors were attacked at the station by young men ‘armed with sticks and stones’.
In contrast to how these relationships were often viewed at home, the Irish women who married Americans usually met with a positive reception in the United States, where European ‘war brides’ were a source of pride. The relationships were lauded in the press, under headlines such as ‘COLLEENS WIN AMERICAN TARS’. Newspapers like the St Louis Post-Dispatch opined that ‘after the war, every part of the United States from Maine to California, and from the Great Lakes to Florida, will boast of an Irish bride who was wooed and won in her native land by an American sailor’. The Washington Times was among those to report on the supposed superiority of Irish brides in contrast to others from Europe, stating that ‘the highest average of comeliness is among the Irish brides. Few of the girls are of the high-heeled variety, the majority having efficient acquaintance with household duties. The girls themselves are unanimous in pronouncing Americans persistent and gallant lovers.’
While many of the women would have had the blessing of their families at the start of their new lives in America, some marriages would undoubtedly have been viewed disapprovingly. A number of them carried the added burden of having to endure the social consequences of pregnancy outside wedlock in early twentieth-century Ireland. In an effort to uncover something more of their personal stories, the US Military in Ireland Centenary Project sought to identify as many of these women as possible through the passport applications they made at American consulates in Ireland and Britain prior to their departure. Aside from providing much detail about the women’s background and marriage, these forms bring the added bonus of including often remarkable images of each of the Irish brides.
To date, the project has uncovered almost 100 Irish ‘war brides’. Unsurprisingly, the majority of them came from Cork City and Queenstown, though at least one was identified from every locality where Americans were based on the island during the war. Ongoing work on the demographics of the women indicates that the majority were under 22 years of age; they came from a range of backgrounds, with the daughters of labourers, tradesmen and military/police the most common. Most hoped to make their new lives on the east coast, particularly in New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Though not all of these young Irish women had happy endings with their American sweethearts, many certainly did. On the occasion of the centenary of the American entry into the war, their considerable courage in leaving everything they knew behind to seek a new life across the ocean is one that deserves to be remembered.
Damien Shiels is curator of ‘Portraits: Women of Cork and the US Navy 1917–1919’, which runs in the Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, until 17 September 2017.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.