Waterford’s green ensign
Published in 18th–19th - Century History, General, Issue 3 (May/June 2011), Letters, Volume 19Sir,—In response to the news item on the national flag and the city of Waterford (HI, March/April 2011), the following account might be of interest.
In a letter written aboard HMS Lucifer at Waterford on 19 July 1845, to Rear Admiral Sir Hugh Pigot at Cove, her captain, Commander George Alexander Frazier, reported that he had sighted a schooner, the Nora Craina, at anchor off Passage East flying a green ensign ‘at the peak’ in contravention of the royal proclamation of 1801. He immediately dispatched one of his officers in a boat to have it hauled down. Upon confiscation of the flag the Nora Craina, bound for St Johns, Newfoundland, with a general cargo, was allowed to proceed on her voyage.
This was the first in a series of seizures of green flags being flown by various Irish merchant ships and boats. The Repeal movement seems to have been the motivation for these demonstrations of national fervour. It is also noteworthy that this activity was centred only in Waterford. Apart from the political significance of such flags, there was also a legal maritime implication—vessels were required by law to display their ‘correct’ ensigns.
The incident with the highest profile, and possibly designed to be the most provocative, occurred in Cork harbour on 8 April 1844. William Bowles was then the admiral at Cove, aboard the Volage. On that morning a steamship, the Mermaid, arrived with the mayor and corporation of Waterford aboard on their way to a dinner in honour of Daniel O’Connell in Cork. She was flying a ‘green ensign’ from her ensign staff and a green flag with the word ‘Repeal’ on it from the fore masthead. Before she came abreast of the Volage, presumably anchored off Cove, she fired two or three guns and dipped her ensign to the men-of-war as she passed. The officers in the Volage prevented their signalman from returning the salute, but other naval ships did so. She had passed the naval ships so unexpectedly and quickly and disappeared round the bend at Black Point that there was no time for any action to be taken. As she passed Cove, people cheered and the cheering was returned by those on the Mermaid. She had also been sighted by the naval ship Pluto anchored at Passage East the previous evening, but again had been going so fast, on an ebb tide, that she was gone before any action could be taken. A similar outfit of flags was noted by the Pluto.
The following morning the Mermaid appeared again, outward bound. She was flying a red ensign (the correct one for a merchant ship) at her ensign staff, but a green flag with ‘some device and a motto in it’ at her mainmast head. She fired one gun on coming into sight of the naval ships in Cove and another on approaching the Volage. Captain Dixon of the Volage ordered Lt Chapman in the ship’s pinnace to board the Mermaid and seize the green flag. As she passed the Volage a band was playing. There was some difficulty in getting her to slow down to allow the boarding party aboard, and Dixon ordered a gun to be fired to get her to heave to, which she did and Chapman was able to board. When he ordered the green flag to be lowered and handed over, the master complied immediately but said that it was the Waterford arms. Chapman replied that he had instructions to confiscate it, but that if it was a proper flag it would be returned to them.
The various flags that were confiscated were given into the stores at Haulbowline. On 18 October 1845 the admiralty wrote to Admiral Pigot at Cove that they had decided that the ‘green ensign’ seized from the Mermaid was to be returned to Benjamin Morris Wall, mayor of Waterford, on the undertaking that it would not be flown from any vessel again. On 31 December 1845 Mayor Wall wrote to the admiralty to say that he still had not received the flag, the property of the corporation of Waterford. In January 1846 Lt Wentworth, the naval storekeeper, was instructed by Admiral Pigot to write to the mayor and make arrangements for the handover of the flag. Presumably this was done. I wonder whether this flag is still in Waterford?—Yours etc.,
DAIRE BRUNICARDI
Fermoy
Co. Cork
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.