German Seamen Recall 1916 Easter Rising

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30998, 2 March 1966, Page 6

German Seamen Recall 1916 Easter Rising

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter)

BONN.

German seamen, who sailed with Sir Roger Casement on his ill-starred attempt to raise insurrection in Ireland during the First World War, will be honoured guests at next April’s celebrations in Dublin of the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising.

The Irish Embassy in Bonn has so far traced three men who sailed half a century ago on the expedition which led Casement to a traitor’s death on the scaffold in London’s Bentonville prison. They describe Casement as a “fine man” and the details of their adventures off the west coast of Ireland are still clear in their minds. But the tragic background of the Irish fight for independence is hazy for them. Even at the time of their mission they were told little of its aims.

In 1916, with Britain fighting desperately in Flanders and France, the Irish nationalists planned a rising at Easter which, with the help of Germany, they hoped, would allow them to seize their independence. Casement, a former British consular official, knighted and lionised for his exposure of atrocities against rubber workers in the Belgian Congo and the Peruvian jungle, toured British prison camps in Germany trying to recruit Irish soldiers for an Irish, Brigade to lead the rising. Howled Down But he was howled down by the prisoners. He won only 60 renegade recruits and decided instead to sail to Ireland on the eve of the rising with a shipload of arms. Jans Dunker, now aged 72 and living in retirement in the port of Leer, takes up the tale. In 1916, he was a stoker in the Imperial German Navy, based at Wilhelmshaven. “Our Commander picked out all the men who looked like Norwegians and asked us if we were ready to carry out a dare-devil mission." he recalls. “We all volunteered.” Twenty-two men, sworn to secrecy, went aboard the freighter Aud, at Wilhelmshaven, and sailed her to the Baltic port of Lubeck. Third Engineer Welhelm Augustin, now 75, and running a Wilhelmshaven hotel, recalls:— “We loaded with coal and with the arms and ammunition. We carried a cargo of pit props as camouflage.” With 20,000 captured Russian rifles hidden in her holds, the Aud skipped out of the

Baltic. “Once out in the North Sea,” says Dunker, “we hoisted the Norwegian flag and changed into merchant seamen’s clothes. 1 had papers describing me as Cornelius Rasmus, born in Christiansen (Oslo).” To avoid British naval patrols, the Aud steamed north into Arctic ice before turning south towards the west coast of Ireland. Casement was to have been aboard her, but decided at the last moment that he would be safer in a submarine. So with two companions, Robert Monteith and David Bailey, a renegade prisoner, he boarded the tiny submarine U-19 and sailed for Ireland, through the English Channel.

One of the 24-man crew of the U-19 was a young seaman called Wolfgang le Marne. Today, at 69, he is a guide showing tourists round the Parliament buildings in Bonn. “Casement was noble,” he recalls, “just the type you would expect to find fighting for freedom."

Like any other submarine voyage in those days, the U-19’s 12-day cruise to Tralee Bay was cramped and uncomfortable. But there were no incidents. “We slipped through the channel minefields and reached , the Irish coast,” le Marne says. “There we surfaced at night. We waited in vain for a prearranged light signal from shore, so we put Casement and his two companions ashore in a rubber boat.”

Its mission completed, the U-19 headed for home, again slipping safely past the British patrols and minefields. Casement was less fortunate. Within 12 hours of being put ashore, early on Good Friday, he was captured by a police patrol. Bailey was picked up later, but Monteith escaped to America.

The Aud, too, reached Tralee Bay unchallenged on the eve of Good Friday. As with the U-19, the reception party which should have been waiting on shore was not there.

“We threw the pitprops overboard so that we could unload the arms,” Augustin says, “but no pilot boat came out. Instead, a British picket boat came out. It was an old trawler—and hailed us.”

Dunker says the trawler skipper asked what the Aud was doing. “Our captain replied that we had an engine breakdown. We were all banging away with spanners down below to back up his story. The skipper came aboard and we filled him up with whisky. He did not look at our cargo when we told him that we were a Norwegian timber boat, but he told us: ‘We have been waiting for the last three days for a German arms ship’,” As soon as the trawler had disappeared, the Aud headed for home. It covered about 50 miles before being intercepted by the destroyer Bluebell and was ordered to follow her into Cork harbour.

“We prepared an explosive charge in the propeller shaft, hoping that we could block the harbour entrance,” says Augustin. “We hoisted the Imperial ensign, put on our naval uniforms, got into the lifeboat—and rowed like bell

to get away from the ship before she blew up. “The Bluebell picked us up. Our Captain was court martialled and we were all sentenced to death. Our captain protested, declaring that this was impossible since we were wearing naval uniform and that jf we were shot, captured British seamen would be shot in Germany.” The prisoners were put ashore and lodged in a fort, Dunker says “We thought we were going to be shot. But one of us still had an accordion and we began to dance to the music. Then the door opened and two Tommies came in, armed with rifles. “We thought we were for it, but the soldiers said ‘We are Irish, not . . . English,’ and they started to dance with us.” Dunker and Augustin were later exchanged for wounded British prisoners.

Now, half a century later, their fleeting association with Casement has brought them an air ticket to Dublin —and an assurance of a much warmer welcome to the Emerald Isle than they received in April, 1916.