Postcard image of the RMS Leinster | |
History | |
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United Kingdom | |
Name | RMS Leinster |
Namesake | Leinster |
Owner | City of Dublin Steam Packet Company |
Port of registry | Dublin, Ireland |
Route | Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire)-Holyhead |
Ordered | 1895 |
Builder | Laird Brothers of Birkenhead |
Cost | £95,000 |
Yard number | 612 |
Launched | 12 September 1896 |
Completed | January 1897 |
Out of service | 10 October 1918 |
Fate | Torpedoed and sunk by German submarine UB-123 on 10 October 1918 while bound for Holyhead. |
General characteristics | |
Type | Steamship |
Tonnage | 2,646 GRT |
Length | 378 ft |
Beam | 75 ft |
Height | 42 ft |
Installed power | Single eight-cylinder triple-expansion steam engine |
Propulsion | Twin propellers |
Speed | 24 knots |
Armament |
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RMS Leinster was an Irish ship operated by the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company. She served as the Kingstown-Holyhead mailboat until she was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine UB-123, which was under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Robert Ramm, on 10 October 1918, while bound for Holyhead. She sank just outside Dublin Bay at a point 4 nautical miles (7.4 km) east of the Kish light.
The exact number of dead is unknown but researchers from the National Maritime Museum of Ireland believe it was at least 564, which would make it the largest single loss of life in the Irish Sea. [1] [2]
In 1895, the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company ordered four steamers for Royal Mail service, named for four provinces of Ireland: RMS Leinster, RMS Connaught, RMS Munster, and RMS Ulster. [3] The Leinster was a 3,069-ton packet steamship with a service speed of 24 knots (44 km/h). The vessel, which was built at Laird's in Birkenhead, England, was driven by two independent four-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines. [4] During the First World War, the twin-propellered ship was armed with one 12-pounder and two signal guns. [5]
The ship's log states that she carried 77 crew and 694 passengers on her final voyage. The ship had previously been attacked in the Irish Sea but the torpedoes missed their target. Those on board included more than 100 British civilians, 22 postal sorters (working in the mail room) and almost 500 military personnel from the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force. Also aboard were nurses from Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. [6]
Just before 10 a.m. as she was sailing east of the Kish Bank in a heavy swell, passengers saw a torpedo approach from the port side and pass in front of the bow. A second torpedo followed shortly afterwards, and struck the ship forward on the port side, in the vicinity of the mail room. The ship made a U-turn in an attempt to return to Kingstown as it began to settle slowly by the bow, but sank rapidly after a third torpedo struck, causing a huge explosion.
Despite the heavy seas, the crew managed to launch several lifeboats and some passengers clung to life-rafts. The survivors were rescued by HMS Lively, HMS Mallard and HMS Seal. Among the civilian passengers lost in the sinking were socially prominent people, such as Lady Phyllis Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Abercorn, Robert Jocelyn Alexander, son of Irish poet and hymn writer, Cecil Frances Alexander, Rev. John Bartley, the Presbyterian minister of Tralee, who was travelling to visit his mortally wounded son in hospital, Thomas Foley and his wife Charlotte Foley (née Barrett), who was the brother-in-law of the world-famous Irish tenor John McCormack, who adopted their eldest son, and Richard Moore, only son of British architect Temple Moore. The first member of the Women's Royal Naval Service to die on active duty, Josephine Carr, was among those who died, as were two prominent officials of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, James McCarron and Patrick Lynch. [7]
Several of the military personnel who died are buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery. [8]
Survivors were brought to Kingstown harbour. Among them were Michael Joyce, an Irish Parliamentary Party MP for Limerick City, and Captain Hutchinson Ingham Cone of the United States Navy, the former commander of the USS Dale (DD-4).
One of the rescue ships was the armed yacht, and former fishery protection vessel, HMY Helga. Stationed in Kingstown harbour at the time of the sinking, she had shelled Dublin during the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin two years earlier. [9] She was later bought and renamed the Muirchú by the Irish Free State government as one of its first fishery protection vessels.
On October 18, 1918 at 9.10 a.m. UB-125, outbound from Germany under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Werner Vater, picked up a radio message requesting advice on the best way to get through the North Sea minefield. The sender was Oberleutnant zur See Robert Ramm, aboard UB-123. Extra mines had been added to the minefield since UB-123 had made her outward voyage from Germany. As UB-125 had just come through the minefield, Vater radioed back with a suggested route. UB-123 acknowledged the message and was never heard from again.
The following day, ten days after the sinking of the RMS Leinster, UB-123 detonated a mine while trying to cross the North Sea and return to base in Imperial Germany. There were no survivors. [10]
In 1991, the anchor of the RMS Leinster was raised by local divers. It was placed near Carlisle Pier [11] and officially dedicated on 28 January 1996.
In 2008, 90 years after its sinking, a commemorative stamp was issued by An Post, recalling particularly the Post Office's 21 staff who died in the tragedy. [12] The sinking of the vessel is further recalled in the postal museum of the General Post Office, in Dublin's O'Connell Street.
On 10 October 2018 an official commemoration took place in Dún Laoghaire attended by the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan T.D. in which she confirmed that Leinster is now under the protection of the National Monuments Acts, which covers all shipwrecks over 100 years old.
Dublin Bay is a C-shaped inlet of the Irish Sea on the east coast of Ireland. The bay is about 10 kilometres wide along its north–south base, and 7 km in length to its apex at the centre of the city of Dublin; stretching from Howth Head in the north to Dalkey Point in the south. North Bull Island is situated in the northwest part of the bay, where one of two major inshore sand banks lay, and features a 5 km long sandy beach, Dollymount Strand, fronting an internationally recognised wildfowl reserve. Many of the rivers of Dublin reach the Irish Sea at Dublin Bay: the River Liffey, with the River Dodder flow received less than 1 km inland, River Tolka, and various smaller rivers and streams.
Royal Mail Ship, usually seen in its abbreviated form RMS, is the ship prefix used for seagoing vessels that carry mail under contract to the British Royal Mail. The designation dates back to 1840. Any vessel designated as "RMS" has the right both to fly the pennant of the Royal Mail when sailing and to include the Royal Mail "crown" insignia with any identifying device and/or design for the ship.
The Dublin and Kingstown Railway (D&KR), which opened in 1834, was Ireland's first passenger railway. It linked Westland Row in Dublin with Kingstown Harbour in County Dublin.
The National Maritime Museum of Ireland opened in 1978 in the former Mariners' Church in Moran Park, located between the seafront and the centre of Dún Laoghaire town, southeast of Dublin city. President Michael D. Higgins officially re-opened the museum in 2012.
Cobh railway station serves the town of Cobh, County Cork. It is located in a red brick building adjacent to the town's Cobh Heritage Centre.
The City of Dublin Steam Packet Company was a shipping line established in 1823. It served cross-channel routes between Britain and Ireland for over a century. For 70 of those years it transported the mail. It was 'wound-up' by a select committee of the House of Lords in 1922 and finally liquidated in 1930.
RMS Connaught was a steamship built in 1897 and operated by the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company for Royal Mail as well as passenger service. Connaught was the second ship of this name operated by the line. She was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-48 on 3 March 1917.
HMS Lively was a B-class torpedo boat destroyer of the British Royal Navy. She was built speculatively by Laird, Son & Company, Birkenhead, pre-empting further orders for vessels of this type, and was bought by the navy in 1901.
The Kish Bank is a shallow sand bank approximately 11 kilometres (7 mi) off the coast of Dublin, in Ireland. It is marked by the Kish Lighthouse, a landmark visible to sailors and ferry passengers passing through Dublin Bay and Dún Laoghaire harbour.
Frank "Lucky" Tower is the subject of an urban legend that said that he was a stoker who survived the sinking of RMS Titanic, RMS Empress of Ireland, and RMS Lusitania. There is no evidence that anyone was involved in all three disasters, and there was no one with the name of Frank Tower on the crew list on any of these vessels' respective voyages; however, there was one survivor and passenger named Frank Tower from Lusitania, and a William Clark who survived both the Titanic and Empress of Ireland sinkings.
Rochdale and Prince of Wales were two troop ships that sank in Dublin Bay in 1807.
An anti-submarine indicator loop was a submerged cable laid on the sea bed and used to detect the passage of enemy submarines.
RMS (later HMTRoyal Edward was an ocean liner of the Canadian Northern Steamship Company that was sunk in the First World War with a large loss of life while transporting Dominion troops. She was launched in 1907 as RMS Cairo for a British mail service to Egypt.
Stena Adventurer is a large roll-on/roll-off passenger (ro-pax) ferry operated by Stena Line on its Holyhead–Dublin route. She was launched in 2002 and entered service between Holyhead and Dublin the following year.
Dún Laoghaire Harbour and Carlisle Pier were constructed in the nineteenth century for the purposes of sheltering ships and accommodating the mailboat which sailed between Dún Laoghaire and Holyhead. The nearby settlement of Dún Laoghaire has also previously been known as Kingstown and also as Dun Leary. Carlisle Pier has been known previously as Kingston Pier and the Mailboat Pier.
The Port of Holyhead is a commercial and ferry port in Anglesey, United Kingdom, handling more than 2 million passengers each year. It covers an area of 240 hectares, and is operated by Stena Line Ports Ltd. The port is the principal link for crossings from north Wales and central and northern England to Ireland. The port is partly on Holy Island and partly on Salt Island. It is made up of the Inner Harbour, the Outer Harbour and the New Harbour, all sheltered by the Holyhead Breakwater which, at 2.7 kilometres, is the longest in the UK.
Dún Laoghaire is a suburban coastal town in County Dublin in Ireland. It is the administrative centre of the county of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown. The town was built up alongside a small existing settlement following 1816 legislation that allowed the building of a major port to serve Dublin. It was known as Dunleary until it was renamed Kingstown in honour of King George IV's 1821 visit, and in 1920 was given its present name, the original Irish form from which "Dunleary" was anglicised. Over time, the town became a residential location, a seaside resort, the terminus of Ireland's first railway and the administrative centre of the former borough of Dún Laoghaire, and from 1994, of the county of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown.
Michael Joyce was an Irish politician who twice served as Mayor of Limerick and was the Member of Parliament for the Limerick City constituency of the United Kingdom Parliament from 1900 until 1918.
MV Cambria was a twin screw motor vessel operated by the British Transport Commission from 1948 to 1962 and British Rail from 1962 to 1976. Together with her sister ship the MV Hibernia she served the Holyhead to Dún Laoghaire route across the Irish Sea.
SM UB-123 was a German Type UB III submarine or U-boat in the German Imperial Navy during World War I. She was commissioned into the German Imperial Navy on 6 April 1918 as SM UB-123.
Today marks the centenary of the sinking of the RMS Leinster, which resulted in the deaths of 564 people in the single-largest loss of life on the Irish Sea.