The torpedoing of the Blue Star Line’s 15,000-ton luxury liner Arandora Star (2) off Donegal on 2 July 1940 remains one of the hidden histories of the Second World War. Reports of the sinking appeared in the press in Ireland, but it never made it into the national consciousness due to wartime censorship. So too in Britain, but for different reasons.  The sinking recalls unpleasant memories of Britain’s wartime domestic security policies. How, on the orders of the War Cabinet, (3) all 8,000 male Italians, Germans and Austrians between the ages of 16 and 70 were interned by June 1940 after Italy entered the war.  The internees were portrayed as a security threat because of their ethnic backgrounds and British fears of a ‘Fifth Column’. Picked up by the police they were herded into internment camps such as (4) ‘Warner’s’, a former holiday camp on the Devon coast, or into (5) unfinished housing estates. ‘Collar the lot’, Churchill infamously ordered. 

As many of you know far better than I, there’s a strong local dimension to my topic tonight. The Italian community in Northern Ireland numbered about 300 in the inter-war years.  (6) Giuseppe Forte, owner two cafés in Belfast, and leader of the Fasci al’Estero in the city, and Antonio Fusco, also of Belfast, were interned and lost their lives on Arandora Star. The ship’s Assistant Purser, George Hughes, was a Belfast man. Lost at sea, his body was never found.

Michael MacRitchie has written about the Northern Ireland dimension to the sinking. In an article in the Belfast Telegraph he explained how the RUC arrested Forte, but in seeking the deputy leader of the Fasci al’Estero, his nephew, Antonio Fusco, the police instead picked up a young man of the same name whose family had lived in Belfast for almost 30 years, owning a chip shop in York Street.  Long afterwards, the Fusco family heard that their son had volunteered to go with Giuseppe Forte onto Arandora Star, rather than have him go alone.  Another prisoner, Angelo Morelli, of Portstewart, was about to board. Soldiers stopped the man in front of him as the ship was full.  Morelli was later interned on the Isle of Man.

Londoner Gino Guarnieri, though in his twenties in 1940, never expected to be interned. He was picked up because of a fleeting involvement in a fascist club. He had attended the club twice to go to dances.  When asked in 1990 what it was like to be labelled an ‘enemy alien’ he replied ‘I don’t even know myself, because I was saying, “Oh my God, look, the other day we were all friendly and now I am an enemy”.’[1]

(7) Nicola Cua, a 23-year-old tailor’s shop manager from Soho, also interviewed in 1990, described how, interned at a disused cotton mill near Bury in Lancashire, his fellow internees were all Italians: ‘there was young and old, and, they were of all ages actually … they weren’t even the young ones who would have been dangerous.’[2]  Cua could understand why he as a man of military age was interned, but he mentioned a fellow internee, and old man, who had three sons in the British Army.  He felt the vast majority shouldn’t have been interned. Looking back dryly to the summer of 1940 in Britain he suggested: ‘there was a little panic because they were afraid of an invasion … there was panic and they just said collar the lot.’[3]

Cua and the others are just four from the over 1,300 internees, Austrian and German and Italian, bound for Canada on (8) Arandora Star, when she was torpedoed.  In Ireland, the sinking of the Lusitania off Kinsale and the Leinster off Dublin, during the First World War, are well known. There are no Second World War equivalents.  The Lusitania, Leinster and Arandora Star were all sunk by German U-boats, but might it be that Arandora Star was conveniently forgotten because she carried an awkward human cargo? Official statements said she had sunk 250 miles west of the coast of Northern Ireland; in fact she was only seventy five miles off Bloody Foreland, Donegal. 

Though neutral, Ireland could not avoid the loss of the ship as events within a month of the sinking were to prove.  On the 6 August 1940 Garda William Cullen of Belmullet station received a phone call from coastwatchers at the nearby (9, 10, 11) Annagh Head Look Out Post (LOP).  He learned that the Atlantic currents had washed ashore the body of a British soldier.  Cullen cycled to Annagh Head to investigate.  He searched the body.  Among the dead man’s few possessions he found an English half-penny piece and a lead toy soldier.  From his Army pay book Cullen identified 21-year-old Private Donald Domican of the Welsh Regiment.  At Belmullet Hospital an autopsy concluded death from asphyxia due to drowning.  The following day, as Domican was buried in (12, 13) the town, Belmullet Gardaí received a further call from Annagh Head: another body had been found.  Garda Sergeant Burns identified 27-year-old Trooper Frank Carter of the Royal Dragoons, a career soldier and a married man, from Kilburn.  Domican and Carter were guards from Arandora Star. 

Alongside their graves in Belmullet is the grave of (14) Private William Frederick Chick of the Dorsetshire Regiment.  Nineteen year old Fred Chick, as he was known to his family, was a butcher in civilian life and was from the village of Martinstown in Dorsetshire.  He had enlisted in the Territorial Army in April 1939 and later saw service in France with the British Expeditionary Force.  Like Carter and Domican, there is absolutely no reason why you should ever have heard of Fred Chick.  Chick’s body was discovered at Annagh Head on the morning of 9 August 1940.  Local men waded into rough seas to tie a rope to his body and bring him ashore. On finding a photograph of Chick’s girlfriend in his wallet they were reduced to tears. 

The sea began to give up its dead from Arandora Star through August 1940.  From Annagh Head north to Tory Island in Donegal the Defence Forces knew that twenty-one bodies had been recovered along the west coast of Ireland in the first ten days of August 1940.  The recovery and identification of the dead of war now became a routine task for the Coast Watching Service.  Their daily reports for August 1940 made grim reading as more bodies washed ashore along the northwest coast.  From Blacksod Bay to Malin Head coastwatchers reported the silent arrival of these ‘men that came in with the sea’. The dead all came from Arandora Star. 100 dead bodies reported by local papers in Mayo to be floating in the sea off the Iniskea Islands.  Conditions were so rough that they could not be recovered. 

            In finding these bodies, communities along the west coast were taking part in the final chapter of a story that began at (15) 4.00am on 1 July when Arandora Star left Liverpool.  Designed to carry 500 passengers, the liner was crammed with 1,300 internees and their military guards.  They were men like the tall dapper 28-year-old Hans Moeller, a (Jewish?) refugee from Nazi Germany.  He had lived in Bremen and was now a student in Britain.  Interned on national security grounds as an alleged Nazi sympathiser, he became prisoner 43206 at Warner’s Camp.[4] With Moeller was 60-year-old Italian Ernesto Moruzzi, a sweet shop owner from Neath, Glamorgan.  Standing on the dockside at Liverpool on 30 June 1940 they expected a short trip to the Isle of Man.  Unwanted in Britain they were instead bound for Canada.  Within forty-eight hours both men would be dead, along with over 800 of their fellow internees.

(16) Corporal Ivor Duxberry of the Welsh Regiment recalled the arrival of the internees onboard when a colleague shouted: ‘Hey, Duxberry, come down here and see who’s coming on the ship he said. There’s all Rabiotti, there’s Conti and all.’ I said, ‘You must be talking daft’ I said. I went down and there was these boys, these internees, who I’d been to school with, who I knew personally, who’d been interned. And I said what the ‘Hey what had you done?’[5] He later said ‘they were pals what I knew, there were boys there from the Valleys, they were mostly Welsh Italians really.’ Duxberry was appalled.

Painted battleship grey and without Red Cross markings Arandora Star began her Atlantic crossing during what U-boat crews called ‘The Happy Time’. During these months in summer 1940 U-boats sank Allied ships with impunity off the Irish coast.  Sailing without escort at cruise speed of 15 knots Arandora Star passed (17) Malin Head and headed out into the Atlantic. She zig-zagged to avoid U-boats.  (18) Captain Edward Moulton knew his ship was a death trap.  If it were to sink ‘we shall be drowned like rats’ he protested before setting sail.

His lifeboats, and the access points to the lifeboats, were festooned with barbed wire, a point specifically and forcefully mentioned by Duxberry, who was on the bridge of the ship with Moulton. The question of the barbed wire has aroused considerable controversy. Cua referred specifically to this and said it was to cordon off areas that internees were not to go on the ship. Such areas were guarded by soldiers with fixed bayonets, but he stressed that the internees had reasonably free movement, were treated well by the guards and were not themselves held behind barbed wire.

The body of Private Peter Clarke of the 4th Devonshires was recovered near Burtonport on 8 August.  Clarke was seventeen, the youngest of the 91 members of the 253 strong military guard lost in the sinking.  He was carrying 40 rounds of .303 ammunition and a bayonet. Many of the identified military dead were carrying equipment that indicated they were armed at the time of their death.  His carrying live ammunition and a bayonet shows how the internees were kept under guard and were judged to be a threat to the ship.

Amongst the internees was a Dr Gaetano Zezzi, a Harley Street doctor and formerly physician to the chairman of the Blue Star Line. Nicola Cua learned from Zezzi, who had spoken with Captain Moulton that Arandora Star was alone and they should be ‘prepared for anything’. At 6.15am on 2 July, 75 miles northwest of Bloody Foreland, Donegal, without notice by the watch, a torpedo from (19) Gunther Prien’s U-47 hit Arandora Star on the starboard side.  Prien had no idea he was attacking his fellow countrymen and their Italian allies.  Arandora Star looked like a troopship and had no Red Cross markings.  Cua recalled ‘this terrific explosion’ and that the ship swiftly began to list.[6] When Intelligence Office Captain C.M.C. Lee made it to the deck he found the Military Officer in command of the ship, Major Christopher Bethell of the Royal Tank Regiment already on deck with Captain Goddard.  Lee asked for instructions, but Bethell gave none.  Lee left to search for lifebelts and, as he put it, ‘was occupied in controlling internees’.  ‘Indescribable chaos’, as one survivor remembered, now reigned on board.[7]  Cua recalled panic, individual and collective, some petrified panic, but no fighting, as newspapers suggested afterwards.

Luigi Beschizza remembered hearing ‘the three toots, afterwards people told me that that meant abandon ship, but I didn’t know at the time.’[8]  There had been no instruction in emergency drill and Nicola Cua recalled that ‘people were trying to lower the lifeboats but no one knew anything about it, they were lowering one side only and of course the lifeboat would crash against the side of the ship.’ No one from the Italian contingent knew how to handle them because they were generally in the catering or restaurant trade and the Germans on board were merchant marine and did know what to do, giving them a better survival rate. 

Below decks lights failed, locks jammed, glass shattered and ruptured pipes spewed out noxious fumes. Those rushing to the deck often found their escape barred by the barbed wire the guards had secured in place.  Duxberry found his passage to a lifeboat impeded by barbed wire telling his interviewee ‘We had to hack our way through the barbed wire to get the boats. I’ve got marks on my hands today where the barbed wire ripped me.’  Internee Ludwig Baruch heard recalled ‘panic, muffled cries, an urgent, wailing alarm and hurried steps along the corridor.’[9] Many decks beneath Gino Guarnieri woke on hearing the explosion and in the darkness went round in circles trying to find stairs to the deck.  Leading cabin mates along a corridor, Baruch found a soldier with bayonet fixed to his rifle still on guard.  Like his superior officers, he was shocked and confused. Though the ship was sinking he would not leave his post.

The descriptions of the sinking were stark. Gunner Bell of the Royal Artillery reported seeing Gunner Dawson ‘standing on the deck … right up to the time the vessel sank … he does not consider there was much hope of his being saved.’[10]  Even by November 1940 Dawson’s wife still held out hope that her twenty-six year old husband was still alive, writing to the military that ‘I may yet receive word from the Red Cross’.[11]  His body was never found.  Captain Goddard also went down with the ship.  He was seen ‘on the first deck with no lifebelt, he was quite calm’.  He had ‘given his lifebelt to an internee.’[12] 

Sighting a raft Cua jumped into the water from the deck, ‘that was the only chance, you know’ he said, adding quietly when asked about his abilities in the water ‘I can’t swim a stroke’. The boat was listing so much it wasn’t much of a jump and he was able to grab on to the ropes of a raft.  Bizarrely, a friend of Cua’s, Carlo Delzi, who was a champion swimmer, died in the sinking. Cua recalled many who like him had grabbed onto a raft simply letting go of the ropes, saying they could not stand it anymore and drifting away to their deaths. He could never understand their motives in this act, saying he’d have to die before letting go.

Arandora Star sank stern first just after 0640.  Men rolled over each other the ship rose to such an angle.  As she went down Captain Lee ‘could no longer stand on deck owing to the angle she had taken … [he] … jumped overboard and swam away from the ship to avoid the suction.’[13]  Sergeant Norman Price of the Worcestershire Regiment saw the end of the liner from the water: ‘the ship went up at one end and slid rapidly down, taking the men with her.’[14] For Duxberry, hearing the cries of the drowning and dying, ‘the tears ran down our eyes, to think what a waste of man’s life, it was terrible, it was terrible.’  Cua says in his interview that the barbed wire placed around the two guns on Arandora Star caught many men and took them down with the ship, Duxberry said the same, his own men as he put it ‘hanging on the side like turkeys in a butchers shop, they couldn’t get off the barbed wire, it was a disgrace, because they had no lifeboat training’. Cua saw the ship sink from about 150 yards away, commenting ‘I should say it was a terrible sight to see going down … it went down slowly and just disappeared … and a deathly silence afterwards, you know, from every, every, all the lifeboats, just a deathly silence after that.’ 

Then there was the muffled sound of the boilers exploding under water, oil rising to the surface (which Cua said kept him warm) and ‘bodies floating all over the place.’ Rando Bertoia, the last survivor of Arandora Star, recalled men shouting for their mothers as the ship sank. He told the Scottish Daily Record in 2010: ‘We rowed away from the ship. I watched the ship go down. It was a beautiful morning and after the shouting stopped, all that was left was a ripple on the sea. Men didn’t last long in the water. It was too cold.’[15] Gino Guarnieri recalled 40 or 50 bodies on the surface of the water near his lifeboat and going around seeing if they were any still alive amongst them.

470 Italians and 243 Germans drowned, as did 37 guards, including Domican, Carter and Chick.  The total death toll was 805.  Almost half of those on board perished, the majority being Italian internees. (20) Malin Head radio had picked up distress signals from the Arandora Star and retransmitted then to Land’s End and Portpatrick, but Britain did not immediately announce her loss.

The Canadian Destroyer St Laurent picked up the survivors after they had spent seven hours in the water. Moeller and Moruzzi were not amongst them.  When Moeller’s badly decomposed body was found on 29 July on the Donegal coast, Gardaí found in his wallet on a slip of headed notepaper from Jermyn Street shirtmakers ‘Turnbull & Asser’ (21, 22).  They also found in the wallet a songbook, ironically titled ‘Holiday Songs’ and inscribed ‘In memory of many a sing song whilst making nets in hut D21, Warner’s Camp, Seaton Doon, 7.4.1940.’ 

            (23) Moruzzi’s body was found on 30 July near Burtonport, Donegal.  A small stout man with thinning grey hair and a dark moustache, he was identified by his political leanings - the receipt for his yearly subscription to the Neath Constitutional Club.  It was the only item in his wallet, save five religious medals and a small crucifix.  Such ‘Pathetic Relics’, as a coroner’s report called them, were more than many had in their possession and Moruzzi was lucky to be identified. He was buried with others from Arandora Star in the graveyard on Cruit Island, Donegal.  Survivors recalled how many older men like Moruzzi or those who were infirm found their situation unendurable.  Some stood waiting on the decks for the sea to take them as Arandora Star sank, others knelt in prayer and one hanged himself. 

Nationality did not matter in the icy waters of the Atlantic, a poignant illustration being the graves of Luigi Tapparo, a 42-year-old Italian internee, a cook from Edinburgh, and one of his guards on the Arandora Star, 21-year-old John Connelly, from Oban in Argyleshire, a Trooper in the Lovat Scouts.  They died on the same day and were buried side (24) by side in Termoncarragh graveyard outside Belmullet. 

Moeller and Moruzzi were symbolic of the two types of internees on the ship.  Those like Moruzzi had come to Britain in the early 1900s from poor regions of Italy as economic migrants seeking to make a new life (25, 26) and integrated into British society.  His political leanings show how he identified with British politics and presumably saw himself as being British and Italian. Many of the internees saw themselves as simply British and did not expect to be treated this way by their adopted country.  Refugees like Moeller sought haven in democratic Britain after fleeing Nazi Germany.  Neither man had any rights in wartime Britain.

There was no co-ordinated way of dealing with the identification of the dead. Often little tact was shown.  Local Gardaí often simply contacted the next of kin of the deceased, if they could identify them, and delivered the grim news without warning.  In this manner Cesare Camozzi’s wife Minnie, the propriotress of the Monogram Café in Manchester, learned of her husband’s death after the discovery of his body at Malin Head on 8 August.  She knew he had been interned and thought he was in a camp in Scotland.  The phone call, out of the blue from the Gardaí at Buncrana, left her ‘so distressed that it was not possible to get from her any instructions as to the funeral arrangements she desired to have made, but before she left the phone, it was learned from her that her husband was a Catholic’.  This gave Cesare Camozzi some final dignity. A requiem mass was celebrated in his memory at the Catholic Church in Carndonagh and the Deputy Coroner ‘himself took the responsibility of ordering a good class of coffin’ for Camozzi’s internment in the cemetery adjoining the Church.  A body found alongside Camozzi remained unidentified. The deceased’s faith was unknown. He was buried without ceremony in the district hospital cemetery.

Blown by a north-westerly gale it took a month for all bodies from Arandora Star to reach land.  They were washed up along a six hundred mile stretch of coast from the western isles of Scotland to North Mayo.  Moeller, Moruzzi, Carter and Domican were amongst the first to be found in Ireland.  The last body known was of 21-year-old (27) Private Edward Lane of the 7th Battalion, the Devon Regiment, recovered from the sea at Ballycastle, Mayo on 21 August.  His watch had stopped at two minutes past eight, forty-seven minutes after Arandora Star rolled over and sank.

The five men above were the lucky ones.  Forty-eight hours before Domican’s body had come ashore coastwatchers at Annagh Head retrieved the body of a white European male from the sea, most likely an internee from Arandora Star.  Aged about 40 years he was wearing black trousers and a well-worn green woollen shirt.  The only property found on the body was two shillings and three and a half pence.  Not surprising as the internees had their possessions removed when they boarded Arandora Star.  The body was never identified and is buried in Termoncarragh cemetery, outside Belmullet, in an unmarked grave.  Forty-four unidentifiable bodies, including the man buried at Termoncarragh, were found on the Irish coast in the two months after the sinking of Arandora Star. Frederick Boland at External Affairs could only write that ‘there would appear to be very little hope of ever establishing the identity of the deceased’.[16] 

            British official opinion blamed the high loss of life on fighting onboard and panic and cowardice amongst the internees as Arandora Star began to sink.  A report to the Admiralty sent soon after the sinking explained that ‘Aliens had appeared on the upper deck and greatly hampered the crew in the launching’ of the lifeboats.[17]  The London Times carried the headline ‘Germans and Italians fight for lifeboats – Ship’s officers on bridge to end’, the propaganda value of portraying the brave British against the cowardly enemy was clear.[18] But an Admiralty report referred to the lack of panic on deck, instead castigating the internees for refusing to jump overboard, a point some surviving internees also made. 

Parliamentary questions soon brought to light the real story.  The conditions the internees were kept in had contributed to the high death toll.  Italians, mostly older men, on the lower decks were unable to make their way to the deck.  The Germans and Austrians on the upper decks had a much higher survival rate; Moeller’s body, for example, had been found with a lifebelt on.  However the lifebelts of the time were to be worn only after the wearer was in the water.  If one jumped into the sea wearing one the jolt of the water pushed the lifebelt upwards and broke the wearer’s neck.

A personal and confidential letter from Lieutenant Constable, the only surviving officer of the Ship’s Guard, to the War Office made unpleasant reading for the authorities.  He prefaced the letter ‘do you wish me to give you a complete recital of the stark FACTS which will enable you to give absolute reasons why the percentage of military casualties was 39%, a statement which would make informative but unpleasant reading, or do you wish me to “soft pedal” the whole affair?’[19]  Constable was responsible for internal security onboard Arandora Star, he was in contact with Captain Moulton and ‘saw things and obtained information that no other Officer, either casualty OR survivor had access to.’

The sinking of Arandora Star was to be the fourth worst British merchant shipping disaster of the Second World War. (28) The episode was the subject of a private inquiry by Lord Snell.  Constable, who knew that the military and internees had no instruction in emergency drill’ was not asked to submit a report on the sinking to Snell’s inquiry. Snell’s report, completed in October 1940, was a white-wash which absolved the war cabinet from any responsibility and hid the muddle and ineptitude surrounding Britain’s internment and deportation policies in 1939 and 1940.  In the rush to intern those who ‘might constitute a grave danger to security’, many harmless individuals were picked up.[20]  Arandora Star was supposed to carry only known Fascists and Nazis, but selection was at best random.  The distress caused by the loss of life on Arandora Star was amplified when it was discovered (29) that there was no accurate list of passengers and embarkation papers had been swapped amongst internees.  There were many cases of mistaken identity when the prisoners were originally interned. Nicola Cua explained that there was

a great mix up which was not the cause of the British Government at all, it was our own fault in a way, because when we were … being called up to go on the Arandora the names were just called out and if I was called out and my father hadn’t been called out the next man would say “why don’t you take your father with you, they won’t check on the names on the way up”, which they didn’t, they just called out the names and people walked up … that’s where the mix up was, they didn’t know exactly who was onboard the Arandora, not their fault, it was our fault for going on when we shouldn’t have gone, but to be together.[21]

Many of those who died should not have been onboard.  The British press and members of parliament alleged that ‘interned aliens who are Nazi sympathisers have been persuading other aliens to impersonate them and be deported to Canada in their names.’[22]  The errors were due to faulty intelligence from the British security services, but MI5 took no responsibility.  It was in fact due to the prisoner of war directorate of the War Office which came under the responsibility of Secretary of State for War Anthony Eden.  Eden was unhappy about Snell’s inquiry, but was compelled to change his mind by Churchill.

Snell ‘saw no reason to query question the decision’ that those who were deported should have been deported.[23]  No one would be blamed fully, no heads would roll and all would agree it was a sad result that arose because of ‘the position which then obtained’ in the war.[24]  However, as a result of his findings British internment policy was relaxed and deportation overseas was abandoned.  On the orders of Cabinet Secretary, Snell’s report was never published in full. 

Later, Constable understood why he was not called to give evidence: ‘After a Parliamentary enquiry and report, a full statement of FACTS might be misunderstood; therefore, as a good soldier, having kept it “under my hat” … I can, if necessary, continue to do so, giving you only a “useful” but innocuous story.’[25]  Other sources suggest deliberate loss of memory amongst the military.  Intelligence Officer, Captain F.J. Robertson, told the War Office that he regretted ‘that at the present moment I can give you no very precise information regarding the fate of the Officers and men missing from the SS Arandora Star.  I have even forgotten the name of the Officer who commanded the escort company.’[26]  Ludwig Baruch wrote more openly: ‘the sights I witnessed were not fit for human eyes to see.’[27]

It was not until (30, 31) the end of August 1940 that last bodies from Arandora Star washed onto Irish beaches.  These ‘men that came in with the sea’ show the rising death toll in the battle of the Atlantic over the summer of 1940 as the ‘Happy Time’ continued.[28]  In August, 12 ships were torpedoed off the Irish coast and 41 lifeboats and 13 rafts put ashore on Irish territory with 132 survivors.  On 12 August Malin Head LOP recorded that ‘there are at present four ships boats washed ashore and five floats ashore’; one of the boats being from the Arandora Star.[29]  Cpl Ted Sweeney at Blacksod LOP recalled how ‘we started to have rafts washed ashore and there were some dead bodies, there were rafts and old lifeboats coming, and, not many came ashore here, but there were quite a lot of bodies’.[30]  By late August there were so many bodies that the Local Relieving Officers had to instruct Councils re-open old graveyards, some of which had not been used since the Irish famine almost 100 years before, and there was real concern about the cost of dealing with so many casualties. The Donegal Board of Health was told that 33 bodies had been washed ashore during the previous week, and that funeral expenses had been paid by Board officers out of their own pockets. From the end of July to the end of December 1940, 213 bodies washed ashore along the Irish coast. 

(32)The sinking and the grim aftermath make an important point that has been ignored by so many Irish historians when dealing with the Second World War. Proclaiming its neutrality in the Second World War, Ireland sought to stay out of the conflict between Axis and Allies, but it could not stay out of the war.  Ireland could not remain remote from the conflict or the impact of the horror conflict.  The Battle of the Atlantic was fought off Ireland’s shores from September 1939 to May 1945. The almost 350 graves of the dead from that battle, dotted along Ireland’s Atlantic seaboard, military and civilian alike, included thirty-four known casualties from Arandora Star.  They are a continuing reminder of neutral Ireland’s inability to remove itself completely from the Second World War and also of the intensity of that conflict off Ireland’s shores almost a generation ago.

(33) But there is a second and final point to make.  Historians have written about the sinking of Arandora Star as an extraordinary event in Emergency Ireland.  But a conversation I had some years ago with Sergeant Terry Reilly, the son of Corporal Pat Reilly, who headed the Coastwatchers on Erris Head made me think about the sinking differently and in a longer term perspective.  Sergeant Reilly mentioned that his father was the last survivor of the Iniskea tragedy, the October 1927 drowning of twelve young men from the island when their currachs were caught in a hurricane as a deep depression moved north east over the west coast of Ireland. Forty-five men were drowned along the west coast.  The deaths from Iniskea broke the spirit of the island and it was evacuated shortly afterwards.  The arrival of bodies from Arandora Star was only the latest chapter in the ongoing struggle between the communities of the West of Ireland and the Atlantic Ocean. 

For the police and the military, the civil servants, the ongoing local resonance and emotion was lost.  Identification had to be carried out, next of kin informed and relevant procedures undertaken.  Local Garda reports, particularly those written in Irish, contain an implicit emotion absent from national level correspondence.  It is as if those based along the seashore, from their closeness to the sea understood the impact of death by drowning, the power of the sea and man’s struggle with the ocean. That struggle is as old as the communities themselves and is immortalised in Synge’s play Riders to the Sea.  I was reminded of the sinking of Arandora Star when reading Synge’s character Maurya, whose sons Michael and Bartley have recently drowned, like her other sons and husband.  Maurya tells how ‘I’ve had a husband, and a husband’s father, and six sons in this house … and some of them were found and some of them were not found.’  Just like the dead from Arandora Star.  Michael’s body is found in the sea off Donegal, but Maurya doubts it is he, saying ‘There does be a power of young men floating round in the sea, and what way would they know if it was Michael they had, or another man like him, for when a man is nine days in the sea, and the wind blowing, it’s hard set his own mother would be to say what man was in it.’ 

The men who found the broken bodies of Fred Chick, Hans Moeller and Ernesto Moruzzi and others along the western coast of Ireland during August 1940 knew how these men had perished in the sea as had their own kith and kin in years gone by.  Neutrality and censorship could not erode bonds of human tragedy and shared loss. Like Maurya’s daughter Cathleen, they knew from personal experience it was ‘a bitter thing to think of [them] floating that way to the far north, and no one to keen [them] but the black hags that do be flying on the sea.’