Hi Ing, and God save all others here,
I am glad, Ing, that you tramped through the long grass. The Old Church has plenty more to offer.
It also includes the graves of Napoleon’s physician at St Helena (maybe the wallpaper did for him too), that of Jack Doyle, the “Gorgeous Gael” boxer who had a colourful life to say the least, and Charles Moore, who wrote that splendidly martial poem,
The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna:
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note
As his corpse to the ramparts we hurried
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our Hero we buried
You may have passed the impressive edifice to Admiral Sit Robert Stokes, who died of pneumonia within a few days of his arrival in Queenstown. That necessitated the recall of the superannuated Vice Admiral Coke, who was thus in charge at the time of the
Lusitania emergency. Stokes might have made a better fist of it.
There are some powerful maritime connections, besides the
Lusy. Just in front of Mass Grave A, row 22, is the memorial to those lost on the
Mars.
You can see the stone has survived very well its 100-odd years here. There is a bouquet of poppies from the Royal British Legion (Republic of Ireland branch).
The
Mars tragedy occurred exactly ten years before the
Titanic hit her iceberg. On April 14, 1902, a 12-in round jammed in the breech of the port gun of the Battleship’s foreturret.
When the order was given to open the breech, air rushed in, re-ignited the smouldering charge, and blew the whole turret off, taking the lives of two lieutenants and six men.
The memorial was paid for by sailors of the
Mars and the
Jupiter.
Also right alongside here are the remains recovered from the British submarine A-1. The A-1 was the first British submarine ever to enter service (leaving aside prototypes).
She was on an exercise here on March 18, 1902, when she submerged to practise an attack on the
Juno, of
Lusitania fame. She never resurfaced.
The passenger
Berwick Castle heard some clunking under her keel, and it is supposed she ran over the unfortunate A-1, the first in a very long list of British submarine casualties.
Among the
Lusitania private graves, at row 16, close to the perimeter path, is a rank of stones erected by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to commemorate the Captain and several crew of the freighter
Anglo-Californian.
This is one of my favourite stories. The
Anglo-Californian, like the
Lusitania, was attacked by a German submarine in 1915. Her Captain, Frederick Archibald Palstrow, won a posthumous Victoria Cross for gallantry, and lies here.
From my copy of the
Illustrated London News, from which I also obtained the pictures:
“One of the bravest deeds in the annals of the British merchant service was told when the London steamer
Anglo-Californian, reached Queenstown on July 5, [1915] with Captain Archibald Parslow and eight men dead, and eight others wounded, after an encounter with a German submarine off the Irish coast.
The
Anglo-Californian, which belongs to the Nitrate Producers Steamship Company, was homeward bound from Quebec when the submarine overtook her, and began firing at her wireless apparatus. ‘Our Captain,’ said a survivor, ‘was a brave man, and kept on the bridge smiling at the enemy as shot and shell were discharged at his vessel.’
Eventually the gallant Captain was killed. His son, the Second Mate, who was by his side, was knocked down, but bravely took the wheel and steered the ship, lying on the bridge, with shells bursting around him, ‘until assistance arrived’ and the submarine disappeared.
Our correspondent states that over thirty horses on board were killed. The submarine, he adds, fired mainly at the bridge and at the boats being lowered. The ship was hit about twenty times.”
We honour all these British dead. We honour their noble foes of the Deutsches Kiegsmarine. And we salute all men who do their duty.
