An Cosantóir

www.military.ie the defence forces magazine | 15 Accordingly, the Aud arrived on the Holy Thursday and its captain, Lt Karl Spindler, signalled the shore expecting two green lanterns to signal back, indicating that a pilot boat would arrive and guide them into the harbour where the cargo would be land- ed. Unknown to Spindler, the local Volunteers, according to the revised schedule, had been told to look for the ship's signal from the evening of Holy Saturday. On Good Friday night, Spindler weighed anchor to flee the Irish coast but was soon overtaken by the armed British sloop HMS Zinnia. For a while it looked as though Spindler would talk his way out of capture but in the end the British decided to escort the Aud to Queenstown (Cobh) Harbour to be searched. Spindler knew the game was up and scuttled his ship while on its way to Queenstown. The importance of the arms on the Aud was un- derscored by the Inspector General of the RIC, Neville Chamberlain, who later argued that if the Aud's arms and am- munition had been landed, the Volunteers outside Dublin 'would not have held back'. However, the Volunteers' plan does raise some questions beyond the lack of communication. Even if they had been able to get all the arms and ammunition ashore, could they have been distributed into the hands of Volunteers efficiently and in time to make a difference? According to his biographer, the Volunteer OC in Kerry, Austin Stack, had a 'detailed plan prepared for the landing of arms at Fenit and their distribution', but no plan was communi- cated to the Volunteers there, and no plan has been found. There is no other evidence of a specific plan to move the weapons from the quayside at Fenit; an amount of weapons and ammunition that would have required a well-coordinated effort to make them available to Volunteer units. In contrast, when weapons and ammunition were landed by the Ulster Volunteers in Larne in 1914, members of the UVF manned pickets along the length of the coast road between Belfast and Larne. ...There was no rush or bustle in the doing of it. It was accomplished with celerity, yet without fuss or splutter, because it was done in pursuance of a well-formed plan, executed as perfectly as it had been precon- ceived...So exactly had this mobilisation been arranged that these hundreds of motors reached the assembly point at an identical moment... Belfast Evening Telegraph, 25th April 1914. The Larne consignment was slightly larger than that on the Aud (25,000 weapons to 20,000), but no fleet of 'hundreds of motors' was laid on by the Irish Volunteers for this landing. Further, no comprehensive plans seem to have been made for distrubution after offloading from the Aud. Further, would the Volunteers have been able to expertly use weapons they had never seen? Fatal accidents involving careless- ness, horseplay, and poor discipline were relatively common dur- ing the Rising and the War of Independence that followed. At the time of the Rising, it was estimated the Volunteers and Citizen Army had only 3,700 weapons and no machine guns, so weapons were desperately needed. But to put 20,000 rifles into the hands of untrained men may have caused as many casualties among their own ranks as to the British. When MacNeill found he had been deceived about the Rising, that the 'Castle Document' may have been a fake, that Casement had been captured in Tralee, and that the Aud had been lost, he cancelled the Volunteer manoeuvres scheduled for Easter that were to be used as a cover for the rebellion. His order on the Sat- urday night was published in the next day's Sunday Independent: Owing to the very criti- cal position, all orders given to Irish Volunteers for tomorrow, Easter Sunday, are hereby rescinded, and no parades, marches, or other move- ments of Irish Volunteers will take place. Each individ- ual Volunteer will obey this order strictly in every particular. - Sunday Inde- pendent, 23rd April 1916. abouT THE auTHor: Joseph E.A. Connell, Jnr a native of the USA is the author of a number of books on Dublin and its revolutionary history and contributes a regular column to History Ireland. His latest books are Dublin Rising 1916 (ISBN: 9781905569908) and Who's Who In The Dublin Rising 1916 (ISBN: 9781905569946), both priced €19.00 and published by Wordwell Books (May 2015/October 2015) http://wordwellbooks.com/ An exaggerated example of the route the Aud took from Lübeck, Germany to Tralee Bay, Co. Kerry in 1916. Sir Roger Casement is escorted to the gallows of Pentonville Prison, London. He was charged and found guilty of treason after trying to obtain German aid for Irish Independence. Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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