The Earl of Lathom creaked and leaned in a fresh breeze that rippled the sunny blue sea. The antique schooner was broad-reaching southward in westerly airs, making its way around the Old Head of Kinsale. Off to port the rocky headland loomed, a dark cliff topped by ancient castle ruins, but from which a new white-painted lighthouse rose. Beyond the headland lay the open ocean south of Ireland.
“Aye, an’ it be a ravishin’ day in these fair waters, now the fog is lifted.” Rory McCray on the timber deck spoke grandly to his mate in the wheelhouse. He felt expansive in this easy sailing after clawing out of Bantry Bay by dawnlight, and then a choppy Atlantic run around the west tip of Ireland. With this breeze, there was no longer need of a smoky diesel engine to keep them underway. It felt it downright restful, after a night of loading eggs and chickens in tiny, foggy Bantry harbor.
“Ravishin’ day, aye,” Mate McGonagill replied, keeping a restless eye on the horizon.
“The wind freshens. And we need not fear runnin’ aground on yonder rockpile,” Rory added with a nod toward the castle. “We could be makin’ a straight run into England this day.”
“Sure, an’ that we could,” the Mate agreed. “But there may be other dangers beside fog and rocks. Remember, there’s a war on.”
“The war, aye,” Rory said. “But it all seems so far away, does it not, on such a splendid morn as this?” From his place near the wooden schooner’s wheel, he took a deep breath of heathery land fragrance. “It’s glad I am that I ain’t lookin’ out upon all this from the bridge of a warship.”
“It’s glad I am they ain’t seein’ us neither,” McGonagill answered, keeping up his watch.
“And what would they be wantin’ from the likes of us, pray tell?” Rory rambled on. “We carry no guns, powder, pikes or bayonets, an’ no battle troopers seethin’ for the kill. None but the fruits of Kerry and Killarney are aboard, innocent country eggs and butter for the market. A few harmless potatoes and carrots…and the eggs’ mothers, too.” He took one hand from the wheel and waved it at the overflow cargo lashed on deck, the chickens in their crates, clucking and ruffling their feathers in the morning sun. “No war contraband here.”
“True enough, and they can be well assured of that,” McGonagill said. “Assumin’ they don’t shoot first and ask questions after.”
“Well, I’m not goin’ to worry about it,” Rory declared, “not on such a day as this. I reckon we’ve cleared Kinsale now, so our course is to be set due east.”
“I reckon,” the Mate said with a glance down at the compass card in the binnacle. He raised his speaking trumpet. “Hands ready to adjust sail!” he called forward to the other idlers on deck.
The men barely stirred at his order. Slow to react—no, worse than slow. They were staring dumbfounded off ahead and to starboard. One of them, Seamus O’Donnell, pointed to where something was coming up out of the water
“Slacken sail,” McGonagill called at once through the speaking trumpet. “Ahoy, you spalpeens, hop to it! Loose the main sheet!”
Going astern himself, he untied the mizzen sheet of the two-master and let the rear sail flap free in the wind. As the mains’l flew out to leeward, the schooner rapidly lost way and began to wallow, rocking in the mild swell.
Off their starboard quarter, a wedge-shaped bow cut through the sea’s surface, spraying foam. Behind it a blunt turret had emerged, a tower topped with vents and pipes. Now suddenly the whole craft rose up onto the surface, its scuppers streaming white foam. Even as it leveled, it slowed to a halt alongside the Earl of Lathom, a mere hundred meters off the old ship’s bow. Judging from the emblem on the side of the tower, a broad-bladed Maltese Cross on a circular field of red, the craft was German.
“Begorrah, ’tis a sea monster!” young Gavin of Limerick cried out, having run from the rail and taken shelter behind the crates of chickens.
“Nay, ’tis a soob—a soobmarine,” said Brian of Ballinskelligs, the more savvy in naval affairs. “An undersea boo-at. They proobly just want some fresh booter an’ eggs from oos.”
“Maybe ’tis the patriot Roger Casement returning home,” Seamus said. “I hear that over in Germany, he’s raised up an army of Irish war prisoners to invade the homeland and cast out the British for sure.”
As the motley, barefoot crew stood gaping in awe, hatches were flung open in the top of the strange craft and uniformed men swarmed out onto the narrow deck. Two went to the main cannon on the foredeck and cranked it around toward the Earl. A captain and mate stood in the conning tower, and slender black-clad crewmen filed out along the narrow stern with rifles and pistols at the ready.
The captain raised his bullhorn and announced in the King’s English, harshly accented:
“In the name of the Kaiserliche Marine von Deutschland, the Imperial Navy of Germany, I claim your ship and cargo as a legitimate prize of war. All shipping of any kind, foreign or neutral, is subject to seizure in the war zone. You will leave your ship and surrender your papers without delay, and without interfering with my crew in any way. If you act swiftly and do not resist, you will be allowed to go unharmed.”
To drive home the point, the sub’s deck gun fired a shot across the Earl of Lathom’s bow. It screamed through the air overhead and raised a plume of water a thousand yards to port. Simultaneously, the U-boat’s men cocked their rifles and raised them to their shoulders. The response of the schooner’s crew, without any further orders from their own officer, was to scramble for the ship’s launch amidships, roll it upright, and ready the tackle to sway it over the side.
“Now, that seems hardly fair, does it to you?” Rory McCray said, keeping his place by the wheel. “Can’t you inform them that we carry no contraband?”
Mate McGonagill deferred to Captain Hardy, who had just come up from below. His first look of consternation at feeling his ship go dead in the water had, upon seeing the U-boat and hearing the gunfire, transformed to wide-eyed recognition.
His response to the wheelman’s question was a helpless shrug. “Do as they say, boys,” he said to the pair. He then turned and called out to his crew, quite unnecessarily, “Abandon ship!”
As he hurried below to salvage money and personal effects, the others manhandled the launch to the rail and hoisted it over. As it struck the water, a prize crew from the sub was just rowing up in an inflatable boat to take possession. Seven leather-clad Germans swarmed nimbly aboard like pirates into the waist of the ship. They carried weapons and metal canisters, with what looked like detonators and coils of fuse.
Pushing past the Irishmen they headed below, unreeling slow-match fuse as they went. Evidently they did not intend to sail the Earl of Lathom back to Germany.
“Should we loose the chickens?” Young Gavin called, standing beside the crated birds, which squawked and fluttered in the excitement. “Looks like they’re going to blow us up.”
“Don’t be an idiot, lad,” Rory called from the rail, where he stood ready to climb down into the launch. “Those poor creet-ers cannot flap or swim ashore from here. Nor can you! Come and join us, and we’ll be away.”
As Captain Hardy came last into the boat with his logbook, and the crew shoved off using their oars, Germans were already emerging from below carrying tubs of butter, cheeses and egg baskets. Rowing briskly away, the Irish crew watched the marauders snatch up pairs of chickens by the neck and carry them off to their rubber boat. In moments the captors had shoved off as well.
“By Mary and Joseph, there she goes!” Mate McGonagill called out. “They’ve sunk her.”
As the inflatable craft was rowed to the sub, twin fountains of water erupted from either side of the schooner, the scuttling charges having detonated. The wooden Earl began to list, its loose sails thrashing in the stiffening breeze.
“’Tis a sorry thing to do,” Rory remarked. “And all for a paltry few hen-fruit we would have given them for nothin’!” He felt truly glum at the loss of the old ship…how was he now to find another seaman’s berth outside of the Royal Navy?
He rowed with the others toward the emerald hills visible over his shoulder, just past the cliffs and the lighthouse. Then with a start he heard the U-boat’s deck gun open fire again.
But it was not at the survivors, praise be to the Almighty. It pounded away at the listing hulk, sending chickens flapping in the blue as it hastened the watery demise of the old Earl of Lathom.