Ulster's Stand For Union

FOOTNOTES:

A VOYAGE OF ADVENTURE

While the work of packing was going on, Crawford, who found he was exciting the curiosity of the Hamburg police, kept out of sight as much as possible, and he paid more than one visit to the Committee in Belfast, leaving the supervision to the skipper and packer, whom he had found he could trust. In the meantime, by advertisements in the Scandinavian countries, he was looking out for a suitable steamer to carry the cargo. For a crew his thoughts turned to his old friend, Andrew Agnew, skipper in the employment of the Antrim Iron Ore Company. Happily he was not only able to secure the services of Agnew himself, but Agnew brought with him his mate and his chief and second engineers. This was a great gain; for they were not only splendid men at their job, but were men willing to risk their liberty or their lives for the Ulster cause. Deck-hands and firemen would be procurable at whatever port a steamer was to be bought.

Several vessels were offered in response to Crawford's advertisements, and on the 16th of March, when the packing of the arms was well advanced, Crawford, Agnew, and his chief engineer went to Norway to inspect these steamers. Eventually they selected the s.s. Fanny, which had just returned to Bergen with a cargo of coal from Newcastle. She was only an eight-knot vessel, but her skipper, a Norwegian, gave a favourable report of her sea-going qualities and coal consumption, and Agnew and his engineer were satisfied by their inspection of her. The deal was quickly completed, and the Captain and his Norwegian crew willingly consented to remain in charge of the Fanny; and, in order to enable her to sail under the Norwegian flag, as a precaution against possible confiscation in British waters, it was arranged that the Captain should be the nominal purchaser, giving Crawford a mortgage for her full value.

While Crawford was in Belfast arrangements were made to enable him to keep in communication with Spender, so that in case of necessity he could be warned not to approach the Irish coast, but to cruise in the Baltic till a more favourable opportunity. He was to let Spender know later where he could be reached with final instructions as to landing the arms; the rendezvous so agreed upon subsequently was Lough Laxford, a wild and inaccessible spot on the west coast of Sutherlandshire. Crawford was warned by B.S. that he was far from confident of a successful end to their labours at Hamburg. He had never before shipped anything like so large a number of firearms; and the long process of packing, and Crawford's own mysterious coming and going, would be certain to excite suspicion, which would reach the secret agents of the British Government, and lead either to a protest addressed to the German authorities, followed by a prohibition on shipping the arms, or to confiscation by the British authorities when the cargo entered British territorial waters.

These fears must have been present to the mind of B.S. when he met Crawford at the station in Hamburg on the 27th on his return from Belfast, for the precautions taken to avoid being followed gave their movements the character of an adventure by one of Stanley Weyman's heroes of romance. Whether any suspicion had in fact been aroused remains unknown. Anyhow, the barges were ready laden, with a tug waiting till the tide should serve about midnight for making a start down the Elbe, and through the canal to Kiel. The modest sum of £10 procured an order authorising the tug and barges to proceed through the canal without stopping, and requiring other shipping to let them pass. A black flag was the signal of this privileged position, which suggested the "Jolly Roger" to Crawford's thoughts, and gave a sense of insolent audacity when great liners of ten or fifteen thousand tons were seen making way for a tug-boat towing a couple of lighters.

On arrival at Kiel, Crawford, after a short absence from the tug, was informed that three men had been inquiring from the lightermen and the tug's skipper about the nature and destination of the cargo. All such evidences of curiosity on the subject were rather alarming, but it turned out that the visitors were probably Mexicans—of what political party there it would be impossible to guess—whose interest had been aroused by the rumour, which Crawford had encouraged, that guns were being shipped to that distracted Republic. Still more alarming was the arrival on board the tug of a German official in resplendent uniform, who insisted that he must inspect the cargo. Crawford knew no German, but the shipping agent who accompanied him produced papers showing that all formalities had been complied with, and all requisite authorisation obtained. Neither official papers, however, nor arguments made any impression on the officer until it occurred to Crawford to produce a 100-marks note, which proved much more persuasive, and sent the official on his way rejoicing, with expressions of civility on both sides.

One can well believe Crawford when he says that he suffered "mental agony" that night. After all that he had planned, and all that he had accomplished by many months of personal energy and resource, he saw complete and ignominious failure staring him in the face. He realised the heavy financial loss to the Ulster Loyalists, for his cargo represented about £70,000 of their money; and he realised the bitter disappointment of their hopes, which was far worse than any loss of money. He pictured to himself what must happen in the morning—"to have to follow a torpedo-boat into the naval base and lie there till the whole Ulster scheme was unravelled and known to the world as a ghastly failure, and the Province and Sir Edward and all the leaders the laughing stock of the world"—and the thought of it all plunged him almost into despair.

But a less desperate job called for immediate attention. The men engaged in transferring the cargo from the barges to the steamer wanted to knock off work for the night; but the offer of double pay persuaded them to stick to it, and they worked with such good will that by midnight every bale was safely below hatches in the Fanny. Crawford then instructed the shipping agent to be off in the tug at break of day, giving him letters to post which would apprise the Committee in Belfast of what had happened, and give them the means of communicating with himself according to previously concerted plans.

Before morning a change occurred in the weather, which Crawford regarded as providential. He was gladdened by the sight of a sea churned white by half a gale, while a mist lay on the water, reducing visibility to about 300 yards. It would be impossible for the Port Officer's motor-boat to face such a sea, or, if it did, to find the Fanny, unless guided by her fog-whistle. As soon as eight o'clock had passed—the hour by which the return of the ship's papers had been promised—Crawford weighed anchor, and crept out of the narrow channel under cover of the fog, only narrowly escaping going aground on the way among the banks and shallows that made it impossible to sail before daylight, but eventually the open sea was safely reached. But the Fanny was now without papers, and in law was a pirate ship. It was therefore desirable for her to change her costume. As many hands as possible were turned to the task of giving a new colour to the funnel and making some other effective alterations in her appearance, including a new name on her bows and stern. Thus renovated, and after a delay of some days, caused by trifling mishaps, she left the Cattegat behind and steered a course for British waters.

Spender at once went over to see him, in order to warn him not to bring the arms to Ireland for the present. He was to take them back to Hamburg, or throw them overboard, or sink the Fanny and take to her boats, according to circumstances. But in London, instead of Crawford, Spender found the Hamburg skipper and packer, who told him of Crawford's escape from Langeland with the loss of the ship's papers. Spender, knowing nothing of Crawford's change of plan, and anxious to convey to him the latest instructions, went off on a wild-goose chase to the Highlands of Scotland, where he spent the best part of an unhappy week watching the waves tumbling in Lough Laxford, and looking as anxiously as Tristan for the expected ship.

In the heavy seas of the Channel the Doreen could not make more than four knots, and she was consequently twenty-four hours late for the rendezvous with Agnew at Lundy, where she arrived on the 11th of April. The Bristol Channel seemed to swarm with pilot boats eager to be of service, whose inquisitive and expert eyes were anything but welcome to the custodian of Ulster's rifles; and to his highly strung imagination every movement of every trawler appeared to betoken suspicion. And, indeed, they were not without excuse for curiosity; for, a foreign steamer whose course seemed indeterminate, now making for Cardiff and now for St. Ives, observed at one time north-east of Lundy and a few hours later south of the island—a tramp, in fact, that was obviously "loitering" with no ascertainable destination, was enough to keep telescopes to the eyes of Devon pilots and fisher-folk, and to set their tongues wagging. But there was no help for it. Crawford could not leave the rendezvous till Agnew arrived, and was forced to wander round Lundy and up and down the Bristol Channel for two days and nights, until, at 5 a.m. on Monday morning, the 13th of April, a signal from a passing steamer, the Balmerino, gave the welcome tidings that Agnew was on board and was proceeding to sea.

The "great changes" referred to were the operations that led to the Curragh incident, the story of which Crawford now learnt from Agnew. The presence of the fleet at Lamlash, and of destroyers off Carrickfergus, was enough to make the Committee deem it an inopportune moment for Crawford to bring his goods to Belfast Lough. But the latter was hardly in a condition to appreciate the gravity of the situation, and the indignation which the missive aroused in him is intelligible. After all he had come through, the ups and downs, dangers and escapes—far more varied than have been here recorded—the disappointment at being ordered back was cruel; and in his eyes such instructions were despicably pusillanimous. The caution that had prompted his instructors to leave the order unsigned moved him to contempt, and in his wrath he was confident that "the Chief at any rate had nothing to do with it." He told the messenger that he did not know who had sent the paper, and did not want to know, and instructed him to take it back and inform the senders that, as it bore no signature, no date, no address, and no official stamp, he declined to recognise it and refused to obey it; and, further, that unless he received within six days properly authenticated instructions for delivering his cargo, he would run his ship ashore at high water in the County Down, and let the Ulstermen salve as much as they could when the tide ebbed.

Crawford accordingly went off in the Balmerino, landed in South Wales on Tuesday, the 14th of April, and hastened by the quickest route to Belfast. Agnew took charge of the Doreen, with instructions to be at the Tuskar Light, on the Wexford coast, on the following Friday night, the 17th, and to return there every night until Crawford rejoined him. A friend of Crawford's, Mr. Richard Cowser, with whom he had a conversation on the telephone from Dublin, met him at the railway station in Belfast and told him that he had a motor waiting to take him to Craigavon, where the Council was expecting him, and that he would see Mr. Sam Kelly, the owner of the Balmerino, there also. This news made Crawford very angry. He accused his friend of breach of confidence in letting anyone know that he was coming to Belfast; he declared he would have nothing to do with the Council after the unsigned orders he had received at Lundy; and he besought his friend to take his car to Craigavon and bring back Kelly, repeating his determination to bring in his cargo, even if he had to run his ship ashore to do so. Mr. Cowser replied that this would be very disappointing to Sir Edward Carson, who was waiting for Crawford at Craigavon, having come from London on purpose for this Council Meeting. "What!" exclaimed Crawford, "is Sir Edward there? Why did you not say so at once? Where is your car? Let us waste no time till I see the Chief and report to him."

Some members of the Council were sceptical about the possibility of transhipping the cargo at sea, but Crawford, who had fully discussed it with Agnew, believed that if favoured by calm weather it could be done. When Carson, after hearing all that was to be said on both sides in the long debate between Fabius and Hotspur, finally supported the latter, the question was decided. There was no split—there never was in these deliberations in Ulster; those whose judgment was overruled always supported loyally the policy decided upon.

Before parting from the Council Crawford made it quite clear that during the remainder of the adventure he would recognise no orders of any kind unless they bore the autograph signature of Sir Edward Carson. On this understanding he set out for Glasgow, bought the Clydevalley, and went by train to Llandudno to await her arrival. These affairs had left very little margin of time to spare. The Clydevalley could not be at Llandudno before the morning of the 17th, and Agnew would be looking for her at the Tuskar the same evening. As it actually turned out she only arrived at the Welsh watering-place late that night, and, after picking up Crawford, who had spent an anxious day on the beach, arrived off the Wexford coast at daybreak on Saturday, the 18th. Not a sign of the Fanny was to be seen all that day, or the following night; and when the skipper of the Clydevalley, who had been on the Balmerino and was privy to the arrangements with Agnew, gave Crawford reason to think there might have been a misunderstanding as to the rendezvous, Yarmouth having been also mentioned in that connection, Crawford was in a condition almost of desperation.

There was only one way in which such communication could be managed, and that way Crawford now took with characteristic promptitude and energy. The Clydevalley crossed the Irish Sea to Fishguard, where he took train on Sunday night to London and Yarmouth, having first made arrangements with the skipper for keeping in touch. But there was no trace of the Fanny at Yarmouth, and no word from Agnew at the Post Office. There appeared to be no solution of the problem, and every precious hour that slipped away made ultimate failure more menacing. But at two o'clock the outlook entirely changed. A second visit to the Post Office was rewarded by a telegram in code from Agnew saying all was well, and that he would be at Holyhead to pick up Crawford on Tuesday evening. There was just time to catch a London train that arrived in time for the Irish mail from Euston. On Tuesday morning Crawford was pacing the breakwater at Holyhead, and a few hours later he was discussing matters with Agnew in the little cabin of the Clydevalley.

The latter had amply made up for the loss of time caused by some misunderstanding as to the rendezvous at the Tuskar, for he was able to show Crawford, to his intense delight, that the cargo had all been safely and successfully transferred to the hold of the Clydevalley in a bay on the Welsh coast, mainly at night. Some sixteen transport labourers from Belfast, willing Ulster hands, had shifted the stuff in less than half the time taken by Germans at Langeland over the same job. There was, therefore, nothing more to be done except to steam leisurely to Copeland, for which there was ample time before Friday evening. The Fanny had departed to an appointed rendezvous on the Baltic coast of Denmark.

Off Copeland Island a small vessel was waiting, which Agnew recognised as a tender belonging to Messrs. Workman & Clark. The men on board, as soon as they could make out the name of the approaching vessel, understood at once, and raised a ringing cheer. Two of them were seen gesticulating and hailing the Mountjoy. Crawford, suspecting fresh orders to retreat, paid no attention, and told Agnew to hold on his course; and even when presently he was able to recognise Mr. Cowser and Mr. Dawson Bates on board the tender, and to hear them shouting that they had important instructions for him, he still refused to let them come on board. "If the orders are not signed by Sir Edward Carson," he shouted back, "you can take them back to where they came from." But the orders they brought had been signed by the leader, a special messenger having been sent to London to obtain his signature, and the change of plan they indicated was, in fact, just what Crawford desired. The bulk of the arms were to be landed at Larne, the port he had always favoured, and lesser quantities were to be taken to Bangor and Donaghadee.

It was 10.30 that night, the 24th of April 1914, when the Mountjoy II steamed alongside the landing-stage at Larne, where she had been eagerly awaited for a couple of hours. The voyage of adventure was over. Fred Crawford, with the able and zealous help of Andrew Agnew, had accomplished the difficult and dangerous task he had undertaken, and a service had been rendered to Ulster not unworthy to rank beside the breaking of the boom across the Foyle by the first and more renowned Mountjoy.

FOOTNOTES:

ON THE BRINK OF CIVIL WAR

The arrangements that had been made for the landing and disposal of the arms when they arrived in port were the work of an extremely efficient and complete organisation. In the previous summer Captain Spender, it will be remembered, had been appointed to a position on Sir George Richardson's staff which included in its duties that of the organisation of transport. A railway board, a supply board, and a transport board had been formed, on which leading business men willingly served; every U.V.F. unit had its horse transport, and in addition a special motor corps, organised in squadrons, and a special corps of motor-lorries were formed.

More than half the owners of motor-cars in Ulster placed their cars at the disposal of the motor corps, to be used as and when required. The corps was organised in sections of four cars each, and in squadrons of seventeen cars each, with motor cyclist despatch-riders; a signalling corps of despatch-riders and signallers completed the organisation. The lively interest aroused by the practice and displays of the last-mentioned corps did much to promote the high standard of proficiency attained by its "flag-waggers," many of whom were women and girls. In particular the signalling-station at Bangor gained a reputation which attracted many English sympathisers with Ulster to pay it a visit when they came to Belfast for the great Unionist demonstrations.

All this organisation was at the disposal of the leaders for handling the arms brought in the hold of the Mountjoy II. The perfection of the arrangements for the immediate distribution of the rifles and ammunition among the loyalist population, and the almost miraculous precision with which they were carried out on that memorable Friday night, extorted the admiration even of the most inveterate political enemies of Ulster. The smoothness with which the machinery of organisation worked was only possible on account of the hearty willingness of all the workers, combined with the discipline to which they gladly submitted themselves.

At the three ports of discharge large forces of volunteers were concentrated. Sir George Richardson, G.O.C. in C., remained in Belfast through the night, being kept fully and constantly informed of the progress of events by signal and motor-cyclist despatch-riders. Captain James Craig was in charge of the operations at Bangor; at Larne General Sir William Adair was in command, with Captain Spender as Staff officer.

The attention of the Customs authorities in Belfast was diverted by a clever stratagem. A tramp steamer was brought up the Musgrave Channel after dark, her conduct being as furtive and suspicious as it was possible to make it appear. At the same time a large wagon was brought to the docks as if awaiting a load. The skipper of the tramp took an unconscionable time, by skilful blundering, in bringing his craft to her moorings. The suspicions of the authorities were successfully aroused; but every possible hindrance was put in their way when they began to investigate. The hour was too late: could they not wait till daylight? No? Well, then, what was their authority? When that was settled, it appeared that the skipper had mislaid his keys and could not produce the ship's papers—and so on. By these devices the belief of the officers that they had caught the offender they were after was increasingly confirmed every minute, while several hours passed before they were allowed to realise that they had discovered a mare's-nest. For when at last they "would stand no more nonsense," and had the hatches opened and the papers produced, the latter were quite in order, and the cargo—which they wasted a little additional time in turning over—contained nothing but coal.

At Larne, where much the largest portion of the Mountjoy's cargo was landed, a triple cordon of Volunteers surrounded the town and harbour, and no one without a pass was allowed through. The motors arrived with a punctuality that was wonderful, considering that many of them had come from long distances. As the drivers arrived near the town and found themselves in an apparently endless procession of similar vehicles, their astonishment and excitement became intense. Only when close to the harbour did they learn what they were there for, and received instructions how to proceed. They had more than two hours to wait in drizzling rain before the Mountjoy appeared round the point of Islandmagee, although her approach had been made known to Spender by signal at dusk. There were about five hundred motor vehicles assembled at Larne alone, and such an invasion of flaring head-lights gave the inhabitants of the little town unwonted excitement. Practically all the able-bodied men of the place were either on duty as Volunteers or were willing workers in the landing of the arms. The women stood at their doors and gave encouraging greeting to the drivers; many of them ran improvised canteens, which supplied the workers with welcome refreshments during the night.

The wisdom of Crawford's system of packing was fully vindicated. There was no confusion, no waiting to bring ammunition from one part of the ship's hold to match with rifles brought from another, and bayonets from a third. The packages, as they were carried from the steamer or the cranes, were counted by checking clerks, and their destination noted as each car received its load. But even the large number of vehicles available would have been insufficient for the purpose on hand if each had been limited to a single load; dumps had therefore been formed at a number of selected places in the surrounding districts, where the arms were temporarily deposited so as to allow the cars to return and perform the same duty several times during the night.

While the Mountjoy was discharging the Larne consignment on to the quay, she was at the same time transhipping a smaller quantity into a motor-boat, moored against her side, which when laden hurried off to Donaghadee; and she left Larne at 5 in the morning to discharge the last portion of her cargo at Bangor, which was successfully accomplished in broad daylight after her arrival there about 7.30.

Sir Edward Carson and Lord Londonderry were both in London on the 24th of April. At an early hour next morning a telegram was delivered to each of them, containing the single word "Lion." It was a code message signifying that the landing of the arms had been carried out without a hitch. Before long special editions of the newspapers proclaimed the news to all the world, and as fresh details appeared in every successive issue during the day the public excitement grew in intensity. Wherever two or three Unionists were gathered together exultation was the prevailing mood, and eagerness to send congratulations to friends in Ulster.

Soon after breakfast a visitor to Sir Edward Carson found a motor brougham standing at his door, and on being admitted was told that "Lord Roberts is with Sir Edward." The great little Field-Marshal, on learning the news, had lost not a moment in coming to offer his congratulations to the Ulster leader. "Magnificent!" he exclaimed, on entering the room and holding out his hand, "magnificent! nothing could have been better done; it was a piece of organisation that any army in Europe might be proud of."

Mr. Bonar Law insisted that the House of Commons ought to be told what the Amending Bill would propose, before it was asked finally to pass the Home Rule Bill. But the real fact was, as every member of the House of Commons fully realised, that Mr. Asquith was not a free agent in this matter. The Nationalists were not at all pleased at the attempts already made, trivial as they were, to satisfy Ulster, and Mr. Redmond protested against the promise of an Amending Bill of any kind. Mr. Asquith could make no proposal sufficient to allay the hostility of Ulster that would not alienate the Nationalists, whose support was essential to the continuance of his Government in office.

On the 8th of July the Bill was amended by substituting the permanent exclusion of the whole province of Ulster—which Mr. Balfour had named "the clean cut"—for the proposed county option with a time limit; and several other alterations of minor importance were also made. The Bill as amended passed the third reading on the 14th, when Lord Lansdowne predicted that, whatever might be the fate of the measure and of the Home Rule Bill which it modified, the one thing certain was that the idea of coercing Ulster was dead.

In Ulster itself, meanwhile, the people were bent on making Lord Lansdowne's certainty doubly sure. Carson went over for the Boyne celebration on the 12th of July. The frequency of his visits did nothing to damp the ardour with which his arrival was always hailed by his followers. The same wonderful scenes, whether at Larne or at the Belfast docks, were repeated time after time without appearing to grow stale by repetition. They gave colour to the Radical jeer at "King Carson," for no royal personage could have been given a more regal reception than was accorded to "Sir Edward" (as everybody affectionately called him in Belfast) half a dozen times within a few months.

Radical newspapers in England believed—or at any rate tried to make their readers believe—that the "Northcliffe Press," particularly The Times and Daily Mail, gave an exaggerated account of these extraordinary demonstrations of welcome to Carson, and of the impressiveness of the great meetings which he addressed. But the accounts in Lord Northcliffe's papers did not differ materially from those in other journals like The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Express, The Standard, The Morning Post, The Observer, The Scotsman, and The Spectator. There was no exaggeration. The special correspondents gave faithful accounts of what they saw and heard, and no more. Editorial support was a different matter. Lord Northcliffe's papers were unfailing in their support of the Ulster cause, as were many other great British journals; and even when at a later period Lord Northcliffe's attitude on the general question of Irish government underwent a change that was profoundly disappointing to Ulstermen, his papers never countenanced the idea of applying coercion to Ulster. In the years 1911 to 1914 The Times remained true to the tradition started by John Walter, who, himself a Liberal, went personally to Belfast in 1886 to inform himself on the question, then for the first time raised by Gladstone; and, having done so, supported the loyalist cause in Ireland till his death. A series of weighty articles in 1913 and 1914 approved and encouraged the resistance threatened by Ulster to Home Rule, and justified the measures taken in preparation for it. Whatever may have been the reason for a different attitude at a later date, Ulster owed a debt of gratitude to The Times in those troubled years.