The Battle for Cork: Ireland's Civil War (Military History of the Irish) by Borgonovo John

Author:Borgonovo , John [Borgonovo , John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781856359771
Publisher: Mercier Press
Published: 2011-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

THE BATTLE BEGINS

The sounds of gunshots, shouts and speeding vehicles aroused some sleeping Cork residents immediately after the Passage landings. However, most people were made aware of the battle by the roar of explosions at 4 a.m. If the IRA defence was initially tardy, there was subsequently no hesitation: within ninety minutes of the National Army troops landing at Passage, a fierce cross-river firefight broke out and bridges began to explode around Cork.

IRA RESPONSE

Having fled from the Granary headquarters, some IRA defenders regrouped at Clark’s Field, on the outskirts above Passage. There they fought back against National Army troops for an hour or so, before completing their retreat from Passage. Though the skirmish caused no casualties, it seems to have slowed the Free State advance, causing the troops to move cautiously in the early morning darkness. The surviving Republicans hustled to Rochestown, where they met gathering IRA Volunteers. One Passage defender needed to be revived and told the attending physician that he had ‘run so hard from Passage that his heart had come up into his throat and he wanted some medicine to put it back again’.1

Across the river, Cobh Republicans threw themselves into the emerging contest. IRA riflemen took up positions around Carrigaloe, and began heavy firing on the two ships. Lewis gun bursts soon joined the cacophony of gunfire, ‘peppering the troopship’. From the sandbagged decks of the Arvonia, National Army troops responded with rifles and machine guns. About 800–900 yards of the River Lee separated the two sides, just on the outer reach of effective rifle fire. ‘The shooting was hot and continuous,’ wrote one eyewitness; bullets ripped through the seaward sides of both the Arvonia and the Lady Wicklow, piercing deck doors and the radio rooms, nearly killing the wireless operator on each ship. The Arvonia lost the ability to receive radio messages, though the ship could still send them. While the firing disturbed disembarking troops, once ashore they were relatively safe, except for occasional shots from hidden snipers above the town.2

At 4 a.m., IRA engineers blew up Fota railway bridge, severing the Cork/Cobh rail line. This seems to have been part of a preconceived defensive response to an anticipated landing in Cobh. Miles away at roughly the same time, the road bridge outside the Rochestown railway station was brought down, cutting the Passage/Cork road. This massive explosion caused serious damage to surrounding buildings. Simultaneously, in the river channel, Republicans scuttled the ‘IRA dreadnought’, No. 1 Hopper. The Republicans took the crew off in a lifeboat (they were left at Blackrock Castle), then detonated a mine in the bilge. The barge sank in the channel, with her funnel peeking through the surface of the water. The other half of the IRA navy, the dredger Owenabuee, was left afloat without a crew. When they abandoned the vessel, the Republicans anchored her fore and aft, swinging her across the stream to block the channel. A mine in the bilge was connected by battery cable to the forecastle, but it could not be detonated remotely and so presented little danger to passing craft.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.