An Irishwoman’s Diary on a one-ship Fenian armada

There's a monument in Helvick in the Ring Gaeltacht of Co Waterford to a long-forgotten tall ship, the Erin's Hope, which tried to run guns and ammunition into Ireland in 1867 by way of helping the Fenian Brotherhood.

It was an unsuccessful mission and it’s an incident in Irish history that few remember today, apart from academics, local historians and some Déise residents.

The lone obelisk, which overlooks Helvick Pier, was erected in 1957 in memory of that ship, the men who sailed in her, the times that were in it and the struggle for independence, but like many stone pillars erected decades ago, the Erin's Hope monument has become such an integral part of the landscape that it is easy to overlook.

Not for Tom Walsh, an American journalist living in Maine, who first came upon the story of this doughty ship some 20 years ago. Such was his fascination with the story that he began researching events surrounding the historic expedition.

Voyage

He visited the area on a number of occasions, interviewed elderly residents, consulted archival material and generally immersed himself in the events of that time until in the end, he decided to write a book about the voyage and its outcome.

For those who live in, know or love the area, it’s bound to be a fascinating insight into a moment in history that happened on our doorstep almost 150 years ago as viewed from an Irish-American perspective.

"This isn't literature, by any means," says Walsh modestly. "It's just a story. But it is a story that I strongly felt needed to be told. It's a story that I stumbled across 20 years ago while researching something else. As I looked into it, I was amazed that so little had been written about this unique expedition. It was a paragraph here, a paragraph there, always buried within a story about something else. So, I told it. It required . . . helping as crew to sail a tall ship, a brigantine like Erin's Hope, from Boston to Ireland."

He explains that it was the New-York based Fenian Brotherhood which decided to send the ship following its long-standing commitment to provide military aid to Ireland. The brotherhood hired Joseph Kavanagh, a native of Passage East in Co Waterford, as the ship’s captain, as well as many veterans of the Civil War in America, in particular survivors of the army’s Irish Brigades, who all signed up for the voyage, vowing to take part in the fight for Irish freedom.

The two-masted, square-rigged brigantine, which sailed out of Sandy Hook, New York, was called the Jacknell on leaving port, but when the men were some way across the North Atlantic, they changed the ship's name to a more suitably patriotic one, and so was born the Erin's Hope.

According to the ship’s manifest, the old sailing ship was officially carrying pianos, sewing machines and barrels of wine.

Below deck, however, thousands of long-stockpiled weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition were stored away in wooden boxes.

The voyage was uneventful and the ship made for the Mayo coast. However, after three days of ducking the coast guard and the British navy while waiting for agreed shore signals from the Sligo shore, Capt Kavanagh decided to head south.

Finally the ship weighed anchor off Helvick Head and again waited for a signal from shore. According to local Déise storyteller, Michíl Turraoin: “Kavanagh was afraid no boat would put to sea in the fog when out of the mist came one of the local fishing boats from Ring heading in their direction. They called to it and she came alongside . . . The captain decided there and then that he’d put all 20 of the men ashore.”

Jail terms

These men were brought ashore but they were soon arrested, tried and sentenced to long jail terms. The ship waited off shore for another week until finally she had to sail north and make good her escape. Walsh describes the ship’s return to the US when she “limped into Long Island Sound on the first day of August, 1867, the men on board half starved, unwashed and in rags”.

While most of what’s depicted in the book actually happened, Walsh has chosen to blend historical events and figures with some fictional characters, calling it “historical faction”.

Even so, publication of Erin's Hope, which is available through Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback, will remind many of the courageous men who sailed out of the US into Irish history.