Ulster's Stand For Union

by Ronald McNeill

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.

Meantime the real business was proceeding twenty miles away. All communications by wire from the three ports were blocked by "earthing" the wires, so as to cause short circuit. The police and coast-guards were "peacefully picketed," as trade unionists would call it, in their various barracks—they were shut in and strongly guarded. No conflict took place anywhere between the authorities and the volunteers, and the only casualty of any kind was the unfortunate death of one coast-guardsman from heart disease at Donaghadee.

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.

There was a not unnatural tendency at first on the part of some of the motor-drivers to look upon the event more in the light of a meet of hounds than of the gravest possible business, and to hang about discussing the adventure with the other "sportsmen." But the use of vigorous language brought them back to recognition of the seriousness of the work before them, and the discharge of the cargo proceeded hour after hour with the utmost rapidity and with the regularity of a well-oiled machine. The cars drew up beside the Mountjoy in an endless queue; each received its quota of bales according to its carrying capacity, and was despatched on its homeward journey without a moment's delay.

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.

Crawford refused to leave the ship at either Larne or Bangor, feeling himself bound in honour to remain with the crew until they were safe from arrest by the naval authorities. It was well known in Belfast that a look-out was being kept for the Fanny, which had figured in the Press as "the mystery ship" ever since the affair at Langeland, and had several times been reported to have been viewed at all sorts of odd places on the map, from the Orkneys to Tory Island. Just as Agnew was casting off from Bangor, when the last bale of arms had gone ashore, a message from U.V.F. headquarters informed him that a thirty-knot cruiser was out looking for the Fanny. To mislead the coast-guards on shore a course was immediately set for the Clyde—the very quarter from which a cruiser coming from Lamlash was to be expected—and when some way out to sea Crawford cut the cords holding the canvas sheets that bore the name of the Mountjoy, so that within five minutes the filibustering pirate had again become the staid old collier Clydevalley, which for months past had carried her regular weekly cargo of coal from Scotland to Belfast. As before at Langeland, so now at Copeland, fog providentially covered retreat, and through it the Clydevalley made her way undetected down the Irish Sea. At daybreak next morning Crawford landed at Rosslare; and Agnew then proceeded along the French and Danish coasts to the Baltic to the rendezvous with the Fanny, in order to bring back the Ulstermen members of her crew, after which "the mystery ship" was finally disposed of at Hamburg.

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."

But it was not to be expected that the Government and its supporters would relish the news. The Radical Press, of course, rang all the changes of angry vituperation, especially those papers which had been prominent in ridiculing "Ulster bluff" and "King Carson's wooden guns"; and they now speculated as to whether Carson could be "convicted of complicity" in what Mr. Asquith in the House of Commons described as "this grave and unprecedented outrage." Carson soon set that question at rest by quietly rising in his place in the House and saying that he took full responsibility for everything that had been done. The Prime Minister, amid the frenzied cheers of his followers, assured the House that "His Majesty's Government will take, without delay, appropriate steps to vindicate the authority of the law." For a short time there was some curiosity as to what the appropriate steps would be. None, however, of any sort were taken; the Government contented itself with sending a few destroyers to patrol for a short time the coasts of Antrim and Down, where they were saluted by the Ulster Signalling Stations, and their officers hospitably entertained on shore by loyalist residents.