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The Impact of the Anglo Irish Treaty 1921

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A quick look at the Anglo Irish Treaty of 1921 and its impact.

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No one should doubt the symbolic importance of rifles to young Volunteers. In 1914 the Irish Republican Brotherhood organ, Irish Freedom, wrote, 'A dozen rifles are more effective than a thousand resolutions in Parliament'.
The gun re-enters Irish life, 1914-1916
In the Ulster crisis of 1913-14, both rival Volunteer movements, Ulster and Irish armed themselves with an assortment of weapons from around Europe.

The UVF imported as many as 37,000 rifles of various makes and around 3 million rounds of ammunition. Some 25,000 rifles were landed at Larne on April 25, in a spectacular defiance of the law and of Home Rule.

The Irish Volunteers for their part unloaded at Howth harbour from the yacht the Asgard, a cargo of 900 rifles and 30,000 rounds of ammunition that Bulmer Hobson, the IRB leader, had secretly purchased in Germany and another 600 at Kilcoole, County Wicklow later in the summer of 1914.

These arsenals were both much less impressive than they looked on paper. The unionists imported better rifles than the nationalists but they were of three different types, German Mausers (1888 model), Austrian Steyr Manlicher rifles and Italian Vetterli rifles. All of these took a different calibre bullet so supply of ammunition to fighters would have been very difficult in the event of their being fired in anger.

As for the Irish Volunteers, they suffered a split in 1914 (the National Volunteers followed Irish Party leader John Redmond into support for Britain in the First World War) and as result lost some of the 'Howth Mausers'. In practice as the war went on the National Volunteers' enthusiasm waned, the core IRB-influenced group of the Irish Volunteers regained some of these weapons. They had, however, other problems with armament.
Easter Rising small arms
The 1871 or 'Howth' Mauser was a very long, very heavy, very old, single shot weapon. It was relatively slow to reload, its ammunition (11mm) was scarce and could not be resupplied in Ireland.

It was also black powder, creating a ferocious explosion and a cloud of black smoke when fired, thus giving away the position of the firer. In the words of one Volunteer who ended up using it in the 1916 Rising, 'it was a bad weapon for street fighting'; 'Flame about three foot long came out through the barrel when it was fired and a shower of soot and smoke came back in one's face. After three shots were fired from it, it would have to be thrown away to let it cool and the concussion of it was so severe that it drove me back along the floor several feet'.

On the other hand, the heavy lead bullet fired by the 'Howth Mauser', broke up on impact with human bodies, caused terrible exit wounds, and inspired significant fear among those on the receiving end.

They could also punch through sandbags and walls as British troops trying to set up a machine gun post as Digges Street near Jacob's Factory found; according to Peadar Kearney 'they were literally blown out of it. A dozen Howth Mausers could always do that'.

It seems that the majority of Volunteer and Citizen Army fighters were armed with the Howth Mauser. Although there were also a certain amount of Italian Vetterli Rifles in the hands of the Volunteeers and Citizen Army dating from early 1914, when they had been imported during the Ulster crisis, ammunition for them was scarce and it is not clear if they were used in the Rising.

A much better bet for the Volunteers, where they could get them, were the British Lee Enfield .303 rifles. Apart from being newer, significantly shorter and lighter than the 1871 Mauser, the Lee Enfield held a magazine of ten rounds and by manipulation of the bolt action, could be fired rapidly in trained hands (perhaps 20-30 shots per minute for veteran troops). It also used smokeless powder and so did not give away the firer's position.

The Volunteers borrowed, bought and stole Lee Enfields wherever they could in the months leading up the Rising. So many service rifles began to go missing in the months leading up to the Rising - mostly sold off by British 'Tommies' at Dublin port - that troops embarking at Hollyhead for Dublin were instructed to leave their rifles behind in Wales and pick up new ones at barracks in Dublin.

The rebels also had a small number of Martini Henry carbines - a single shot lever action carbine - which up to 1905 were issued to the Royal Irish Constabulary and some of which were imported from sympathisers in the United States. In Bolands Mill one Volunteer reported that there were three different kinds of rifle, the Lee Enfield, two different types of Martini-Henry (with different cartridges) and the Howth Mauser as well as shotguns, all of which had to be kept supplied with different calibre ammunition, ' even in the hottest of corners'.

One surprisingly effective weapon in the hands of the Volunteers was what they referred to as the 'Peter the Painter' (after an anarchist terrorist who used one in turn-of-the-century London) or C96 Mauser automatic pistol.

This was a clip fed semi-automatic weapon that held ten 7.63 rounds. It could be equipped with a shoulder stock to make it more accurate and proved lethally effective in close quarters street fighting during Easter Week. At Mount Street Bridge Mick Malone , armed with a C96 and accompanied by a mere 12 Volunteers killed and wounded 240 Sherwood Foresters. Malone himself in one charge shot down ten British soldiers with his automatic pistol before taking up a Howth Mauser.

Other Volunteers carried revolvers, shotguns or even pikes, the latter being virtually useless in a 20th century fire fight.
Heavy weapons
Having occupied positions around Dublin on Easter Monday, many Volunteers actually saw little combat until they received the order to surrender. But those that were attacked in their fortified positions in general proved very difficult to dislodge despite their antiquated weapons.

By the end of the week, the only insurgent stronghold that had actually been forced to surrender was the rebel headquarters at the GPO.

The British forces massively outnumbered and outgunned the insurgents in 1916. By the end of the week they had assembled some 16,000 troops to take on the 1,600 odd rebels. Every infantryman was equipped with a Lee Enfield rifle, which in most cases was superior to what they faced.

More important though, were machine guns, of which the British had many and the Volunteers none. The Vickers heavy machine gun was belt fed and could fire continuously at a rate of 500 rounds per minute. The Lewis light machine gun was fed by a 47 round pan magazine and could be carried around easily by infantry troops, unlike the Vickers. Both, but especially the former, could 'suppress' a defensive position by spraying it with so many bullets that no one would be able to return fire.

Automatic weapons made a significant difference but the decisive weapon in 1916 was artillery. The British Army after the initial shock of the outbreak of the rebellion, deployed four 18 pounder field guns in Dublin, taken from the garrison in Athlone along with a 12 pounder gun aboard the gun-boat Helga.

A number of insurgent positions were fired at with artillery, but it made the most difference at the rebel headquarters at the GPO and O'Connell Street, where artillery fire by the Friday had made the Post Office a flaming inferno and levelled much of Dublin's main street. This was the main factor in the insurgent surrender. It also seems likely that the use of heavy weapons in a densely populated urban area caused many of the 250 odd civilian fatalities.

The disproportion in the weaponry available to both sides was a salutary lesson to the surviving Volunteers, notably Michael Collins, who resolved never to gain face the British military in open combat.
John Dorney is a historian, author of 'Peace After the Final Battle the Story of the Irish Revolution 1912-1924 (2014)' and editor of The Irish Story website.

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No one should doubt the symbolic importance of rifles to young Volunteers. In 1914 the Irish Republican Brotherhood organ, Irish Freedom, wrote, 'A dozen rifles are more effective than a thousand resolutions in Parliament'. The gun re-enters Irish life, 1914-1916 In the Ulster crisis of 1913-14, both rival Volunteer movements, Ulster and Irish armed themselves with an assortment of weapons from around Europe.

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The events leading up to 1916

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Ireland 1912-1916: An Animated History from Home Rule to Easter Rising

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Trinity college lecture on the civil war

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Trinity college lecture on the civil war

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Irish War of Independence  | 3 Minute History

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Shannon hydroelectric scheme

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On 13th August 1925 one of the most important under-takings for the economic and social life of Ireland began when the first sod was cut at Ardnacrusha, Co Clare, for the construction of the Shannon Hydro-Electric Scheme. The initial proposal for the Scheme was presented by the German firm Siemens to the Government of the Irish Free State on 1st September 1924. The scheme was the first national integrated (generation, transmission, distribution, marketing and sale of electricity) system in the world and led to the establishment of the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) on 11th August 1927.

The construction of the Shannon Scheme was a mammoth undertaking for a country the size of Ireland, especially when the State was barely three years old. The project cost IR£5.2 million and an additional IR£600,000 was paid in compensation to landowners. This total represented about 20% of the Government's revenue budget in 1925.

It was a huge undertaking, employing over 5,000 people at its peak. To avoid flooding Limerick city with discharge waters, the station was built upstream, at Ardnacrusha. Water was diverted to it from the main river, via a dam and intake weir at Parteen, and channelled to the power station down a new 13-kilometre head-race canal that was dug out by bucket excavators.

A dam, power station and turbine hall were built at Ardnacrusha. A two-kilometre tail-race canal was blasted through the rock to take the outflow back to the river. Two rivers were diverted, two navigation locks were built and four new bridges were constructed where the intake canal cut across roads. The chief engineer was Frank Rishworth, who had worked on Egypt's Aswan Dam.

The logistics were fascinating: a temporary power station was needed to power the various workshops and an electric crane. 100 kilometres of narrow gauge railway were installed to navigate around the Scheme, with some 100 locomotives and 3,000 wagons to move the massive amounts of clay and rock which were excavated. Three large rock crushing plants were used to excavate the rock so it could be re-used as hard-core.

The Scheme was officially opened at Parteen on 29th July 1929 by President William Cosgrave. It was one of the largest engineering projects of its day and was a revolutionary infrastructural development, bringing electricity to all parts of the country.

The influential London Financial Times was highly impressed with the result, commenting:

They have thrown on their shoulders the not easy task of breaking what is in reality an enormous inferiority complex and the Shannon Scheme is one - and probably the most vital - of their methods of doing it

Within 3 years the demand for electricity in Ireland had expanded so much that stage two was initiated. Instead of the planned three extra penstocks, only one was used but it used a new 30 MW Kaplan turbine with seven blades which produced high efficiency on the relatively small head and increased the capacity of the station to 75 MW by 1933.
In 1937 the Poulaphouca Reservoir hydro plant on the Liffey was constructed adding another 35 MW.

The scale and importance of the Shannon Scheme made it an economic centrepiece for the development of the modern Irish State. It laid the ground work for rural electrification in the late 1940s, which transformed rural life and improved the quality of life in communities throughout the country and paved the way for economic, social and cultural change. It was one of the largest engineering projects of its day, and has served as a reference model for other major engineering projects worldwide. Among those also to take an interest in the scheme was Franklin D. Roosevelt who consulted ESB about the scheme and passed on relevant information to the designers of the Tennessee Valley Project.

In 1996 Ardnacrusha became the first power station in the world to achieve ISO 9002 - an award from the International Organisation for Standardization - for its management system. In July 2004, the station achieved the environmental award ISO 14001.

In 2002 the Shannon Scheme joined the ranks of one of the world's major engineering achievements when it received two major heritage awards. The "International Milestone" by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) and "International Landmark" award by ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers). Previous winners of these awards include the invention of colour television (Milestone), Japanese Bullet train (Milestone) the first Space Shuttle (Milestone), the Golden Gate Bridge (Landmark) and the Eiffel Tower (Landmark).

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On 13th August 1925 one of the most important under-takings for the economic and social life of Ireland began when the first sod was cut at Ardnacrusha, Co Clare, for the construction of the Shannon Hydro-Electric Scheme. The initial proposal for the Scheme was presented by the German firm Siemens to the Government of the Irish Free State on 1st September 1924.

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Political Developments in 20th century Ireland

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Political Developments in 20th century Ireland

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JUNIOR CERT HISTORY: Modern Ireland: Episode 2

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Irish history: 1916 rising background (Modern Ireland)