On the 10th of October 1918, the Leinster was torpedoed off the Kish light vessel by the German submarine UB 123. With 800 people on board, 300 of them troops, the Leinster sinking was heavily censored by military authorities to prevent the real scale of the death toll becoming public. However, a surviving US Navy man, Chief Petty Officer Special Mechanic J.D. Mason who was stationed at the torpedo facility at Haulbowline in Co Cork, wrote a detailed report to his CO on the sinking and subsequent rescue efforts. The US National Archives in Washington stored this report for 78 years until a copy was discovered by the Consul at the American Embassy in Dublin, Mrs Anne Sides, who was researching Irish and American Naval links.
The HMY Helga, taking on bunkers at the Traders Wharf at Dun Laoghaire, was one of the first vessels to reach the mail steamer, and proceeded to the Kish Bank to search for survivors. The Leinster had been struck forward of the bridge by the first torpedo at 09.50 hours, the U Boat then fired another torpedo which hit as the lifeboats were being lowered. The vessel sank within ten minutes. In spite of the efforts of the HMY Helga, and destroyers HMS Lively, HMS Millard, USS Winslow DD-53 and USS Cushing DD-55, of the 800 passengers 501 were lost to the sea.
The U Boat, under the command of Lieutenant Robert Ramm, is believed to have sunk in the American and British mine barrage laid across the North Sea, as it never returned home.
During the visit of the USS John Fitzgerald Kennedy to Dublin Bay in 1996, Commander Mike Georgino from the carrier made a presentation of CPO Morton’s report to Dr Philip Smyly at the Maritime Museum in Dun Laoghaire, in commemoration of the many links between Ireland and the US Navy during World War One. Anti-submarine bases at Cobh (Queenstown, as it was then called), and Bantry Bay, and Naval Air stations at Aghada (Whitegate), Wexford, Larne and Bantry Bay were of considerable assistance to the US Navy.
An Post have launched a commemorative stamp to mark the 90th anniversary of the RMS Leinster, designed by Irish illustrator Vincent Killowry and featuring an original drawing of the mail steamer with one of her anchors in the foreground.
St Michael’s Church, Marine Road, Dun Laoghaire, are holding an Ecumenical Service in memory of those lost from the Leinster at 12:00 hours on Friday the 10th of October 2008.
It’s been ninety years since the tragic sinking of the mail steamer Leinster shortly after leaving Dun Laoghaire. Over 500 people drowned in the worst maritime disaster in the Irish Sea, many of them local postal workers who sorted the mail during the crossing, and other civilians as well as soldiers from Ireland, Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
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