February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Afterward, reporters from print and TV media worldwide streamed into the Sligo village, whose year-round population numbers only 70 or so.
The 50-pound bomb, planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army, ripped Mountbatten’s yacht, Shadow V, into shreds, killing him and three others, and wounding three.
The bomb — and the torrent of journalists — was an unprecedented sight for Mullaghmore. Still, Friday’s anniversary of the killing will likely draw only an article or two in the local newspapers, with aging memories recalling that day 25 years ago.
Mullaghmore remains a popular locus for vacation homes for the wealthy, whose yachts throng the harbor and often spill out into the sea. Vacationers balloon the village’s population into the hundreds, crowding the village’s hotels and guesthouses in the summer months. Homes typically sell for $500,000 and up.
Above the village looms Classiebawn Castle, a great impressive hulk of Mountcharles sandstone built by British statesman Lord Palmerston. Vying for attention with Benbulben and Knocknarea, those other majestic Sligo landmarks, Classiebawn falls short — but only just.
The Sligo Champion and other advocates for Ireland’s peasantry condemned Palmerston for clearing his estate of tenants during the Great Famine. Desperation forced many of them aboard the notorious coffin ships that swept them from Sligo quay, and hence to paupers’ graves in Grosse Ile, Quebec, and elsewhere in the New World.
Mountbatten, a great-grandson of Queen Victoria and uncle to Prince Philip, was born June 25, 1900. He married Edwina Ashley in 1922 and so came into ownership of Classiebawn and its sprawling estate from her family, which was directly descended from Palmerston.
The Mountbattens, like the Ashleys, were absentees. Their visits created no stir among villagers, who were well used to visitors of all types. For most here, the only indication that the Mountbattens were in residence was the house flag flying from the roof. Or they might see the ill-fated Shadow V leaving the harbor, or returning.
Sometimes, the old man could be seen puttering about with a shrimp net in the harbor. For the most part, he and his wife minded their business and villagers minded theirs. Most had no idea of his close relationship to the royal family, nor cared.
Little snippets of casual gossip circulated. The Boy Scouts who often camped in the woods on castle grounds flew the tricolor over their camp:
“Did ye hear they were driving out the road in their car? Lady Mountbatten saw the tricolor and was complaining that it shouldn’t be flown on their property?”
“Go on!”
“Aye, the chauffeur heard her, but Mountbatten said to her, ‘Why shouldn’t they fly it? It might be our property, but it’s their country.’ “
That went down well.
“Oh, I wouldn’t be surprised. I heard he wore an Easter lily the last time he was here?”
“Well, ye know there’s no badness in him.”
Perhaps remembering Lord Palmerston’s excesses, others were not so ready to give dispensation to his descendants. But for the vigilance of a local fisherman, Shadow V would have been sunk — and that was years before the assassination. Someone had drilled holes in her bottom expecting the filling tide to finish her off.
This should have served as a warning, but it was dismissed as an insignificant act of vandalism. Given the scale of the conflict a few miles down the road in Northern Ireland, it was almost inevitable that this grandson of Queen Victoria, retired admiral of the fleet, one time commander of allied forces in Southeast Asia, last viceroy of India, first sea lord, and Earl of Burma would be a prime target for some kind of political demonstration.
In 1960, Mountbatten’s estate manager, Patrick O’Grady, raised questions with the gardai about the earl’s safety.
“While everything points to the fact that no attack of any kind on the earl, by subversive elements, was at any time contemplated,” the police reply went, “it would in my opinion be asking too much to say in effect that we can guarantee his safety while in this country.”
Mountbatten himself scorned a major security presence, saying that he “was used to giving orders, not taking them.”
Who might have wished to harm Mountbatten? In addition to the IRA, he was not favored by such bodies as the League of Empire Loyalists, whose members felt his views on partition were too liberal and he was “very friendly disposed toward the Catholic clergy, particularly the Jesuits.” The Jesuit angle may have arisen because the castle was rented to Jesuits, or anyone else with hard cash, in the 1950s.
Life went on normally in Mullaghmore in that fateful August of 1979. Tourists came and tourists went. It rained almost every day, and summer drew to a soggy close.
Behind the outwardly normal fa