Merchant of mercy

Perhaps the most sublime testimony to the heroism of the crew came from a grateful Nazi German government, in the aftermath of the ship’s peril-filled rescue, on Dec. 29, 1943, of 168 German sailors in the storm-tossed Bay of Biscay.
A week after the rescue, the German ambassador to Ireland, Dr. Eduard Hempel, wrote to the Kerlogue’s captain, Thomas Donohue, calling the “exemplary deed” “worthy of the great tradition of Irish gallantry and humanity.”
Between her maiden voyage in 1939 until the war’s end, in addition to undertaking one of the most heroic and successful rescue efforts of the war, the Kerlogue withstood damage from an acoustic mine, as well as a withering attack by the Allies, who said they mistook her for a French ship. Through this, she continued to function as a cargo ship, sailing as a neutral, with the tri-color and “EIRE” painted large on her sides and deck.
The Kerlogue was the smallest of three ships belonging to the Wexford Steamship Company. She was built in Holland, just prior to the war’s outbreak in September 1939. Intended for coastal work, she was a mere 142 feet long and able to carry up to 335 tons, but at that, her deck, when she was loaded, was less than a foot above the water line.
On April 2, 1941, German bombers attacked a British convoy. A crippled collier, the Wild Rose, out of Liverpool, was left behind. The Kerlogue was under the command of Captain Samuel Owens of Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, and was on passage from Wexford to Cardiff, Wales.
Seeing distress rockets, the Kerlogue altered course and went to the Wild Rose. Wild Rose’s engines were disabled and her two lifeboats couldn’t be launched. Owens took the 12-man English crew aboard. The Kerlogue took the Wild Rose in tow and beached her on Rosslare strand on the Wexford coast, saving her from sinking.
Oct. 23, 1943 proved another trying day for the little ship. On passage from Port Talbot, a Welsh port where she loaded on coal, to Lisbon, the Kerlogue was attacked 130 miles south of Ireland by two planes, later determined to be Mosquitoes, from the Royal Air Force’s 307 Polish Squadron.
The planes’ flight logs, referring to the unarmed Kerlogue, record the following: “Sighted and attacked with cannon 1,500-ton merchant vessel flying French flag and word EMPO clearly discerned on starboard side — the word France also on her bows. The vessel, which returned fire with cannon without effect, was left circling with smoke issuing from it.” Nearly two hours later, a Royal Australian Air Force flying boat flew over the Kerlogue, still reeling from the attack, and identified the vessel as Irish, while turning down the ship’s request for an escort.
Then-skipper Desmond Fortune had both legs fractured. Second Officer Samuel Owens had shrapnel fragments embedded in his chest and Second Engineer James Carthy suffered a gaping back wound, to name but a few of the grievously injured. Chief Officer Denis Valencie then took command.
The 25-minute attack severely damaged the ship. The entire bridge was destroyed, both lifeboats were broken, along with her compass and radio transmitter. Though water was overwhelming the engine room, she slowly limped into Cork.
It was the Kerlogue’s cargo of coal that saved her. RAF cannon shells lodged in the coal and so did not reach the ship’s hull.
Taoiseach Eamon de Valera, on Dec. 2, 1943, made the following statement in the D_il:
“[The British] informed us that the attacking plane did not identify the ship as Irish, and at the time of the attack Kerlogue was sailing off course. . . . The British government for that reason will not accept responsibility for the attack, but are prepared to make a payment ex-gratia to the injured men.”
The Kerlogue was repaired in Cork after the attack, and Donohue took command. It was under his experienced captaincy that the Kerlogue made her greatest rescue. (Donohue commanded the Lady Belle when it was bombed by the Nazis in March 1941 and served on the crew of the Irish Oak when a Nazi submarine torpedoed it in May 1943.)
On a routine passage on Dec. 29, 1943, while sailing to Dublin from Lisbon, the Kerlogue’s crew spotted a German long-range reconnaissance aircraft circling it, signaling “SOS.” She altered her course to the plane’s request.
At 11 a.m., the Kerlogue reached what must have been a truly appalling scene. Royal Navy light cruisers Enterprise and Glasgow, which had been in hot pursuit for several hours, had sunk a large German destroyer, the 2,688-ton Z27, along with two 1,318-ton torpedo boats, leaving more than 700 men in the water. The sea all around was littered with flotsam, corpses in life jackets, and desperate men on rafts or clinging to wreckage.
Chief officer Valencie of the Kerlogue described the scene in an interview with writer Frank Fordefor the book “The Long Watch”: “As rafts rose into view on the crests of the giant waves, we could see men on them and others clinging to their sides. At first we did not know whether they were Allied or Axis until somebody noticed the long ribbons trailing downward from behind a seaman’s cap, which denoted they were German Navy men.”
Lt.-Commander Jaochim Quedenfelt, the highest-ranking German rescued, later wrote of “the little ship bravely moving through the enormous waves to pick up more and more of my comrades.”
For at least 10 hours, until well after sunset, the Kerlogue’s crew pulled men unto their boat. There was no doctor on board, but the Kerlogue’s crew treated the Germans as best they could. Forde, in “The Long Watch,” noted that “cabins, storerooms, and alleyways were soon packed with shivering, soaked and sodden men; others were placed in the engine room where it became so crowded that Chief Engineer Eric Giggins could not move around to attend his machinery, and so by signs — as none spoke English — he got the survivors to move the instruments he could not reach.”
Quedenfelt asked that the ship travel to German-controlled La Rochelle or Brest to land his men, but Donohue refused and headed the Kerlogue back to Ireland. The German acquiesced, though he easily could have compelled Donohue to change course, considering there were more than 15 Germans for each Kerlogue crewman.
Donohue headed to Cork, ignoring British instructions to go to Fishguard, on the Welsh coast, to fulfill an earlier agreement with British authorities made in return for coaling privileges. Donohue maintained radio silence, keeping them unaware of the Kerlogue’s human cargo, believing the wounded men needed more immediate help, best obtained at Cork. The vessel arrived in Cork Harbor on New Year’s Day at 2:30 a.m.
The Irish media barely seemed to get hold of the story. The Cork Examiner of Monday, Jan. 3, 1944, printed a paragraph on the rescue, the statement the Government Information Bureau released. The Germans proved grateful, sending a letter of thanks to the matron of the Cork hospital who cared for the German wounded.
After an exhausting trip the Kerlogue finally made its way back to Dublin on Jan. 5, while the rescued Germans remained at the Curragh Internment Camp until the war was over. Two, Petty Officer Helmut Weiss and Lieutenant Braatz, are buried in the German War Cemetery at Glencree, Co. Wicklow.
Irish TD Dick Roche, whose father, Garret, was among the crewmen involved in the rescue, praised the merchant marine’s wartime service, stating in Seanad Eireann in 1994: “[Their] ships were so rickety, old, and derelict that we would not go to sea in them today. Yet these brave, perhaps foolhardy, men crossed the Atlantic, went to the Mediterranean and North African coast and kept Ireland supplied with vital provisions.”