I heard a comment on the radio recently about an incident that occurred at sea during the Second World War which resulted in 168 German sailors being rescued by an Irish vessel. They were plucked from certain death and brought to Cobh in Cork Harbour after they had been recovered by the MV Kerlogue.
This was news to me and it was the first I had heard of that story so I had to find out more.
On December 29, 1943, the 142-foot-long coaster, the MV Kerlogue, was carrying a cargo of oranges from Lisbon to Dublin on behalf of the Wexford Steamship Company. They were in international waters and were aware that they could be heading into a war zone.
So, when the crew of MV Kerlogue spotted a plane approaching the ship, they took notice.
It swooped down towards them but instead of strafing them with gun fire, the plane signalled them and dropped flares away to the starboard bow of the coaster trying to alert them to an incident nearby.
The coaster realised that something was wrong and altered her course. When they reached the area that was lit up by the flares, they were astonished to find the sea all around them was full of men, hundreds of them, holding on to life rafts and other objects in very rough seas.
More than 700 men were in the water and the sea all around them was littered with bits of wreckage and corpses. At first, they had no idea who these people were, but it soon became clear that they were Germans sailors.
Two British cruisers had earlier shelled a flotilla of German ships. They sank a German destroyer and two torpedo boats leaving more than 700 Germans, some dead, others burned and injured, floundering in the ocean.
For at least 10 hours and well into the night, the Kerlogue’s crew pulled men into their boat. There was no doctor on board, so the crew treated the Germans as best they could. They put them in cabins, storerooms and just lay some of them in the alleyways.
They put more of them in the engine room where it became so crowded that the engineers were unable to move around to attend to the engines. They used hand signals to get some of the able-bodied Germans to carry out certain tasks.
The rescue effort was relentless. The sea was rough and it was long, backbreaking and heart-breaking work. Many of the men hauled aboard were dead and had to be slipped back into the sea to make room for others.
Finally, the Captain of the Kerlogue had to make a difficult decision. The ship was packed tight and he was unable to take any more men aboard. He had no choice but to turn away, leaving hundreds of the men still in the water, facing certain death. A head count later revealed that they had taken 168 German sailors onboard.
The crew were exhausted from the effort and were soaked to the skin. All their spare clothes had been given to the Germans and all the ship’s stores had been used up very quickly. The Captain ordered the cargo of oranges to be broken open and the crew made hot orange drinks for everyone.
The story began to emerge slowly. Three days earlier, a German flotilla of ten ships, including three destroyers, sailed from Brest to meet with a merchant ship from Japan with a cargo of materials vital to the German war effort. As they waited to rendezvous with it, two Royal Navy Cruisers, “H.M.S Enterprise” and “H.M.S.Glasgow” who were also out searching for the merchant ship, appeared on the horizon.
A battle ensued but it didn’t last long, and the Germans were no match for the allied fire power. As darkness fell British planes flew over and dropped life rafts and flares to aid the struggling sailors. The cruisers had earlier left the area to avoid being spotted by prowling U-boats.
The crew of the Kerlogue didn’t hesitate to answer the call and they put in a massive effort to save the lives of so many. It wasn’t their first time either.
On April 2, 1941, German bombers attacked a British convoy, and a ship called the Wild Rose, was left in a bad way and sent up flares.
The Kerlogue altered course and went to the Wild Rose and took the 12-man English crew aboard and towed her to Rosslare strand on the Wexford coast, saving her from sinking.
Two years later, In October 1943, two planes, which were later identified as RAF Mosquitoes, attacked the MV Kerlogue, 130 miles south of Ireland, even though it had sailed under an Irish flag, and had ‘EIRE’ painted in white letters on its deck and sides. For 25 minutes, cannon shells rained down on it.
Several crew members were injured, and the captain was shot in both legs. Water flowed into the engine room, but the pumps kept enough water out until the ship limped into Cork harbour. Ironically, it was the boat’s cargo of British coal that saved it. The coal absorbed the cannon fire, and protected the hull.
But back to December 1943. The Kerlogue headed to Cork Harbour with its cargo of 168 German sailors. As it made its way home, it was passed several times by German a plane which tipped its wings to acknowledge the crew of the Kerlogue.
It arrived in Cobh on New Year’s Day at 2.30 a.m. Emergency services treated the survivors in Cobh, before moving them onto the Military Hospital in Collins Barracks and then to internment at the Curragh, Co Kildare.
The MV Kerlogue and its brave crew punched above their weight and their efforts were later recognised by the German Government.