The Howth gun-running ( ) involved the delivery of 1,500

Mauser Mauser, originally Königlich Württembergische Gewehrfabrik ("Royal Württemberg Rifle Factory"), was a German arms manufacturer. Their line of bolt-action rifles and semi-automatic pistols has been produced since the 1870s for the German arm ...

rifles to the

Irish Volunteers The Irish Volunteers ( ga, Óglaigh na hÉireann), sometimes called the Irish Volunteer Force or Irish Volunteer Army, was a military organisation established in 1913 by Irish nationalists and republicans. It was ostensibly formed in respon ...

Howth Howth ( ; ; non, Hǫfuð) is an affluent peninsular village and outer suburb of Dublin, Ireland. The district as a whole occupies the greater part of the peninsula of Howth Head, which forms the northern boundary of Dublin Bay, and include ...

harbour in Ireland on 26 July 1914. The unloading of guns from a private yacht during daylight hours attracted a crowd, and the authorities ordered police and military intervention. Despite this the Volunteers evaded the security forces and carried away the arms. As the

King's Own Scottish Borderers The King's Own Scottish Borderers (KOSBs) was a line infantry regiment of the British Army, part of the Scottish Division. On 28 March 2006 the regiment was amalgamated with the Royal Scots, the Royal Highland Fusiliers (Princess Margaret's O ...

returned to barracks, they were accosted by civilians at Bachelors Walk, who threw stones and exchanged insults with the regulars. In an event later termed the

Bachelor's Walk massacre The Bachelor's Walk massacre occurred in Dublin, on 26 July 1914, when a column of troops of the King's Own Scottish Borderers were accosted by a crowd on Bachelor's Walk following the Howth gun-running operation. After some verbal baiting,Conn ...

, the soldiers shot into the civilian crowd and bayoneted one man, resulting in the deaths of four civilians and wounding of at least 38.

Gun-running plan

According to

Darrell Figgis Darrell Edmund Figgis ( ga, Darghal Figes; 17 September 1882 – 27 October 1925) was an Irish writer, Sinn Féin activist and independent parliamentarian in the Irish Free State. The little that has been written about him has attempted to high ...

, the plan was first conceived in April 1914, in response to the

Curragh incident The Curragh incident of 20 March 1914, sometimes known as the Curragh mutiny, occurred in the Curragh, County Kildare, Ireland. The Curragh Camp was then the main base for the British Army in Ireland, which at the time still formed part of the U ...

on 20 March. Many Irish people believed that the British Army could not be relied on to enforce Home Rule when it was enacted, and many

also felt that availability of arms would aid recruitment. At a lunch attended by

Alice Stopford Green __NOTOC__ Alice Stopford Green (30 May 1847 – 28 May 1929) was an Irish historian and nationalist. She was born Alice Sophia Amelia Stopford in Kells, County Meath. Her father Edward Adderley Stopford was Rector of Kells and Archdeacon of ...

Sir Roger Casement Roger David Casement ( ga, Ruairí Dáithí Mac Easmainn; 1 September 1864 – 3 August 1916), known as Sir Roger Casement, CMG, between 1911 and 1916, was a diplomat and Irish nationalist executed by the United Kingdom for treason during Wo ...

, Figgis and

Eoin MacNeill Eoin MacNeill ( ga, Eoin Mac Néill; born John McNeill; 15 May 1867 – 15 October 1945) was an Irish scholar, Irish language enthusiast, Gaelic revivalist, nationalist and politician who served as Minister for Education from 1922 to 1925, Cea ...

, it was decided that Figgis would contact Michael O'Rahilly to raise funds to buy arms.

George Fitz-Hardinge Berkeley George Fitz-Hardinge Berkeley (29 January 1870 – 14 November 1955) was an Anglo-Irish soldier, public servant, cricketer, and author. Personal life George Fitz-Hardinge Berkeley was born in 1870, the only child of George Sackville Berkeley, a ...

subscribed the largest amount. He was unsuccessful and the group was dismayed to learn of the

Larne gun-running The Larne gun-running was a major gun smuggling operation organised in April 1914 in Ireland by Major Frederick H. Crawford and Captain Wilfrid Spender for the Ulster Unionist Council to equip the Ulster Volunteer Force. The operation involved ...

of the

Ulster Volunteers The Ulster Volunteers was an Irish unionist, loyalist paramilitary organisation founded in 1912 to block domestic self-government ("Home Rule") for Ireland, which was then part of the United Kingdom. The Ulster Volunteers were based in the ...

(UVF). Senior Irish Volunteer Patrick Pearse had commented that: "the only thing more ridiculous than an Ulsterman with a rifle is a Nationalist without one". Casement asked Alice Green for a loan to be repaid when the volunteers bought their rifles. Casement, Figgis and Erskine Childers visited the London agent of a Belgian arms dealer. They eventually closed with a dealer in

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

, introduced to them by O'Rahilly, and settled on a sale of 1,500 rifles. Transport from Germany to Ireland was carried out by Erskine Childers,

Molly Childers Mary Alden Childers ( Osgood; 14 December 1875– 1 January 1964), known as Molly Childers, was an American-born Irish writer and nationalist. A daughter of Dr Hamilton Osgood and Margaret Cushing Osgood of Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts, ...

, Sir Roger Casement, Alice Green and

Mary Spring Rice Mary Ellen Spring Rice (14 September 1880 – 1 December 1924) was an Irish nationalist activist during the early 20th century.Martin 1964 Molly Childers and Spring Rice established a board to raise more funds for the arms, and succeeded in obtaining just over £2,000. Molly kept a diary of the events, a witty historical document. The Childers offered their pleasure yacht, the ''

Asgard In Nordic mythology, Asgard (Old Norse: ''Ásgarðr'' ; "enclosure of the Æsir") is a location associated with the gods. It appears in a multitude of Old Norse sagas and mythological texts. It is described as the fortified home of the Æsir ...

'', to carry 900 of the Mauser M1871 11 mm single-shot rifles and 29,000 rounds of its black powder ammunition. To buy these guns, Erskine Childers – who drafted the contract – told the German arms dealers that the rifles were destined for Mexico. The guns, although obsolete, were still functioning. They were later used in the attack on the GPO in the

Easter Rising The Easter Rising ( ga, Éirí Amach na Cásca), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with t ...

of 1916. A much smaller number of Mauser rifles was landed from the ''Chotah'' simultaneously at

Kilcoole Kilcoole () is a village in County Wicklow, Ireland. It is three kilometres (2 miles) south of Greystones, 14 kilometres (9 miles) north of Wicklow, and about 28 kilometres (17 miles) south of Dublin. It was used as the set for the Irish tel ...

County Wicklow County Wicklow ( ; ga, Contae Chill Mhantáin ) is a county in Ireland. The last of the traditional 32 counties, having been formed as late as 1606, it is part of the Eastern and Midland Region and the province of Leinster. It is bordered by ...

Sir Thomas Myles Sir Thomas Myles (20 April 1857—14 July 1937) was a prominent Irish home ruler and surgeon, involved in the importation of arms for the Irish Volunteers in 1914. Early life Thomas Myles was born in Limerick in 1857, the third of eleven ch ...

, Tom Kettle, and

James Meredith James Howard Meredith (born June 25, 1933) is an American civil rights activist, writer, political adviser, and Air Force veteran who became, in 1962, the first African-American student admitted to the racially segregated University of Missi ...

Transporting the guns

Mary Spring Rice and Molly Childers on board the Asgard, 1914

The ''Asgard'' and Conor O'Brien's yacht ''Kelpie'' sailed to the Ruytingen buoy near the Belgian coast, crewed by O'Brien, the Childers, Spring Rice, and two sailors from Gola Island, County Donegal: Patrick McGinley (Páidí Dhónaill Pháidí Mac Fhionnghaile) and Charles Duggan (Séarlaí Pháidí Shéarlais Ó Dugáin). There they met the tugboat that had carried the rifles from Hamburg. The arms filled the yacht's cabin entirely, leaving little space to sleep or prepare food, all of which was done on top of the arms. On the return journey, they met with bad storms. Next they encountered an entire fleet of the British navy, out in anticipation of the outbreak of the coming war, and had to sail through with their illicit cargo. Spring Rice's diary is a moving personal account.

Arrival in Howth

The ''Asgard'' unloaded the arms in Howth harbour on 26 July 1914. It was met by members of

Fianna Éireann Na Fianna Éireann (The Fianna of Ireland), known as the Fianna, is an Irish nationalist youth organisation founded by Constance Markievicz in 1909, with later help from Bulmer Hobson. Fianna members were involved in setting up the Irish Volun ...

, led by Countess Markievicz, ready with hand carts and wheelbarrows. Also present were Bulmer Hobson,

Douglas Hyde Douglas Ross Hyde ( ga, Dubhghlas de hÍde; 17 January 1860 – 12 July 1949), known as (), was an Irish academic, linguist, scholar of the Irish language, politician and diplomat who served as the first President of Ireland from June 1938 t ...

Peadar Kearney Peadar Kearney ( ga, Peadar Ó Cearnaígh ; 12 December 1883 – 24 November 1942) was an Irish republican and composer of numerous rebel songs. In 1907 he wrote the lyrics to "A Soldier's Song" ( ga, "Amhrán na bhFiann", italics=no), now the ...

and

Thomas MacDonagh Thomas Stanislaus MacDonagh ( ga, Tomás Anéislis Mac Donnchadha; 1 February 1878 – 3 May 1916) was an Irish political activist, poet, playwright, educationalist and revolutionary leader. He was one of the seven leaders of the Easter Rising ...

. The harbour master informed the authorities about the situation, and the

Dublin Metropolitan Police The Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) was the police force of Dublin, Ireland, from 1836 to 1925, when it was amalgamated into the new Garda Síochána. History 19th century The Dublin city police had been subject to major reforms in 1786 and ...

were called out. Assistant Commissioner Harrell also appealed for military assistance, and a detachment of the

were dispatched from their barracks at

Kilmainham Kilmainham (, meaning " St Maighneann's church") is a south inner suburb of Dublin, Ireland, south of the River Liffey and west of the city centre. It is in the city's Dublin 8 postal district. The area was once known as Kilmanum. History In t ...

.The two groups met at Clontarf. A riot ensued between Volunteers armed with batons and the police. Many policemen refused to obey orders to disarm the Volunteers and those that followed orders were unable to seize the weapons. There followed another confrontation with the military detachment in which there was more hand-to-hand fighting involving bayonets and rifle butts. There may also have been pistol shots fired by Volunteers or Fianna members. Bulmer Hobson records in a memoir that he requested Frank Flanagan (son of the nationalist councillor Michael Flanagan) to create a diversion; Flanagan "galloped his horse off at a furious pace and added to the noise". In the confusion Thomas MacDonagh and Bulmer Hobson succeeded in ordering the back ranks of

Volunteers to quietly relay the guns away and hide them in the nearby Christian Brothers' grounds. In total, police seized 19 rifles, but they had to return them when a court ruled the weapons had been taken illegally. Some of the guns were also left in the Boland house, 15

Marino Crescent Marino Crescent () is a Georgian crescent of 26 houses at the junction of Marino, Fairview and Clontarf in Dublin 3, Ireland. It is the only Georgian crescent in Dublin. History The crescent was built by Charles Ffolliott in 1792 as a spite ...

, Clontarf. Kathleen Boland (sister of

Harry Harry may refer to: TV shows * ''Harry'' (American TV series), a 1987 American comedy series starring Alan Arkin * ''Harry'' (British TV series), a 1993 BBC drama that ran for two seasons * ''Harry'' (talk show), a 2016 American daytime talk show ...

and Gerald) said in her statement to the Irish Bureau of Military History:

Bachelors Walk

By this stage a crowd had gathered, and on seeing the soldiers frustrated they began to heckle and jeer. Whilst returning to their barracks, some soldiers from the Borderers reached Bachelors Walk, where they came across an unarmed but hostile crowd who baited them.Connolly, J.S.; ''Oxford Companion to Irish History'', page 263-4. Oxford University Press, 2007. The crowd mocked them for not seizing the arms. An officer who had joined them en route was unaware that their arms were prepared to fire, and gave the order to face the crowd. While he was addressing the civilians, a shot was fired by one of the troops and this was followed by a volley. Three people were killed instantly—Mrs. Duffy, James Brennan and Patrick Quinn—and thirty-eight were injured. One man, Sylvester Pidgeon, died later of bayonet wounds. A subsequent commission of inquiry censured the city's calling out the military. The incident and casualties caused widespread outrage throughout Ireland.

Comparison with the Larne gun-running

Regardless of claims of collusion between the

and the authorities over the

, in contrast to the Irish Volunteers who were intercepted by the police and army, the manner of both gun-runnings say more about the strategies used by either side.Jackson, Alvin; ''Home Rule – An Irish History 1800–2000,'', page 136. Whilst the Ulster Volunteers planned theirs as a secret operation to arm their members, Bulmer Hobson of the Irish Volunteers sought to create a propaganda coup. The Irish Volunteers landed their arms in daylight, under a "blaze of publicity", as close to the capital, Dublin, as possible. By contrast, the Ulster Volunteers split their weapons into three caches, used a decoy vessel to distract the authorities, and landed their arms under the cover of darkness. The weapons obtained by each group were quite different. The unionists had landed some 24,600 rifles, mostly Gewehr 88s and M1870/87 Vetterli-Vitalis of the next generation of rifles, each with a

magazine A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combinatio ...

for rapid firing and

smokeless powder Finnish smokeless powderSmokeless powder is a type of propellant used in firearms and artillery that produces less smoke and less fouling when fired compared to gunpowder ("black powder"). The combustion products are mainly gaseous, compared t ...

ammunition in

stripper clip A stripper clip (also known as a charger or charger clip, especially in British and in Commonwealth military vocabulary) is a speedloader that holds several cartridges (usually between 5 and 10) together in a single unit for easier and faster ...

s for faster loading. Smokeless powder yields about 4 times the energy of black powder, resulting in flatter

trajectories A trajectory or flight path is the path that an object with mass in motion follows through space as a function of time. In classical mechanics, a trajectory is defined by Hamiltonian mechanics via canonical coordinates; hence, a complete traj ...

and longer range, and produces less muzzle blast than black powder. With limited funds, the Irish Volunteers bought only 1500 19th-century Mauser M1871, which used gunpowder (black powder) that can foul a gun after several shots, and required each round to be hand-loaded individually. Patrick Pearse complained in a letter to

Joseph McGarrity Joseph McGarrity (28 March 1874 – 4 September 1940) was an Irish-American political activist best known for his leadership in Clan na Gael in America and his support of Irish Republicanism back in Ireland. Early years McGarrity was born in ...

that the rifles were of an "antiquated type". The comparison adds to the conclusion that the Howth guns were bought primarily for the publicity effect and, while lethal, did not compare to the Larne guns on a like-for-like basis. Given his experience in the

Second Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the So ...

, Childers would have been well aware of these differences.C Townshend, "The Easter Rising 1916: The Irish Rebellion" (London 2005)

Commemoration

The killing of unarmed civilians at Bachelors Walk shocked many in Ireland and beyond. "Remember Bachelor's Walk" became a rallying cry, and the ranks of the Irish Volunteers swelled as a result."Easter Rising"
, ''The Irish Times'' In 1961, the Irish government arranged a re-enactment of the Howth gun running, procuring the original ''Asgard'' from its owner and featuring some of the Mausers and surviving Volunteers who were present that day. An address was read by president

Éamon de Valera Éamon de Valera (, ; first registered as George de Valero; changed some time before 1901 to Edward de Valera; 14 October 1882 – 29 August 1975) was a prominent Irish statesman and political leader. He served several terms as head of govern ...

, and a plaque was erected on the pier commemorating the events.

F. X. Martin Francis Xavier Martin, OSA (Irish: ''Proinsias Xavier Ó Máirtín''; 2 October 1922 – 13 February 2000) was an Irish cleric, historian and activist. Life Francis Xavier Martin was born 2 October 1922 in Ballylongford, County Kerry, Ireland. F ...

published ''The Howth Gun-Running'' to coincide with 50th anniversary of the event. The book is an academic work including

Mary Spring Rice Mary Ellen Spring Rice (14 September 1880 – 1 December 1924) was an Irish nationalist activist during the early 20th century.1914 in Ireland Arms trafficking History of County Dublin

Gun-running Arms trafficking or gunrunning is the illicit trade of contraband small arms and ammunition, which constitutes part of a broad range of illegal activities often associated with transnational criminal organizations. The illegal trade of small arm ...

Irish republicanism 1914 crimes in Ireland