Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on June 30, 2004 at 06:37:59 from 195.93.32.7 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: Top 25 posted by Jeremy Kriewaldt on June 30, 2004 at 01:07:59:
Childers was in the Royal Naval Air Service in WW1. His position on Independence as opposed to Home Rule cost him his life - it was more of a political murder to eliminate an opponent than an execution - but his position had become an extreme one even by the standards of Irish Republicanism. Indidentally, he was a Protestant, not a Catholic. The Vixen, the original of the Dulcibella, went to pieces in Lymington, but the boat that he replaced her with, the Asgard, built for him by no less than Colin Archer as a wedding present from his American parents-in-law, and used, of course, for the arms smuggling business, survives, and was recently rescued from life as a static exhibit in Kilmainham Jail.
For a fresh, and funny, insight on the arms smuggling epsiode, read Conor O'Brien's "From Three Yachts" - and incidentally add Conor
O'Brien, the first man to sail round the world south of the three great capes, to the list of authors.