The Easter Rising of 1916 has generated an enormous literature, much of it understandably concentrated upon events in Dublin, the political leaders of the rebellion and the subsequent British response. Daniel Wrinn’s Mission to Ireland approaches the Rising from a rather different direction. Instead of following Pearse, Connolly or the fighting around the General Post Office, Wrinn takes us aboard the German vessel Libau, disguised as the Norwegian merchant ship Aud, and follows Captain Karl Spindler and his crew as they attempt to carry a substantial shipment of German weapons through the British blockade and into Ireland.
It is an excellent subject for a short book because the voyage of the Aud really does contain most of the ingredients of a good adventure story. Spindler and his crew had to disguise not merely their ship but virtually every aspect of life aboard her. German equipment had to be concealed, Norwegian markings and documentation were prepared and the crew had to appear convincing if challenged by British patrols. Spindler’s original account makes clear just how detailed these preparations were, extending to apparently insignificant objects which might betray the vessel’s true nationality if a search were conducted. Wrinn makes particularly good use of this element of the story, and the voyage becomes an exercise in deception, navigation and calculated risk rather than simply a tale about transporting rifles from Germany to Ireland.
The strategic background is equally fascinating. Germany’s support for Irish revolutionaries was hardly an act of disinterested sympathy. Berlin saw rebellion in Ireland primarily as another means of distracting Britain and potentially forcing the diversion of troops and resources away from the wider war. Roger Casement had negotiated for German assistance, although his attempt to establish an Irish Brigade from Irish prisoners of war in Germany achieved very little. The Germans nevertheless agreed to provide a major shipment of weapons for the planned rebellion. The Aud carried approximately 20,000 rifles together with ammunition, machine guns and explosives, an arsenal which could have considerably strengthened the Irish Volunteers had it reached them.
Wrinn is at his best when describing the practical difficulties of getting that cargo to Ireland. Spindler successfully negotiated a remarkable voyage through waters dominated by the Royal Navy and reached the Irish coast close to the appointed time. The mission nevertheless collapsed because the German crew and the Irish revolutionaries failed to make contact. Changes to the planned rendezvous were made after the Aud had sailed, while Spindler had no radio with which revised instructions could reach him. British intelligence had also intercepted German communications concerning the operation. The result was one of those historical episodes in which several individually small failures combined to produce a much larger disaster. Spindler had succeeded in the extraordinarily difficult task of reaching Ireland, yet the weapons remained aboard his ship because nobody was waiting in the right place at the right time to receive them.
Eventually intercepted by British forces and ordered toward Queenstown, now Cobh, Spindler chose to scuttle the vessel rather than surrender his cargo. The Aud went to the bottom and Spindler and his crew became prisoners of war. For the Easter Rising the consequences were considerable. It would be excessive to suggest that the arrival of the weapons would necessarily have transformed the rebellion into a military success, but their loss deprived the Volunteers of thousands of modern rifles and a large quantity of ammunition at precisely the moment these were desperately required. The affair also demonstrates just how fragile the preparations for the Rising actually were, with communications, command arrangements and coordination often depending upon individuals carrying messages across considerable distances while British intelligence was actively attempting to unravel the conspiracy.
As history, however, Mission to Ireland has an important weakness. Wrinn presents much of the story as an immediate first person narrative, creating a fast paced account that frequently feels more like historical fiction or a naval thriller than conventional military history. That makes the book extremely readable, but it also creates uncertainty about where documented recollection ends and reconstructed dialogue or dramatic interpretation begins. Contemporary readers have similarly noted that the narrative style can make it difficult to distinguish firmly documented events from material inserted to create atmosphere. This is particularly important because Karl Spindler himself published an account of the operation, Gun Running for Casement in the Easter Rebellion, 1916, meaning that much of the underlying story can be compared with a readily available primary source. A more substantial discussion by Wrinn of his sources and of how he converted those sources into narrative would therefore have considerably strengthened the book.
There is also relatively little analysis of the larger strategic implications of the operation. I would have liked more consideration of what might realistically have happened had the arms been landed successfully, how they were intended to be distributed, whether the Volunteers possessed the organisation necessary to exploit them and how significant the German operation actually was within Berlin’s broader wartime strategy. Modern studies drawing upon Irish, German and British records allow the Aud mission to be placed within a much wider intelligence and political context than is attempted here.⁷ Wrinn instead concentrates overwhelmingly upon Spindler’s experience. That decision makes sense for the type of book he has written, but it also limits its usefulness as an analytical history of the Easter Rising.
These reservations should not obscure the book’s considerable strengths. Mission to Ireland is short, accessible and highly readable, and it introduces readers to a fascinating episode of the First World War that remains far less familiar than it deserves to be. Spindler’s voyage was a genuinely remarkable feat of seamanship and deception, followed by a failure caused not by an inability to reach Ireland but by the collapse of the complicated system intended to connect the ship with the rebellion ashore. Wrinn captures that strange mixture of success and failure particularly well.
For readers already familiar with the Easter Rising, there is probably not a great deal here that will fundamentally change their interpretation of 1916, and those looking for a deeply researched academic study will need to look elsewhere. As an introduction to the voyage of the Aud, however, it works extremely well. It is history presented primarily as narrative rather than analysis, but fortunately the underlying story is sufficiently extraordinary that very little embellishment is actually required.
Recommended, particularly for readers interested in the First World War at sea, German clandestine operations and the military background to the Easter Rising. I enjoyed it considerably, although I would have preferred rather more historical analysis and a clearer distinction between documented evidence and reconstructed narrative.
For me the key criticism is the blurred boundary between history and reconstructed narrative. The underlying story is excellent, but Wrinn could have made a much stronger history book by explaining his sources and giving more attention to the consequences of the failure of the Aud mission.