The events in Larne, 1914 have a ‘permanent place in our history’ books’

The Larne Times of May 2, 1914, predicted that the previous week’s gunrunning would find a permanent place in this history books.

The paper got it right.

The gunrunning of 1914 not only found a permanent place in the history books but also changed the course of history.

The previous month, the Government had tried to order troops at the Curragh camp nort. However, a significant number of senior officers refused, indicating that they would leave the service instead. Unionists were confirmed in their belief that, while they had right on their side, the Government was prepared to use military force against them and introduce martial law to control the situation. Arrest warrants were also rumoured.

Against a background of such growing perceived belligerence, the Provisional Government of Ulster had decided in January, 1914 to purchase weapons in Europe and smuggle them across en bloc.

Among those believed to have given funding for the venture was the poet Rudyard Kipling, whose £30,000 donation would be akin to £2.5 million today.

Major Fred Crawford, the man entrusted with the operation, had local ship’s captain Andrew Agnew as his right-hand man. Together they bought the weapons, the original gunrunner The Fanny, and oversaw the loading of the vessel.

The full story of this whole episode is worthy of the big screen. The ship was almost seized by the Danish authorities, became invisible in the busy shipping lanes of the English Channel, and finally discharged her cargo to the Clyde Valley overnight in the Irish Sea in preparation for the weapons being landed by the former Kelly coal boat.

Many stories surround the gunrunning. When I interviewed the late Lily McKee in 1989 for the Larne Times, her abiding recollection as a young girl was of the long line of car lights coming into the town. “You could have stood at Bay Road and seen the lights going round Shane’s Hill. There was a lot of excitement in Larne that night,” she said.

Another lady, the late Margaret Hume, spoke to me of remembering her father going with other farmers to Larne in their horses and carts from Magheramorne and how her mother cried, unsure whether he would come back or not.

The guns were quickly concealed away. The late Andy Ferguson of Larne told me how the boiler room at Brown’s Factory was one of the locations, but there were others including Orange Halls and churches in the local area.

Fred Crawford, who risked much to bring the rifles to Larne, returned to the town in July that year, when Carson reviewed the Central Antrim

Regiment in the grounds of Drumalis, the home of Lady Smiley.

He recounted: “It was a sight to see those rifles being carried in the open after all I had to do with them, and it was all the reward I want. Success is its own reward, and if ever any man had his reward I have had mine.”

Carson for his part left the Regiment in no doubt as to the dangers which encompassed them. He warned that he believed that a war was likely, while stressing that they wanted peace with honour.

Ultimately war did come, but not the one which might have been predicted. The First World War saw many of the Larne gunrunners swell the ranks of the 36th Ulster Division and many did not return home.

The Larne gunrunning, meanwhile, brought the issue of exclusion from Home Rule well to the fore. The Government had to accept the gulf between nationalist Ireland and unionist Ulster. The end result was Northern Ireland.

Carson said in Larne in July. 1914 that the events of the gunrunning night would live long after he and those around him had passed away. He was correct. A century later the events of that April night and their legacy are still remembered.