Initially the Volunteers drilled with wooden batons, (much to the amusement
of the British press), but a local carpentry firm stepped in and offered
to supply wooden replica rifles at a cost of one shilling and eight pence
each for pitch pine, and one shilling and sixpence for spruce. Now in
areas such as Sandy Row, Newtownards Road and the Shankill, a common sight
each evening was the local Company of Volunteers, as they went about their
training and designated duties, ‘armed to the teeth’ with
their wooden rifles. It was at this juncture that Charles Craig, (brother
of James Craig), went on record as saying, “Whilst Ulstermen should
do their best to educate the electorate, as an argument, £10,000
spent on rifles would be a thousand times stronger than the same amount
spent on speeches or pamphlets”.
A
UVF gun-runner transporting arms from Birmingham to Ulster in spring 1913
Small
scale gun-smuggling was already going on before 1914. Guns came in on
fishing boats to ports such as Kilkeel and were hidden in boxes of herring.
However the number of guns getting through was inadequate to the needs
of the volunteers, so the go ahead was given to a Belfast volunteer, Frederick
Hugh Crawford who had formerly been an officer in the British army and
had been involved in the volunteer movement since 1911, to buy 20,000
rifles and two million rounds of ammunition from a German by the name
of Bruno Sppiro who Crawford had built up contacts with in Hamburg and
ship them back to Ulster en masse to land at some secret night time rendezvous.
Naturally the cost of of such a vast amount of weaponry as anticipated
demanded a healthy bank balance, but in those glorious days Ulster had
many numerous high-profile friends who were only too willing to meet the
expenses required by Carson and the Volunteers. Men like Rudyard Kipling,
Admiral of the fleet Sir E. Seymour, Waldorf Astor and Viscount Halifax
to name but a few.
The Gun running was planned secretly and scrupulously, especially now
that a watch was being kept on key British ports, following the discovery
that gun running had become standard practice throughout Ulster.
The operation code named ‘Lion’ on the night of the Friday
24 April 1914, there was to be a test mobilisation of the UVF under cover
of which the Co. Antrim regiment was to take over the Port of Larne whilst
the ‘Clyde Valley’ docked there and unloaded. The motor corps
of various UVF units would be waiting with engines turning to collect
their parcels of guns and deliver them to secret locations in their home
areas.
In an attempt to draw attention away from the Larne operation, volunteers
were to march a contingent to the docks where the SS Balmerino would arrive
in what would be a ‘decoy run’. A great effort was made to
frustrate the custom authorities in their attempts to search the vessel,
adding to the suspicion that she contained arms for the waiting volunteers.
In Larne the UVF took control under the cover of darkness all went according
to plan as column after column of vehicles approached the port past checkpoint
after checkpoint As the Clyde Valley pulled into the harbour the headlights
of 500 motor vehicles were flaring into the Co Antrim town. Men from local
Battalions had been placed at key points along the highways to give drivers
unfamiliar with the roads with reserve supplies of petrol and tools for
possible breakdowns. As the drivers left Larne with their clandestine
cargo two local ships were located with guns for Belfast and Donaghadee
and soon the Co.Down coast where a further, smaller consignment of guns
and ammunition was unloaded. By 7.30, the last cars were leaving Bangor
Pier with their cargo and at Donaghadee and Belfast the guns had also
been quietly shipped ashore. The Clyde Valley gun-running operation had
been a success.
The
Gallant Clyde Valley
The
guns that had been shipped in were mainly German Mauser Austrian Mannlicher
rifles and the majority went to Belfast, Antrim and Down with some to
Derry and Tyrone. There were also several thousand Italian made Vetterli
guns which were distributed to Armagh, Fermanagh and Monaghan.
Unionists in Britain, particularly the Union Defence League and others
promoting the British Covenant, were impressed by the gun-running operation.
The success of the episode, despite all odds, was seen as a sign of Gods
hand guiding the Ulster Protestants. Men such as Crawford believed strongly
in the rightness of their cause :
‘I felt my responsibilities very heavily, but I believed that our
cause was just and I believed in God Almighty. We were going to defend
our faith and Liberty”. It was with this sense of achievement that
the men of the UVF were to enter the British army and eventually, the
gun and shell fire of the Somme. They had had the verdict of military
men that they could compare with any army in Europe, in their organisation
and strategy, and now hey had ‘evidence’ that God was on their
side.
Gun
Runners
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