Thursday 19 May 2011

Gun Running - Donaghadee 1914

Thanks to Jack Greenald for this important information.

If you recall I mentioned in a recent post that my Orange Lodge - Loughries True Blues LOL 1948, are planning a new banner for 2012. Well, 2012 is the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Ulster Covenant and we (the Lodge) have decided to commerate the event with a new Orange Banner.

I was inspired by a well known local politician who made a wonderful rousing speech at the Newtownards Orange Twelfth in 2010 - here he (I will name this man later) referred to the signing of the Ulster Covenant as 'The Birth Certificate of Northern Ireland'.

I later put this idea to members of Loughries Lodge Banner Committee, this was agreed, then we set about researching the content of the banner, to make sure that every item that is put on the banner is historically correct. Now, I don't want to give away too much, as I would like to keep the design under wraps until it is unveiled, but I can say there were a number of significant events that happend in Ulster History around 1912, and ensuing years.

With the help of Jack, it has been established that the gun running in Donaghadee took place on the 25th April 1914 and the Innismurray was the boat that delivered the guns into Donaghadee Harbour, having met with the Clyde Valley at Larne Harbour, earlier in the evening.

The landing of the guns was overseen by Unionist Leader James Craig (he can be seen in photo 2) with the guns loaded onto waiting vehicles by men - local members of the UVF, who distrubuted the weapons to towns and villages throughout the Newtownards area.


More Later!

HMA

1 comment:

  1. Good afternoon,

    My name’s Matthew Harris, I’m a researcher on the BBC Series, ‘Coast’. We’re doing a piece on the gun running at Larne and we'd love to use the images you've used in this post. Do you know where it is from and who might hold the copyright to it?

    Thank you for your time,

    Kind regards

    ReplyDelete