Beyond The Sea

by Jack Lynch

  It was a difficult spot to attract attention so they shouted with all their might but to no avail. Rocky Island had been used by the British as an ammunition storage depot during their occupation and had long since been abandoned. There was no one around and it was far from the mainland so their shouts weren’t heard. Suddenly someone had a brainwave. One of the boys took off his shirt, doused it with siphoned petrol from the engine, attached it to an oar and set it alight. This torch was then waved backwards and forwards in a bid to catch the attention of someone. Fortunately for them, the Spike launch was on its way back to Spike from Cobh and diverted from its course to check on the flames seen by the crew. They picked up the lads, who were now very frightened but relieved, and took them to the guards who questioned them about what had happened. They got a stern warning about going into unknown waters and were eventually let go. The story appeared in the Cork Examiner and the boys felt like heroes but the parents were not too happy. However the boys thought long and hard, before they went boating again.

  Boys being boys, we were always looking out for adventure and when daddy bought me a Daisy Air gun I was thrilled. This gun was not powerful, but gave me the desire to get a stronger one later. I did in fact buy two more as I grew up and during the Emergency I shot many pigeons, both wild and urban types, which helped supplement the dinner table when food was scarce. I used to cycle to Cork with the pigeons on the handlebars and sell them for six pence each. Joe Murphy later bought the gun from me and he asked me to mind it for him, as his mother would not allow him to take into the home with him. I did so and Joe soon forgot I had the gun, which I then resold him about a year after! Later, I progressed to .22 rifles. Just after the war, Italian .22 bullets became available. The Italian bullets were a washout. Some just fell out the gun barrel when fired and there were a lot of duds. Remington bullets were available before the war and they were excellent. Daddy stocked up some of these bullets, which again helped fill the table with rabbits, and other wild fowl. I used to cycle to Midleton where there was a hardware shop, and I used to buy the bullets there. I was never asked for a licence, or even asked what my age was. Daddy and I used to go to the country and I got lots of shooting experience. Once when daddy and I were outside Midleton searching for rabbits we decided to get some target practice in. He spotted a white tin, close to a bush, about one hundred and fifty yards from the ditch in a field. Daddy rested on the ditch and took aim. He squeezed the trigger and the can went spinning away from the bush. Just then, there was a loud yell and a farmer got up from behind the bush, pulling up his trousers as he ran like hell. So did we! The poor man was having a quiet visit to the loo! We got into our Baby Ford and did not return to that area for a long time.

  I was now in my teens and feeling confident after gaining experience in working and earning some money to contribute to the family and also for myself. I had proved that I could stand up for myself and should now consider my future. Much as I wanted to, I felt I could not just hang around and do nothing useful. There was no work available so I started to consider the possibility of emigrating. Fate was about to take a big part in my future.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was just as the Emergency was coming to an end that I decided that I wanted to go to sea. My brother Anthony had joined the Royal Navy and my sister Eileen was in the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) in the British army, and she was stationed in Lisburn Northern Ireland so I had heard lots of exciting stories about what life in the forces was like. When Eileen was home on leave she smoked in front of daddy and we all thought this was so brave. On one occasion, she did not have a match to light her cigarette so she asked me to get a light for her and in return she gave me a cigarette. I went up to daddy and asked him to light the cigarette for Eileen.

  “You light it” he said.

  “But I don’t smoke.” I lied.

  “Put that cigarette in your mouth and light it, as you have been doing for some time.” he retorted. I don’t know how long he had known of my habit but after that he gave me the occasional cigarette and I used to give him one, when I had them.

  I began to seriously think of my life at this point. I’d spent many happy years growing in this beautiful seaside town, watching transatlantic liners visiting the port, studying the tall ships, which called into Cobh and generally witnessing so much of marine and naval life. I went to see these wonderful ships and boats at close range and listened to many stories, which the local salts and other seamen related about their experiences in foreign countries. The British Navy utilized the harbour in Cobh to its full extent, various types of warships had been anchored in the harbour and tied up at Haulbowline during peacetime days and so I had a fairly good idea of what I could expect.

  It was strange that both my brother Anthony and I decided to go to sea and yet none of our known ancestors or relatives had ever done so before. After a short time considering my few options, I decided to give it a go and become a Radio Officer. It came as no surprise to my family when I decided to study and achieve my ambition.

  Around November 1944 a friend of mine, who was a Radio Officer in the Merchant Navy, convinced me to take up the course. His name was Dudley Balburnie but we all knew him as Bal. He worked with the Blue Funnel Shipping Company and was on leave and back in Cobh for a couple of weeks. One day he came up Harbour Row, in full uniform, and everyone passing smiled with pride and pleasure at him. He looked very smart. He wore a navy overcoat with gold braid, a peak cap with the Merchant Navy badge, kid gloves, and full uniform underneath. I was envious! He told me he had qualified from The Radio Telegraph Institute in Tivoli, Cork and that the course and examinations were not too difficult. I was convinced that this was for me but I had to wait a few months for the course to start.

  During this time, while Bal was at sea, another Cobh lad called Sean Carr, from the Mall, whom I also knew, was also at sea as a Special Radio Operator. Some lads had gone off to sea with the Marconi Company and were only qualified at sending and receiving Morse code. They had no electronic experience but due to the urgent need for ships to have some form of communication these Special Operators were allocated as a stopgap measure, until fully qualified Radio Officers became available. Also, it was mandatory to have them during the war. Later, these Operators had to come ashore, to sit the full examination.

  I met Sean Carr at the Radio Telegraph Institute when I started in March 1945. He was studying for his full certificate. He used to relate stories about his trips at sea, with particular emphasis on The Rio Tinto, in South America. He loved talking about this and usually put on a South American Latin accent when telling these stories. Every day I cycled from home to Tivoli to attend classes. It did not matter if it was summer or winter, except that if it was exceptionally bad weather I got the train to Cork and a bus to the Radio Telegraph Institute. This was about fourteen miles each way and kept me more than fit in those days.

  The Principal and owner of the Institute was P.J. O’Regan. He was very droll, and an excellent teacher who never seemed to lose his cool.

  But before I set off to sea I was determined to find a girl and so it was that during one of my expeditions to the Railway station with the boys on a glorious sunny Sunday that I met true love. Dan, Mick and I were sitting on the wall awaiting the train when we spotted four girls walking and pushing bikes, as they came up from the Lower Road. Without hesitation we followed the girls and tried to chat them up. Eventually we broke down their token resistance and found out their names. Molly Kiely was the youngest, Eileen was her elder sister, Kathleen was their cousin, and they had a friend with them called Mary. Dan immediately moved in on Eileen, and Mick tried for Kathleen. From the very start Molly and I kept looking at each other and smiling. I remember Molly wore a light summer dress and had ankle socks on. Her hair was strawberry blonde and she had freckles across the bridge of her nose. She was slightly built and had a beautiful smile, and glistening blues eyes that twinkled. We struck it off immediately and she told me she was sixtee
n years old. I believed her at first, only to find out years later she was in fact only fourteen years old!

  On the first day we met, I found out the reason the girls were walking with the bicycles was because Molly’s bicycle wheel was punctured. She jokingly said I had done it to get talking to them. I asked her how I could have done it when they walked into my life with the bike already punctured but offered to fix it for her. Together, we all walked to the Baths Quay near my home and from there Molly and I went up to my house to get my puncture repair kit. We returned to the Baths, where I fixed the puncture and earned my brownie points. Whilst we were up at the house, daddy saw Molly and from that day forward always referred to her as ‘Freckles.’

  When the puncture was repaired we all went for a walk out the Water’s Edge to Whitepoint. This was our favourite place whenever we had a courting session going on. I remember we formed into our own pairs, except for Mary who had nobody to hold her hand as there were only three of us boys. Molly and I found a little hideaway and held hands for a while, before I put my arm around her slim waist. She did not object so after a further while longer I put my cheek to her cheek. As we sat on the rocks looking out at sea we watched the cattle boat s.s Kenmare pass in front of us - very Romantic! We then got up and moved towards a little crevice in the side of the strand that was more private, where I kissed Molly for the first time. She had to stand on her tiptoes, ankle socks and all. At first she did not know how to respond, and later she told me I was the first boy that kissed her. Reluctantly we parted and the girls got on their bikes and headed back to the ferry at Rushbrooke to return home. I went back to my house well and truly smitten.

  Molly was attending St. Angela’s school in Cork City and I cycled each day to the institute for my Radio Officer training. This gave us plenty of time to meet after school. We went for walks to Fitzgerald Park, along the Mardyke and in Cork City we regularly went to the Savoy and Pavilion cinemas. This was lovely in the summer. Sometimes we had tiffs and Molly and I went our own ways. We were both strong willed and neither wanted to give in. Molly was a Leo and I am a Pisces.

  On one occasion, when we were coming back from Fitzgerald Park it started to rain. Molly had only a flimsy summer frock on her and soon this was clinging to her body, her golden hair was dangling around her face. She looked a pathetic sight. We headed for shelter in St. Mary’s Church, on the Quays, but the rain continued to come down. Molly asked me to take her on the bus home instead so she wouldn’t have to walk. However, in my pocket I only had six pence which belonged to my father. Even at eighteen years old, I would not spend it without permission. I pretended to run for a bus a couple of times and made sure I did not catch it, even though I got wetter with each attempt. In the end Molly got fed up, and walked ahead of me, in the downpour, back to her house. She went inside and closed the door. All I saw as the door closed were the blue eyes, freezing me out. Not a word was spoken then or for about a week after. Then one day, whilst I was at the Radio Telegraph Institute, the owner told me there was a phone call for me. I picked up the phone and I heard giggling from the other end. The conversation went something like this;

  “Hello, who is calling?” I enquired.

  Female voice; “Are you interested in Molly Kiely?”

  “Who is this?” I asked, “And what business is it of yours”

  Female voice; “I am a friend of hers and she asked me to ask you, if you are still interested in her.”

  “Please put Molly on the phone,” I requested.

  She replied that Molly was not there with her.

  “I can hear her in the background” I said, and when there was no response I asked the girl not to ring me again at the Institute and I hung up. For ages Molly denied she was there but finally admitted that she was and was sorry for not answering when I asked her to do so. This tiff ended when Molly’s twin brother Paddy came to Cobh for a day of fishing. He handed me a crumpled piece of paper, he was grinning and said Molly had asked him to give the note to me. Still grinning, and with a knowing look in his eyes, Paddy asked me if there was any reply. “I don’t know what was in the note,” he said, but I knew damn well he had read it many times between Cork and Cobh. Paddy was the salt of the earth. I was very fond of him and he carried many more messages between Molly and me over the years. Molly and I patched up our differences, but had more tiffs from time to time. We saw each other on occasions, separated and led our own lives, meeting new friends, but always having time for each other and coming back together.

  After nine months study I nervously sat the Radio Officer examination. At the Morse test, a friend and fellow student of mine, named Maurice Cronin, was sitting next to me. The test started and half way through it, my pencil flew upwards out of my fingers, did a summersault, and landed right between my fingers again. Somehow I kept taking and writing the Morse and eventually finished and handed up my paper. Maurice told me that when he saw the pencil go up in the air he froze, and could not continue taking Morse and lost his place in it entirely. He failed the examination. Like all the other students I had to do the practical, written and oral tests and then wait, and pray, that I would pass. I felt awful about Maurice and I don’t know whether he ever went on and qualified.

  A month later, I was down in the Deepwater Quay with Dan Hunt and we were looking around out the Harbour. I had no thoughts of the examination when Willie Casserly, and his brother Paddy, who were both Radio Telegraph students came up to me and said; “Congratulations Lynch, you’ve passed the examination!”

  I was flabbergasted, my stomach had butterflies flying inside it and I kept asking if they were serious. I had forgotten that the results were due out. I didn’t believe them and got the next train to Cork where P.J. O’Regan confirmed that I had passed.

  Eventually the big day arrived for me to be awarded my certificate. I was now guaranteed a position as a Radio Officer with The Marconi Marine Communication Company in Chelmsford, England. My name, along with the names of the other successful students, was forwarded to this company and we now had to sit and wait to be called up.

  I asked P.J. “Why our certificates black and all previous certificates are were either maroon or blue?”

  He looked me straight in the eye and said, without a smile or flicker of the steely blue eyes; “Mr. Lynch, I presume that the certificate is in mourning because of the low standard of education this year.” I could only laugh at his droll reply.

  Now, I was a fully qualified Radio Officer, licensed to go to sea in the Merchant Navy or to be attached to Coastal Radio Stations when I got the relevant sea going experience. I never intended to try for Coastal Stations.

  Whilst I awaited a call from Marconi, I carried on as normal in Cobh. Dan and I were still enjoying each other’s company and we carried on as any teenagers did in those days.

  As the Emergency was coming to an end lots of things were slowly changing in Cobh. Liners began to return. Some rations were being lifted and we were all getting much nicer food. The first slice of white bread I tasted and loved after the Emergency I got from an American liner in the Harbour. It was like nothing I ever tasted before. It was pure white and light as a feather. The taste was out of this world. It melted in the mouth. I could have eaten a loaf of it. We got this by rowing out in a leaking punt to the liner at the mouth of the Harbour. We had to continuously bail out the water, which was leaking into the old punt. Anyway, some of the crew threw this delicious bread to us, along with some chocolates. Some liners were useless for giving anything to us and sometimes turned the hose on us, at the request of the local customs officer. We soon got to know which liners were most generous, and which of the customs officers to avoid.

  Once, we went out to a liner and were looking up and waving at the passengers when we spotted a couple of lovely girls standing at the rail, near three nuns. We started talking amongst ourselves in Irish, about how lovely the girls were and that we would not mind having a date with them, or something like that. The next thing we knew was that
the nuns started to give out yards back to us in Irish for our disrespectful conversations, telling us we should be ashamed of ourselves. Nobody ever rowed away as fast as we did. If it had been the Regatta race, we would have won hands down. We travelled quite a distance before we thought of baling the water which was building up in the punt. Our trouser’ legs were soaking by the time we got ashore.

  On another trip, we were a bit late coming in from the liner and there was a strong breeze blowing. It was difficult to row against the ebbing tide so we decided to try and ‘sail’ in. I had daddy’s raincoat with me so using that as a mock sail we hoisted one oar to use as a mast, and the second was used as a rudder. The coat ballooned out with the wind and we took off at a rate of knots, cutting straight across the channel. We arrived safely and disembarked, thrilled with our ingenuity. It was very thrilling and exciting, and we felt invincible. Daddy’s coat survived the ordeal too.

  An episode in a rowing punt that same year did not go as smoothly. A local lad, Gerard Bransfield, and I took my sister Eileen and her friend Peggy O’Leary out in rough waters in a small leaky punt. Actually, nearly all the punts leaked so we never left shore without a few empty paint tins to bail the water out! With the tide full in we headed from the Bench, up past the Baths Quay. Gradually, the punt began to take in water and the two girls had to sit on bailing tins on the back seat. People on the quaysides were screaming at us to come in, but we carried on until we got as far as the Naval Pier. This was about a half mile from where we started and we had to return the same distance.

  We turned around and nearly capsized as we headed back. People kept calling on us to come into the camber, but defiantly we continued towards the Bench. One soldier had stripped off part of his uniform and was ready to dive into the sea and rescue us. He kept running along the Bath’s wall in line with us ready to jump in if he was needed. The Gardai now arrived on the Quay and watched as we slowly edged towards the Bench. All the time the girls were furiously bailing the water out of the punt and soaking from head to foot. Gerard and I were soaked, cold and very tired by this time. At last, in the darkness we reached the Bench, where a crowd of people were waiting and some had boats crewed and were ready to launch to rescue us. We were called all kinds of names for being so stupid. However, there was relief amongst them that we had made it safely back. None of the four of us was fazed. Even though none of us could swim we KNEW we were going to make it!