Others were about at this hour. From Dublin to Cork, Galway to Limerick. Some of them were the telegraph men themselves, who had worked their apparatus that very day. Before they shut down for the night they had sent queries about earlier messages they had received. Asked for repeats of some. Their work done they now took great pleasure in severing the wires. They knew the places where they could be cut so that no one would notice. Where telegraphers could not be drafted for this duty, men simply climbed the poles and trees, severed the wires and rolled up yards of them. They worked fast: they knew what had to be done. By half twelve all of the electrical communication in Ireland was gone. Messages could be neither sent nor received in all the length and breadth of the island. With the underwater cable to Port Logan in Scotland cut as well — the island of Ireland was isolated.
No one in the great fleet expected to reach Ireland without being detected. Just west of the Blasket Islands, off the Munster coast, the British revenue cutter Wasp blundered into the outer screen of fast ironclads. Her captain had seen their smoke for some time, but never for an instant did he imagine they could be anything but British. Only when one of the warships turned in his direction did he think differently. He turned back towards land, but it was far too late. A shot across his bow, the sight of the stars and stripes — plus the menace of the big guns, brought him to a halt, rolling, dead in the water. The cutter was quickly boarded and captured. With her crew locked below and under guard, the warship turned and hurried after the attacking fleet, Wasp following slowly in her wake.
In mid-afternoon the attacking fleet of ships had begun to separate, forming three separate attacking forces. The first of these slowed their engines, just out of sight of Kerry Head and the mouth of the Shannon River, while the other two hurried north.
By dusk the second invading fleet had reached its destination. Just over the horizon was the Clare coast where they would be landing at dawn. The third fleet had been out of sight for hours, for they had to round Ireland to the north to reach their objective of Lough Foyle.
Ireland’s three main cities all lay on the east coast. Belfast in the north, almost within sight of Scotland, which was just across the North Channel of the Irish Sea. Dublin i
n the center across the Irish Sea from Wales. And Cork, in the south, across the Celtic sea from Wales. This was the settled and populated east coast of the island.
But the wild west coast of the country was the most beautiful — and most empty. It was hard to scratch a living from the flinty soil, or take fish in the stormy sea. With the major cities all in the east that would certainly have appeared to be the place to launch an invasion.
But General William Tecumseh Sherman and General Robert E. Lee were never ones to take the easy and obvious way. In the past, during the war, they had moved armies by train, kept them supplied by train. They had used railroads to wage war in a manner never seen before. So when they had looked at the map of Ireland and had seen a wonderful modern network of rail — it appeared to have been designed for their military needs.
From Portrush on the north coast it was only sixty miles by rail to Belfast. It was much the same distance in the south from Limerick to Cork.
While in the center of the country the Midland Great Western Railway ran straight from Galway to Kingsbridge Station in Dublin. A few ancient Martello towers on Galway Bay, built when there was great fear of a French invasion, were all that stood in the way of American troops coming from the sea.
There would be three striking forces: three fighting generals. Dublin was the capital of Ireland so it seemed predestined that General Sherman would land with his troops in Galway, to strike east and take that city. With Grant still fighting the British in Mexico a man of his caliber had been chosen to attack in the south from Limerick to Cork. This was General Thomas J. Jackson, the Stonewall Jackson who won battles. To General Lee fell the shortest, and possibly the easiest, invasion route from Portrush to Belfast. But it might prove to be the hardest because the invaders would be striking through the Protestant loyalist heartland. These hard men would not welcome the Americans, as would the Catholic Irish in the south. Ulster was a question mark, which is why Lee had volunteered to lead the invasion there. A superb tactician, he could maneuver entire armies, first one way then the other. If there was to be stiffened resistance and rapid alteration of plans he was the man to match the occasion.
Overall it was a subtle invasion plan that would, hopefully, be simple enough to lead to victory. Three lightning strikes to seize the country by land.
But what of the massive sea power of the American fleet? What would be their role in this new kind of warfare?
Firstly, they had to see that the transports were safely sailed across the ocean. Once this had been accomplished their role had changed. Now they were blockaders — and floating batteries. The plan of attack that Sherman and Lee had developed could not be slowed down by unloading and moving artillery. Speed must be substituted for heavy guns. The Gatling guns would take their place in the landings and attacks in the west because they could attack alongside the infantry. Speed and overwhelming odds would, hopefully, assure victory there. But what would happen when the fast-moving attackers ran up against strongly held positions held by infantry backed by artillery? Plans had been made for this possibility. Now it would be seen if the new kind of battle could be won.
Engines were banked in the second fleet, while the signal flags called selected ships with orders. At sunset a dozen ships, both war craft and troop carriers, headed east for the Irish coast.
At the same time Patrick Riordan was pushing his boat into the waters of Galway Bay. Barna was a small fishing village, no more than five miles west from Galway city. Yet it was so rural that it could have been five hundred miles away. A mere dozen houses clustered around a single dirt track that meandered offacross the fields. Patrick Riordan’s brother, Dominick, brought out an armful of lobster pots and dumped them into the boat, climbed after them in silence.
“I guess it’s about time,” Patrick said.
Dominick looked at the dark clouds banked up on the western horizon and nodded. He used the steering oar to push them out, sculling them forward with it while his brother raised sail on the single mast; it billowed out in the light wind. Blowing, as it almost always did, from the west. They tacked in silence across the bay.
“You have the lanterns?” Patrick asked. Dominick touched the bag with his toe.
“And it is the right day?”
“Paddy, you know all these things without asking about them over and over. We went to mass this morning, which means that it is a Sunday. The eighth day of October, the day we’ve been planning for all these long months. Sean told us that — and you have to believe your own cousin. And he gave us the money to buy the lamps and all. This is the right day, all right, and you should be jubilating.” He pushed the steering oar hard over and they ducked their heads as the boom came about as they tacked in the opposite direction.
Dusk turned to night, a starless night as the clouds rolled in from the ocean. Neither of the brothers took much notice as they tacked again. A lifetime fishing these waters had stamped every part of them into their souls. The hills of The Burren to starboard were an even darker mass against the cloudy sky. On the next tack they were just aware of clearing Finvarra Point; the waves foaming on the rocks there barely visible. When they reached the mouth of the bay, and the Aran Islands, it was close to midnight. Lights in the occasional farmhouse moved by as they aimed for the outermost island and the sandy shore past the village of Oghil. Patrick jumped out and pulled the little boat grating up onto the sand: Dominick lowered the sail then dug out the bag with the lanterns.
“Should I light them?” he asked.
“Aye. It’s time.”
He lifted the chimney and fumbled out a lucifer from the waxpaper wrapping in his pocket, struck it on a metal fitting on the mast. It flared to life and the lantern caught. He blew the match out and adjusted the wick. Relit the match from this to light the second lantern. As they had been instructed, the lanterns were hung one above the other from the mast.
After securing the rope from the bow to the stump of a tree ashore, Patrick dug the stone crock out from under the stern bench. Dominick joined him ashore. Took out the stopper and drank deep of the poteen. Patrick joined him, sighing with satisfaction.
“So now we wait,” he said.
No more than an hour had passed before they heard the distant throb of a steam engine from the darkness of Galway Bay. The sound stopped and they stood, trying to peer into the inky darkness.
“I hear something—”
“Oars — and a squeaking oarlock!”