William Molloy and the Arandora Star Tragedy

By Danny Grace

Few people probably realise that a man who spent his later years living at No 29 Yewston, Nenagh, was involved in one of the greatest sea disasters of the Second World War.

William (Willie) Molloy was born in Wexford Town in January 1915 into a family with a long sea-faring tradition. After leaving school he served his mechanical apprenticeship with Boggan’s Engineering in Wexford. The scarcity of jobs in Ireland and the lure of the sea led him to join the British merchant navy in the late 1930s. He was appointed second engineer on the Blue Star Line’s cruise liner, the Arandora Star. One of the attractions of the ship, Willie always maintained, was the quality of the food on board.

RESCUE MISSIONS

The 15,500-ton Arandora was built in 1926 by Cammell Laird of Birkenhead as an ocean liner and refrigerated cargo vessel. But in 1929 she was refitted in Glasgow as a luxury cruise liner – complete with tennis court and swimming pool – at a cost of £200,000 and renamed the Arandora Star. During the next decade she made cruises to various parts of the world, clocking up an average of 85,000 miles each year.

When World War Two broke out in 1939 the British Admiralty requisitioned the Arandora Star as a troop carrier. During the first three months of 1940 she was used to test an anti-torpedo system consisting of underwater wire mesh suspended from booms on either side of the ship. Unfortunately, the system was then removed – had it been left in place, the subsequent fate of the Arandora Star might have been different.

Willie Molloy recalled that during the early summer of 1940 they made several difficult and dangerous voyages to the Continent to rescue stranded troops and other evacuees after the Nazis overran much of Western Europe. They sailed to Norway at the end of May and evacuated 1,600 British and Polish troops. Two weeks later they were sent to Brest in France where they were strafed by the German Luftwaffe and only escaped with the help of covering fire from a British destroyer. They made several other rescue missions to France and Northern Spain during that summer, including one to pick up a single passenger. But Willie said they were never told the man’s identity.

TORPEDO STRIKE

In 1940 the fear of a German invasion gripped Britain. A panic-stricken government ordered the round-up and internment of all Austrian, German and Italian men between the ages of 16 and 70 living in Britain. The fear was they would act as “fifth columnists” and assist a German invasion. It was decided to send the internees across the sea to Canada, and the Arandora Star was commissioned to ferry the first batch.

The ship left Liverpool for St John’s, Newfoundland, on July 1, 1940 with a total of 1,672 people on board. There were 734 Italian and 479 German internees, together with 86 German prisoners-of-war. They were guarded by 200 British soldiers. The ship’s crew comprised 174 officers and men under the command of Captain Edgar Moulton. The vessel carried no Red Cross markings to indicate there were civilians on board; nor did she have a naval escort even though she would have to pass through a stretch of water notorious for German submarine activity.

At 6.15am on the morning of July 2 the Arandora Star was ploughing her way steadily through the Atlantic about 75 miles north-west of Donegal when suddenly, without warning, there was a massive explosion that brought her to a shuddering halt in the water. She had been struck on the starboard side by a torpedo fired from a German U-boat – the U-47 – commanded by Captain Gunther Prien. The ship was badly holed, the engine room and its crew were destroyed, and water was flooding in. The lighting system was put out of action, glass and debris were strewn everywhere, and ruptured pipes were spewing out noxious fumes.

The internees and prisoners – who were confined below deck – were mostly asleep at the time of the explosion. What followed next was described by one survivor as “indescribable chaos”. In the mad scramble to reach the lifeboats – too few in numbers – people were punching, kicking and trampling on each other. Many of the elderly Italians were injured in the stampede, people who had spent a lifetime in Britain and had no sympathy with either Hitler or Mussolini.

MOLLOY'S ESCAPE

Willie Molloy was waiting for the steward to bring him his tea before going on watch when he heard and felt the terrific crash. He clearly recalled the gagging taste of cordite that permeated the entire ship. Running out on deck, he found the ship was already listing badly. The crew and soldiers were trying to bring some semblance of order to the frantic, milling crowd but it was proving nigh impossible. Willie helped launch the lifeboats and as the last one was being lowered into the water an officer ordered, “Keep a seat for Paddy” (meaning Willie). But in the confusion the lifeboat pulled away without him.

When the order came to abandon ship Willie dived into the sea. As his son Kevin put it, “he may have only been 5 feet, 6 inches tall, but he was as strong as an ox and a powerful swimmer”. He instinctively knew he had to get as far as possible from the sinking vessel or else he would be sucked down with her. He found himself swimming against the current and making little progress, so with the aid of a hawser he manoeuvred his way around to the other side of the ship and swam frantically away. Luckily for him, he was pulled from the water by two other survivors on a life-raft. All three later found a place in one of the lifeboats.

Willie told his grandson Michael that forever etched on his mind was the terrible sight and sound of the doomed passengers clinging hopelessly to the rails and frantically crying out for their loved ones as the Arandora Star reared up and plunged headlong beneath the waves, taking 805 people to their deaths. Captain Moulton and 54 of his crew went down with her, together with 37 of the military guard.

There were nine Irishmen among the crew, four of whom lost their lives. But the greatest number of fatalities were from among the internees: 243 Germans and 470 Italians went down with the ship that fateful summer’s morning.

RESCUING THE SURVIVORS

Before the ship sank it managed to send out distress signals that were picked up by the Malin Head coastguard. They in turn relayed them to the British authorities. After more than two hours bobbing about on the water in lifeboats and on life-rafts – luckily the sea was relatively calm that morning – the survivors spied a British Coastal Command flying boat circling overhead. It dropped watertight packages of fruit, food and cigarettes, and a message that help was on the way. Five hours later a Canadian destroyer, the St Laurent, arrived on the scene and commenced picking up the survivors – a very difficult task.

They were taken to Greenock in Scotland and given food, clothing and shelter.

Several British newspapers – eager to play their part in the propaganda war – squarely laid the blame for the heavy loss of life on the cowardly and selfish behaviour of the “aliens” in contrast to the manly and plucky behaviour of the British soldiers and sailors who were on board. The government – under parliamentary pressure – appointed Lord Snell to draw up a report on the tragedy. It was a whitewash that – conveniently – absolved the British government of any responsibility for the disaster.

HOME TO IRELAND

Willie Molloy returned home to Wexford after the disaster. One would have thought he would now have his fill of the sea after such a close shave with death. But not a bit of it. He was back working on another Blue Star Line ship within weeks and continued in the company’s employment until 1947. Meanwhile he had met and married Mary (May) Feeney in Liverpool. May hailed from near Castlebar, Co Mayo, and had emigrated to Liverpool in 1936. During the war she worked in Rootes factory in Liverpool making parts for Lancaster bombers. The couple had three sons, William, Michael and Kevin.

Kevin Molloy – who spent ten years in the merchant navy – married Mary Flaherty, who was nursing in a Liverpool hospital. The couple returned to Ireland in 1969 and built a house on Mary’s family farm at Youghal near the village of Newtown. Willie and May Molloy came to Ireland in 1979 and settled at Yewston, Nenagh. Willie died in 1984, his wife May died in 1995. Both are buried in Garrykennedy graveyard overlooking the waters of Lough Derg – certainly waters less turbulent than those Willie experienced in his seafaring days.

My thanks to Kevin Molloy and his son Michael for sharing with me their reminiscences of their father and grandfather Willie.