Jonathan Shackleton with the Seagull, which acted as a patrol vessel off the Cork coast during the first World War. The motor yacht is still in great shape and is believed to be the oldest surviving wooden boat on the Shannon. Photograph: Paddy Whelan
Over 80 years later, conspiracy and cover-up theories still haunt the Cunard liner Lusitania, sunk by a German torpedo off the Cork coast with a loss of 1,195 civilian lives in May 1915. Mystery still surrounds the ship and maybe always will.
Following mention of the tragedy in this column last month Jonathan Shackleton, of Lakeview House, Mullagh, Co Cavan, got in touch about his family's connection with the disaster. Dated 11/5/1915, a letter was sent from west Cork by a certain Mr Cope to his father, a station master on the Great Western Railway in Wolverhampton. Cope the younger was on board the Seagull, a 42-foot, six-berth, 15-tonne motor yacht owned by the Shackleton family, which had been lent to the British Admiralty in September 1914 by John Shackleton of Lucan, Co Dublin, grandfather of Jonathan. Young Cope may even have been commanding the vessel at the time he wrote the letter .
"In September 1914, my grandfather lent it to the British Admiralty," says Jonathan Shackleton. "He and a Royal Navy volunteer reserve crew of four travelled from Athlone to Killaloe where he left them, with a good deal of anxiety about their ability to handle a smart, new 15-tonne motor yacht. The crew took the Seagull to Baltimore on the Cork coast from where she acted as a patrol vessel. She was painted and given the number 47," Jonathan adds.
Writing to his father, young Cope said: "We played a very active role in the last murder [this word was underlined by Cope] and the papers have got hold of some sort of a report thereof (I enclose a cutting from the Cork Examiner which leaves one with a very vague impression).
Here is a true report of what happened. We had been chasing an elusive submarine for several days without getting as much as a glimpse of the bounder, in spite of being hot on his track. On Friday morning, about 9.55 a.m, I was struck by the odd position of a rock which I failed to notice when round about that particular quarter before. I looked at the chart and found that no rock was marked thereon. This was interesting when one comes to consider that three armed trawlers had passed the point some half an hour before and had only just then disappeared from view into a thick bank of fog. So we proceeded to investigate. We were not surprised to find our `jolly roger' looking as innocent as a new-born babe.
On sighting us, about two to three miles off, they made for us, full top speed. They were greeted with a shot or two from my rifle which must have had the effect of making them smile, so futile was it. From this on, matters became exciting (see newspaper cutting). They had the legs of us by some eight or nine knots (nearly twice our speed) but our handy little boat was able to hold her own. She can spin round like a teetotum in a fit."
They succeeded, wrote Cope, in keeping the German vessel under observation for 20 minutes to half an hour. Then "she gave up on us as a bad job and went under. Then, the engine of our little packet behaved itself in the most patriotic manner (like its owners).
Going full speed, we got into Baltimore at 11.15 a.m. and by 12 noon, all the signal stations and naval centres around the south of Ireland had the news and details of position, etc," Cope wrote.
The newspaper cutting to which Cope referred in the letter mentioned the Seagull and the fact that it had been pursued by a U-boat around this time in those waters but didn't have the graphic details supplied by the writer to his father.
Was the U-boat that Cope and his crew encountered the one that went on to sink the Lusitania or was there another German Uboat in the area at that time? Keen researchers like Paddy O'Sullivan, author of the most recent book on the disaster, who have spent years on the Lusitania's records, are excited about the contents of the Cope letter, which is new material for them.
The Seagull was built by Percy See in Fareham, Hampshire, in 1911 for John Shackleton. The boat was kept on the Shannon at Athlone until 1951 and since then has been on Coosan Lake near Athlone. Jonathan Shackleton and his family had a memorable holiday this year travelling up on the Seagull to Lough Erne. "Historically, apart from this incident, it is unusual that the boat is still in very good shape and still in the ownership of the same family - now owned by my uncle Dick Shackleton and myself." In his letter Cope also adds fuel to the theory that the British Admiralty, then under Winston Churchill, allowed the Lusitania to meet its fate without protection so as to draw America into the war. Cope had warned all and sundry about the U-boat's presence.
"I cannot now understand the Lusitania's behaviour, for she must have received this news when she was still some 10 or 20 miles away from the point of coast she would first sight," he commented at the time.
All these decades later, the questions remain.