Sir, - It does not appear from diary that the captain of the U19, Raimund Weissbach, waited in Tralee Bay for more than a few minutes for the Libau to appear, as Mr de Courcy Ireland suggests (January 26th). As the record indicates, it would have taken the period from 0010 to 0220 hours at least for him to reach the agreed rendezvous with the pilot boat off the Seven Hogs; find at once that "no vessel is to be seen"; decide that "the only possibility is to land [Casement] in the dinghy"; sail to Ballyheigue Bay; get the dinghy on deck, launch it, get "the three Irishmen" on board, decide not to use the motor, and see them on their way to Banna Strand. He then departed at full speed without any stops to the safety of the Atlantic.
The significance of this is that the priority was clearly to get Casement ashore, presumably so that he could reach Dublin as soon as possible, rather than to get involved with the Libau, to which there is no reference of any kind.
Mr de Courcy Ireland tells us that Kapitan Weissbach changed his surname in later life to Weisbach. I find this extremely curious and wish he had found the very moderate temerity to enquire why. I don't suppose the German practice of writing a double-S with a single character can have had anything to do with it.
Since he displays his qualifications by appending certain initials after his signature, I might as well (just this once) do likewise. - Yours, etc.,
Lt-Commander (A), DSC, MA, RN (Retd), Killegar, Co Leitrim.