The ST Leukos was an Irish

commercial trawler A fishing trawler is a commercial fishing vessel designed to operate fishing trawls. Trawling is a method of fishing that involves actively dragging or pulling a trawl through the water behind one or more trawlers. Trawls are fishing nets tha ...

that was sunk off the north coast of

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

by a German

U-boat U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare ro ...

on 9 March 1940. The vessel, which had been fishing in the company of

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English ...

trawlers, was attacked by the off

Tory Island Tory Island, or simply Tory (officially known by its Irish name ''Toraigh''),Toraigh/Tory Island
deck gun A deck gun is a type of naval artillery mounted on the deck of a submarine. Most submarine deck guns were open, with or without a shield; however, a few larger submarines placed these guns in a turret. The main deck gun was a dual-purpose ...

. All 11

crew A crew is a body or a class of people who work at a common activity, generally in a structured or hierarchical organization. A location in which a crew works is called a crewyard or a workyard. The word has nautical resonances: the tasks involved ...

members were lost. The reason for the attack has never been proved. As a

neutral country A neutral country is a state that is neutral towards belligerents in a specific war or holds itself as permanently neutral in all future conflicts (including avoiding entering into military alliances such as NATO, CSTO or the SCO). As a type ...

, all Irish

ship A ship is a large watercraft that travels the world's oceans and other sufficiently deep waterways, carrying cargo or passengers, or in support of specialized missions, such as defense, research, and fishing. Ships are generally distinguishe ...

s, including the Leukos, were unarmed and clearly marked. Several theories exist. First the ''Leukos'' had positioned herself between the fleeing British trawlers in the hope that the U-boat would respect Irish Neutrality. Second that she tried to ram the U-boat. This is the view taken by the Irish Seamen's Relatives Association which holds that the Leukos attempted to ram the U-38 as it threatened the British fishing fleet. They maintain that this selfless bravery should be acknowledged by the British government.

Death certificate A death certificate is either a legal document issued by a medical practitioner which states when a person died, or a document issued by a government civil registration office, that declares the date, location and cause of a person's death, as ...

s for the lost crew were not issued until 1986.

History

ST ''Leukos'' was built in

Aberdeen Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), ...

in 1914 by the John Duthie Torry Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. for the National Steam Fishing Company of Aberdeen. She was powered by a

coal-fired Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be ...

. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

she was requisitioned by the British Admiralty and used as a "

boom defence vessel A net laying ship, also known as a net layer, net tender, gate ship or boom defence vessel was a type of naval auxiliary ship. A net layer's primary function was to lay and maintain steel anti-torpedo or anti-submarine nets. Nets could be laid ...

"; that is: she maintained the

buoy A buoy () is a floating device that can have many purposes. It can be anchored (stationary) or allowed to drift with ocean currents. Types Navigational buoys * Race course marker buoys are used for buoy racing, the most prevalent form of ya ...

hawser Hawser () is a nautical term for a thick cable or rope used in mooring or towing a ship. A hawser passes through a hawsehole, also known as a cat hole, located on the hawse.The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, third edition ...

s and

netting In law, set-off or netting are legal techniques applied between persons or businesses with mutual rights and liabilities, replacing gross positions with net positions. It permits the rights to be used to discharge the liabilities where cross cla ...

of a boom defence. Initially she fished from Aberdeen. In 1920 she was sold to Tucker, Tippet and Company and continued fishing out of Aberdeen. On 27 February 1927 she was in a

collision In physics, a collision is any event in which two or more bodies exert forces on each other in a relatively short time. Although the most common use of the word ''collision'' refers to incidents in which two or more objects collide with great fo ...

with ST ''Thomas Bartlett''. Later that year she was sold to the Dublin Trawlers, Ice and Cold Storage Company with offices at 8 Cardiff Lane,

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 ...

. She was transferred to the Irish registry. She was based at Hanover Quay,

Ringsend Ringsend () is a Southside (Dublin), southside inner suburb of Dublin, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is located on the south bank of the River Liffey and east of the River Dodder, about two kilometres east of the city centre. It is the sou ...

, Dublin

Original Account

On 9 February 1940 the ''Leukos'' sailed from Hanover Quay under Captain James Potter Thomasson, from

Fleetwood Fleetwood is a coastal town in the Borough of Wyre in Lancashire, England, at the northwest corner of the Fylde. It had a population of 25,939 at the 2011 census. Fleetwood acquired its modern character in the 1830s, when the principal lando ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a Historic counties of England, historic county, Ceremonial County, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significa ...

. She called to

Troon Troon is a town in South Ayrshire, situated on the west coast of Ayrshire in Scotland, about north of Ayr and northwest of Glasgow Prestwick Airport. Troon has a port with freight services and a yacht marina. Up until January 2016, P&O opera ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to th ...

for coaling and then headed for ‘the bank’, a

fishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques ...

ground, north-west of Tory Island. She was scheduled to return to Dublin on 12 March 1940, but failed to return. On 21 March her empty lifeboat was found off Scarinish on the Island of

Tiree Tiree (; gd, Tiriodh, ) is the most westerly island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. The low-lying island, southwest of Coll, has an area of and a population of around 650. The land is highly fertile, and crofting, alongside tourism, and ...

in the Scottish

Inner Hebrides The Inner Hebrides (; Scottish Gaelic: ''Na h-Eileanan a-staigh'', "the inner isles") is an archipelago off the west coast of mainland Scotland, to the south east of the Outer Hebrides. Together these two island chains form the Hebrides, whic ...

. On 26 March,

Lloyd's of London Lloyd's of London, generally known simply as Lloyd's, is an insurance and reinsurance market located in London, England. Unlike most of its competitors in the industry, it is not an insurance company; rather, Lloyd's is a corporate body gove ...

declared the ''Leukos'' and her crew were presumed lost. This loss remained a mystery until 1986. There were theories: was she on a target list because of her previous role as a boom defence vessel; or was there a structural weakness caused by her collision with ST ''Thomas Bartlett''? The general assumption was that she struck a mine. Officially she was listed as ‘missing’. Further details were uncovered by Peter Mulvany, grand-nephew of Patricio McCarthy, one of those lost. They were published in the Spring 1987 edition of the Journal of the Maritime Institute of Ireland. His sources were former U-boat personnel and recently declassified

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as the a ...

resulting from

decryption In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can dec ...

of encrypted

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

radio communications, known as ‘

Ultra adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park ...

’. The other trawlers with the ''Leukos'' were: ''John Morris'' of Aberdeen, ''Alvis'' of Fleetwood, ''Pelagos'' of Fleetwood, ''Flying Admiral'' of Fleetwood, ''Seddock'' of Grimbsy; the ''Alvis'' and ''Pelagos'' were armed Trawlers each having a 3-pounder gun mounted aft. (''Seddock'' might have also been armed)

U-38

''Inverliffey''

On 11 September 1939, ''U-38'', on its first patrol, shelled and sunk the Irish-flagged

oil tanker An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk transport of oil or its products. There are two basic types of oil tankers: crude tankers and product tankers. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined c ...

''Inverliffey'' carrying 13,000 tons of gasolene. The blazing oil threatened to engulf the Inverliffey's lifeboats. At some risk to the ''U-38'', it towed the lifeboats away from the flames. They were later rescued by the American oil-tanker ''R.G. Stewart'', which transferred them to the American freighter SS ''City of Joliet'' and landed at Antwerp, Belgium. William Trowsdale, master of the ''Inverliffey'', had protested to the Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Liebe of the ''U-38'' that as a neutral Irish ship, his ship should not be attacked, but the German captain responded that, as the ship was carrying gasoline, a war material, for the British, she was a legitimate military target.

Éamon de Valera Éamon de Valera (, ; first registered as George de Valero; changed some time before 1901 to Edward de Valera; 14 October 1882 – 29 August 1975) was a prominent Irish statesman and political leader. He served several terms as head of governm ...

permitted Inver Tankers, the owners of the ''Inverliffey'', to transfer their seven tankers to the British registry at the outbreak of the war, therefore their continued flying of the Irish tricolour was questionable.

''Leukos''

The account of the sinking of the Leukos, as recorded in the ''U-38'' war diary, is curious. At 20:00 he surfaced

“After surfacing 6 steamers with lights on were sighted which apparently formed a guard line with north-south course. I decided to give one of them a lesson with our gun.”

He remained, surfaced, for over an hour. At 21:13

“fired one shot on one trawler at 200m distance. Hit engine room, steamer disappeared in smoke and dust.”

He wrote that the Leukos had not sunk!

“Later it was recognised that the steamer had not sunk as presumed before. Decided not to attack again”.

He also wrote that some other trawlers were unaware of the incident

“others seemed not to have noticed the gunfire.”

It is not known why the ''U-38'' sank a neutral Irish trawler, leaving the five British trawlers unmolested. Nor is it known why he waited an hour. In 1988 an effort was made to ask Kapitän Liebe. He declined to speak. He died in July 1997.

German spy

On its fifth patrol the ''U-38'' landed Walter Simon, alias "Karl Anderson", a Nazi agent, at

Dingle Dingle (Irish: ''An Daingean'' or ''Daingean Uí Chúis'', meaning "fort of Ó Cúis") is a town in County Kerry, Ireland. The only town on the Dingle Peninsula, it sits on the Atlantic coast, about southwest of Tralee and northwest of Killa ...

Bay in Ireland on the night of 12 June. Simon was an experienced spy. He had several successful trips to England. Not noticing grass overgrown on the rusting rail-tracks of the

Tralee and Dingle Light Railway __NOTOC__ The Tralee and Dingle Light Railway and Tramway was a , narrow gauge railway running between Tralee and Dingle, with a branch from Castlegregory Junction to Castlegregory, in County Kerry on the west coast of Ireland. It operated be ...

which had closed 14 months earlier, he asked "when is the next train?" He was later arrested.Enno, Stephan, "Spies in Ireland" (1965) Four Square

Notes

;Citations ;Bibliography * Irish Seamens' Relatives Associatio

* Wilson, Ian. ''Donegal Shipwrecks'' Impact Printing 1998 - {{DEFAULTSORT:Leukos Merchant ships of the Republic of Ireland Fishing vessels Ships built in Aberdeen Maritime incidents in March 1940 Maritime history of Ireland Ships sunk by German submarines in World War II World War II shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean Independent Ireland in World War II Shipwrecks of Ireland Ships lost with all hands Merchant ships of Ireland Fishing in Ireland