The Infiltrators

On Good Friday 21st April 1916, six men set off from Dublin by train to Killarney, Charlie Monaghan, Donal Sheehan, Con Keating, Dennis Daly, Thomas McInerney, and Colm O’Lochlainn. According to the memoirs of Gerry Plunkett, they were to travel by car to Cahirciveen in order to seize control of the wireless station on Valentia Island. From there, the plan was that they would signal to the British Navy that a German naval attack was imminent on the Scottish coast. The purpose of this would be to distract the British naval presence from the Kerry coast , thus facilitating the landing of 2000 German rifles and 10 machine guns at Banna Strand from the U-boat ‘The Aud’. On board the Aud were a small group of Irish Republican’s led by Sir Roger Casement. They were then to liase with Austin Stack in Tralee, so as to ensure that the weaponry was distributed throughout the country to coincide with the Easter Rising in Dublin on Easter Sunday. The men travelling to Kerry from Dublin had each been selected for their particular expertise, Keating originally from Cahirciveen was a radio expert and had been a radio officer on a number of ships. Monaghan was a mechanic and a wireless installation expert, Sheehan had worked at the War Office and knew the Admiralty codes.

 

However, the mission ended in tragedy and failure in what is believed to be one of the first tragedies of the Easter Rising,  radio operator Con Keating, of Renard, Cahersiveen, along with Charles Monahan from Belfast and Donal Sheehan from Newcastlewest, drowned when their car took a wrong turning and went off a treacherous pier at Ballykissane near Killorglin, on the night of April 20, hours before Roger Casement was being brought ashore at Banna Strand just miles away.