RMS Leinster to be remembered this weekend

A WREATH will be laid at the anchor from RMS Leinster on the Queen’s Road, Dún Laoghaire beside the George IV Memorial at 9.30am on Saturday, October 10.

It is 102 years since the RMS Leinster was torpedoed off the Kish Bank with the loss of 569 of its complement of 813 souls.

This was and still is the greatest loss of Irish lives in a single incident and the greatest loss of life to this day on the Irish Sea.   It occurred just over a month before the Armistice which ended WW1 on November 11, 1918.

The anchor was donated by the late Des Brannigan, owner of RMS Leinster but it was always his wish and the wish of very many other people that the RMS Leinster would be commemorated by a memorial naming all those on board on its fateful last voyage.

Three have been moves to allocate a small site at the entrance to the Carlisle Pier, which is where the trains disembarked passengers joining Mail Boats from 1856 until the 1980s.

On October 11, a memorial to Thomas Joseph Woodgate, RAF (14)  will be unveiled in Kilkenny to commemorate the youngest Irish casualty of WW1.  He died on the RMS Leinster.