Ireland
The HMS Argenta, during the 1920s, was a vessel used as a military base and prison ship for the holding of Irish Republicans by the British government as part of their internment strategy.
By February 1923, under the 1922 Special Powers Act the British were detaining 263 men on the Argenta, which was moored in Belfast Lough. This was supplemented with internment at other land based sites such as Larne workhouse, Belfast Prison and Derry Gaol. Together, both the ship and the workhouse alone held 542 men without trial at the highest internment population level during June 1923.
Conditions on the prison ship Argenta were "unbelievable" says author Denise Kleinrichert who penned the hidden history of the 1920s' floating gulag.
Cloistered below decks in cages which held 50 internees, the prisoners were forced to use broken toilets which overflowed frequently into their communal area. Deprived of tables, the already weakened men ate off the floor, frequently succumbing to disease and illness as a result.
Courtesy of author Denise Kleinrichert's lobbying efforts, the files of all the internees — most of them named in an appendix to her book — are now available for viewing at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) (phone ++44-90-255825).
During World War II, known in Ireland as the "Emergency", "K-Lines" was the part of the Curragh Camp used as an internment camp. It was used to house German soldiers, mainly navy personnel stranded in neutral Ireland. A separate section was created for Allied military, mostly British soldiers, who entered Irish territory in violation of the neutrality policy. No.1 Internment camp, that had been built by the British pre-1922, held republicans who had a suspected link to the I.R.A.
Later in the war, Gormanston Camp, near Balbriggan, was used to house eleven Allied airmen from operational flights but in final eight were finally released in June 1944, however, in 1945, three Germans were kept there for a short period.
Read more about this topic: List Of Concentration And Internment Camps
Famous quotes containing the word ireland:
“Life springs from death and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.... They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools, they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”
—Patrick Henry Pearse (1879–1916)
“Out of Ireland have we come,
Great hatred, little room
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother’s womb
A fanatic’s heart.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The tragedy of Northern Ireland is that it is now a society in which the dead console the living.”
—Jack Holland (b. 1947)