German sailors owed their lives to my grandfather and the heroic crew of the MV Kerlogue

They were on board the MV Kerlogue—a 142ft coaster owned by Staffords Shipping Company in Co. Wexford—when the crew saw ‘SOS’ signals from a German aircraft that was heading southeast.

They followed the flares to a scene of despair—three German ships had been bombed and 700 men were drowning in the sea. The brave crew spent the next 10 hours pulling 168 men from the wreckage—there was no room to take them all.

“The others died crying in the sea for their mothers,” Franciscan Friar Fr Fritz later told me; he had befriended the Germans after the rescue.

Captain Tom O’Donoghue ignored a request from Germany to bring the survivors to La Rochelle and from Britain to go to Fishguard. Instead, they disembarked in Cobh Harbour on New Year’s Day 1944, the Germans and crew sang and punched the air with delight after their near-death experience.

It was a truly remarkable act of bravery by the crew and this year marks the 80th anniversary of the famous rescue. Unknown to me until 2012, my mother’s father, Eric Giggins was the Chief Engineer on the MV Kerlogue during that rescue.

I never knew my grandfather; he left my nanny when my mother was a child and I believed for years that he went back to his home in Gravesend in London.

I later learned though, that he lived out the rest of his days in Dublin where he worked on the Guinness boat, the Lady Gwendolyn.

When I began researching his life, my nanny’s younger sister Sarah Taylor, who met my grandfather as a teenager, said oranges were an exotic fruit back in 1943.

“I remember seeing Eric Giggins getting off the boat in Wicklow and he gave every single person on the street an orange. It was like Christmas morning”, she told me.

Those precious oranges were lifted in small crates onto the MV Kerlogue by my grandfather and his colleagues before they made their way back to Irish shores.

When they were departing Lisbon, the crew who included former Minister Dick’s Roche’s father never expected the course of their lives to change forever.

Author Frank Forde, who sadly passed away in September, described the events that unfolded in his book ‘The Long Watch’ which sounded like a scene straight out of the film Dunkirk.

Captain Donoghue was faced with a terrifying dilemma, but he didn’t hesitate and ordered his men straight to the scene of the explosion.

The ship manifests says “At 11am the tiny coaster reached what was described as a truly appalling scene, the aftermath of a naval battle where 700 men were left drowning in the sea”.

A large destroyer, the 2,688-ton Z27, and two 1,318-ton torpedo boats had been sunk.

Frank Forde continued: “The sea all around was littered with flotsam, corpses in life jackets and desperate men on rafts or clinging to wreckage.

“Chief officer Valencie was recorded as saying ‘As rafts rose into view on the crests of the giant waves, we could see men on them and others clinging to their sides.

“At first we did not know whether they were Allied or Axis until somebody noticed the long ribbons trailing downwards from behind a seaman’s cap which denoted, they were German Navy men.” 

For those who did make it on board, the crew gave them first aid because there was no doctor.  The oranges were boiled and given to the Germans who were dehydrated. Captain Donoghue received a stern backlash for returning “empty handed”—despite his heroic actions.

Frank Forde wrote: “Cabins, storerooms and alleyways were soon packed with shivering, soaked and sodden men; others were placed in the engine room where it became so crowded that Chief engineer Eric Giggins could not move around to attend his machinery, and so by signs—as none spoke English—he got the survivors to move the instruments he could not reach…” 

I read that quote about my grandfather in 2011 after I googled his name to see if I could find out any information about him. All I really knew was he died on November 3, 1984.

I also remember my parents driving to Glasnevin Cemetery with me and my baby sister in the back seat when I was nine before going to a house in Finglas. My mother knocked on the door and a strange woman brought us in and gave us lemon cake, she cried many times during the meeting.

The woman was my grandfather's partner and she was called May. She handed my mother photos of my grandfather and said: “He died after having a heart attack in that chair there, he was a lovely man”.

In 2012, I began to trace my grandfather’s family, I often wondered about his relations in the UK. I don’t know why he left my nanny, but she always said he was a lovely man who was “never right after that rescue” and that he turned to alcohol and smoked like a train.

The Cork Examiner reported the Kerlogue rescue on January 3, 1944. It was an exhausting trip, the men were soaked, ill and distressed.

I often wondered why there was no plaque paying tribute to the crew, and then in December 2014, former Lord Mayor of Wexford, George Lawlor, said “it was time” they were honoured. A beautiful monument was unveiled in June 2015, just four months after my granny Mai Giggins died on February 13.

There was a huge turnout that day in the harbour of Wexford. My nanny spoke to me three weeks before she died about the ceremony, saying she hoped to be there.

Despite leaving her at a time when single mothers were frowned upon, my nanny, whom I was very close to, never uttered a bad word about Eric Giggins. If she did, I never would have delved into his life.

The night before the service, I dreamt she was standing in Wexford harbour wearing a white coat and cap, she smiled at me, then put her arms out and hugged me. She would have stolen the show that day, had she lived to see it.

That same year I traced my grandfather’s family in Gravesend, and they told me he had been missing from home along with his younger brother Roy, for 60 years. Their families were shocked but delighted to learn of our existence. I was thrilled to be able to help solve their lifelong mystery.

Eric and Roy had both been married with two children each, before arriving in Ireland.

My grandfather had a daughter and a son from his first marriage. His daughter had passed on, but I traced my uncle and his family. My cousin Catherine came to visit twice—she is the image of my mother. My uncle passed away in 2013.

I could find no reason as to why the brothers ran away, they were not in any trouble, they came from a good family, were well educated, and had their own mechanic business. Maybe they could not face their responsibilities on land, and the sea was an escape.

Roy’s life seemed particularly sad, he was also a well-respected chief engineer on several Irish ships, before moving to Cork where he ended his life in the River Lee on October 18, 1981.

With the help of Cork's 96fm, I traced his life there. Mary Hackett who runs the KLM bar in Tivoli said he was one of her regular customers and described him as “the nicest man” and provided me with a beautiful photo of him.

Anne O’Connell who was the landlady of the Port bar recalled Roy leaving her pub on the night he died. The gardaí arrived the next day to say he was found in the river across the road—no foul play was suspected.

Anne identified Roy’s remains and he was buried in St. Finbarr’s cemetery in a pauper’s grave. When I found my long lost Giggins family some of whom were in Australia we all agreed to organise for a plaque to go on his grave—which is being done.

Robert Giggins who died in December last year said it was one of the greatest moments in his life, to learn at the age of 90, what had happened to his long-lost cousins.

“I was a child when I first heard they were missing” he said. “Nobody knew where they were.

We have always loved Ireland and then to learn we had a secret family there; meant the world to me, it all came good in the end.

My mother and I flew to Australia in 2019 to meet our cousins. I also was presented with two emergency medals and scrolls for Eric and Roy from the Department of the Marine which we donated to the Maritime Museum in Dun Laoghaire, south Dublin.

Anne Murphy from The Friends of the Wexford Tall ships also presented my family with medals for Eric and Roy. She organised for the Giggins family in Australia to receive copies, which Robert wore to several events proudly.

Neither Robert nor my granny will be here to witness the 80th anniversary of the MV Kerlogue rescue at 3pm on December 29 in Wexford harbour, but I know they will be with us in spirit.

For me, it is an incredible story, and a powerful act of humanity in the middle of World War II. My grandfather hurt many people by running away from his family but despite his flaws, he did right by those Germans.

Some of the survivors’ families summed it up perfectly when they contacted me recently to say they would not be here only for my grandfather and his brave colleagues.