Dublin in Flames: The Easter Rising’s Deadliest Days

Simon Carver

So, it’s Wednesday, April 26th, 1916. Just after eight in the morning. And if you’re standing on the banks of the Liffey, the- the first thing you hear isn’t rifle fire. It’s this deep, low, mechanical thud. The HMS Helga, this gray fisheries protection vessel converted into an improvised gunboat, has just anchored near Custom House Quay. And she starts lobbing three-inch shells straight over the Loopline Bridge, aimed directly at Liberty Hall. The noise, Billy, in a quiet city, must have been utterly deafening.

Billy Galligan - Author

Ah, it would have cracked the teeth in your head, Simon. You have to understand, Dubliners in 1916, they- they weren’t used to the sounds of modern industrial war. Sure, they had lads away in the trenches of Flanders, but home? Home was tramcars and dray horses. And suddenly, you have this floating piece of the Royal Navy firing high explosives into the middle of a European city. Liberty Hall was empty, of course—the Volunteers had already left—but the British military didn't know that. Or maybe they just didn't care. They just wanted to send a message with those three-inch guns.

Simon Carver

Right, and that message completely shattered any lingering, romantic Victorian notions of what a rebellion was supposed to look like. This wasn’t going to be some- some gentlemanly standoff with honorable surrenders in the park. It was a cold, mathematical deployment of modern artillery against brick and mortar.

Billy Galligan - Author

Exactly. The British authorities looked at Dublin and didn't see a political protest; they saw a tactical problem to be solved with maximum firepower. They- they brought up nine-pounder guns from Trinity College, too, positioning them on Tara Street. And once those guns started up, O'Connell Street—Sackville Street, as it was called then—it just became a meat grinder. The shellfire hit the Imperial Hotel, it hit Clery’s department store. By Thursday, you had a wall of fire, literally a roaring, blinding wall of flame stretching all the way down the main thoroughfare of the city.

Simon Carver

And the civilians! I mean, we- we talk about the leaders, Pearse and Connolly, but there are thousands of ordinary people living in these incredibly overcrowded tenements right behind those grand facades. What happens to them when the shells start falling?

Billy Galligan - Author

Oh, God, Simon, it was absolute terror. You have families, five, six, ten people to a single room in those old Georgian houses, with no cellar, no protection at all. The- the brickwork is turning to dust around them. People were trying to flee across the streets, dodging sniper fire and shrapnel just to find a loaf of bread. There's a story of a woman trying to get water from a public fountain and being shot dead mid-street. By the end of it, over two hundred and fifty civilians were dead. That's more than the actual combatants on both sides combined. The city center smelled of- of coal smoke, burning asphalt, and decaying bodies. It was hell on the Liffey, pure and simple.

Simon Carver

And while the center of the city is literally burning to the ground, you have this other, incredibly concentrated tragedy unfolding just a mile or so away at Mount Street Bridge. This is Wednesday afternoon. You have the Sherwood Foresters, these brand-new British recruits, marching into Dublin from Kingstown—now Dún Laoghaire.

Billy Galligan - Author

Aye, the Foresters. Lads from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Most of them were eighteen, nineteen years old. Simon, some of them had only been given their rifles a few weeks before. They actually thought they’d landed in France! They had no idea where they were when they stepped off the boat. And their officers, carrying on with this old-school, Victorian mentality, just marched them in column formation straight up Northumberland Road. Right into a textbook ambush.

Simon Carver

And waiting for them are just seventeen Volunteers. Seventeen men, led by Michael Malone, positioned in 25 Northumberland Road, the schoolhouse, and Clanwilliam House overlooking the canal. Just seventeen against an entire brigade.

Billy Galligan - Author

Seventeen! It’s- it's hard to even picture it. Malone had a Mauser pistol and a rifle, and he’s up on the top floor of number twenty-five. When the British column came into view, the Volunteers just opened up. It was a- a crossfire. The lead British files were just swept away in seconds. But instead of flanking or taking cover, the British commanders just kept ordering wave after wave of these raw lads to charge the bridge. Just straight into the teeth of it.

Simon Carver

It's- it's unbelievable. They did that for hours. Charge after charge. By the time the British finally took those positions by throwing hand grenades through the windows of Clanwilliam House, the casualties were catastrophic. Four officers and two hundred and sixteen other ranks killed or wounded. At a single bridge, defended by a handful of guys with outdated rifles.

Billy Galligan - Author

A massive chunk of the entire British losses for the whole week happened right there on those bloody cobbles. I- I actually drove my school bus past Mount Street for years, Simon. And even now, if you look closely at the stone-work around the canal and those old houses, you can still see the pockmarks. The bullet chips. It’s like the brick itself has a memory of those young lads bleeding out into the canal water.

Simon Carver

By Saturday, the GPO is a shell, Connolly is severely wounded, and Patrick Pearse realizes that continuing the fight just means the total destruction of Dublin and everyone left in it. He signs the unconditional surrender on a cardboard box in a damp room on Moore Street.

Billy Galligan - Author

Aye, he did. Sure, why not? There was nothing left to fight with. The city was ruined. It’s funny, you know, when the rebels were marched through the streets after the surrender, the working-class Dubliners—especially the women whose husbands were fighting in the British Army—they actually threw filth at them. They spat on them. They blamed them for ruining their homes, for the lack of food, for the sheer terror of those six days. It took the British executing the leaders in Kilmainham Gaol over the next few weeks to turn those 'traitors' into martyrs. But the physical and mental scars of that week? They never really left the city. You can rebuild a street, Simon, but you can’t quite mend the quiet damage done to the people who had to live through the fire.

Simon Carver

Yeah. Well, on that note, that’s our quick take on the Easter Rising. Talk to you next time, Billy.

Billy Galligan - Author

Grand, Simon. Talk to you then.