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"Howth" Mauser 1871: Irish Volunteers Gunrunning into Dublin (Ad-free)
🕑 Added 2025-05-02 12:00:02 +0000 UTCOn July 14th, 1914 the 50 foot pleasure yacht “Asgard” sailed into Howth harbor in Dublin with its cabin completely filled with arms. It has 900 Mauser 1871 rifles and 29,000 rounds of ammunition for the Irish Volunteers, and there is a crowd of a thousand people turned out to unload them - just daring the British authorities to try a crackdown. These rifles would ultimately become some of the most iconic weapons used in the 1916 Easter Rising.
Video on Ulster gunrunning:
Comments
Squid556
Great story thanks for bringing this to us
Mark S
Your dealer for the sale of guns to both sides sounds like a older version of Sam Cummings of Interarms. I own three Interarms guns (marked on the receiver or barrel). Sam was the ultimate Yankee trader, he'd sell guns to one side and then convince the other side of the conflict they needed his guns because their enemies had better guns (which he'd sold them). It's surprised that he wasn't assassinated or arrested during his career as he pissed off a lot of governments, rebel (communist and non communist) groups, and even private competitors. That was probably because he learned to use cut outs (or independent salesman) to sell his wares without the other side knowing in most cases. He was definitely a scoundrel, but he did sell functioning and generally well maintained guns (which was improvement over the sale by others of barely functional or badly abused surplus guns.). It you got an Interarms gun it was usually very decent operating condition. Thought not always as I had an issue with an Interarms German Mauser 1914 pistol that jammed constantly until I replaced a couple of parts and sold it (which I now wish I hadn't done) due to it's intermittent reliability issues.
