Cherished memories from the Royal Navy to the Royal County

A new book about the extraordinary life and times of Michael Garvey, adventurer, sailor and farmer who survived the horrors of WW1 before coming to reside in Gibbstown in the 1930s has been written. But, as grandson Michael J Garvey explains to JIMMY GEOGHEGAN, the publication was a labour of love and one for the family to treasure

Three or four years ago Michael Joseph Garvey (or Michael J as we will refer to him) embarked on what could be described as a labour a love. It was something that had percolated in his mind for some time. He wanted to write a book which he has called ‘The Sailor.’ It’s a book with a difference.

The subject matter centres around the times and extraordinary life of his grandfather - who we will call Michael Garvey because that was his name - and who grew up in Kerry but found himself, as a member of the Royal Navy, involved in at least one of the most savage sea-based confrontations in the First World War.

There is something else about the book (which is just finished) that is a little different - it will not to be sold to the general public.

"I had thought about the book for a long time. I had my grandfather's stuff in my possession, his war medals, a lot of his naval records,” explained Michael J who worked as a teacher in St Patrick’s CS, Navan for a time before moving onto a career in teacher education in Africa and Ireland.

“My grandfather left a big family behind as one of his legacies and I thought it would be a nice thing to leave a record behind of his life because in 20 years time it might not be possible to do so. Things disappear, are lost, memories fade. A 100 copies of the book will be printed to be distributed among the family."

One of the stories that Michael J relates about his grandfather is how he departed from this world. Michael Garvey, suffered from angina in his latter years and the ailment eventually got worse until he died in October 1954. He was 77 – and until the end he recalled what he had seen in World War One.

"As he lay in his bed dying he suddenly leaned forward, stretched out his arm in front of him and starting crying 'kamerad, kamerad' before he laid back and died. The reason he did that was because that's what the German sailors (from the sinking ship the SMS Leipzig) were shouting up to those on the deck of the British warship the HMS Cornwall. The family believed he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

Scenes of drowning German sailors pleading for their lives and calling up to enemy sailors on an British warship was just one of the chapters that made up the extraordinary life and times of Michael Garvey, adventurer, sailor, farmer who came to reside in Gibbstown in the 1930s although he spent much of his life a long, long way from the Royal County.

DUNQUIN

Michael Garvey spent his childhood and early teens living near Dunquin on the Dingle Peninsula, across from the Blaskets. He was the second youngest in a family of eight.

“They lived in poverty in a small, thatched, drystone hut on a very small farm,” explains Michael J Garvey. “One of the most important things for them as a family was that the British administration had established a national school system throughout the country so that they had access to good primary education, basic education, and that stood to them all their lives.”

The entire family emigrated to the US, except Peter the eldest son who inherited the farm, and young Michael who, as it turned out had other plans.

At 16, and without saying a word to anyone, he made his way to nearby Ballydavid where the Royal Navy had a presence. He enlisted and was sent with other recruits such as fellow Kerry native Tom Crean for training in the port of Devonport, Plymouth. Crean was to later make a name for himself as a renowned adventurer.

Michael Garvey was to spend the next 27 years in the Royal Navy travelling all over the world – to places like Egypt, Malta, Capetown, Sydney, Yokohama, Shanghai – and many other locations in between. The world’s oceans were his frontiers.

He loved the navy. “He was promoted to the rank of Petty Officer and wore a beautiful uniform with the standard twin rows of four bass buttons on his front, peaked cap with gilt on it. He must have cut quite a resplendent figure when he came home on leave. He was quite happy to go along with the local perception of him as this exotic creature who had travelled the world,” his grandson recalls.

It was on one of those trips home to Dunquin he met a local woman, Margaret Sayers. They decided to get married which they did on the 14th June 1914. He was 37, she 24.

The couple travelled to Devonport to set up home but the storm clouds were gathering – and soon their world was turned inside out and upside down. In August 1914 the First World War started. It would be over before Christmas somebody suggested. They were wrong.

Michael Garvey was sent on a ship out to the Atlantic. His and his comrades’ job was to intercept German ships on the vast ocean. “Margaret had no idea where he was going, when she would see him again – or if she would see him again. She made her way back to Dingle unaware she was pregnant with their first child.”

As it turned out Margaret didn’t see her husband again for 18 months when he briefly returned to Kerry where he saw his new-born son for the first time.

Michael went back to sea and he was on the HMS Cornwall when they encountered a squadron of German armoured cruisers and other boats under Admiral Maximilian Von Spee near the Falklands. The outcome was a brutal, savage confrontation. “The Cornwall was involved in the sinking of the German light cruiser, SMS Leipzig and that was one of the experiences that stayed with my grandfather the rest of his life because the slaughter was appalling,” recalls Michael J.

“He saw it up close and he was also under a hail of fire, the Cornwall was hit by something like 20 shells fired from the Leipzig. We reckoned he suffered from PTSD for the rest of his life but nobody would have recognised the condition at the time.”

Michael Garvey and his colleagues on the Cornwall also played a part in the Dardanelles campaign that was initiated by Winston Churchill. It turned into a disaster. The Kerryman was also involved in the ramming and sinking of a German u-boat off the Northern Ireland coast shortly before the end of the war.

He made it through the war but another threat awaited. He contracted Spanish Flu. He was one of millions afflicted as the pandemic raged. He was fortunate to survive. It took him 10 months to recover but the Flu, and the war, left its legacy. In 1920 he was invalidated out of the Navy.

Returning to Kerry he and Margaret were to go on to raise eight children, including their second born Vincent.

BAILE GIBB

Margaret Garvey was clearly a woman with an entrepreneural flair. As well as raising her large brood she opened a little shop. Michael tried to adopt to his new life on land by becoming a farmer. He hated just about everything involved on working on the land.

“His neighbours used to help him do a bit of farming but he never took to it. He was a sailor, he had spent 27 years of his life moving around the world. Suddenly he was stuck in one place, it just didn’t suit him.”

Out of left field came a form of redemption – Gibbstown.

In the 1930s Eamon de Valera’s government were encouraging people to go east. Start anew. People in counties like Kerry and Galway were asked to give up their home farm to the Land Commission. In exchange they got 22 acres in places like Gibbstown and Rath Chairn, a house, outhouses, tools and a plot of bogland thrown in.

“He was delighted to get rid of the poor quality farm he detested and swap it for a farm in Gibbstown on the Teltown road and he did it,” adds his grandson.

Margaret was less enthralled by the idea. She liked Kerry and her little shop but in time she too moved to Meath and their large family.

“My grandfather loved something different. It was his love of new adventures and new horizons that motivated him in the first place but Margaret was one of those who found the move extremely difficult. She was a woman who lost her place in her own community, it was a very painful loss. She suffered loneliness and desolation especially as she got older.”

In his seventies Michael Garvey was afflicted by angina and in 1954 he passed away shortly after he had raised himself up in his sickbed, stretched out his arm and shouted ‘kamerad, kamerad,’ the terrible images of war staying with him until the end.

He has left behind a large family, including (at the last count) 16 grandchildren, 30 great-grandchildren and another 30 great-great-grandchildren.

Two of Michael Garvey’s own children are also still with us, son Vincent, who lives in Gibbstown and recently turned 100 and a daughter Eileen who is 98.

In so many ways Michael Garvey lived a remarkable life; a life that was certainly less ordinary.

MICHAEL J GARVEY ON ....

HIS GRANDFATHER AND POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

“He talked about the First World War incessantly. Some people who were in the war never spoke about it, that’s how they dealt with it.

My grandfather was fascinated by all the actors who were involved and the episodes of the war he experienced. The incessant stories the family heard many times around the dinner table. Places and people like Gallipoli, Churchill, the Falklands, Admiral von Spee. All that dominated his mind.

HIS GRANDFATHER’S FAITH

“He was a devout Catholic, the daily rosary was very important to him. He would often head off and not tell anyone where he was going. If he was asked he would respond by saying ‘I have my duties to perform.’ He would go down to the lower field and say the Rosary.”

ON THE LONLINESS SUFFERED BY SOME PEOPLE WHO MOVED FROM THE WEST TO PLACES LIKE GIBBSTOWN

“It wasn’t always a happy life for them. They left behind lives full of economic poverty and hardship but these very same lives were immensely rich. Rich beyond measure in terms of social and community connections. These people belonged somewhere. It was a tragedy repeated many times among the families who moved to places like Gibbstown.

People often pined inconsolably for their old homes, friends, communities. Their lives up here often became desolate, full of sadness and longing. Quite a few of them just went back home.”

RESEARCH FOR HIS BOOK

“When my grandfather passed away I was five years old. I have some recollections of him but they are just flashes, they don’t add up to a coherent narrative but I do have in my possession a lot of his records, his naval records, some letters he wrote, his service medals.

I relied on the Imperial War Museum and their records but the person who made the greatest contribution to the book from a historical perspective was my father, Vincent, Michael’s son. His accurate story-telling and capacity for story-telling is a credit to a man who is over 100 years of age.”