Between 1911 and 1926 the population of the twenty-six counties that made up the Irish Free State declined by 5.3%, and the General Report of the 1926 census cited various ‘abnormal causes’ that contributed to this decline. One of them was the withdrawal of the British military and their civilian dependents, which had taken place rapidly in the early months of 1922. The 1926 census thus records the resulting drop in the populations of many former garrison towns, but it also registers the presence of a handful of British garrisons that remained after 1922. Under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 that established the Irish Free State in the first place, the British retained a handful of naval facilities that were deemed strategically valuable to the defence of Britain itself. One of these was on Bere Island, at the mouth of Bantry Bay in Co. Cork, a deep-water harbour on the Atlantic Ocean which had witnessed an abortive French invasion attempt in 1798 and was later used as an anchorage by both the Royal Navy and the US Navy during the First World War. There were military facilities on Bere Island itself, including artillery batteries to defend the approaches to the bay. Fort Berehaven was thereby chosen as one of the so-called ‘Treaty Ports’.
As a result, the 1926 census returns for Rerrin, at the eastern end of the island, recorded not just the civilian population of the village of that name (such as the entrepreneurial Patrick J. Murphy (45), born in Rerrin and enumerated as a ‘coal merchant, flour & meal merchant, bakery, “shopkeeper”’), but also the ‘British military camp’. Here was a distinctive example of a British community in the Irish Free State, the origins of whom illustrate the geographical breadth of the British Empire at its fullest extent. Take, for example, Charles F. Gable, a soldier, and his wife Amelia (both 34); he was born in India, she was born in Devon, and their 3-year-old son (also Charles) was born in Singapore. Thomas Abro Nubar Bent (30), a captain in the Royal Engineers, was born in Alexandria, in Egypt. The birthplaces for British military personnel and their families recorded on the census for Bere Island included Egypt, India, Malta, Singapore, South Africa, New Zealand (and Ireland itself, it should be said). They point to patterns of migration dictated by patterns of military deployment, as well as the geographical breadth of the British Empire at the time.
At least some of the soldiers in the garrison were Irish born: a single page of the garrison returns lists Clare and Sligo among the birthplaces of the solider enumerated, alongside locations across England in in Scotland. Irish links to the British military can also be seen within families: John Ely (37) was a soldier born in Winchester in England; his wife Josephine (37) was born in Waterford; their three children, in descending order of age, were born in Portsmouth in England, and Cobh and Spike Island in Co. Cork, before the family arrived in the most westerly of the Treaty Ports.
The example of the Ely’s points to the personal connections many Irish people had with the British military. In Rerrin itself this was best illustrated by the family of James Sullivan (60), a labourer, ‘out of work for 2 years’, who had previously been employed on ‘Government works’ on the island, where he had been born. James’ lived with his family, including his son Patrick (28), a shoemaker on his ‘own account’; his daughter Julia (20), recorded under her married name, Chalmers; and his son-in-law Robert Thomas Chalmers (27). The latter was born in London and was recorded a ‘military wireless operator’ employed by the ‘British Government’ on the island. Their census return stated that the couple were married for ten months; they had been married some years after the Irish Free State came into being.
The Treaty Ports were relinquished by the British in 1938, and the remaining garrisons withdrew for the last time. Were Robert and Julia Chalmers still on Bere Island in 1936, when the next census was taken? Time will tell.