Neutral Shores

Ireland and the Battle of the Atlantic

By Mark McShane
2012, Mercier Press
ISBN 1856359344
Paperback, 352 pages

Descripton: This is the story of how neutral Ireland offered a lifeline to hundreds of survivors from the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second World War. Many merchant navy ships during the war were attacked and sunk, and their surviving crews left adrift on the hostile Atlantic Ocean in a desperate struggle for survival. For the fortunate ones sanctuary was found along Ireland's rugged Atlantic shores, where the local people took these men from the sea into their homes and cared for them without any consideration of their nationality or allegiances to any of the belligerent nations.

From the uboat.net review: The war was only few days old when the liner Athenia was sunk north of Ireland by U-30 (Oblt. Fritz-Julius Lemp) on 3 Sept 1939 and 449 of its 1306 survivors landed at Galwa ...
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