The Aud and the Embassy: a remarkable connection

100 years ago this week, Roger Casement, a retired British diplomat and a member of the nationalist Irish Volunteers was arrested near Banna Strand in County Kerry. Casement had just arrived in Ireland on board a German U-boat.

At the same time, a German ship masquerading as a Norwegian vessel, the Aud, was to be found off the Kerry coast carrying a consignment of 20,000 weapons. These were intended to arm the Irish Volunteers in advance of their planned rebellion during Easter week.

The Aud was intercepted by the British navy and escorted to Cork where its captain, Karl Spindler, scuttled his ship. The arrest of Casement and the failure of the Aud's mission meant that there was now no hope of a successful rebellion and the leader of the Volunteers, Eoin MacNeill, called off the manoeuvres planned for Easter Sunday. When the Rising went ahead on Easter Monday, after the members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood's (IRB) Military Council decided to proceed with the plans, it was a much smaller affair than would have been the case had the German arms been delivered, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The ship we now know as the Aud also had a history. Before it was renamed the Aud in 1916, it had been known as the Libau, a German merchant ship. But that was not its original name. It was built in 1911 and launched as the Castro II. It belonged to the Wilson Line, based in Hull, which at the time was the world's largest, privately-owned shipping line. The company owned 92 ships at the outbreak of the First World War, 16 of which, including the Castro, were in German waters and were seized by the German Navy.

The driving forces behind the Wilson Line were the brothers, Arthur and Charles Wilson. They both spent part of the year in London with their families where they entertained lavishly. In the late 1880s, Arthur Wilson and his wife, Mary, bought the lease on a newly-built residence at 17 Grosvenor Place and the family lived there for more than 20 years. Their daughter, Muriel, was widely admired in late-Victorian and Edwardian society (there is a portrait of her by John Singer Sargent) and had many suitors including Winston Churchill.

The Wilson family sold the lease on 17 Grosvenor Place after Arthur's death in 1909 and, in a remarkable coincidence that connects the story of the Aud with today's Irish diplomatic service, that same building now houses our Irish Embassy in London. The Embassy has been located at 17 Grosvenor Place since 1950, but the building's connection with the Aud has only recently come to light.

Roger Casement once lived in Ebury Street, just around the corner from our Embassy. We will be organising a series of events in the coming months to commemorate Roger Casement, including for his role as a human rights campaigner.

Daniel Mulhall is Ireland's Ambassador in London