Owen Ward

He boarded the Royal Mail Ship Leinster at Carlisle Pier, Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire), County Dublin. The ship was bound for Holyhead, Anglesey, which was a regular shipping route and vital to move troops, people, supplies and even the post between Ireland and Wales for onwards movement.

RMS Leinster set sail shortly after 9:00am despite warnings from some Royal Navy warships that the Irish Sea had been particularly rough due to poor weather near Anglesey. Approximately an hour into the voyage some of the passengers on deck saw a torpedo heading for the Leinster’s port side but it missed and passed in front of the ship. The Leinster had been targeted by German submarine UB-123, which then released a second torpedo that struck the port side and destroyed the ship’s onboard postal sorting room.

Twenty-one of the twenty-two Dublin Post Office workers lost their lives in the blast. As there were relatively few casualties, the Captain decided to turn the ship about and began slowly sailing back to Kingstown while launching lifeboats. A third torpedo was fired and, now the Leinster had turned, struck the starboard side. The damage was catastrophic and the Leinster began to sink rapidly. The damage the third torpedo caused and the sinking led to the loss of over five-hundred lives, only one month and one day before the Armistice. Head Constable Ward was one of those to lose his life when the RMS Leinster sank.

He was survived by his wife of eleven years, Rosina, and their four children. Having joined the Royal Irish Constabulary on the 1st September 1899 Head Constable Ward had seen service throughout Ireland with postings to County Donegal, County Londonderry, Belfast, County Sligo, County Galway and County Clare. Nine days later, the submarine responsible, UB-123, struck a mine and went down near Orkney, with the loss of all thirty-six crew members.