Mystery Man Letter

I came on your web site by accident and I was intrigued about your article on “the Mystery Man” at an unnamed County Down coastguard station (Newsletter December, 2003). My great grandfather was William Stanbury who was the officer in charge of the coastguard station at Burr Point, in County Down around 1901. My grandmother was a great story teller and could keep people enthralled for hours. One of her stories involved an incident she claimed happened at Burr Point. The father and mother had gone out one evening leaving the seven children in the house.

She described how they were cooking seafood in a pot and then had to carry the pot from a kitchen to another room. On the way they had to pass a staircase leading downstairs into some form of hallway or passage leading to an outer door that was locked and bolted. She claimed that although the passage was dark they saw a very tall man dressed in black, walk across the passage at the foot of the stairs and disappear through the wall. The outer door was still locked and there was no other exit. The children were frightened, spilled the food and then locked themselves in one of the upstairs rooms until the mother and father came home.

Of course by the time the parents came home the only evidence was the spilled food on the floor. One of my great uncles came to stay with us for a summer holiday. He was an old sailor and also a great story teller. He was the eldest child and was sixteen or seventeen when the incident happened. He also told the story and it was an exact repeat of my grandmothers’ version. Another brother and sister independently verified the story at different times. I do not know who or what they saw but it is evident to me some 50 years on from hearing the story that they certainly believed they had seen a ghost or “mystery man”. I wonder if the coastguard station in your article was the one at Burr Point?   (1)

Mystery station- Front door demolished.

Another little Mystery has just come my way. Maybe some of our readers may be able to solve this one. There is an account of an action involving a Royal Navy vessel which (on purpose) fired a 'shell' through the front door of a Coastguard station in Ireland. But which station ?.
 

We were involved in one engagement with Sinn Fein. This was after the Truce when Irish were murdering Irish. We had occasionally delivered mail to a member of the new Senate who lived on the shore of the Kenmare river. We anchored off and sent in our dinghy with outboard , with an officer and one seaman. I was still on the bridge when the dinghy was on its way in. There was the sound of shots and I saw them splashing in the water around the dinghy, which McLean quickly turned round and headed back. As the shots went on, I aimed the twin Lewis gun mounting on the bridge wing into the trees above the boat and let loose one burst. That stopped whoever was shooting. We thought we might try to parley with our attackers and moved the ship opposite an evacuated Coastguard station, which we had reason to believe was their headquarters. The men were at tea and the Captain, First Lieutenant, Chief Engineer and myself were having a cupper in the ward-room discussing what to do next. Suddenly there was a noise like hailstones on a corrugated iron roof.

Navy gun -1922 / 1923

Our friends had opened up on us with a machine gun. I got up to the bridge, but we were out of effective Lewis gun range, and so I dropped over the front of the bridge to the forward gun platform where I found a stoker petty officer sheltering in the gun shield.


The gun had been left with a shell in the breach. I finished loading, brought it to the ready, took gun layer and directed the SPO who took trainer, and we put a shell through the front door of the Coastguard station – a good shot. What effect it had apart fro stopping whoever was shooting at us, we never heard. Our only casualty was the Chief who got a splinter off one of the guard rails in his trouser leg as he dived for the engine-room ladder from the ward-room. This drew blood but only just. We reported this ‘battle’ to Queenstown and were told not to try to deliver the senator’s mail.

Commander B.De L’Faunce sailed on the HMS Badminton, a minesweeper, which was engaged in coastal patrols off Ireland, mainly in supply and and support role to Coastguard stations, but also targeting possible gun smuggling. (2)