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The ''Leinster'', under the command of Capt. William Birch, was 2640 tons burthen, had twin screw propellers, 9,000 horsepower triple expansion steam engines and was capable of 24 knots. Despite many previous requests for a naval escort the Admiralty relied on the ''Leinster'''s speed as her only protection from U-boat attack. She had been unsuccessfully attacked before but the torpedoes missed their target. On her final morning she carried a crew of 77 and 680 passengers, of whom 500 were soldiers. At 9.50am east of the Kish Bank she became the prey of ''UB-123'', commanded by Oberleutnant Robert Ramm, on a search-and-destroy mission in the Irish Sea. It seems likely that Ramm knew she was carrying the 500 troops as he may have been in radio communication with spies in Dublin. Initially Ramm fired two torpedoes; one missed, passing harmlessly across the ship's bow, but the other struck the ''Leinster'' midships forward of the bridge. The ship began to settle very slowly bow down in the water. In response to her distress call the British destroyers HMS ''Lively'' and HMS ''Mallard'' went to her assistance. It is believed that at this stage she could have been saved by being towed back into Dublin or Dun Laoghaire harbour but Ramm, knowing that rescue ships were quickly being dispatched from Dublin Port, decided to administer the coup de grace and finish her off with a third torpedo. This he did as the ''Leinster'' continued taking on water and was disembarking her passengers into the lifeboats in rough seas. Over 500 of the 757 people on board were lost, including Capt. Birch who had been wounded in the initial attack but drowned when the lifeboat he was in became swamped in heavy seas and capsized while trying to transfer survivors to HMS ''Mallard''. One of the rescue ships sent from Dublin was the gunboat ''Helga'', the same that had shelled the General Post Office (GPO) in O'Connell Street during the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin two years earlier and was later bought and renamed the ''LE Muirchu'' by the Irish Free State government as one of its first fishery protection vessels. According to German records the ''UB-123'' was due to return to her home base of Zeebrugge immediately after sinking the ''Leinster'' but she never made it. It is thought that she was herself sunk on her homeward voyage on or about 19 October 1918 , in the British North Sea mine barrage that stretched from Scotland to Norway. REFERENCES
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