Three days before the Easter Rising began, Roger Casement was landed by German submarine at Banna Strand near Tralee in Co. Kerry. His immediate mission was a failure – he had arranged for the shipment of twenty thousand rifles to be landed in Kerry in order to equip Irish republicans for an armed rebellion against Britain, but the shipment was intercepted. The German cargo ship Libau, disguised as a Norwegian ship called the Aud, was scuttled by its crew as it was about to be escorted into Cobh by a British naval vessel. Soon after reaching shore, Casement was arrested and was in custody while the Easter Rising occurred. He outlived the leaders of the Rising by just a couple of months – he was hanged for treason in London on this day 99 years ago. Six years later, the Irish Free State was ratified by treaty with Britain, and in 1965, Casement’s body was returned to Ireland and he was given a state funeral. Eamonn De Valera, the only leader of the 1916 Rising to escape execution, was at the graveside as president of the Irish Republic.
The photo above shows the view of Banna Strand (the far left of the picture) and Tralee in the distance, taken from Brandon Mountain on a clear October day in 2012. If you are viewing this on a big screen, you should be able to see a solitary climber on the rightmost peak in the foreground, gazing over the bay and the incoming tide.