‘They all got brilliantly drunk, delinquencies were overlooked’

My uncle Fr Michael Flynn embarked on a seven-week trip from Southampton to Australia in 1945. He was from Leitrim and had just been ordained before being posted to a parish in Tasmania, where he was to spend all his working life. This is an extract from his journal

“Dearest Folks, yesterday was St Patrick’s Day. We came down to dinner to find the whole lounge decorated with green and traced on a big tableau were the words ‘Eire go bra’ interlaced with four-leaved shamrocks and illuminated by green lights.

“Then to the smoke room for the concert and the other passengers arrived en masse led by the Captain. Every Irish song I ever heard was sung several times, interspersed with bits of Scotch ones. The volume was terrific and grew even louder as the flowing wine mellowed the sedate, emboldened the timorous and lent fresh strength to the lusty. Every one of the passengers was three sheets to the wind and such an air of festivity was never witnessed before. Most of the ladies appeared in green frocks and most of the men effected some piece of greenery.

“It was a very noble gesture of tolerance and kindness on the Captain’s part. None enjoyed the affair as much as the crew. They all got brilliantly drunk and did everything they could think of and curiously enough their delinquencies were overlooked. It’s seldom they get an excuse to flout authority. Well, I sure enjoyed it.

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“I sorely missed your annual little parcel of shamrocks and bulky letters, Mammy. I was thinking of you all the day and wondering if you had got my letter or cable and if you were uneasy about me and if you rushing out to Mass and if sun shone as it shone here on the lonely wastes of the Southern Seas.

“I guess I shall not quickly forget St Patrick’s Day 1945 and it will be, I’m sure, a pride to you as it was to me, to see our national holiday and national Saint so universally regarded as something similar to Christmas, a day when personal and race animosities are buried and all men, even for one night, are brothers in a very happy family.”

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The fee for this article has been donated to the Society of St Vincent de Paul