In the weeks before Lord Mountbatten boarded his 29-foot fishing boat Shadow V for the last time, all lights were blinking red that a problem lay ahead if he visited Ireland.
Former British MI6 spymaster Maurice Oldfield personally met with 'Dickie' Mountbatten, Prince Philip's uncle. Oldfield advise Mountbatten not to travel to Ireland because intelligence reports warned that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) planned to target the royal family.
Lord Mountbatten, born in 1900, at age 66
The meeting was in 1979 and Northern Ireland was in the midst of ‘The Troubles’, the conflict that killed 3,500 people, carried on for almost 30 years, and sometimes spilled over the border into the south, the Republic of Ireland, where Mountbatten planned to holiday. Whether it was bravado or denial, Mountbatten wasn’t listening.
"But the Irish are my friends," the feisty Mountbatten protested.
"Not all of them," came the prescient reply.
Classiebawn Castle in the Republic of Ireland
Mountbatten’s Irish bolthole
For weeks before his final excursion, Mountbatten was having problems convincing the local Irish boatmen to take him out to the lobster traps nearby. He brushed it off. Mountbatten, 79, was retired at the time. As viewers of Netflix’s The Crownmayrecall, Mountbatten was also headstrong.
He’d pulled the strings behind the scenes to ensure his nephew, Prince Philip, married Queen Elizabeth in 1947. He was a British Navy Admiral who’d chaired the NATO Military Committee for a year. As the British Armed Forces’ Chief of the Defense Staff, Mountbatten inspected British crews trained on the Thor nuclear missile and studied the Titan missile silos.
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In the weeks before Lord Mountbatten boarded his 29-foot fishing boat Shadow V for the last time, all lights were blinking red that a problem lay ahead if he visited Ireland.
Former British MI6 spymaster Maurice Oldfield personally met with 'Dickie' Mountbatten, Prince Philip's uncle. Oldfield advise Mountbatten not to travel to Ireland because intelligence reports warned that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) planned to target the royal family.
Lord Mountbatten, born in 1900, at age 66
The meeting was in 1979 and Northern Ireland was in the midst of ‘The Troubles’, the conflict that killed 3,500 people, carried on for almost 30 years, and sometimes spilled over the border into the south, the Republic of Ireland, where Mountbatten planned to holiday. Whether it was bravado or denial, Mountbatten wasn’t listening.
"But the Irish are my friends," the feisty Mountbatten protested.
"Not all of them," came the prescient reply.
Classiebawn Castle in the Republic of Ireland
Mountbatten’s Irish bolthole
For weeks before his final excursion, Mountbatten was having problems convincing the local Irish boatmen to take him out to the lobster traps nearby. He brushed it off. Mountbatten, 79, was retired at the time. As viewers of Netflix’s The Crownmayrecall, Mountbatten was also headstrong.
He’d pulled the strings behind the scenes to ensure his nephew, Prince Philip, married Queen Elizabeth in 1947. He was a British Navy Admiral who’d chaired the NATO Military Committee for a year. As the British Armed Forces’ Chief of the Defense Staff, Mountbatten inspected British crews trained on the Thor nuclear missile and studied the Titan missile silos.
Classiebawn with the Benbulben rock formation as a backdrop
Ireland: Mountbatten's second home
Mountbatten’s wife, Edwina, had inherited Classiebawn Castle, near County Sligo, a country house they’d spent years upgrading. They’d been holidaying at the property for decades - enough time to feel they had a right to visit their second home as they wished. Enough time also, to notice the security situation deteriorating every year.
In the late ‘60s, Britain’s intelligence service advised Mountbatten that the risk of holidaying in County Sligo was 'one that could be reasonably taken'. By 1971, the Mountbattens decided it would be prudent to have a security team of 12 guards on duty at Classiebawn Castle. By 1974, they were employing 28 guards, almost one for each room.
Mountbatten with then-Prince Charles (left) and Prince Philip (right)
More warning signs
Mountbatten worried he might be taken hostage and sought advice from the British Cabinet Office, according to Rory Cormac’s The Secret Royals. In 1978, Mountbatten's cousin Prince Moritz of Hesse Kassel was kidnapped by five amateurs in Germany who’d followed his movements carefully. Moritz said the captors expressed a strong interest in Mountbatten.
A police raid on an IRA safe house confirmed that Mountbatten was an IRA target. Scotland Yard’s Commissioner, Sir David McNee, reportedly dispatched a senior officer. MI5 also investigated. Mountbatten started sleeping with a loaded shotgun.
Dangerous waters in Ireland
Mourning and an apology
An SAS-trained corporal on Mountbatten's protection unit had reported that a car with a Belfast license plate repeatedly returned to the quayside and that the driver watched the boat through binoculars. The Army and police identified the car as one that had been used for transporting IRA weapons. Incredibly, it was bugged and tracked for months by Army intelligence but nothing happened, Cormac said.
A bomb was smuggled on board Mountbatten’s fishing boat before its launch on August 27, 1979. Mountbatten died instantly along with his 14-year-old grandson Nick Knatchbull and 15-year-old Irish boatman Paul Maxwell. Nick’s twin brother Tim Knatchbull and father John Knatchbull survived, but John’s mother Anglo-Irish aristocrat Baroness Brabourne died the following day from injuries sustained in the blast.
The IRA claimed responsibility. King Charles was particularly devastated, writing in his diary at the time: "It will take me a very long time to forgive these people."
In 2021, Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald was asked by Times Radio if she would apologize to Charles for the death of his great uncle. McDonald said: “I can say of course I am sorry that happened. Of course, that is heartbreaking.”
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