page_title: Kit Poole
section_title: Raiding the Defiance
hierarchical_section_title: Kit Poole / Irish Citizen Army / Raiding the Defiance
caption_attribution_description: English: S.S. Defiance (American Freighter, 1918) Underway, probably while running trials in San Francisco Bay, California, circa early September 1918. This ship served as USS Defiance (ID # 3327) in 1918-1919. Note her pattern camouflage.
context_page_description: Christopher "Kit" Poole was an Irish soldier and military tactician who fought in the Tirah Campaign and the Second Boer War as a British Army private, as well as a captain of the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising. During the Citizen Army's inception in 1913, he was a member of the group's initial provisional council alongside Jack White, James Larkin, P. T. Daly and Constance Markievicz, and would go on to take up a permanent position on its executive committee. He was also a pivotal figure during the 1916 Easter Rising, as second-in-command at St. Stephen's Green under Citizen Army commandant Michael Mallin where they held out for six days against British forces, ending the engagement when the British brought them a copy of Pearse's surrender order.
context_section_description: Following the Rising, a significant challenge for the ICA was the sourcing of weapons and ammunition. On the Dublin docks in 1918, Poole led a battalion of ICA men and secured a huge windfall of ammunition from an American transport vessel, the Defiance, which had served as a cargo ship in the United States Navy during the late stages of the Great War. Arms expert Seamus McGowan was smuggled aboard in as a docker who then allowed the rest of Poole's men to come aboard when all was clear. 
  According to R.M Fox's The History of the Irish Citizen Army, "cases had to be broken open in the hold by dockers without being observed by the guards. Then all the stuff had to be concealed to get it across the gangway. No parcels were allowed. In spite of all the difficulties the booty was too valuable to lose, and relays of Citizen Army men were down on the quays for eight hours a day, taking the revolvers and ammunition from those who succeeded in getting the necessary shore permits." 
  The munitions haul yielded  56 .45 revolvers, 2,000 rounds of revolver ammunition, 5,000 rounds of Springfield ammunition in canvas bandoliers and an assortment of Verey lights and pistols. Arrangements were also made with a member of the crew to deliver 34 .45 automatics, which had been served out to the crew.
caption: USS Defiance
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