Sir, - It may interest John Kilbracken to know that Raimund Weisbach, whom I got to know very well by correspondence in late 1965 and early 1966, and during his last years after he returned to Germany after attending the 1916 celebrations here, and during and immediately after those celebrations when I was with him and his wife daily, dropped an S from his name some time between the end of the first World War and 1965.
I try to be as polite as I can about people's names so I never asked him why, and I do not suppose the reason is historically important. Frau Weisbach, who is still alive and in regular communication with at least one member of the Maritime Institute, always spells her name with one S.
If your correspondent happens to have £4.60 he could get from the National Maritime Museum, Haigh Terrace, Dun Laoghaire the third (revised) edition of The Sea and the Easter Rising posted to him, with all the details we could amass. Spindler, Commander of the Libau, had instructions to look for the pilot boat which for reasons well known did not appear, and for a submarine with Casement aboard. Weisbach, according to what he told us (which I see no reason to doubt) had orders to contact the pilot boat which would give him news of Li- bau. Otherwise he was to watch out for her himself, which he did, for two hours in bright moonlight when an anchored cargo ship should have been clearly visible.
Spindler, in the course of an account full of fables such as his sighting of the white cliffs of Co Cork, admitted that he was not sure where he was. Libau was seen by boats on the Friday morning, after U19 had gone, steaming down from northward, which makes it fairly obvious that he had mistaken the Shannon mouth for Tralee Bay which he had passed inadvertently the previous late afternoon. He was, incidentally, a naval reserve officer. Weisbach's charitable verdict on him is noted in the book mentioned, which took many months and much trouble to compile, and which we believe to be as definitive an account of the whole episode as it is now possible to have. - Yours, etc.,
Grosvenor Terrace, Dalkey, Co Dublin.