John Jeffries
The Cobh Pier Head Shooting and the story of the moon car. On 21st March 1924 a group of men wearing Irish army uniforms pulled up at the main pier in Cobh, Co. Cork. Seated in a yellow Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, they watched around 50 British soldiers disembark from a ferry from Spike Island.
Suddenly the men in the Rolls Royce produced machine guns and fired on the British soldiers. One soldier was killed while eighteen others and six civilians were injured. Driving away at speed, the Rolls Royce stopped briefly to fire on a British warship in the harbour. An hour later armed British soldiers returned to Cobh and more shots were fired. There followed one of the biggest manhunts in modern Irish history, making front-page news throughout the world. The Rolls Royce and its occupants seemed to have vanished into thin air. The car was not seen again for 57 years. In his book Death on the Pier, John Jefferies unravels fact from myth surrounding the Pier Head shooting and the amazing story behind the mysteries Rolls Royce known as the Moon Car.
