A BRIEF CHRONICLE OF
CHARLES JOHN 'NOMAD' McGUINNESS

Originally Compiled By John McGuffin
 j@mcguffin.freeserve.co.uk

Chronicle Periods   1893-1914   1914-1928   1928-1947

• August 1914. returns to Derry just in time to enlist in the British Navy (or Army?) at the commencement of World War I. CM sees service in the Cameroon campaign in Africa.

• Nomad learns of the 1916 Rising back in Ireland. Deserts the British army and joins the S. Africans. Upon being captured by the Germans in East Africa he escapes and then fights with the Germans against the British. The East African jungle campaign.

• 1917. November. sole survivor of shipwreck of the SS. Vasco da Gama in shark infested waters of Indian Ocean.(Dalagoa bay)

• 1918-1920 Adventures in China and far East.

• Captained a pirate junk in the China Seas, engaged in scandalous romances with oriental princesses and of his escape to Canada and his work as a lumberjack. (1919)

• 1920 July. Back in Derry. Riots, assassinations. Flying Column in Donegal.

• Frank Carty rescue from Derry jail was February 15th, 1921

• Sgt. Higgins shot outside St. Eugene's April 4th, 1921 - CM named as assassin.

• May 6th, 1921 Carty was arrested yet again in Glasgow this time. Allegedly Nomad and a team go over but the far east screws it up and Nomad and the boys get off side and back to Derry on the good old 'Carrickalee' - nomad's Dad's boat

• June 16th, 1921 CM shot and caught near Ardara after a failed bank raid.. Taken on boat and ends up in Ebrington from where he escaped after ten days - they thought he was too wounded to do anything. File smuggled in a cake. (Although Fr. Coyle tells a weird rumor about being smuggled out in a coffin)

• By July 21 Nomad is in Dublin w/Mellows  acc. Greaves.

• En route to Germany he stops off in London with Sam Maguire.

• Sept. 9th he's in Hamburg.

• Frieda left Germany Oct 28 1921. Arrived in Waterford (instead of Helvick) on November 11, 1921. The Hanna set sail from Bremen March 23, 1922. Arrived April 3, 1922. CM subsequently claims that he brought 4 boats in - but obviously it was only two, although they were important ones...On April 11, 22 Nomad, just back from the gunrunning goes on a jaunt to Sligo with the Woods, Sean Russell, the Plunkets and Mellowes. (Greaves p. 322)

• 1924. After the Irish treaty. His arrest in Germany for aiding Bulgarian revolutionaries. His retirement to a monastery and his marriage to a Polish girl. (In Berlin) How he was recruited to help Chiang Kai-Shek but instead became a building contractor and moved to New York.

• Regarding Chiang: CM at times claimed that he had commanded a gun running fleet of 4 boats to bring Chiang guns but in another interview he merely refers to being offered a job by one of Chiang's men in New York and turning it down. Chiang stuff is a story he tells but never offers any details [Note: Chiang aka Jiang Jieshi (1887-1975) didn't really get ahead until Sun Yat Sen died in 1925. He then started his campaign and finally entered Beijing in 1928 - although he had prior to 1925 been head of the Whampoa Military Academy and so may have been up to trying to get a bit of gear.]

• Stories re Nomad 'selling' the boat to a drunken Capt. Collins - and, presumably scarpering with money . Able to do it because Mellows admired him.

• In 1925 Sean MacBride got a letter from CM asking for photos of the area around where he landed the guns - obviously planning his biography. He also tells MacBride that 'he has settled down in NY as a respectable married man.' MacBride and Briscoe both cast aspersions on CM as a 'womanizer' wink wink. Also story that he had gone out to Hollywood to be an advisor on a movie but nothing seems to have come of this - c. 1923-4 - but was he in Europe then?