The steamship Helga took part in the first Clare Island Survey of 1909–11; then, refitted as a gunboat, she shelled the centre of Dublin during the 1916 Rising. She later became a troopship and transported some of the notorious Black and Tans to different ports in Ireland when the roads were blocked. Eventually, the new Free State bought the ship while the Black and Tans and RIC men, hardened by their Irish experience, left to continue their rampages among the unfortunate villagers of Iraq in 1922. The Helga thus passed out of the history of world domination and into the quiet desuetude of the Irish Free State naval service.