Ulster’s Gallant Woman Admiral
Dramatic footage of Mrs. Laverton (Hazel Valerie West), owner and pilot of the steam-yacht The Lady of the Lake (renamed HMS Pandora), which was pressed into service during the rescue operations following the Battle of Pettigo. She was hailed by the newspapers in Britain some days later as the pistol-wearing ‘Ulster Admiral’.
The Battle of Pettigo and Belleek in the summer of 1922 was the largest military engagement between the Irish Republican Army and the British Occupation Forces in Ireland since the Easter Rising of 1916, and one of the last significant actions in the island nation’s War of Independence.
