It will be a poignant tribute.

The largest bell of St. Colman’s Cathedral in Cobh will solemnly toll eleven times on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month this Sunday.

The ceremony will be followed by a recital on the 49-bell carillon, to commemorate the moment when the guns of World War I fell silent in 1918.

A carillon is a set of bronze bells, connected by strings to a keyboard. The 49-bell Carillon of St. Colman’s Cathedral in Cobh is the largest in Ireland and Britain. It also includes Ireland’s largest bell, named St. Colman (3.6 tons).

Cobh Cathedral carilloneur, Adrian Gebruers will perform ‘The Dead March’ from Handel’s ‘Saul’ followed by Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’ in memory of the 15 million people – including the 1,198 who died on the Lusitania in 1915 and the 20 Queenstown men killed in the 1916 Battle of Jutland – who died as a result of World War I.

The Battle of Jutland in 1916 was the greatest sea battle of WWI and caused the largest loss of life of men from Queenstown. Research by the Cobh based Jutland Memorial Society confirmed that of the 78 Queenstown men involved in the battle, 20 were killed.

The bodies and survivors of the sinking of the Lusitania were also brought ashore in Queenstown in 1915 and 170 of the victims were buried in the Old Church Cemetery just outside the town.

The midday Mass in St. Colman’s Cathedral will be dedicated to all who suffered and died in World War I. At 12.45pm, Carrigaline Pipe Band will lead a parade to the gardens of St. Benedict’s Priory, formerly Admiralty House – the WWI U.S Navy headquarters – where the Armistice Day centenary brass plaque will be unveiled.