Irish Aboard Titanic (25 page)

Bernard McCoy (23) Saved

Joint ticket number 367226. Paid £23 5s.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: Carrickatane, Granard, County Longford.

Destination: 358 Madison Street West, Brooklyn, New York city.

Agnes, Alice and their brother Bernard were heading to New York to join their sister, Mrs Mary Heckel, at the above address, and to seek their fortunes.

Three Irish Survivors

Sisters' Thrilling Story – Saved Their Brother

The
Morning Leader's
New York correspondent wires –

Three steerage survivors who were at St Vincent's Hospital were Agnes, Alice and Bernard McCoy. They said that when the first shock came to the
Titanic
they were asleep. They dressed and hurriedly went on deck. There was an officer there who quickly reassured them.

They returned to the steerage quarters and found men and women rushing about. They noticed stewards going through the berths, telling passengers to dress and put on lifebelts. They donned lifebelts and went on deck.

They saw a boat half-filled with members of the crew and about to be lowered away. An officer came up pointing his revolver at the men and told them to get out or he would shoot. The men climbed out slowly.

Then the officer turned to the two young women and their brother and told them to get back downstairs as there was no immediate danger. Miss Agnes said they started down but drew back when they saw the water rushing into the steerage quarters.

By the time they got back to the officer, he was directing the placing of women in the lifeboat vacated by members of the crew and the women got in. Their brother, who is younger than either of them, watched as the boat was lowered.

That was the last they saw of him until they had been in the lifeboat half an hour. Then they saw him struggling in the water. One of them grabbed for him and missed, and a sailor told her he would throw her out if she did it again.

Their brother swam towards the boat and was shoved away with an oar. The third time he came, they grabbed him. A sailor with an oar hauled their brother into the boat.

(
The Cork Examiner
, 27 April 1912)

Sisters save drowning brother

Another dramatic story was told by two sisters, the Misses Agnes and Alice McCoy, who saved their brother, Bernard, after the seamen at the oars fought him off as he struggled in the water when the
Titanic
was sinking. Between sobs, Miss Agnes McCoy recounted the harrowing experiences. She said –

‘Both my sister and I wanted to remain on shipboard when they would not allow poor Bernard to come into the lifeboat with us. He told us to go ahead, but we thought that if one was going to drown we might all go down. We were literally thrown into the lifeboat and while we fought and cried, it was lowered over the side. The boat bobbed around in the water for some time before the men got at the oars, and the first thing I knew, I saw a form whirl through the air and splash into the water near our boat.

‘When the form came up, I recognised it as Bernard. I cried to my sister, who was nearer to him than I, to help him. The poor boy took hold of the side of the boat and I staggered to his rescue. Several persons pushed me back and I saw a seaman strike Bernard's hands with an oar. Then he tried to beat him off by striking him on the head and shoulders.

‘It was more than I could stand, and calling for Alice, I made for the seaman. With more strength than I thought I ever possessed, I threw the man to the bottom of the boat and held him there fast. Yes, maybe I did hit him once or twice, but I think I was justified under the circumstances.

‘In the meantime, Alice helped the poor boy over the side and lifted him to safety. I think everyone on board the lifeboat was highly elated and perfectly satisfied that our brother was safe with us. We need him here with us as any two sisters do.'

(
New York Herald,
29 April 1912)

Fr Michael Kenny, spiritual counsellor to a number of survivors, gave an interview to the
Brooklyn Eagle
on 23 April 1912, in which he was evidently confused about who had rescued whom:

I also learned at the hospital that Agnes and Alice McCoy, who escaped in a lifeboat into which they were pulled by their brother Bernard, together with their brother lost their life savings, amounting to £180, leaving the sum in a pillow slip when they deserted the ship.

Report of the American Red Cross (Titanic Disaster) 1913:

No. 278. (Irish.) Two girls, 28 and 22, and their brother, 21 years old, suffered severely from shock and exposure, and lost $500 in cash besides all their effects. ($300)

Agnes McCoy later paid tribute to Fr Thomas Roussel David Byles, who stayed with the steerage passengers as the
Titanic
slipped to oblivion:

I saw Fr Byles when he spoke to us in the steerage; and there was a German priest with him there [Fr Josef Peruschitz]. I did not see Fr Byles again until we were told to come up and get into the boat. He was reading out of a book, and did not pay any attention. He thought, as the rest of us did, that there wasn't really any danger.

Then I saw him put the book in his pocket and hurry around to help women into the boats. We were among the first to get away, and I didn't see him any more …

I learn from several passengers that Fr Byles and another priest stayed with the people after the last boat had gone, and that a big crowd, a hundred maybe, knelt about him. They were Catholics, Protestants and Jewish people who were kneeling there. Fr Byles told them to prepare to meet God, and recited the Rosary. The others answered him. Fr Byles and the other priest were still standing there praying when the water came over the deck.

(
Irish World
, New York, 27 April 1912)

Agnes became a servant employed by wealthy New Yorkers, and in time became housemaid to Hollywood stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who were married in 1919 but divorced in 1935. One of her treasured possessions was a photograph of Fairbanks inscribed ‘to Agnes'.

Agnes never married, and died from heart failure on 14 January 1957, which some have suggested was due to shock from a break-in at her Brooklyn apartment. She was 74.

Her sister Alice was twice divorced in her later life. She then co-habited with a third man, considering herself excommunicated from the Catholic Church. She used the name Gardner from a 1962 marriage. A daughter, Colleen, survived her.

Bernard McCoy, known as Barney, developed a permanent stutter from his terrifying experiences as he struggled for survival. Like other male survivors, he was later drafted into the US army and fought in the First World War. He worked as a laundryman in New Jersey after demobilisation, never married, and died from spinal cancer in a veteran's hospital at the end of the Second World War in July 1945.

1901 census – John McCoy, farmer (60), wife Bridget (55).

Children: Margaret (28), Patrick (23),
Alice (15), Bernard (13)
, John (10), Luke (7).

Delia McDermott (28) Saved

Ticket number 330932. Paid £7 15s 8d.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: Knockfarnaught, Lahardane, County Mayo.

Destination: 404 Henrietta Street, St Louis, Missouri.

Although one of the first to find a place in a lifeboat, Delia insisted on climbing out of the early boat to insist on recovering a prized possession. She had bought a new hat in Cawley's shop, Crossmolina, the nearest big town to her home place in a remote part of County Mayo, just before she travelled to America.

Journalist Tom Shiel told her story in T
he Connaught Telegraph of February 1998
:

Nephin Mór had been snowcapped on a number of occasions during the winter of 1912 and the people in the valleys below were longing for Spring. Even when only the boggy summit of Mayo's highest mountain was mantled in white, the people of Addergoole parish (Lahardane), indeed the whole of Ireland, had a cold time of it.

Many times that long ago spring of 1912, Delia McDermott looked westwards from her parents' thatched cottage at Knockfarnaught at the great majestic bulk of mountain. When the hedgerows were greening and only a few tiny stripes of snow remained on the upper reaches, Delia knew the time was fast approaching when she would be uprooted, perhaps forever, from her birthplace.

As part of her preparations for the great journey to America, she travelled one day to Crossmolina to buy new clothing. One of her purchases was a smart new hat. She liked the hat so much that weeks later she risked her life to recover it from her cabin in the ill-fated
Titanic.

Delia was one of 14 people from Addergoole preparing in spring 1912 to travel on the White Star liner. Only three of the group survived. Delia, despite dicing with death on the double in order to retrieve her cherished millinery, was one of the lucky ones.

There was great activity in Addergoole as sailing time approached. Those not travelling were out and about on the land and in the bog, or perhaps taking the odd trip to Castlebar where the women sold eggs and the men purchased grain and farm implements.

Thoughts of turf-cutting and harvesting were far from the minds of those who were about to emigrate as they travelled by pony and trap over the steep Windy Gap and then at a smart gallop into Castlebar. By the time the scythes had felled the first grass of that year's hay harvest, they planned to be carving out new lives in Chicago or other bustling industrial cities in the industrial United States.

In March, ten of the intending passengers, including Delia McDermott, then 28 years old, booked their passage with Thomas Durcan of Castlebar. Three others booked with another travel agent, Mrs Walsh of Linenhall Street.

The days before they were due to travel for Queenstown were extremely busy ones for the Addergoole contingent. They visited neighbours most would never see again and there were tearful embraces on the doorstep of many a thatched cottage.

Delia McDermott's niece, now Delia Melody of Lord Edward Street, Ballina, tells the story of a strange and chilling encounter between her aunt and a mysterious man in black in Lahardane village the evening before she left for Cobh.

‘She was in Lahardane with friends when suddenly a hand tapped her on the shoulder,' Mrs Melody explained. ‘She turned around and there was a little man there whom she thought was a traveller. My aunt went to give the man a few pennies and he told her he knew she was going on a long journey. “There will be a tragedy, but you will be saved,” the little man said before disappearing.'

When Delia mentioned the little man to her friends, they said they hadn't seen anybody. Thus Delia McDermott began her long and eventful journey to the New World filled with some foreboding …

Luck was also in Delia McDermott's favour. She was one of the first to find a lifeboat but returned to her cabin for the new hat she had bought before the journey. Says Delia's niece, Mrs Melody: ‘It was perhaps a foolish thing to do, but luckily she managed to get a place in a boat. She had to jump fifteen feet from a rope ladder onto the lifeboat. At this stage the
Titanic
was sideways. It was going down.'

Delia indeed survived and later prospered in the United States. She never returned to Ireland.

Report of the American Red Cross (
Titanic
Disaster) 1913:

No. 323. (Irish.) Servant, 25 years of age, injured very severely, and long unable to work. ($200)

On 25 April, Delia McDermott received $150 from the Women's Relief Committee, formed in New York to aid survivors. She had intended to travel to her cousin, Mrs Celia Syson, at Henrietta Street, St Louis, but never left the east coast. She moved from New York to New Jersey, marrying a fellow countryman, John Joseph Lynch of Galway. He served in the First World War and spent his working years on the Jersey city docks. They had three children – Julia, Margaret and Tommy. Delia never spoke about her
Titanic
experiences and the children were forbidden to ask her about it. It appears however that Delia was rescued in lifeboat No. 13, launched from the starboard side of the ship relatively early in the night.

Her daughter, Julia Danning, remembers Delia's later life:

She was a quiet, home-loving housewife, devoted to her family. She was very devout, with daily Mass and nightly Rosary. Her one and only vice was a weekly Euchre game with friends. She rarely spoke of her experience aboard the
Titanic
except for having left a lifeboat to go back and retrieve her new hat. Hats being what they were in those days, it was no doubt a huge expenditure for her family and it was a going-away gift. Otherwise I believe the ordeal was so traumatic that she closed her mind to it.

Delia died in Jersey City, N.J., on 3 November 1959. She was believed to have been aged 75 – a figure supported by the 1901 census which put her age at 17. However, if an age of 32 from the 1911 census is correct, she would have been 33 when the
Titanic
sailed, and 80 when she died.

1911 census – McDermott, Knockfarnaught.

Parents: Michael (77), farmer, Bridget (73). Married 40 years, seven children, four living. Children in house: Thomas (35),
Bridget (Delia, 32).

Michael McEvoy (19) lost

Joint ticket number 36568. Paid £15 10s.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: Farraneglish, Glebe, Ballycolla, County Laois.

Destination: 231 East 50th Street, New York city?

Eloping Michael McEvoy seems to have become infatuated with a woman nearly twice his age. The callow teenager was travelling on the same ticket as an intriguing female, fifteen years his senior. Norah Murphy, a 34-year-old nanny, already had one broken marriage behind her. How she became embroiled with 19-year-old Michael – and he with her – remains uncertain.

Norah was originally from Sallins, County Kildare, while Michael was born in County Laois. They may have met in Dublin as their ticket was bought in the capital and Norah had an aunt living close to the centre of the city. It seems the couple may have abandoned their home places to carry on an unapproved liaison in the city. Michael's family later airbrushed him out of their history, while Norah seemed to have left her own family trailing far in her wake, specifying only an aunt as her next of kin.