Irish Aboard Titanic (3 page)

Yet the Irish stories contained in these pages are not just important for the illumination they throw on the many mysteries still surrounding those last hours of the largest steamer in the world. They are also of importance in themselves, because the
Titanic
was an ocean-going time capsule. Here the Irish nation of the time presents itself – in all its outlooks, attitudes and values.

The survivors' letters, and newspaper reports about the lost fill these pages with the sights and sounds of early last century, while placing us on the deck of the
Titanic.
Such touchstones as religion, kindred, politics and emigration are all dwelt upon, and come into sharper focus from these contemporaneous outpourings. And 1912 was an important year for Ireland. Home Rule was a burning issue and the Bill to give it effect was introduced the same week
Titanic
sank. By the time of the British inquiry into the loss, the Bill had just been passed.

On 9 May 1912, trimmer George Cavell told how Third-Class men stood back as his packed No. 15 lifeboat began its descent with women and children. Counsel Sir John Simon asked whether the women in his boat were foreigners and was told they were Irish. He brought forth laughter in court when he observed: ‘A nice question, whether they were foreigners or not.' The Irish boarding the
Titanic
were taking their opinions overseas, they were part of an emigration stream draining Ireland of much of her lifeblood while simultaneously transfusing America and permanently colouring much of political discourse there.

Nearly 30,000 Irish emigrated west in 1912, with more than two-thirds going to the United States and another 6,000 to Canada. It was an extraordinary human traffic that had been going on since the famine, sixty-five years before. The
Titanic
passenger list shows who those emigrants were in 1912: overwhelmingly young, single men and women, Roman Catholic, from labouring or farm backgrounds. They were aged in their early twenties or late teens, and they largely did not ever expect to return home. The merriment and music of ‘American wakes' could not hide the heartache of impending separation. Older children were parting from their younger siblings (the census returns of 1901 and 1911 are startling in showing how populous Irish families could be) and the hurt remained behind. They left on sidecars, on horseback or on foot, heading to the local train station. They had saved for years to be able to afford to make the journey and they brought pitifully little with them in clothes, bags and wealth. Many had only been able to go because a family member already in the United States had sent back enough money, or a prepaid ticket, to ‘bring the next one out'.

An enormous industry had grown up on the back of Irish emigration. Any town of any consequence had its own shipping agent or sub-agent. One such outlet, O'Connor's of Ennistymon, sold tickets, steamer trunks and religious statuary. The operators reported that almost every intending emigrant also bought some religious item to accompany them on their journey – and Irish bodies taken from the sea had Rosary beads or protective scapulars. Some brought relics. Mary McGovern had clay from a saint's grave, promising protection against death by fire or drowning. She was saved. Meanwhile the little girl pictured in the front door of O'Connor's herself became an emigrant and moved to Britain, where she served as a nun.

Shipping lines made a fortune from the one-way tide. So too did others. One letter home, posted in Queenstown by a man who was lost, complained about the high cost of his party's overnight accommodation. In Queenstown alone no fewer than twenty establishments described themselves as emigrant lodging houses in 1912, with a further unspecified fourteen boarding homes and one or two hotels. All this in a town of a few thousand, making it a kind of Klondyke in reverse.

Just one week before the
Titanic
sailed, the local correspondent of
The Cork Examiner
wrote:

Standing on the highway of Queenstown (in) those days, a stranger would think it a remarkable spectacle to see thousands of country people pouring into the town carrying their belongings. But to us the spectacle is no new one, as it has been repeated year after year for decades. Time was when 20,000 people poured through the gateway of Queenstown in the first three months of the year. Formerly, by Queenstown, 100,000 would leave in one year.

Parents and every member of the family all went together. They carried their humble bedding and food vessels with them. Nowadays they come in broadcloth and minus bedding and utensils. No longer do we see parents joined up with their youngsters in the exodus. America is a closed door now, save to vigorous young people, without blemish and subject to triple medical examinations before getting passports. One of the saddest features contributing to the blood-letting of Ireland is the prepaid ticket, accounting for more than one-third of the annual drain.

The emigration rate was 6.7 per 1,000 of the population in 1912. Since the enumeration of Irish emigrants began on 1 May 1855, no less than 4,847,360 Irish people had left the country by the end of the
Titanic
year. Females were in a majority, with 2.6 million departures compared to 2.2 million males.

The poor cross-subsidised the rich. White Star, Cunard and others could not have afforded to extend the race for bigger, faster ships had not the emigrants provided the steady, year-long business that brought huge turnover and massive cash flow. After the disaster, one Irish newspaper observed plaintively that it did not much matter to the emigrant what day – let alone what time – he or she arrived in New York. But when striking seamen cancelled a sailing of the
Olympic
soon after the sinking, the British papers carried a businessman's pompous claims that every hour's delay was costing him hundreds of pounds.

The White Star's annual report, published in May 1912, recorded a profit of £1,074,752 and one shilling. Nearly half the money was paid out in dividends, but the under-insured
Titanic
had wiped out the year's work. The report declared: ‘The loss of this fine vessel is a source of deep regret to your directors, but it is of minor importance compared with the terrible loss of so many valuable lives.' Curious syntax, some might think.

Newspapers had always fallen in line with the age's obsession with both success and excess. Pictures of castings for the White Star's
Gigantic,
noting that she would be a larger vessel than even the
Titanic,
appeared on the front page of
The Irish Post
on 4 May. And barely a week short of the tragedy's first anniversary in April 1913,
The Cork Examiner
carried a picture of the
Olympic's
first voyage from Cork following her expensive safety refit. Without a trace of irony, the caption noted: ‘In addition to the increased bulkheads, she has also been fitted with a strong inner shell of steel, rendering her practically unsinkable.'

Nor did the emigrants themselves have any questions. Those joining the big liners were walking into a standard of living, even in Third Class, that they could only dream about at home. They had electric light, warmth, planked floors, and three or more square meals a day – for most, vast improvements on what they had at home. And standards in steerage on the
Titanic
were incomparably ahead of anything else afloat. No wonder the Irish partied.

On Thursday 11 April 1912, two tenders bringing 113 Third-Class, seven Second-Class and three First-Class passengers left Deepwater Quay, Queenstown, for the anchorage of the
Titanic
off Roches Point. The
America
and the
Ireland
also ferried a small mountain of luggage and 1,385 mail sacks. They returned with the Irish mails and confident, optimistic messages to loved ones from many of those on board. They also brought back a single deserter. Why did stoker John Coffey, originally from Queenstown, desert? Had he been receiving abuse in the furnace-environment below decks or been offended by anti-Catholic slogans chalked on the flue boxes?

Those looking for insensitivity did not have to look far in the immediate aftermath of the sinking. Notes sent to bereaved families by the White Star's agents in Queenstown a month after the tragedy were composed on a letterhead still bearing the boast that the
Titanic
was one of the two largest steamers in the world. Worse, when White Star itself published its final list of survivors and casualties, the names of the Irish who boarded at Queenstown contained a series of grotesque errors – with two female passengers unforgivably transformed into men through the careless mistranscription of the simple names Julia and Bridget, into ‘Julian' and ‘Bert'. Other surnames were hopelessly transmogrified – such that it led to the grimmest of confusion about whether loved ones might have been on board or not.

Southern Irish attitudes seem initially to have soured against the
Titanic
in the early years after her sinking. The ship stood for ‘Black' Belfast, for anti-Catholic sentiment, with reports of Home Rule protest slogans daubed on the hull receiving wide currency, to the exclusion of many other considerations. As usual, Ireland's political and religious squabble was narrowing horizons and limiting visions. It was only in 1998 that the first outdoor
Titanic
memorial was erected in southern Ireland, at the liner's last port of call.

The Royal Mail Steamer
Titanic
was built, crewed and passengered in large part by the people of Ireland. She belongs to all of Ireland as much as the whole world, and to those who recognise that dreams and death and hopes and life are common to all humans of every status and allegiance.

Piper Eugene Daly played a farewell dirge to his homeland as the
Titanic
weighed anchor at Queenstown and began her journey into destiny. The air he chose was
Erin's Lament.
Like hymns on the boat deck, the strains still carry … and come wafting like a memory, across the distant water.

Note to the reader:

The following includes verbatim reports from a variety of sources, which can give rise to inconsistencies when collated. The headline information for each person should then be considered correct. For example, ages are commonly wrong in census information, where shown, particularly for females. There are also variations in the spelling of names and places. Census material is omitted in some cases for space reasons. Ticket numbers could vary widely, but the first digit generally indicates the class of travel.

Julia Barry (26) Lost

Ticket number 330844. Paid £7 12s 7d, plus 5s extra for upgrade.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: Killeentierna, Currow, Farranfore, County Kerry.

Destination: 14 West 36th Street, New York city.

The Hennessy girl and her friend Julia Barry were having a wonderful day visiting the Lakes of Killarney. They had joined a pleasure boat and were now 200 yards from shore when Julia, perhaps spinning her parasol in evocation of the good life, suddenly lost control of it. The umbrella fell from her grasp and sank in the lake.

Julia exclaimed and the Hennessy girl was horrified. But worst affected was the boatman. Wildly superstitious, he turned his boat immediately and headed back for shore. He could not be persuaded otherwise by anyone on board.

On tying up, the skipper told his passengers that Julia Barry would die at sea. Kerry folklore says the prophecy came true a few weeks later when Julia lost her life in the wreck of the
Titanic
off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

Julia had already been living in America for many years when she returned to Ireland to nurse her ailing mother – who shared her Christian name – at the beginning of 1912. She had previously been living in Yonkers, New York, with brothers and sisters. Her stated destination on the return voyage was to be her sister Nellie's at West 36th Street.

Almost all the family had emigrated from a brood of fourteen children born to Julia Snr and her husband Michael, a stonemason. The family started off in a crowded cottage in the village of Currow, where her father was employed by local landlords on the construction of walls around their estate. Begun initially as famine relief, the employment lengthened and the Barrys moved to a house opposite a lake at Scartaglin where Julia was born in early 1882.

The
Irish Independent
pictured Julia in the wake of the disaster, noting: ‘She was returning to New York after coming home to nurse her mother, who is now dead. She was about 26 and the mainstay of her aged father.' The omen on the Lakes of Killarney came about because she resolved to see again the splendour of the place that many Americans had asked her about when she was in the United States.

On 11 April 1913, the first anniversary of her boarding the
Titanic
at Queenstown, her father brought a high court writ against the Oceanic Steam Navigation Co., the incorporated operators of the White Star Line. He is thought to have received a small settlement for the loss of his daughter, without admission of liability.

1911 census – Killeentierna, County Kerry.

Michael Barry (80), mason, widower.

Julia, daughter (25), single.

John Bourke (41) Lost

Catherine Bourke (32) Lost

Mary Bourke (39) Lost

John and Catherine's joint ticket number 364849. Paid £15 10s.

Mary's ticket number 364548. Paid £7 15s.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

All from: Carrowskehine, Lahardane, County Mayo.

Destination: All bound to stay with Catherine's sister, Ellen McHugh, 66 Ruby Street, Chicago.

John and Catherine Bourke had been married for just over one year. She had been Catherine McHugh, falling in love on a visit home to Ireland. Soon after the wedding the couple resolved to sell up and go to the United States. John's younger sister Mary opted to accompany them on the great adventure to Chicago where Catherine had previously lived.

Their story is told by the
Chicago Evening World
of May 1912:

Flower of Mayo's youth sank with hands joined on the
Titanic

Of fifteen merry lads and colleens seeking fortune, only two arrive

The Chicago ‘Evening World' says – Of twelve young Irishmen and girls, two young men and a boy, comprising a party of fifteen from the County Mayo who started for Chicago on the
Titanic
, only two have arrived here – two colleens, Annie Kelly and Annie McGowan.

The rest are at the bottom of the ocean for they went down with the
Titanic
and there is grief here in Chicago where relatives mourn and grief back in County Mayo over the sudden end to the dreams and plans of thirteen of the flower of Ireland's youth.

It was a family party, all the members being bound by ties of kinship or of lifelong companionship. In it were John Bourke, a sturdy young farmer, and his Kate, the bride of less than a year, and John's sister Mary, all from the farming country around Crossmolina; Kate McGowan, a former resident of Chicago, and her niece Annie McGowan, a girl of 16; Annie Kelly, aged 18, of Castlebar, the county town of Mayo, a few miles from Crossmolina; Patrick Canavan, 18, a cousin of Annie Kelly; Mary Manion [
sic
], bound to join her brother in Chicago; a boy Patrick, and Mary Flynn his sister; three blue-eyed rosy-cheeked girls named O'Donohue, Mahan and Driscoll, and Nora Fleming and Mary Glynn.

Romance of Ireland comes into Kate's life

The mysterious workings of destiny contributed to the formation of this ill-fated little squad of ocean-travellers. Some ten years ago, Kate McHugh and Kate McGowan, then little more than children, came to Chicago from their homes near Crossmolina.

They prospered, and about fifteen months ago Kate McHugh went back to Ireland for a visit. She met John Bourke, a playmate of her childhood days, and he married her out of hand, for an old affection both had forgotten leaped into love. It was the intention of Bourke and his wife to live out their lives in Ireland.

Kate McGowan went back to Ireland last October. She owned a rooming house in this city, and it was her intention to return in the spring. Right industriously did she sing the praises of Chicago in the homes of those she visited in County Mayo and the result of it was that when she came to start back there were fourteen ready to accompany her, among them the Bourkes, who had sold their farm and planned to invest their money in a teaming business in this city.

The night before the fifteen started for Queenstown to board the
Titanic,
there was what the Irish call a ‘live wake' at Castlebar. Hundreds of friends of the young people gathered and made merry that they might start with light hearts and merriment. Never were fifteen voyagers to a strange land launched on their journey with such a plenitude of goodwill and good wishes.

The immense
Titanic
overshadowing everything in Queenstown harbour was a revelation to thirteen of the little party as they came alongside in the tender. Some of them had never seen an ocean liner before.

The Mayo delegation were given a section of the Third-Class quarters remote from the Lithuanians and Herzegovinians and Slavs, who had boarded the vessel the day before at Cherbourg and were already filling the steerage with strange odours.

Although travelling Third Class, the little party was prosperous. All had money and good clothing and many little trinkets they were carrying to loved ones who had gone before to the far-off and mysterious and magical Chicago. All fifteen kept to themselves, spending the days on deck in the fresh air and sunshine.

They were all asleep when the
Titanic
, rushing along at 23 knots an hour, tore a hole in her hull against an iceberg. The jar did not disturb the third cabin where the rush of water and the throb of engines were always heard.

It was half an hour or more after the
Titanic
struck when a steward roused the County Mayo travellers and told them the ship had struck something but there was no danger.

Although they believed the stewards, they did not go to sleep again. There was apprehension in the hearts of the lads and colleens from Mayo, and when Mrs Bourke suggested prayer, they all knelt. One of them recited the Rosary and the others, with their beads in hand, intoned the responses aloud. They were calm then, but they did not sleep.

Just twenty minutes before the boat went down, stewards ran through the steerage shouting orders for all passengers to go up on deck. There was no time for those who had neglected to clothe themselves to dress. They swarmed to the companionway leading to the upper decks, but were held back by officers who said things were not ready.

John Bourke and Patrick Canavan knew there was a ladder leading to the upper decks. Gathering the women and girls about them, they started for the ladder. Just then a steward who had talked on several occasions to Annie Kelly, a roguish Miss, happened along and saw her, frightened and confused, dropping behind her friends.

Grasping her hand, the steward dragged her up the stairway to the deck where the lifeboats were loading. She was clad only in a nightgown. A boat was just about to be launched. The steward pushed her in. It was only half full.

Then John Bourke and his wife and his sister Mary and the little Flynn boy appeared on deck. The stewards tried to push the two women into the boat after Annie Kelly.

‘I'll not leave my husband', said Kate Bourke. ‘I'll not leave my brother', said Mary Bourke.

The crew of the lifeboat would not let the little Flynn aboard, although he was a slight boy and not able to take care of himself. The last Annie Kelly saw of John Bourke and his wife and his sister and little Patrick Flynn, they were standing hands clasped in a row by the rail, waiting for the end.

The end came in a few minutes. The great
Titanic
went down and of all that left County Mayo on that ship, Annie Kelly thought she was the sole survivor.

But the next day, when she had recovered from the effects of the shock and exposure, she found Annie McGowan lying beside her. The two girls were cared for in an hospital in New York and sent to their relatives in this city scantily clothed, for they say the clothing given to them in New York was so ragged and dirty they could not wear them.

Annie McGowan does not know how she was saved; in fact she is unable to tell any connected story of the horror.

All gone but two of that merry group that boarded the
Titanic
in Queenstown, fresh from the County Mayo. And the two, young as they are, bear the marks of sorrow that will never leave them.

(Reprinted by The
Connaught Telegraph,
25 May 1912)

The tragedy resulted in more wakes in County Mayo, days after the American wakes:

Titanic
Disaster Lahardane Victims

One of the saddest sights ever witnessed in the west of Ireland was the waking of the five young girls and one young man from a village near Lahardane, who went down with the ill-fated
Titanic.

They were all from the same village, and when the first news of the appalling catastrophe reached their friends the whole community was plunged into inutterable grief. They cherished for a time a remote hope that they were saved, but when the dread news of their terrible fate arrived, a feeling of excruciating anguish took the place.

For two days and two nights, wakes were held. The photograph of each victim was placed on the bed on which they had slept before leaving home and kindred. The beds were covered with snow-white quilts and numbers of candles were lighted around.

The wailing and moaning of the people was very distressing and would almost draw a tear from a stone. The name of the young man who drowned was Michael Bourke [
sic
], and in his case his loss is rendered all the sadder by the fact that his young wife went down with him to a watery grave.

A strange story is told by Bourke's brother in connection with the tragic affair. He states that at the time of the disaster he dreamt he saw his brother in the attitude of shaving himself in his own house.

(Western People
, 4 May 1912)

John Bourke, baptised on 25 May 1869, was the son of William Bourke and Mary O'Boyle. His parents died and he married Catherine McHugh on 17 January 1911, in Lahardane.

Catherine, originally from Tawnagh in the locality, was related to another passenger, Catherine McGowan of Terry, Massbrook, County Mayo, while the Bourkes lived next door to fellow passenger Mary Mangan.

The 1911 census shows John and Kate to be aged 40 and 31, married for under one year, with the farmer's sister Mary in the same household, aged 38.

Local history states that John Bourke bought a new spade in early 1912 intending to put down a crop, but changed his mind and decided to emigrate instead. Local folklore also insists that Catherine and Mary were in a lifeboat (possibly No. 16 on the port side) and when they saw that John was to be left behind, returned to the ship and were lost.

Bridget Delia Bradley (22) Saved

Ticket number 334914. Paid £7 14s 6d.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: Ballinahulla, County Kerry; bordering Kingwilliamstown, County Cork.

Destination: 29 William Street, Glen Falls, New York.

She was saved – sitting securely in a lifeboat that was beginning its jolting descent to the water. But Bridget Delia Bradley felt she had to escape from the vessel of her salvation. Demented with fear, she tried to get back on the doomed ship: