Irish Aboard Titanic (50 page)

(
Weekly Freeman
, 8 June 1912)

Questions in parliament

Loss of the Steamship
Titanic

Mr J. P. Farrell: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether his attention has been called to the case of James B. Williamson, a native of Dublin, who joined the sea-going post office at Southampton on 10th April 1911, and was lost in the
Titanic
wreck on 15th April 1912; whether he is aware that this young man was the sole support of his mother and three young sisters; whether he is aware that for one year in this service he contributed £90 towards their support; and whether, under the circumstances, a bulk sum of £150 is all that is proposed to give his widowed mother in compensation for the loss of such a son who in one year nearly gave that amount of his earnings?

Mr Herbert Samuel: I am aware of the circumstances of this sad case and regard it with much sympathy. The sum specified by the honourable member is that due to the executors of the late Mr Williamson under the Superannuation Act of 1909, and is quite apart from any question of compensation for his loss. That question is complicated by unexpected legal difficulties, which have rendered it necessary to consult the Law Officers of the Crown. I regret, therefore, that at the present moment I am unable to give a more specific answer.

(
Longford Leader
, 20 July 1912)

Eleanor Grace Williamson, widow, of 11 Botanic Road, backed in surety by her daughter Eleanor, a spinster and railway clerk, later sought administration of the estate of James Bertram Williamson, ‘Sorter in the Sea Post Office aboard the
Titanic'
. She declared that she was the lawful next-of-kin of her son, and agreed to pay his just due debts, certifying that his personal estate was worth £223. The family's solicitor was Gerald Byron of 7 Lr Ormond Quay, Dublin.

Eleanor herself did not long outlast the crushing heartbreak of losing her only son, an unfairness piled on top of the death of her husband. She died on 6 July 1913 at the Adelaide Hospital. Her estate amounted to £851 7s.

A memorial plaque was erected by lamenting colleagues to the Dublin sorter aboard the
Titanic
. It is found in the Abbey Presbyterian Church on Parnell Square, Dublin, also known as Findlater's Church:

To the Glory of God and in Memory of

James B. Williamson

Of the Transatlantic Post Office

Who died on duty in the foundering

of the SS ‘Titanic' April 15th 1912

By this tablet the members of

the Postal and Telegraph Services

Record their Deep Sorrow at his death.

A Related Incident

Tragic Affair at the Curragh

Castlebar Man's Brother Lost on
Titanic

Inquest into the death of Private John T. Young of the Connaught Rangers
.

Sergeant Thomas Duffy told the inquest that the deceased was 33 and unmarried. He had been corporal, but had been reduced to private on the 28th March last.

As store man, the deceased slept in the store by himself, and on entering yesterday a witness found him lying on his right side about 18 feet from the bed.

He saw the carbine examined that morning and an empty cartridge extracted from the bore of the rifle. Deceased had been worried about a brother of his who was on the
Titanic
and who had, he believed, been drowned.

Sergeant John Clinton RIC said the deceased's body was very much stained with blood. Having pulled the trigger, the deceased must have fallen back and then got off the bed.

The jury found that the deceased died from gunshot wounds, self-inflicted, while of unsound mind. The deceased is a native of Castlebar.

(
Western People
, 18 May 1912)

Drowned fireman Francis Young of Russell Street, Southampton, was the only man with his surname on board. His picture appeared in the
Daily Sketch
, of 22 April 1912. Recent research indicates, however, that he had been born in Southampton and had no connection at all with Mayo. Therefore the soldier from Castlebar had deceived himself about his brother being lost on the
Titanic.

Private John Young's family lived at 11 Ellison Street, Castlebar, County Mayo. William Young and his wife, Emily, had had ten children, nine of whom lived. They had been married for 34 years. Son Francis appears to have been working as a seafarer from English ports, but was not on the maiden voyage.

In the 1911 census, as in previous population snapshots, Francis James Young of the
Titanic
disaster and of Russell Street, Southampton, is shown as having been born locally. His parents were Frank and Louisa, the former also a seafarer. Son Francis married Amy White at Southampton in 1901 and died in the North Atlantic at the age of 33.

William Edward Minahan (44) Lost

Lillian Minahan (37) Saved

Daisy (Ida) Minahan (33) Saved

Only three First-Class passengers went aboard the
Titanic
at Queenstown. They were members of the first-generation Irish family called the Minahans. Dr William Edward Minahan was a 44-year-old physician with a practice at Fund Du Lac, Wisconsin. His wife, Lillian, was 37 years old and was formerly an artist's muse. William was her second husband. Also travelling with them was William's sister, Daisy Minahan, aged 33, from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

William and Daisy were both children of William Burke Minahan and Mary Shaughnessy, who had been childhood sweethearts from the village of Adare, County Limerick, before emigrating to a new life in America in the lean years after the Great Famine. The trio had been in Ireland on a sightseeing tour, and had stayed at the Imperial Hotel in Cork just prior to making the short journey to Queenstown and the luxury vessel that was supposed to convey them back to America. William lost his life in the ensuing tragedy. Lillian and Daisy were saved in lifeboat No. 14, launched from the port side.

They shared cabin C-78, dead amidships on the port side. Daisy told how she and her brother and his wife went to dinner at the Café Parisien on B deck at 7.15 p.m. on Sunday night, before the collision. When they entered a party of a dozen men and three women were already enjoying themselves at another table. The company included the Wideners, Major Archibald Butt (President Taft's personal aide-de-camp) and Captain Edward John Smith. Daisy said Captain Smith remained at the gathering, drinking coffee, for more than two hours, finally bidding goodnight between 9.25 and 9.45 p.m. William Minahan also suggested going to bed at this time, but was persuaded to remain on for one more piece of music from the ship's orchestra. The
Tales of Hoffman
was played and the Minahans retired.

Daisy told in an affidavit to the US inquiry what happened next:

I was awakened by the crying of a woman in the passageway. I roused my brother and his wife, and we began at once to dress. No one came to give us warning. We spent five minutes in dressing and went on deck to the port side. The frightful slant of the deck toward the bow of the boat gave us our first thought of danger.

An officer came and commanded all women to follow, and he led us to the boat deck on the starboard side. He told us there was no danger, but to get into a lifeboat as a precaution only. After making three attempts to get into boats, we succeeded in getting into lifeboat No. 14. The crowd surging around the boats was getting unruly.

Officers were yelling and cursing at men to stand back and let the women get into the boats. In going from one lifeboat to another we stumbled over huge piles of bread lying on the deck.

When the lifeboat was filled there were no seamen to man it. The officer in command on No. 14 called for volunteers in the crowd who could row. Six men offered to go. At times when we were being lowered we were at an angle of 45 degrees and expected to be thrown into the sea.

As we reached the level of each deck, men jumped into the boat until the officer threatened to shoot the next man who jumped. We landed in the sea and rowed to a safe distance from the sinking ship. The officer counted our number and found us to be 48. The officer commanded everyone to feel in the bottom of the boat for a light. We found none. Nor was there bread or water in the boat. The officer, whose name I learned afterwards to be Lowe, was continually making remarks such as, ‘A good song to sing would be,
Throw Out the Lifeline'
, and ‘I think the best thing for you women to do is take a nap.'

The
Titanic
was fast sinking. After she went down the cries were horrible. This was at 2.20 a.m. by a man's watch who stood next to me.

At this time three other boats and ours kept together by being tied to each other. The cries continued to come over the water. Some of the women implored Officer Lowe, of No. 14, to divide his passengers among the three other boats and go back to rescue. His first answer to those requests was, ‘You ought to be damn glad you are here and have got your own life.'

After some time he was persuaded to do as he was asked. As I came up to him to be transferred to the other boat he said, ‘Jump, God damn you, jump!' I had showed no hesitancy and was waiting only my turn. He had been so blasphemous during the two hours we were in his boat that the women at my end of the boat all thought he was under the influence of liquor.

Then he took all of the men who had rowed No. 14, together with the men from the other boats, and went back to the scene of the wreck. We were left with a steward and a stoker to row our boat, which was crowded. The steward did his best, but the stoker refused at first to row, but finally helped two women, who were the only ones pulling on that side. It was just 4 o'clock when we sighted the
Carpathia
, and we were three hours getting to her.

On the
Carpathia
we were treated with every kindness and given every comfort possible.

It is remarkable that Daisy makes mention nowhere in her account of what became of her brother William, who evidently accepted his fate. The sea yielded up his corpse nine days later:

No. 230. Male. Estimated Age: 60. Hair, Grey.

Clothing – Black suit and overcoat.

Effects – Pocketbook; papers; gold watch, ‘Dr W.E. Minahan'; keys; knife; fountain pen; clinical thermometer; memo book; tie pin; diamond ring; gold cuff link; nickel watch; comb; check book; American Express; $380; 1 collar button; £16 10s. in gold; 14 shillings; nail clipper.

Name – Dr W.E. Minahan.

William's body was brought to the Morgue in Halifax by the rescue vessel
MacKay-Bennett
and later buried in his native Wisconsin.

Gypsy told doctor he would lose life in a sea disaster

Fond du Lac, Wis., 17 April – Dr William Minahan, the Fond du Lac surgeon who met his death in the
Titanic,
was told five years ago by a soothsayer that he would meet his end in a marine disaster.

Minahan with a number of friends visited a gypsy camp and all had their fortunes told. The fortune teller told Dr Minahan he would die while on a steamer on his second trip abroad.

The physician went to Europe shortly after, spending a year there in medical research. Last January he went again. Friends joked with him about the prediction of death made by the fortune teller, but he ridiculed the idea. However he arranged all his affairs before he went, taking his wife and sister with him.

He carried life insurance to the amount of $100,000 and $60,000 accident insurance. He was one of the foremost surgeons in Wisconsin.

(
Denver Post,
17 April 1912)

Incredibly, shortly after the discovery of the
Titanic
wreck by Dr Robert Ballard in 1985, cultists broke into the Minahan mausoleum and stole his skull. The grotesque trophy was later recovered by police and reinterred in solemn ceremony.

After the
Titanic
, Daisy Minahan survived just another seven years. She died at the age of 40 on 30 April 1919 – and her officially certified cause of death was chronic TB.

Lillian Minahan, William's widow, lived for another half century, dying at the age of 86, after a total of four husbands, on 13 January 1962.

Charles Kirkland (71) Lost

Ticket number 219533.

Kirkland was a Free Will Baptist minister, originally from Glasgow, who had taken a sabbatical from his pastoral work in Canada to settle up a relative's estate in Scotland. He was journeying to the United States and Canada, where he intended to visit a married sister in Tuxford, Saskatchewan.

Records of lawsuits against the White Star Line show that Rev. Kirkland had family members living in Old Town, Maine. He had six children, named as sons Algie, Henry and Allen, and daughters Alma Jipson, Myrtle Treadwell and Maude Elden.

Hilda Slayter (30) Saved

Ticket number 234818.

Miss Hilda Slayter, one of the First-Class [
sic
] passengers saved from the
Titanic,
was coming back to Canada on the big liner to marry Mr Reginald Lacon, of the big ranch owners of British Columbia, and son of the late Hon. Mr Lacon.

Miss Slayter, who is a Halifax girl, and a sister of the Captain of Queen Victoria's private yacht, has been in England and France visiting friends, and incidentally collecting a beautiful wedding trousseau, in view of her coming marriage to Mr Lacon. The trousseau will, of course, be lost, but one may well imagine that the coming bride will be none the less welcome for that.

(
Edmonton Daily Bulletin
, 25 April 1912)

Hilda had been in Ireland to visit her younger sister, Margaret, 26, who was married to an army officer and living in Anglesea Street, Clonmel, County Tipperary. She was travelling home to get married herself in Moon Island, British Columbia. Just turned 30, Hilda was the daughter of a wealthy doctor in Halifax, where the bodies of
Titanic
victims were later landed, and where she now lies buried herself. She had been living in Europe for many years and had trained as a professional singer in Italy.

The Cork Examiner
reported: ‘Miss Hilda Slater, sister of Mrs Haslam, wife of Captain [Gerald Willoughby] Haslam, Royal Irish Regiment, Clonmel, is among the rescued, and a cable announcing the glad tidings has been received by her relatives'. It appears certain that Hilda was saved in boat No. 13 – the same starboard boat entered by Dulwich College teacher Lawrence Beesley, who seems to be describing her in the course of relating a coincidence:

One conversation took place that is, I think, worth repeating. One more proof that the world, after all, is a small place. The ten-month-old baby which was handed down [into lifeboat No. 13] at the last moment was received by a lady next to me – the same who shared her wraps and coats.

The mother had found a place in the middle and was too tightly packed to come through to the child, and so it slept contentedly for about an hour in a stranger's arms; then it began to cry and the temporary nurse said: ‘Will you feel down and see if the baby's feet are out of the blanket? I don't know much about babies but I think their feet must be warm.'

Wriggling down as well as I could, I found its toes exposed to the air and wrapped them well up, when it ceased crying at once. It was evidently a successful diagnosis. Having recognised the lady by her voice – it was much too dark to see faces – I said ‘Surely you're Miss –?' ‘Yes', she replied, ‘And you must be Mr Beesley, how curious we should find ourselves in the same boat!'

Remembering that she had joined the boat in Queenstown, I said: ‘Do you know Clonmel? A letter from a great friend of mine who is staying there at ––– (giving the address) came aboard at Queenstown.'

‘Yes, it is my home and I was dining at ––– just before I came away.' It seemed that she knew my friend too, and we agreed that of all the places in the world to recognise mutual friends, a crowded lifeboat in mid-ocean at 2 a.m., twelve hundred miles from our destination, was one of the most unexpected.

(Lawrence Beesley,
The Loss of the SS Titanic,
1912)

Hilda Slayter was duly married on 1 June 1912, and had a baby of her own the following year with the arrival of Reginald William Beecroft Lacon. She died in British Columbia on 12 April 1965, three days before the fifty-third anniversary of the sinking. She was 83.