by Senan Molony
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.
Irish Passengers RMS Titanic
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:
There was a girl from my place, and just when she got down into the lifeboat, she thought that the boat was sinking into the water. Her name was Bridget Bradley. She climbed one of the ropes as far as she could and tried to get back into the Titanic again, as she thought she would be safer in it than in the lifeboat. She was just getting up when one of the sailors went out to her and pulled her down again.
(Daniel Buckley, testifying to the US inquiry, day 12, 3 May 1912)
Buckley also mentioned Bridget in a letter he wrote home from the safety of the rescue ship Carpathia:
Thank God some of us are amongst the saved. Hannah Riordan, Brigie Bradley, Nonie O’Leary and the Shine girl from Lismore are all right.
(Letter printed in The Cork Examiner, 13 May 1912)
Bridget’s family believed she was rescued in lifeboat No. 4, launched from the starboard side of the sinking Titanic at 1.55 a.m., but this is inconsistent with her being seen by Daniel Buckley, whose own lifeboat departed a little earlier.
Bridget was interviewed by the Daily Times while still recovering from her ordeal at St Vincent’s Hospital in New York:
I was in bed at the time the accident occurred and the shock, which was a comparatively slight one, did not disturb me greatly. A knock on the doors of our rooms caused us to get up and dress ourselves. I slipped on a lightweight black dress and wrapped a small shawl about me, the only clothes I saved, and went to the deck where I found the most of the passengers assembled.