Irish Aboard Titanic

by Senan Molony

  Ticket number 110344. Paid £26.

  Boarded at Southampton. First Class.

  From: Torquay, Devon.

  Destination: San Francisco.

  A thoroughly English gentleman, Henry Forbes Julian happened to have been born in Cork city on 9 May 1861. He was the son of a coachbuilder and his wife, Marie. He began his schooling in Cork, but the family soon relocated to Little Bolton, Lancashire. There is no evidence that Henry spent any time in Ireland for more than thirty years before the Titanic sailed.

  He married in 1895, by which time he was a metallurgical engineer and a consultant to mines in South Africa and Germany. He was an extensive traveller, having also visited the West Indies, Mexico, Canada and the United States, having crossed the Atlantic thirteen times in the process.

  Trip number fourteen was the unlucky one. His wife, Hester, was saved by a bout of flu which meant she could not join him on his journey to do business in California. The couple lived at ‘Redholme’, 62 Braddons Hill Road East, Torquay. Henry was a founder of the Royal Automobile Club.

  Andy Keane (23) Lost

  Ticket number 12460. Paid £7 15s.

  Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

  From: Tobberoe, Derrydonnell, Athenry, County Galway.

  Destination: 162 Melrose Street, Auburndale, Massachusetts.

  Andy Keane was one of three brothers who were local sports stars. He and his brothers, Pat and Mike, were the backbone of the Derrydonnell hurling team, winners of the club championship for all of County Galway in the years 1909 and 1911. A former treasurer of Derrydonnell, Andy played in the championship final at Tuam on 26 November 1911, when special trains were laid on to carry supporters to the venue. Derrydonnell scored three second-half goals to beat Claregalway by a good margin.

  Andy decided to leave Ireland and the team just months later, because his two sisters, Mary-Anne and Ellie, who were already in the United States along with his brother John, sent over the money for his passage. Both girls returned home for good in the wake of the sinking. Buying his ticket at Mahon’s shop in Athenry, Andy signed aboard the Titanic as an agricultural labourer, giving his age as 23. He knew a near neighbour, Nora Healy, was also travelling on the vessel but was anxious to avoid her. He considered Nora ‘a bit touched’. He joked with his brothers that if he met her on board he would pretend he had never encountered her in his life before.

  Andy packed his championship hurling medals, a dozen hurleys and a melodeon in his baggage. He was due to stay in America at the address of his brother John Keane, two years older, who had established his home in the small town of Auburndale, Massachusetts. Andy might also have decided to become an emigrant because his father had recently died, leaving older brother Patrick (26) to inherit the family farm.

  There were eleven children in the family, six boys and five girls, and while the 120-acre farm was large, Andy evidently decided his fortune lay elsewhere.

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

  No. 232. (Irish.) A farmer, twenty years of age, was drowned, leaving dependent his widowed mother and four younger children in Ireland. This Committee gave $100 to the mother for emergent relief. The case was referred to the English Committee, which made a grant of £25. ($100)

  A solemn Requiem Mass was said in Andy’s honour in the parish church, Athenry, in July 1912, celebrated by Canon Canton, PP, and attended by Gaelic games enthusiasts, team mates, and representatives of clubs from all over County Galway. At the county convention later in the year, the board presented a portrait of the deceased to his brother Patrick.

  1911 census – Keane family, Tobberoe, Athenry.

  Head: Norah Keane (61), widow.

  Children: Patrick (26), labourer, Andrew (22), labourer, single, Michael (20), Mary Anne (18), Martin (15), Thomas (9).

  Daniel Keane (35) Lost

  Ticket number 233734. Paid £12 7s.

  Boarded at Queenstown. Second Class.

  From: Gallowshill, Cratloe, County Clare.

  Destination: St Louis, Missouri.

  One of the few Irish Second-Class passengers, Daniel Keane clearly decided to travel in comfort on his voyage to America. Indeed, he was considered rather rich in his home place and eyebrows were raised at the abandonment of a valuable bicycle, which he had grandly left behind at his sister Bridget King’s house. It was not the only commodity he forswore in Ireland, for his estate subsequently amounted to £145, a large sum indeed when many of the Irish victims of the disaster left only a handful of pounds.

  ‘He was going to America to get a job. He had a belt around his stomach made of all sovereigns,’ said his grandniece Ita Cusack. ‘The night before he left, he attended a farewell party and dance at his sister’s house.’

  Before he decided to seek pastures new, Keane had been living in Dublin and working as a tram conductor on the Donnybrook–Phoenix Park line. He lived in lodgings in Marlboro Road, Donnybrook, close to the terminus of the No. 59 tram. He appears in No. 4 Marlboro Road in the 1911 census, where he is described as a 34-year-old tram conductor, single, from County Clare. Keane was boarding with the Gaffney family, and his fellow tenants include a motor man, a carpenter and a lacemaker.

  Dublin Passengers

  It is stated that there were four Second-Class passengers booked from Dublin at Messrs Cook’s offices. Two women who called at noon yesterday to make enquiries bore marked traces of the grief and anxiety that they were suffering.

  One of the four passengers booked from Dublin was Daniel Kane [sic], who, up to the time of his leaving Ireland, was employed as a tramway car conductor on the Donnybrook line.

  He is a County Clare man and lived in lodgings in Marlborough Road, Donnybrook.

  Irish Independent, 18 April 1912

  Daniel was born on 25 June 1876, and was aged 35 when the Titanic sailed. Administration of the estate of Daniel Keane, late of 4 Marlboro Road, Donnybrook, Dublin and Gallowshill, Cratloe, County Clare, tram conductor, who died on 14 April 1912 at sea off the coast of North America, was granted at Limerick to Honoria Keane, widow.

  The papers show that Mrs Keane could neither read nor write. Solicitor R. Frost wrote that her affidavit had been ‘first read and explained, she being illiterate, and she seemed to understand same and made her mark thereto’.

  Nora Keane (46) Saved

  Ticket number 226593. Paid £12 7s.

  Boarded at Queenstown. Second Class.

  From: Gardenhill, Castleconnell, County Limerick.

  Destination: 167 Paxton Street, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

  A corset nearly got in the way of Nora Keane saving her own life. She was wasting so much time as she fumbled to put it on and lace it up that it became the object of a dispute with her travelling companion, Edwina Troutt. When Edwina returned to her cabin, one woman, Susie Webber, had already left. The other, Nora, was still dressing. Having replaced her dressing-gown with a warmer coat, Edwina dealt with the nervous Irishwoman. When Nora insisted on trying to put on a corset, Edwina grabbed it from her and sent it flying down the narrow passage leading to the porthole. Interestingly a similar confrontation over a corset is played out in the James Cameron movie Titanic. Edwina could not believe that Nora could put her life at risk over a foolish item of clothing at the height of a sinking.

  The three women had been sharing compartment 101 on E deck aft. Edwina Celia Troutt (27) was from Bath, heading back to a sister in Massachusetts. Susie Webber (37) was from Devon, bound for Hartford, Connecticut. Both also survived. Edwina lived to be 100, dying in December 1984, while Susan Webber died in 1952 at the age of 77.

  Edwina later recounted how their Irish companion, Nora Keane from Castleconnell, had undergone a sudden premonition that the Titanic would sink when boarding at Queenstown, speaking openly of her fears when the vessel was barely underway. It is one of a number of verified incidents of foreboding and one of the most chilling – Edwina later claimed that Nora told her she was so overcome with sudden dread as she tot
tered towards the towering Titanic that she dropped her Rosary and prayer book into the water as she was going up the gangway from a tender that had brought mainly Third-Class Irish passengers from Deepwater Quay.

  Another member of the women’s cabin had a story of foreboding to share: Nellie Hocking, a 21-year-old girl from Cornwall. Edwina later recounted how Nellie put the fear of God into Nora Keane by telling her how she had heard a cock-crow on the Titanic at dusk on the fateful Sunday. Hearing such a cry while travelling on a journey is viewed as an ill omen in Cornish custom. Nora told the unnerving story to Edwina, who laughed it off. But Nellie had not been imagining things – there was a live rooster and other poultry on the Titanic. First-Class passengers Marie Grice and Ella Holmes White were importing a clutch of French chickens to the United States.

  Nora was on her way back to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where she and her brother ran the Union Hotel on Paxton Street. She told her story to a local paper:

  Miss Keane Home; Her Complete Story

  Survivor of Wreck tells how Ship Sank as those in Boats looked on – Drifted Eight Hours in Darkness and Cold before Aid Came

  Miss Nora Keane, the only resident of this city who was aboard the Titanic when it was wrecked off the Newfoundland banks, arrived home at 7.10 o’clock last evening. She was accompanied by her brothers and their wives who met her at the Cunard line pier where the Carpathia docked Thursday evening at 9.15. Last night she told to The Patriot all the details of her terrible experience, from the time the giant ship first struck the iceberg until she was gathered into the arms of her four big brothers on the New York dock.

  ‘It was terrible that wreck … I felt a slight shock a little time before they came. I thought nothing of it. No person had any idea that the vessel was hurt. Even after we were told to get ready we didn’t think there was any danger, for we had been told that the ship could not sink – that it was unsinkable. People had told me that it was an impossibility for it to go down. I went on deck with other persons. The officers had perfect control of everything. There was some excitement amongst some of the people but not what you would expect under the circumstances.

  ‘Officers called out just who were to go in the boats. I was fortunate to get out in the fourth or fifth boat that left. The crew showed every courtesy in lowering the women and children into the boats. The men passengers stood back. Without doubt, they sacrificed their lives to give women and children the preference … There was a foreigner of some kind ran from some part of the ship and jumped into our boat. No one saw him go. When we got into the boat, we tramped over him for some time but didn’t see him or even know we were stepping on a human form.

  ‘Later he proved of great use. He could handle the boat. After we rowed away from the ship, we learned that he was in the boat and asked him if we hurt him when we walked over him. He said, “No, still living.” The boat had but one sailor in it and this man came in very useful in helping us work the boat. He did good work … Two men floated by us. Both of them had life preservers. One of them drooped low in the water. He did not call. The other called to us: “Take me on.” It was almost an impossibility to do anything. Our boat barely floated. “Goodbye,” the man in the water called. Then his head went down a little later. He disappeared out of sight. That was the case with many others. It was [a] terrible sight to witness. It cannot be forgotten. The sight of men in the sea was awful.’

  From the lifeboat, Nora saw the Titanic go down. ‘The ship seemed to go down forward and raise to an awful height, all at once. There was a roar and a deafening sound. The cries and moans of those passengers and crew in the water were awful. Very soon there was nothing seen or heard. The ship went down about 100 yards from where our boat was. Bodies drifted past us. Pieces of the wreck were around.

  ‘And that band played, I don’t know how the men did it, while we were getting on the boats. It played when we drifted away. Men jumped into the sea but the band played. Some of them must have stood in water that was then over that part of the deck while they played, for we were on nearly the same level with the deck then.

  ‘They played Nearer My God to Thee till the ship rose and they went out of sight. They must have been playing when it went down,’ said Nora.

  Nora and the 704 other survivors were picked up by the Carpathia about daybreak. And it was The Patriot which told her brothers in Harrisburg that she was safe, having previously reported their anxiety about her.

  At 9.15 a.m. on 18 April, the Carpathia docked in New York where Nora was met by her brothers, Dennis, William, Patrick and John Keane.

  Nora then returned to Harrisburg where she had made her home with another brother, Michael, who had a hotel there.

  (The Patriot, 20 April 1912)

  The same newspaper the day before quoted Nora, in an account dictated to her brother Dennis, as saying that ‘some shots were fired on the ship. People said men had been shot. I don’t know who they were … it is so awful I cannot think of all that happened.’

  Nora, who discreetly carved eleven years off her age when signing aboard the Titanic, had been born in 1866 to John Keane (1819–1885) and his wife Nora Fee (d. 1916) of Gardenhill, Castleconnell, Limerick. Nora later bought and managed a pub in Harrisburg, using money she received from an inheritance. The American Red Cross assisted her to the tune of $100.

  Nora told her family back in Ireland little about the disaster. She said the other women in her cabin were woken up by stewards and told to leave the ship immediately. She was in the lifeboat all night, dressed only in her nightgown – sans corset of course – and strictly enjoined her nephews and nieces in later life: ‘When they tell you to get off the boat, do what they say!’

  She eventually returned to Ireland and died on 20 December 1944, at the County Infirmary in Limerick, aged 78. The cause of death was complications from a broken leg.

  Annie Kate Kelly (20) Saved

  Ticket number 9234. Paid £7 15s.

  Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

  From: Cuilmullagh, Addergoole, County Mayo.

  Destination: 303 Eugenie Street, Chicago.

  Annie Kate made a pact with God. If He would save her from the apocalyptic slaughter about to be visited on the Titanic, she would dedicate her life to His service. Annie was saved, and, true to her word, became a Dominican nun.

  Weeks earlier she had no such intentions, writing to her cousin in the Windy City: ‘I am coming to America on the nicest ship in the world. And I am coming with some of the nicest people in the world, too. Isn’t that just splendid? They live in Chicago and I shall be able to make the entire trip with them. They have told me all about Chicago, and I know I shall like it much better than I do Ireland.’ But she was not able to make the entire trip with her friends.

  Annie’s account, as related to an American newspaper in 1912, is important because it contains a claim that steerage passengers were ‘held back until the last moment’. Annie was one of a party of young people from the Lahardane area of County Mayo, and appears to have been one of the very last Irish passengers to be rescued:

  The young girls would talk about what they would do in America before they were married. That is, they would talk about it when they were not scurrying around the deck laughing and making friends here and there with everybody and joking with the stewards, and it’s a God’s mercy that Annie Kelly did joke with one of the stewards or he take notice of the girl, or she would not have been alive this moment.

  The weather was grand and the waves that washed against the great boat were smooth as smooth could be, and the night it all happened was a grand night, with the stars as bright as moons and the water as if oil had been poured over it.

  It was cold, to be sure, but they were always warm because their hearts were gay, dancing and singing. In that part of the boat everybody must be in bed early. There was a grand ball upstairs in the first cabin, and that was why when the call came so many of the women up there had all their jewels on.

  The call came to
them, but late. I do not know how it was with the others, but Kate Burke could not sleep after the steward opened the door, nor could John her husband; nor Kate McGowan, nor Annie, her niece; nor Annie Kelly, nor nobody at all of those that came from Mayo, though they talked and talked and said to each other it was nothing.

  Then somebody said, ‘Let us tell the beads,’ and they all got up and said the Rosary and their fear fell from them, and they went to bed again. The steward came again to them and said, ‘All hands on deck. For God’s sake, hurry if you would have a chance for your lives,’ and then they went in their nightgowns, just as they were. The first thing they saw was the people being held back from going up the stairs to the second deck.

  You see, it was feared, for the excitement they would cause to the people up there who were getting away in the lifeboats, and they held them back to the last moment.

  About half an hour before the boat went down was the time they called the Burkes and the others from Mayo from their berths.

  And here it was that the steward, to whom Annie Kelly had been talking so often, saw her running with the Burkes and Mary Mannion and the others towards the ladder that went up to the second deck. For then they were not letting the steerage passengers up the stairway, and he screamed, ‘Miss Kelly, here’s a chance for your life,’ and took her by the hand and ran up the stairs without anyone stopping him, because then they were for letting all the people come up the stairs, and he called out to a boat that was just being sent away. ‘Let this young girl go with you. You’ve got room. Let her in,’ and they shoved Annie Kelly on the boat, in her nightgown …

  Not a thing did Annie Kelly know when she was pulled over the side of the other boat, the Carpathia, at 5 o’clock in the morning, though they poured hot whiskey and raw brandy into her and buried her in blankets and hot water bottles, she was that frozen. It was noon before she came to herself and found herself in the hospital, with Annie McGowan there too, though how Annie McGowan came to be saved, she herself could not tell. She was young and swift as a deer, and when the call came for all to go on deck, she ran among the first to see what was the matter, and thus was saved.