by Senan Molony
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.
What is known is that Michael paid for both of their tickets and that the White Star Line subsequently misreported his name as ‘McElroy’, an error that has persisted to this day and which might be partly explained by the fact that there was a purser of this surname on board.
The money for Michael’s passage was sent to him by his sister Annie Deegan, a 30-year-old maid in Norristown, near Philadelphia. The family in Ireland disapproved of what little they could discover, and relatives at home later shunned Annie because of Michael’s death, according to grandniece Elizabeth Mary Haruch. They may have believed the drowning was heavenly retribution for his embrace of sin and Annie had encouraged him in this.
Anxious inquiries are being made at the various offices of the White Star in Ireland by friends and relatives of passengers on the ill-fated liner.
One of the callers at Messrs Cook’s offices in Dublin yesterday was Constable P. McEvoy from the RIC Depot, whose younger brother Michael McEvoy of Kilmacanogue, is believed to have sailed in the Titanic.
They could not trace the latter’s name at Messrs Cook’s offices, but he may have boarded at Queenstown. His name appears in the passenger list as Michael McEvoy, Dublin.
(Irish Independent, 18 April 1912)
[Constable Patrick McEvoy, aged 45 in 1912, was from Mountrath, County Laois, and served one-third of a century with the DMP from 1890. He retired in 1923, and died at the end of the Second World War on 23 May 1945 at the age of 78.]
Michael McEvoy died in the disaster. His body was never recovered. He was the youngest of eight children, the baby of the family. Norah Murphy, however, was saved. Their parting on the decks of the Titanic, after only a few days earlier darkly delighting in parting from past lives on boarding the ship at Queenstown, can only be imagined. For 19-year-old Michael, alone on a sliding deck, the loneliness must have been absolute.
1901 census – McEvoy, Farran, Ballycolla, Abbeyleix. Aghaboe parish.
Parents: John (56), farmer. Bridget (50).
Children: Martin (22), ploughman, Mary (20), Anne (18), Thomas (16), James (14), Kate (12), John (10), Michael (8).
James R. McGough (35) Saved
Ticket number: 17473. Paid £26 5s 9d.
Boarded at Southampton. First Class.
From: Mandistown, Slane, County Meath.
Destination: 708 York Street, Philadelphia.
Born close to the Boyne river battle site of 1690, James Robert McGough is believed to have emigrated to the United States with his family while a young boy. By 1912 he was a buyer with Strawbridge & Clothier department store, and was enjoying enormously the regal comfort of the Titanic as he returned from a business trip. Life had never been better. So it seemed when he and four friends signed the back of their Sunday dinner menu, which featured a choice of lamb, roast duck or sirloin of beef, in celebration of good times together.
McGough was at the table in the First-Class dining room on D deck in the company of four other commercial buyers. They were Spencer Silverthorne of St Louis, George Graham of Winnipeg, Canada, Edward Calderhead of New York city and John Irving Flynn of Brooklyn. Only Calderhead had turned forty, the other four were still in their thirties.
At the bottom of the menu, someone noted that they were only 1,760 miles from landfall. But just three hours later, James McGough experienced a huge iceberg crunching by his starboard stateroom, dropping chunks of ice onto the carpet through his open porthole. And within a few hours, one of his table companions, 38-year-old George Graham, was dead.
McGough was in E-25 with Flynn, and Calderhead and Silverthorne were in the adjoining E-24. Graham may have died because he was sleeping in cabin C-42, two decks away, out of sight and out of mind.
James McGough submitted an affidavit to the US inquiry into the disaster:
&
nbsp; I, James R. McGough, do depose and say that I was a passenger on the steamship Titanic …
I was awakened at 11.40 p.m. ship time; my stateroom was on the starboard side – deck E – and was shared with me by Mr Flynn, a buyer for Gimbel Bros, New York, at Thirty-third and Broadway. Soon after leaving our stateroom we came in contact with the second dining room steward, Mr Dodd, in the companionway, of whom we asked the question, ‘Is there any danger?’ and he answered, ‘Not in the least,’ and suggested that we go back to bed, which we did not, however, do.
It was our intention to go up on the promenade deck, but before doing so I rapped on the door of the stateroom opposite mine, which was occupied by a lady, and suggested to her that she had better get up at once and dress, as there was apparently something wrong.
Mr Flynn and I then ascended to promenade deck A, and after being there about ten minutes were notified to put on life preservers as a matter of precaution. We then had to go all the way from the promenade deck back to our stateroom, which was on E deck. After procuring our life preservers we went back again to the top deck, and after reaching there discovered that orders had been given to launch the lifeboats, and that they were already being launched at that time.
They called for the women and children to board the boats first. Both women and men, however, hesitated, and did not feel inclined to get into the small boats, thinking the larger boat was the safer. I had my back turned looking in the opposite direction at that time and was caught by the shoulder by one of the officers, who gave me a push, saying, ‘Here, you are a big fellow; get into the boat.’
Our boat was launched with 28 people; we, however, transferred 5 from one of the other boats after we were out in the ocean, which was some time after the ship went down.
When our lifeboat left the vessel, we were directed to row away a short distance from the large boat, feeling it would be but a short time until we would be taken back on the Titanic. We then rested on our oars; but after realising that the Titanic was really sinking, we rowed away for about half a mile, being afraid that the suction would draw us down.
Although there were several of us wanted drinking water, it was unknown to us that there was a tank of water and also some crackers in our boat, having no light on our boat; and we did not discover this fact – that is, as to the tank of water – until after reaching the Carpathia.
McGough was saved in lifeboat No. 7, the very first launched from the Titanic, at 12.25 a.m. He heard no shooting during the unfolding crisis, but became aware of moaning and groaning after the sinking. Some of the women passengers in No. 7 objected to making the effort to go back for survivors.
In the aftermath, McGough went back to work. He lodged an insurance claim for lost property and was paid $612.90. He married and was eventually widowed. When the Wall Street Crash happened in 1929, McGough, then 53, found himself out of a job as his employers battened down the hatches. Unemployed during the Great Depression, McGough was living in Philadelphia in 1935 when he developed cancer. He died on 24 July 1937. His death certificate stated that he was born in Mandistown, Ireland, on the hundredth anniversary of the original American Independence Day. His parents, Thomas McGough and Catherine Dowdell, had both also been born in Ireland.
Mary McGovern (22) Saved
Ticket number 330931. Paid £7 12s 7d.
Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
From: Clarbally, Bawnboy, County Cavan.
Destination: 435 56th Street, New York city.
Dry land was hundreds of miles away for the trapped passengers and crew of the Titanic on the icy blackness of the Atlantic, but Mary McGovern attributed her survival to a handful of soil. Mary was a 22-year-old steerage passenger, on her way to stay with a cousin, Mrs Greeves, in New York and work as a domestic, and the arrangements for her going had long been in place. She booked her ticket in Ballinamore, County Leitrim, the nearest big town to her home in Clarbally, Corlough, in west County Cavan.
She told of the Titanic tragedy in a newspaper interview forty years later:
We left Cobh on Wednesday for New York, and everything was grand. I was fast asleep in my cabin, a three-tiered affair, which I shared with two others from Virginia, County Cavan. On Sunday night we were awoken and thrown out of our bunks by the shock of the collision.
But we were not at all afraid, for everything was silent. The lights burned brightly. In fact we had no cause for alarm. But outside our door we heard a rising clamour and we went out and found the passages and corridors full of running people.
That was about midnight if I remember right, and we went up onto the boat deck, pushing our way through lines of linked sailors and armed men who were shouting ‘Women and children first’.
Somebody told us to go back for our lifebelts, and with difficulty we went back to our cabin, found them over the door, put them on, and fought our way back again.
We went from lifeboat to lifeboat, all of which were packed, and which one by one, were being lowered away down into the water. I knew how near the water was, for I had actually seen it washing down the corridor as we went down for our lifebelts.
We were shoved into the last of the lifeboats to leave and had to watch drowning men being beaten with oars to prevent them from overturning the boat we were in.
We watched the lights go out one by one in the huge ship sliding to her grave on the starlit water and saw the last, long, slow death struggle of the pride of Queens Island, the greatest and newest ship in the world.
Next day we were picked up by the Carpathia. I am one of the 712 people saved out of a total of 2,201. Sewn in my clothes from the time I left my native Corlough here in Cavan, I have carried a little locket of St Mogue’s clay. I still have it hidden in the rafters of my home.
(Sunday Independent, 21 September 1952)
Mary’s locket of St Mogue’s clay was soil taken from the grave of a Leitrim man of God, which the faithful believed would protect her from death by drowning, fire, or in an accident.
Her parents were John and Bridget, and Mary was born in 1890. When news of the disaster reached them, it was followed a few days later by a telegram and they dreaded its possible contents. A younger brother was dispatched to collect the cable from Corlough post office and the returning teenager came back into view from the post office and waved the telegram over his head, signalling that it was obviously good news. Bridget McGovern fainted with relief.
Mary’s account of drowning men being beaten with oars to keep them from entering her boat is eerily reminiscent of the accounts of the Murphy sisters, the McCoy family and Thomas McCormack, although this is probably coincidental.
Report of the American Red Cross (Titanic Disaster) 1913:
No. 282. (Irish.) Girl, 20 years old, injured. ($100)
Mary McGovern is believed to have shared the same compartment on the Titanic as Mary Glynn, Julia Smyth and Kate Connolly. Mary Glynn was from Clare, but the other two were fellow Cavan girls and all four became instant friends. They all survived. It seems likely that they entered a boat together. Julia Smyth followed Kate Connolly into lifeboat No. 13 and both had to jump, indicating the boat was already lowered some way. Mary Glynn also seems to have been in No. 13, and Mary McGovern’s use of the word ‘we’ indicates she too may have made it into this vessel.
When she arrived in New York, Mary McGovern was ferried to St Vincent’s Hospital in a Gimbel’s truck along with some other Third-Class survivors. Private trains met some of those rescued from First Class. Eight months later, she filed a claim against White Star for $50 and after a few weeks topped it up with a $20 loss to cover the cost of two crocheted collars given to her by her mother.
A year or two went by and Mary McGovern returned to Ireland. In 1921 she married her namesake Peter McGovern. They lived in Tullytrasna, Corlough, close to her home place. She had a son, Hugh, and a daughter, Mary Kate. Mary died on 24 August 1957, aged 67.
1901 census – Clarbally, Corlough, County Cavan.
Parents
: John (50), Bridget (35).
Children: Patrick (11), Mary (9), John (7), Thomas (5), Francis (2).
Annie McGowan (17) Saved
Ticket number 330923. Paid £7 15s 7d.
Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
From: Massbrook, Lahardane, County Mayo.
Destination: 3241 North Ashland Avenue, Chicago.
Annie made the most of her ocean reprieve, living into her mid-nineties. When she died in the last decade of the twentieth century, nearly 78 years had passed since the Titanic went down.
The terror of that night affected her memory, and when she met fellow survivor Annie Kate Kelly – herself a teenager – in the sickbay of the Carpathia, she had no idea of how she had escaped from the stricken steamer:
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 [Annie McGowan] 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.
(Chicago Record-Herald interview with Annie Kate Kelly, reprinted in the Irish Independent, May 1912)
Annie was travelling with her aunt Catherine, who had come home from America on a holiday intending to take Annie over on her return. They were due to stay in Chicago at the home of another aunt, Catherine’s sister Mary, who had become Mrs Thomas McDermott and who lived at North Ashland Avenue.
Catherine was lost in the disaster, and Annie survived wearing only her nightgown. She cannot be attributed to any lifeboat, since she refrained from all later comment about the Titanic, even when pressed by her family. Her daughter Mary Kapolnek said after Annie’s death in 1990: ‘She wouldn’t talk about the sinking. She refused to return to Ireland to see her parents because she was afraid of both the water and flying. She would be scared if we children even went in a rowboat.’