by Senan Molony
Close beside me – so near that I cannot avoid hearing scraps of their conversation – are two American ladies, both dressed in white, young, probably friends only: one had been to India and is returning by way of England, the other is a school-teacher in America, a graceful girl with a distinguished air heightened by a pair of pince-nez.
Engaged in conversation with them is a gentleman whom I subsequently identified from a photograph as a well-known resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, genial, polished, and with a courtly air towards the two ladies, to whom he was known but a few hours; from time to time as they talk, a child acquaintance breaks in on their conversation and insists on their taking notice of a large doll clasped in her arms; I have seen none of this group since then.
(The Loss of the SS Titanic, Lawrence Beesley, 1912)
From the Clonmel Chronicle of 24 April 1912:
Among those who, it is feared, perished in the disaster was Mr T. F. Myles of Boston, who had just visited Fermoy, of which he is a native, and intended returning with his family next year.
He left a widow, Mary, and sons Leo and Frederick (who coincidentally lived beside John Kiernan, another Irish Titanic passenger, in Grove Street, Jersey city), along with daughters Gertrude, Agnes, Elizabeth and Eileen.
The family were visited three weeks after the tragedy by a passenger who told them he had seen Myles in a lifeboat – but the old man had stepped out again, saying ‘Women and children first’. He was also seen in a group kneeling on the deck of the Titanic, saying the Rosary.
Lawrence Beesley, who had falsely been reported lost, had met the family, and commiserated with them on the false reports that their Papa had been saved:
The name of an American gentleman – the same who sat near me in the library on Sunday afternoon and whom I identified later from a photograph – was consistently reported in the lists as saved and aboard the Carpathia: his son journeyed to New York to meet him, rejoicing at his deliverance, and never found him there. When I met his family some days later and was able to give them some details of his life aboard ship, it seemed almost cruel to tell them of the opposite experience that had befallen my friends at home.
Hannah Naughton (21) Lost
Ticket number 365237. Paid £7 15s.
Boarded at Queenstown. Second Class.
From: Kilcullen, Donoughmore, County Cork.
Destination: 433 West 33rd Street, New York city.
Hannah was going to America to take up a job as a schoolteacher in New York, but she became a victim of arithmetic and was just another of the steerage women to die. Nearly half of all adult females in Third Class lost their lives – 87 out of 178 – compared with just thirteen per cent of the women in Second Class and a minuscule three per cent of those in First.
Hannah was born on 10 April 1891, exactly twenty-one years before the Titanic began her maiden voyage from Southampton. She was named after her grandmother. Her family had a sheep farm of forty acres, which is still owned by descendants. One older brother, 25-year-old Paddy, had emigrated to New York a few years before, was working on the railroad, and had patiently put prospects in place for Hannah.
Donoughmore Victims, Donoughmore, Wednesday
It is regrettable to have to record that among those who lost their lives in the historic Titanic disaster were Hannah Naughton, daughter of John Naughton, and William, son of John Foley, Commeen, both of this parish.
The greatest sympathy is felt for the parents of both for the sudden and tragic way in which they lost their lives. Hopes were entertained that their names would appear in some lists of those saved, but it is now certain that both were lost.
(The Cork Examiner, 22 April 1912)
Hannah’s father, John, and his wife, Ellen, had suffered the death of another daughter, Bridget, when she was only a few months old, and Hannah’s loss seemed to renew and magnify that earlier pain. John died within three short months of her loss. He was shattered at the extinction of his only surviving daughter among six strapping sons. She had been the apple of their eye – the parents had paid for expensive boarding school tuition for Hannah at Crosshaven Convent, many miles away along the coast. When Hannah qualified with a certificate of merit in English, arithmetic and geography, they were extremely proud. But the news that she next wanted to teach in America came as a blow. Her brothers Martin and Paddy were already ‘over there’, but somehow John Naughton had always clung to the belief that his closeness to his beloved daughter would keep her close to home. However, John and Ellen told her to follow her dream, swallowing their own sense of loss. A short time later the reality of that loss overwhelmed them.
1901 census – Kilcullen, Donoughmore. Naughton.
Parents: John (50), agricultural labourer; Ellen (40).
Children: Martin (16), Patrick (14), John (12), Hannah (10), Cornelius (8), Michael (6), William (2), Bridget (two months).
Denis O’Brien (21) Lost
Ticket number 330979. Paid £7 12s 7d, plus 4s extra.
Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
From: Caheragh, Drimoleague, County Cork.
Destination unknown.
Denis O’Brien was a postman. Within a short time of his departure from the quay at Queenstown, his father, Michael, a rural postmaster, received a letter that didn’t need onward delivery. A grim White Star Line confirmation hit home.
Although he had been working as a letter carrier, Denis was signed on board the Titanic as a 21-year-old farm labourer, according to available embarkation records. Work as a postman would have been extremely limited in his quiet townland in those days – probably not sufficient to sustain a living wage.
Denis was diminutive in stature – ‘a tidy size’ according to folk memory – and earned a reputation as a talented jockey in his district. He had won a number of races locally and further afield. He began to dream of working full time with horses in America. It is believed he was travelling to New York to join his sister Margaret who had emigrated a short time before.
The 1901 census establishes that his parents were Michael and Mary O’Brien, aged 50 and 51 respectively at that time, eleven years before the Titanic sailed. In various family reports and other censuses Michael listed his many and various occupations as boot and shoemaker, postman and publican. The children named on the 1901 census form are Bridget (24), Catherine (21), assistant postmistress, Margaret (18), seamstress, Michael (16), rural postman, Mary Ellen (14), and Denis (10).
Another brother, who did not appear in that census, was ‘Batt’, a nickname for Bartholomew. A carpenter, he joined the Royal Navy and fought at sea in the Great War. The area has a strong connection with seafaring, linked to a lack of economic opportunity in the hinterland.
Thomas O’Brien (26) lost
Hannah O’Brien (26) saved
Joint ticket number 370365. Paid £15 10s.
Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
From: Grean, Pallasgreen, County Limerick.
Destination: 638 Sherman Place, Chicago.
Tom and Hannah were one of just two married couples to embark among the 113 Third-Class passengers at the Titanic’s final stop – or were they? They signed aboard as husband and wife, yet there is no record of the O’Briens ever having married in Ireland according to the scrupulously kept civil registers. Also, none of Tom’s family in the United States had ever heard of his having a bride and were thoroughly shocked when such a claimant presented herself.
What complicated the story further was that Hannah was more than two months pregnant on the Titanic. She was the only Third-Class passenger who was in the family way when aboard that is known to have survived the sinking. Hannah is believed to have been saved in lifeboat No. 16, while the unborn mite’s father – if he knew she was pregnant – must have known in his heart that he would never see his new son or daughter draw breath. Thomas O’Brien, who had worked in a creamery at home, died in the sinking – sundering the soon-to-be family whose welfare might have prompted his moving to the United Sta
tes in the first place.
The couple may have met during milk deliveries from Hannah’s parents’ farm in Kilduffahoo, Doon West, County Limerick. But folk memory tells of love blossoming on a train to Limerick months before the Titanic sailed. Michael gallantly gave up his seat for the fresh-faced young beauty, and seized his chance to strike up a conversation. It is said that the couple eloped and were married by a priest in Limerick related to Hannah. No official record exists.
Their passionate involvement could have led to their elopement. If Hannah realised she was with child – a shameful condition for a single girl in those days, one that invariably involved giving up the child for adoption and never seeing it again – a joint decision to disappear forever could have become the only option.
They first booked themselves aboard the Cymric for passage to America – just like Denis Lennon and Mary Mullin, another runaway couple who were fleeing to the United States. Both couples were cruelly disappointed that the White Star vessel’s Easter Sunday sailing was cancelled. But they were elated to be transferred instead to the mighty Titanic. These seem to be the only two Irish couples that could be referred to in the following newspaper reports of eloping lovers:
The most pathetic feature of all is that of a young couple, a prepossessing and well-connected girl, aged about 20, and her husband, who is about the same age, who were turned away from the parental home when it first became known that they were married, and who took the first chance of leaving for the Land of the Free by the Titanic. It is known that both were travelling under false names, and the passenger list to hand bears this out as no such names as those borne by the parties appears on the list, though they were seen in the tender leaving Queenstown and spoken to when aboard the ill-fated vessel. The parents of the bride arrived in the city yesterday evening, and their grief can very well be imagined. Still there is hope that the youthful bride might be one of the female passengers aboard the Carpathia.
(Cork County Eagle, 20 April 1912)
Tom O’Brien had four sisters living in the Chicago area who knew he was coming out to join them. One married sister, Mrs Mary Hunt (38) of Sherman Plaza, was named on official documents as his sponsor for accommodation. But the sisters had no idea that Tom might be accompanied, and the news that Hannah Godfrey had become his wife sent their senses further reeling after the shock of realising he was dead. Nonetheless they were determined to do ‘the right thing’. They offered Hannah a place to stay.
When the survivors landed in New York, however, Hannah did not travel on to Chicago. Instead she stayed with a friend in Brooklyn. She told immigration that she was 26, from Limerick, and that her next of kin was Mrs Eliza Godfrey of Cappamore. She later lodged a claim for compensation for her husband’s drowning, a legal move that clashed with similar papers seeking financial assistance filed by his sisters. This is how the American Red Cross reported the developments and dilemmas in its 1913 revelations about aid to survivors:
No. 346. (Irish.) The husband was drowned. His bride, who was saved, was placed in a hospital in New York city to await confinement, which occurred in September. She is unwilling to return to Ireland, because her family cannot support her, and unwilling to go to her husband’s sisters, who have offered a home although they cannot assist her financially, because she is an entire stranger to them and association with them would only keep her husband’s death constantly before her mind. She now has employment where she can have her baby with her. She was given $500 by this Committee for her own use upon leaving the hospital, and the remainder of the appropriation has been placed in trust for her child. The Society of St Vincent De Paul is interested and will keep supervision over her affairs. From other relief sources she has received $2,282.38. ($1,500)
Hannah gave birth to Tom’s daughter, Marion Columba O’Brien, on 3 September 1912. The following March she wrote to his sister Mary, whose home had been Tom’s nominated destination, in the following brusque terms, which caused a stir when it was sent home to Ireland for perusal:
My dear Mrs Hunt
I have just received your letter this morning. You need not bother yourself about that law-suit. I have all that fixed long ago. I settled with them, you needn’t worry about me. My baby and myself will be all right.
I knew ye were all trying to get some money. I produced my marriage certificate, and I had the nearest claim. So you nor the lawyer needn’t bother.
With love from baby and myself your fond Sister
Hannah O’Brien.
Hannah next met and wooed James Quinn, a New York fireman born in Kilkenny, and they were wed in New York in November 1916. She then had a second child, James Jnr. But within a few hard years Hannah had joined her first husband in death. She passed away just six years after arriving in New York in the great influenza epidemic of 1918. When she died from pneumonia on 17 October that year, daughter Marion had just turned six, while James Jnr was a toddler.
Her hard-drinking husband returned from the burial three days later and immediately burned all Hannah’s documents and private papers, including her marriage certificate to Thomas O’Brien.
Marion, a latter-day orphan of the Titanic disaster, grew up to marry Willie Hanlon, another Irish immigrant, a ‘spoiled priest’. They lived in New Jersey and had three children – Margaret, Catherine and Billy. Marion’s husband died of lung cancer in April 1975, and she then went to live with her daughter Catherine in Manchester, Tennessee, where she died on Independence Day, 1994. She was 81 years old and is buried in St Agnes’ Cemetery in Albany, New York. Catherine says her mother:
… sort of resented it all: the fact that she was left without anybody. She never knew her father and then her mother died when she was five or six. She had it tough when she was younger but her life was happy with my father. The only real sorrow she had was the death of my brother [from melanoma, at age 27].
She wouldn’t go near water, she hated it. Even when we went to the ocean she stayed well back on the beach. She didn’t like boats, she never went on one. She never spoke about the Titanic.
The first her children knew about her involvement in the disaster was when Catherine as a youngster went to see the 1958 movie A Night to Remember and came home to tell her mother about it. Marion then confessed that she had survived the sinking, carried into a lifeboat in her mother’s womb.
1911 census – Kilduffahoo, Doon West, County Limerick.
Parents: Michael Godfrey (41), son, farmer. Eliza Godfrey (71), widow.
Children: Hannah (32), Patrick (30).
Patrick D. O’Connell (18) Lost
Ticket number 334912. Paid £7 14s 8d.
Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
From: Kingwilliamstown, County Cork.
Destination: New York city.
Patrick Denis O’Connell was unusual in that he had no need to emigrate to America. There was no economic engine driving his departure, since his family owned both a farm and a pub. But wanderlust and a craving for excitement drew him away. His parents were worried about his devil-may-care attitude. His father, Denis, thought his second son was too naive and impulsive to head off to America and believed he should stay at home. But Denis’ wife, Hanna, thought that the US might be the makings of ‘Patie’, and that he would grow up quickly.
One day Hanna abruptly bought her son his ticket, so there was little Denis could do. Patie was intending to travel on another vessel, but the family were pleased when a large group of intending emigrants from Ballydesmond formed a group to go together. They were particularly happy that Nora O’Leary would be there: despite the fact that she was a year younger than Patie, they believed she acted as a calming influence upon him.
Patie’s first bit of growing up came when he had to part with his dog. It was an emotional wrench, but he managed the leave-taking. The canine howled and mourned all night – and then repeated the anguish four days later, on the night when the Titanic was sinking.
Patie was a cousin of Daniel Buckley, and the family pub sto
od right next door to the Buckley home in the village centre of Kingwilliamstown. Both Dannie and Patie attended an American wake with other lads and lasses from the village and its hinterland on the eve of their embarkation journey to Queenstown. Much of the party likely centred around Denis O’Connell’s pub and it is certain that Patie was prevailed upon for a song, as were all the would-be emigrants.
The four lads from the same area roomed together in a compartment at the bow of the ship. Short minutes after the first scrapings of disaster they had to evacuate their cabin urgently – although it seems they initially believed Buckley was pulling their legs about something being wrong with the ship. But then water came sliding onto the floor of their room in the aftermath of the ship’s forward starboard plates being opened to the sea. Dannie had already fled, allowing the others space to tumble out of their bunks and organise themselves. He never saw them again.
Buckley, in a letter home composed on the Carpathia a few days after he had been saved and when he was still under severe psychological stress, deals with his friend, neighbour and cousin’s death in these dissociated terms – ‘There is no account of Patie Connell (25) … ’ the age is wrong, and its inclusion seems inappropriate.
Although referred to colloquially as Patie Connell, there is no doubt that his surname took an O’ prefix, as demonstrated repeatedly by class rosters from his earliest schooling in Kingwilliamstown. It is also clear from the passenger manifest, booking records and a White Star receipts statement that Patie liked to include his middle initial in his name – hence entries for both ‘Pat D.’ and ‘Patrick D. O’Connell’.
He may have thought the inclusion of the ‘D.’ a very sophisticated, or American, thing to do. He was young, he was innocent and he had dreams. And then death got in the way.