Irish Aboard Titanic

by Senan Molony

  From: Spring Garden Alley, Waterford city, County Waterford.

  Destination: 416 West 38th Street, New York city.

  Patrick O’Keeffe had a dream the Titanic was going to sink. The vision came to him before he ever went on board, and he tried to sell his ticket for the crossing, but got no takers. He had been home to Ireland on holiday, visiting his father in Waterford, but as soon as he reached Queenstown for the return journey, he was filled with a sense of foreboding.

  The Evening Telegraph of 20 April 1912 described his woe:

  The principal topic of discussion in the city during the week has been the terrible ending to the maiden voyage of the Titanic. Amongst the passengers was Patrick O’Keeffe, son of Mr O’Keeffe, Spring Garden alley, who was returning to the States after a month’s holiday in this city. As if the poor fellow had some premonition of what was to happen, the following postcard was received by his father prior to his departure from Queenstown:

  ‘I feel it very hard to leave. I am down-hearted. Cheer up, I think I’ll be alright. – Paddy.’

  And The Cork Examiner subsequently amplified the reasons for O’Keeffe’s unease:

  Waterford Survivor

  Letters have been received by his father and friends from Patrick O’Keeffe, the only passenger from the city of Waterford on the ill-fated Titanic, and who was saved.

  He says he dreamt before embarking at Queenstown that the steamer was sinking and would sell his steerage ticket for £7 if he got anyone to buy it. He says he escaped quite easily with two Londoners on a raft and attributes his luck to a cool head.

  On 16 May 1912, the same paper printed his picture with the caption ‘Another Titanic Hero’. It related:

  An act of heroism was performed by Mr Patrick O’Keeffe, who, plunging into the sea from the steerage deck, managed to capture a collapsible raft on which he first pulled an Englishman from Southampton and then a Guernsey islander, and after that, with the assistance of those he had already rescued, some twenty other men and women who were finally landed safely on board the Carpathia.

  The Enniscorthy Echo recorded:

  Waterford Passenger’s Escape

  On Saturday Mr John O’Keeffe, Waterford, received a telegram from his son Patrick, who was on board the Titanic, stating that he was safe in the St Vincent Hospital, New York. Mr O’Keeffe, who was to have Masses said in the Waterford churches on Sunday for the repose of his son’s soul, changed them to Masses of thanksgiving for his rescue.

  (Enniscorthy Echo, 27 April 1912)

  Hospital visitor Fr Michael Kenny told the Brooklyn Eagle, 23 April 1912, of the heroics of ‘James O’Keeffe’, a Waterford boy, whom he had met and spoken to. He told the newspaper: ‘O’Keeffe’s success in rescuing lives after he assumed absolute command on the raft was one of the many providential avenues of escape provided for the steerage passengers of which I heard many recitals during my visit to St Vincent’s.’

  Two collapsible boats floated off the Titanic in its final moments. Collapsible B remained upside down throughout the night, while A was low in the water and flooded. The use of the word ‘raft’ and some other details have led to it being considered more likely that O’Keeffe saved himself on capsized B.

  Two things stood to O’Keeffe. One was the fact that he was a strong swimmer, used to cold water because he swam in the sea each Christmas Day. Another was his occupation as a porter (although he had been signed aboard the vessel as an agricultural labourer), which meant he was capable of handling heavy weights.

  Harold Bride, one of the ship’s wireless operators, had been trapped under collapsible B, but swam out from below and tried to clamber aboard. He spoke fleetingly in testimony to the US inquiry about a passenger who seemed to be at the centre of assistance efforts:

  Bride: And there was a passenger; I could not see whether he was first, second or third.

  Senator Smith: What kind of looking man?

  Bride: I could not say, sir.

  Smith: Have you learned who it was?

  Bride: No, sir; I heard him say at the time he was a passenger.

  Smith: Was it Col. Gracie?

  Bride: I could not say. He merely said he was a passenger.

  Smith: Where did he get on?

  Bride: I could not say. I was the last man they invited on board.

  Smith: Were there others struggling to get on?

  Bride: Yes, sir.

  Smith: How many?

  Bride: Dozens.

  O’Keeffe was registered on arrival in New York as a 21-year-old porter. In aid case number 352, in a report of the American Red Cross, he is also described as a 21-year-old porter, Irish, who was ‘severely bruised and unable to work for several weeks’. He was given a grant of $102.

  Pat remained in New York, moving to an address at Second Avenue, and then Eighth Avenue, Manhattan. He found work as a window dresser for a big store. On 19 September 1923, 41-year-old O’Keeffe married Anna Nolan. His Irish bride was aged only 18. A bookbinder by profession, she had an address just a few doors away from the home of the cousin with whom Pat had first stayed. The couple were immediately blessed with a daughter, Margaret, likely conceived on honeymoon, since she was born nine months and one week after their marriage on 26 June 1924. Margaret lived to be 63, and died in January 1988.

  Within a few years the O’Keeffe marriage had hit trouble, due in part to the wide disparity in ages and Anna’s difficulty in understanding the demons that still attended her husband. They reluctantly divorced. Several years later, however, Anna and Pat returned to each other’s embrace. They decided to formalise their rekindled relationship and in 1936 they married each other again.

  This time Pat was 54 and Anna 30 as they walked down the aisle at the Church of the Ascension on 8 February that year. Twelve-year-old Margaret may have acted as a page girl – and the couple covered up what would have been a deeply sinful charade in the eyes of the Church by claiming it was a first marriage for them both.

  Another child was born, a son, Edward. He later had two girls.

  Within three years of his second wedding, Patrick O’Keeffe was dead. He succumbed to a heart attack brought on by angina at the age of 57 – his heart possibly having been fatally weakened by his ordeal in the Titanic a quarter of a century before. The death certificate states that he was born in Ireland, the son of John O’Keeffe and Catherine Fitzgerald, and had been working as an elevator operator in an office building. He was a resident of New York for thirty-five years, placing his first arrival in 1904 when he was aged 13. He lies buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

  Just before he had sailed with White Star, Pat O’Keeffe had had his photograph taken at the Poole portrait studios in Waterford city. It is an image of an undoubtedly brave man who, within days, was put sorely to the test and triumphed magnificently.

  Nora O’Leary (17) Saved

  Ticket number 330919. Paid £7 12s 7d, plus 4s extra.

  Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

  From: Glencollins, Kingwilliamstown, County Cork.

  Destination: 2873 Eighth Avenue, New York city.

  Nora O’Leary was awakened by a crash. The teenager didn’t know what it was – and even when water began seeping into her cabin she thought that a pipe had burst, according to the story she would later tell when safely back in her home town. She felt an uncomfortable atmosphere after being woken, although there was very little confusion. She decided to make her way on deck and when she got there asked crewmen what was the matter. She didn’t get an answer.

  Nora said a lifeboat was being filled and an officer was calling for people to get in. She decided to enter the craft as a precaution, believing it would soon return to the Titanic. As the lifeboat was being rowed away, she realised something dreadful was happening.

  Someone started saying the Rosary and the large number of Irish who were in the boat – Nora mentioned a figure of eighteen – joined in. Mentally she thanked God that she hadn’t decided to go back t
o her cabin for her case. She would also tell her family that she distinctly saw the lights of another steamer – the ‘mystery ship’, most likely the Mount Temple, reported by many off the port bow – and believed it was coming to rescue them. But it never did.

  On board the Carpathia, fellow Cork passenger Daniel Buckley would write home to his family: ‘Thank God some of us are amongst the saved. Hannah Riordan, Brigie Bradley, Nonie O’Leary … ’

  When US immigration came aboard at New York, Nora said she was a 17-year-old domestic, the daughter of John O’Leary of Tureencrigh, Kingwilliamstown, County Cork. She said she was going to stay with her cousin, Mrs Margaret Olmberger, at Eighth Avenue. She also had a sister Catherine (Katie) living in the Bronx.

  When allowed off the Cunarder with the other 711 survivors, Nora recalled seeing thousands waiting at the quayside in the stormy night. It was only then, she said, that she realised what had actually happened. She collapsed with delayed shock into the arms of her sister Katie O’Leary of 137 West 11th Street, who had journeyed to meet her. Together they sent a telegram to their parents in what is now Ballydesmond. ‘Nora safe and sound’, was the import of the message. The American Red Cross aided her: No. 353. (Irish.) Girl, 17 years old, injured ($100).

  Nora would later tell of the heady social excitement that had been enjoyed in Third Class. There had been dancing and singing, she said, echoing many accounts of tremendous jollity in the steerage rooms. She had made friends with other Irish girls and lads. ‘We had made plans to meet when we arrived – I know now that I will never meet most of them again.’ But Nora did meet up with Dannie Buckley and some Irish survivors at a reunion a couple of months later. She herself would stay working in New York for nine years before feeling again the draw of home and returning to Ireland. And she didn’t have to steel herself for the sea journey: ‘It never cost me a thought.’

  She married Tom Herlihy in the early 1920s. He was a veteran of the War of Independence and a former volunteer for the Old IRA. They had five children – Hannah, Sheila, Kathleen, Nora, and Timmy. Tom died on 23 November 1968, but Nora was to be allotted a span of another seven years. She passed away on 18 May 1975, and is buried in Ballydesmond Graveyard – just in front of the grave of fellow Titanic passenger Dannie Buckley, killed fighting in France fifty-seven years earlier.

  1901 census – Glencollins Upper, Kingwilliamstown.

  Parents: John (50), farmer. Johanna (45).

  Children: Daniel (24), Catherine (17), Denis (15), Martin (14), John (11), Jeremiah (9), Honora (6), Margaret (3).

  Bridget O’Sullivan (21) Lost

  Ticket number 330909. Paid £7 12s 7d.

  Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

  From: Dromdeveen, Glenduff, Broadford, County Limerick.

  Destination: 290 Park Avenue, New York city.

  ‘Wait!’

  Bridget O’Sullivan made it onto the Third-Class deck space with others, according to folk memory. They were still a long way from the boat deck, but at least they were up and moving – when suddenly she was seized with the need to retrieve her handbag. Ignoring advice, she turned to go below … and suddenly her boyfriend, Joseph Foley, was with her, knowing her determination to save her clutch-bag from her cabin. They would never be seen again.

  Bridget’s sister Hanna was meanwhile working blithely in New York as maid to a Mrs Gilroy on fashionable Park Avenue. She had paid Bridget’s fare, having previously brought over a third sister Nellie, and couldn’t wait for all three to be together again.

  Tales around her home place tell that Bridget could have travelled to America with an earlier party, but chose to wait for the man she had been courting for nearly two years, gardener Joseph Foley, who would act as protective companion on the first long journey of her life. The wait was fatal.

  Hanna and Nellie went to the dock as the Carpathia berthed in New York, anxious to ascertain Bridget’s fate for themselves. There, some charitable agency or do-gooder pressed upon Hanna a card of comfort, intended to ease the grief of both anxious relatives and bereaved survivors. It was a simple poem entitled ‘Waiting’, written by John Burroughs. Hanna would remain devoted to the contents all her life – and it seems the sentiments could have been specially written to suit the last remaining memory of her sister, a keepsake portrait stunning in its understated beauty:

  Serene I fold my hands and wait

  Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea

  I rave no more ’gainst time nor fate

  For lo! My own shall come to me.

  I stay my haste, I make delays

  For what avails this eager place?

  I stand amid the Eternal ways

  And what is mine shall know my face.

  Asleep, awake, by night or day

  The friends I seek are seeking me;

  No wind can drive my barque astray

  Nor change the tide of destiny.

  What matter if I stand alone?

  I wait with joy the coming years;

  My heart shall reap where it hath sown

  And garner up its fruit of tears.

  The waters know their own and draw

  The brook that springs in yonder heights

  So flows the good with equal law

  Unto the soul of pure delights.

  The stars come nightly to the sky

  The tidal wave unto the sea

  Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,

  Can keep my own away from me.

  The original card bearing the poem’s treatment of the pain of separation – no doubt felt all the keener in sisters so close remains faithfully framed today in the home of relatives in Ireland. The sisters themselves have long been joined in death, but the echo of loss remains.

  County Limerick Victims

  From enquiries made, it appears that the names of Joseph Foley of Mountplummer and Bridget O’Sullivan of Glenduff, Ashford, two passengers on the ill-fated Titanic, do not appear amongst the lists of survivors and consequently the worst is now feared.

  As they were both deservedly popular, their untimely fate has evoked universal regret, and the utmost sympathy is felt for their relatives in their very sad bereavement.

  (The Cork Examiner, 2 May 1912)

  The Titanic was not only the first trip abroad for Bridget O’Sullivan, but also her first journey outside her native county. She was very much a home bird. By the turn of the century, her father was dead and she was living at home with her widowed mother, Mary, three sisters and an older brother. She was just eleven years of age. A decade later, two of her sisters were living and working in New York. And to ease the pangs of their own separation, they sent for Bridget.

  1901 census – Dromdeeveen, Glenduff, Ashford.

  Mary O’Sullivan (48), widow.

  Children: William (21), agricultural labourer, Hannie, daughter (14), Ellie (13), Bridget (11), Mollie (7).

  Katie Peters (26) Lost

  Ticket number 330935. Paid £7 17s 9d, plus 5s extra.

  Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

  From: Ballydrehid, Cahir, County Tipperary.

  Destination: 243 East 45th Street, New York city.

  Miss Peters has been in America some four years and came home on a few months’ stay. Miss Peters is a daughter of Mr William Peters, farmer, and was returning to America after a three month stay in her native land.

  (The Cork Examiner, 18 April 1912)

  In fact she had been nearly five and a half years living in the United States, having originally emigrated on the White Star Line’s Oceanic from Queenstown in September 1906 when just 19. The manifest discloses that her hair was auburn and her eyes grey.

  Katie, one of twelve children, roomed on board the Titanic with Kate McCarthy and Kate Connolly, both also of Tipperary. Katie Peters was a sweetheart of Roger Tobin, another Irish passenger, according to folklore in her native place. From surviving records, it is clear that both Katie and Roger separately gave the same destination – the address of Mrs John Eg
an at 243 East 45th Street in Manhattan. She was Katie’s sister, who had paid her passage six years earlier.

  Katie was five years older than Roger, who was just 21. If they developed a relationship, it can only have sprung up in the short time Katie was home. Yet it appears, from a Cork Examiner report, that Roger was just the kind of man a girl could easily fall for:

  Mr Tobin, son of Mr Patrick Tobin, farmer, was a young man of splendid physique and noted in the Gaelic field for his prowess as a hurler and footballer.

  After the perishing cold of the North Atlantic stole the lives of Tobin and Katie, there was nothing left for her family to do but to tie up loose financial ends:

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

  No. 378. (Irish.) A housemaid, 26 years of age, returning from a visit to Ireland, was lost, leaving dependent parents in Ireland. This Committee refunded to a brother in New York $50 of the money advanced to his sister for passage, which he sent to his parents. The English Committee gave £15 to the family. ($50)

  Peters, Catherine (551), 15th October 1912. Administration of the Estate of the late Catherine Peters, late of Ballydruid [sic], Cahir, County Tipperary, spinster, who died 15th April 1912 on the SS Titanic, granted at Dublin to William Peters, farmer. Effects £64.

  1901 census – Peters. Ballydrehid, County Tipperary.

  Parents: William (56), farmer. Mary (46).

  Children: Thomas (16), James (14), Katie (15), Brigid (10), Margaret (7), Helena (6), Josephine (1).

  Margaret Rice (39) Lost

  Albert Rice (10) Lost

  George Rice (8) Lost

  Eric Rice (6) Lost

  Arthur Rice (5) Lost

  Eugene Francis Rice (2) Lost

  Joint ticket number 382652. Paid £29 2s 6d.

  Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

  From: Athlone, County Westmeath.

  Destination: 1922 Columbia Avenue, New York city, en route to Spokane, Washington.

  Margaret Rice’s death, and that of her five young sons, is the single biggest catalogue of loss endured by any Irish family. It is all the more tragic as she brought her sailing date forward by a month to embark in April rather than May.