by Senan Molony
Well we drifted about until it started getting daylight. We could just see the berg. It had drifted on to the skyline with the help of the bump we gave it. There was a low icefield practically all round us. Paddy McGough suddenly gave a great shout – ‘Let us all pray to God, for there is a ship on the horizon and ’tis making for us.’ Some of our crowd had already passed out but those who were still able did pray and cry. The old SS Carpathia picked us up about 7 a.m.
A manifest for the Lapland, arriving at New York from Antwerp on 15 January 1920, names seaman George McGough, born at Duncannon, with an address at 15 St George Street, Southampton – the same street address he gave on the Titanic. This was the same vessel on which he returned from New York in 1912. Perhaps because of his manslaughter conviction, he was not called to give evidence at either the American or British Titanic inquiries.
Later, in 1920, George McGough arrived as a crewman on the Gothland from La Coruña, Spain, and in December set foot in Seattle, Washington, from the Steel Ranger. On 1 April 1921, he was aboard the Atlantic transport liner Minnekahda, plying between Boston and New York. A year later, he sailed into New York aboard the Oropesa from Southampton. This time the Irishman is noted as having a scar on his cheek. He was last seen on a crew list for the Corbis, arriving in New York from Tampico, Mexico, in 1924. McGough was aged 50, Irish by race, an able seaman. But the entry has a line through it, striking it out. A note reads: ‘Deserted, Lisbon, October 19’.
Alfred Middleton (27) Lost
Assistant Electrician.
From: Ballisodare East, County Sligo.
Alfred spiritedly climbed access ladders inside the fourth, or aftermost, funnel in order to get a bird’s eye view of the Titanic leaving Southampton on her maiden voyage, according to a letter home by his fellow assistant electrician Albert George Ervine. They were in no danger; the last funnel was for ventilation only. But it gave the Titanic symmetry and implied superiority over three-funnel steamers.
Someone was to repeat the funnel-climbing trick at Queenstown – poking a head above the parapet to watch the tenders bringing out steerage emigrants and their baggage. A few of those on the Titanic’s decks noticed the figure, and it gave watching passengers quite a shock, for it must have appeared like a sweep popping out from the top of a chimney. Many fancied, perhaps psychologically influenced by the smokestack association, that the face was ‘blackened’. They thought it was a daring stoker. Others commented that it was a bad omen. The face of a man wearing a flat cap does indeed appear at the top of the fourth funnel in a picture taken from the approaching tender America by a Mr Whyte of Queenstown.
Alfred Pirrie Middleton was the son of the local corn and flour-mill manager in Ballisodare, County Sligo. His father was Adam John Middleton, married to Annie, and Alfred grew up as one of three surviving sons from five births. His brother Bruce was two years older, while the youngest boy, born in 1900, gloried in the name of Wilbraham. The family were of the Plymouth Brethren sect – meaning Alfred was the same religion as his funnel-grappling friend, Albert Ervine. They may have known each other for some time.
Alfred went to intermediate school in Sligo and then went to Glasgow to train as an electrician. He later returned to Ireland as an electrical supervisor with the Scottish firm of Telford, Grier & Mackay. The 1911 census finds him a boarder in the Wilson household in 37 Lomond Avenue, Belfast, and also in digs at this address is Percy Scott, a fellow electrician, with whom he went to school. Middleton had by now joined Harland & Wolff, but the lure of adventure was too much to stay a landlubber and he signed aboard the White Star Line’s Demosthenes for its maiden voyage to Brisbane, Australia, in August 1911.
Returning to duties alongside young Ervine in H&W, he itched for another opportunity to get away, and found it when the Titanic needed crew.
Thomas Morgan (26) Lost
Fireman.
From: Limerick.
16 Spa Road, Southampton.
Little is known about Morgan, apart from his Limerick allegiance. His body was recovered from the sea by the search vessel MacKay-Bennett, captained by F. H. Larnder.
No. 302. Male. Estimated age, 26. Hair Brown. Scar on Left Wrist.
Clothing – Blue coat; dark pants; no boots or socks.
Effects – Pocketbook with crucifix; Union book and discharge A book.
Fireman. Name – Thomas Morgan, Spar Tavern, Spar Road, Southampton.
Identified as a Catholic by his crucifix, Morgan was buried in Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Halifax on 8 May 1912. He was actually a lodger at Mrs Steindel’s Spa Tavern in Spa Road (not ‘Spar’), Southampton.
From the Mansion House Titanic relief fund booklet, March 1913:
Case no. 191. Morgan, sister. Grant £25.
Joe Mulholland (29) Quit at Southampton
Fireman.
From: Upton Street, Belfast.
Joe Mulholland wasn’t on board the Titanic on the maiden voyage proper, but did escort the ship from Belfast to Southampton. His story, told on the fiftieth anniversary of the sinking, highlights long-rumoured stories of anti-Catholic sentiment among some members of crew and it points to the character of Thomas Andrews, shipbuilder.
His account of being aboard is true: his name appears in the ship’s articles for the preliminary run to Southampton. He was the second-last man signed on, joining on 2 April 1912, the very day of the voyage. His stated last ship was the Troutpool. This was a much bigger fish.
Titanic: when his cat walked off, so did Joe
Old-time seamen are notoriously superstitious and 79-year-old Joseph Mulholland, of Upton St., Belfast, who sailed from Belfast in the Titanic on the first leg of her ill-fated maiden voyage, can still recall his feelings as he stoked down in the engine-room of the ship which Belfast boasted was ‘unsinkable’.
Silver haired and vigorous despite his great age and a lifetime at sea, from square rigged grain ships on the Australian run to White Star liners on the Atlantic, ‘Big Joe’ Mulholland says:
‘There was something about that ship I did not like and I was glad to lift my old bag and bid goodbye to my shipmates, like Hughie Fitzpatrick and “Pancake” Baker, when she arrived at Southampton. Hughie offered me a job as storekeeper on the trip across the Atlantic, but I did not accept. Hughie was lost when she hit the iceberg, but “Pancake” was picked up and I met him years later at La Plata.’
A Stray Cat
Big Joe is still fond of cats and perhaps he has reason. He recalls that on his way down to the Titanic before she set sail from Belfast with bands playing and crowds cheering, he took pity on a stray cat which was about to have kittens. He brought the cat aboard and put her in a wooden box down in the stoke hold.
At Southampton, when he was ruminating whether to take on the job of storekeeper on the trip or sign off, another seaman called him over and said: ‘Look Big Joe. There’s your cat taking its kittens down the gang-plank.’
Joe said ‘that settled it. I went and got my bag and that’s the last I saw of the Titanic.’
Pride of Belfast
But there was plenty of drama on the journey down the Irish Sea as the great ship – the pride of the Belfast shipyard – headed for Southampton to take on board its complement of passengers, a cross-section of the social registers of England and America.
In Belfast in those days it was hard to get an experienced stokehold staff. Joe Mulholland said they scoured the Salvation Army hostel, the dockside and eventually got together a scratch team ranging from ‘milk-men to dockers’.
‘I had to mind six stokeholds, and the chief engineer told me to get the men to break up the big clinkers. I told them, but they must have lifted up the covers and kicked the clinkers down and affected the hydraulic pumps because the seas came back and we were soon standing up to our thighs in water. A young whippersnapper of an engineer came galloping up and he gave off something shocking. We got the water away, but I did not fancy that young fellow.’
Filthy slogans
Joe recalls a meeting in the engine room with Thomas Andrews, the designer of the ship, director of Harland and Wolff’s, and a member of the noted Comber (County Down) family.
‘I knew Mr Andrews because I often stoked ships on their trials after they were launched at Belfast. He came down to me and pointed to some of the insulting slogans about the Pope which had been chalked up on the smoke-box. Some of them were filthy and I had already heard about similar slogans which had been painted on the hull before the Titanic was launched.
‘Mr Andrews said, “Do you know anything about these slogans?’’
‘I did not, so he said “They are disgusting” and went off and returned with some sailors and had them removed.
‘Mr Andrews was a very decent man. He went down with the ship. Young Harland afterwards married his widow.’
Speed record
Joe has his own theory about the disaster. ‘I was never in deep water in a White Star liner that we were not trying to win the blue ribbon for speed. That was the cause of the disaster. They were on a Northerly course to break the record for the Atlantic crossing.
‘Any seaman can smell the ice from miles away, but instead of changing course South they kept on and hit that berg. The blue ribbon was the cause of the disaster and all those folk losing their lives.’
Old Joe was taken to see the premiere of the film A Night to Remember because he helped James McQuitty [sic] and his advisers with details for the production. He sat in the front row with the Belfast Lord Mayor.
What did he think of the film? ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘It would make all the old sailors turn in their graves. The tiny crew they showed in the engine-room would remind you of a coal-boat.’
(Sunday Independent, 15 April 1962)
A 30-year-old fireman, John Baker, was on board for the Belfast–Southampton run, but the name does not appear on the crew list for the maiden voyage proper, indicating that he too signed off rather than remaining on board to be subsequently ‘picked up’. Hughie Fitzpatrick, junior boiler-maker, was indeed lost. So too were all twelve men who served as junior storekeepers – Mulholland’s offered job.
John O’Connor (25) Saved
Trimmer.
From: Wexford?
9 Tower Place, Bargate Street, Southampton.
One of twelve substitutes engaged on board the Titanic, O’Connor could have lost his life because of a split-second decision made by other men in allowing a train to go by before they crossed the road.
Jack Podesta, a fireman, much later told the Southern Daily Echo of Southampton that he had been among a large number of crew enjoying a last drink on shore in The Grapes public house before final muster and the ship’s sailing. The crowd steadily thinned out – until an urgent effort to board the Titanic was called for:
Six of us left about ten minutes to twelve and got well into the docks and towards the vessel. With me and my mate were three brothers named Slade. We were at the top of the main board and a passenger train was approaching us from another part of the docks.
I heard the Slades say, ‘Oh let the train go by’, but Nutbean and myself crossed over and managed to board the liner. Being a rather long train, by the time it passed, the Slades were too late, the gangway was down – leaving them behind.
A party of substitutes were waiting aboard the Titanic for just such an opportunity. When Slade and others failed to board, twelve stand-by workers were taken on, including O’Connor. He must have savoured his good fortune.
Jack Podesta found himself working alongside new recruit O’Connor, whose work as a trimmer involved keeping the coals level in the boilers. And Podesta told the Southampton Echo on 27 May 1968 that O’Connor managed to escape from the Titanic. He stated that among survivors picked up from a raft, ‘shivering terribly with cold’, were two of his stoke-hold colleagues. ‘My mate and I gave them blankets and rubbed their legs to start up their circulation. Their names were John Connor and Wally Hurst.’
John O’Connor was taken on board the Carpathia, where he recovered fully from the ravages of exposure. He returned to England on the SS Lapland and signed the crew discharge book on 30 April 1912. O’Connor’s birthplace was entered as Southampton.
The Enniscorthy Echo reported on 20 April 1912:
It is also stated that a sailor named Connors, from Coolcots (County Wexford) was on board the Titanic, but this report is not verified.
There was no ‘Connors’ on the Titanic. The only other similar name was Thomas O’Connor, a bedroom steward from Linacre Lane, Liverpool, who was lost.
William F. N. O’Loughlin (62) Lost
Senior Surgeon.
From: Nelson Street, Tralee, County Kerry.
Polygon House, Southampton.
Dr William Francis Norman O’Loughlin was very proud of his roots in Tralee, County Kerry, and retained his fondness for his birthplace through four decades at sea. In the ship’s articles for the Titanic he inscribed his home town name in the space for place of origin, a piece of form-filling that didn’t detain many others who were content to indicate ‘Soton’ or ‘Hants’, whether they came from Southampton or not.
The second son of William O’Loughlin Snr, he was a tender 16 years of age when he moved to Dublin to become a student at the Catholic University. He lived in a collegiate house on St Stephen’s Green where his uncle was the reverend Dean.
For three years he attended lectures regularly at the school, and in 1869 he had completed a distinguished course. But the Catholic university had neither public endowment nor even a charter enabling her to confer degrees. O’Loughlin then could obtain no degree from his own university. To Trinity College he would not go, and consequently, like many another distinguished Catholic student of those days, he obtained no university degree but only a licence.
(Irish News, 21 May 1912)
O’Loughlin spent a short time thereafter working in a dispensary medical service in Clane, County Kildare, before leaving his native land. He joined the White Star Line when he was just 21.
He was described in the New York Herald as ‘a most attractive character, a great lover of the sea, an affable man of most kindly and genial disposition’, and as ‘the strongest personal friend of every officer and seaman he ever left a port with. He would give his last dollar to charity.’ He had friends in America, who established a pathological laboratory after his death as a tribute to his memory at St Vincent’s Hospital, the same clinic that treated so many survivors of the wreck. He was said to have had ‘many friends in Ireland, England and France’, who were invited to support the project.
Edward C. Titus, Medical Director of the White Star Line, said simply that the doctor was ‘the finest man that I have ever known’. Titus added, in the report carried by the New York Herald on 22 April 1912:
Once recently I said to him that as he was getting on in years, he ought to make a will and leave directions for his burial, as he had no kith or kin. He replied that the only way he wanted to be buried was to be placed in a sack and buried at sea.
In fact O’Loughlin had made a will, drawing it up during a brief trip home to Dublin a few years earlier. It was probated on 1 August 1912. The venerable surgeon, ‘the doyen of the White Star service’, according to The Cork Examiner, left a substantial £2,412 – about twice Captain Smith’s annual salary, for instance – in spite of his reputation for giving away his last dollar. Many of the Irish Third-Class passengers left assets worth only £10, according to legal documents. By comparison, the ship’s builder, Thomas Andrews, left more than £10,000. These values can certainly be scaled up 100-fold and more in order to attempt a present-day understanding of their value.
Money and value are indeed relative, particularly at 2 a.m. in the mid-Atlantic when the last boats are loading. Multi-millionaires stood by with paupers on the decks of the Titanic to submit to what God had ordained. John Jacob Astor’s body was found with $2,440 in notes, £225 sterling, gold and diamond cufflinks and a diamond ring. It was worth nothing to him.<
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For Dr O’Loughlin it appears that the most valuable thing at this critical hour was a tot of whiskey. He was seen rummaging below decks close to the end by baker John Joughin who himself was after the hard stuff, and felt O’Loughlin was doing likewise.
O’Loughlin met stewardess Mary Sloan during the night. She later described him as ‘a fine old man, and a great favourite with all on board’. Some survivors talk of O’Loughlin soothing the panicked and helping all he could, directing women to the boats. Irene Harris, the widow of theatre impresario Henry B. Harris, claimed she saw the doctor when she crossed with her husband from starboard to port, walking through the bridge area normally forbidden to passengers.
The Captain was standing with Major Archibald Butt and the little doctor. I saw the clock. I can still see it with its hands pointing to 2.20. The captain looked amazed when he saw me: ‘My God, woman, why aren’t you in a lifeboat?’ I kept repeating, ‘I won’t leave my husband. I won’t leave my husband.’ The little doctor said, ‘Isn’t she a brick?’ to which the Captain replied: ‘She’s a little fool.’
(Liberty Magazine, 23 April 1932)
Finally O’Loughlin is seen with his medical colleague John Edward Simpson from Belfast, his fellow countryman Purser Hugh McElroy, and his assistant purser, standing on deck in an apparently relaxed and resigned mood. Some reports say O’Loughlin was casually swinging a lifejacket. ‘I don’t think I’ll need to put this on,’ he said. His desired burial at sea was only minutes away. The lifejacket, he had decided, had no value. Simpson then made a joke to Second Officer Charles Lightoller, who was feverishly working at filling the last boat and who had taken off his coat. He asked if he was too warm in the freezing conditions. It seems to have lightened the mood. Lightoller came over and the senior crewmembers all shook hands and said goodbye.
‘As far as we can ascertain from the available accounts of the disaster,’ a Fr Walsh told O’Loughlin’s Requiem Mass at the University Church in St Stephen’s Green in May 1912, ‘his characteristic gentleness and philanthropy forsook him not in that last supreme crisis.’