by Senan Molony
He loved the sea. And the sea took him to her bosom.
Tralee man lost
Dr. Wm. F. N. O’Loughlin, the senior surgeon of the Titanic, and who went down with that great steamer on the morning of the 15th inst., was born in Tralee.
He was the second son of the late Mr William O’Loughlin, and some of the older inhabitants may (says the Kerry Post) remember his grandfather, the late Mr Benjamin Mathews, of Nelson Street, Tralee.
(Limerick Chronicle, 25 April 1912)
During a talk with me in the South Western Hotel he did tell me that he was tired at this time of life to be changing from one ship to another. When he mentioned this to Captain Smith the latter chided him for being lazy and told him to pack up and come with him. So fate decreed that Billy should go on the Titanic and I to the Olympic.
(Dr J. C. H. Beaumont, Ships and People, 1927)
Dr O’Loughlin was 62 years old and was born in Naase [sic], County Kerry. He was on the Britannic in 1887 when she rammed the steamship Adriatic.
(Irish American, 27 April 1912)
Dr O’Loughlin dined alone with the Chairman and Managing Director of the White Star Line, J. Bruce Ismay, on the night the Titanic sank. He mentioned to Ismay that the vessel had ‘turned the corner’, meaning it had changed course from a south-westerly track to steer west and slightly north towards New York. Ismay realised the course would put them directly headed towards field ice the Titanic had been warned about. The two men might even have discussed it. But Ismay presumably did not tell the White Star’s surgeon of forty years that he had in his pocket an ice warning from another White Star ship, the Baltic, which had been wordlessly handed to him just before lunch by Captain Smith.
Michael Rogers (24) Lost
Steward.
From: Aughrim Street, Dublin.
13 Green Hill Avenue, Winchester.
The 1911 census shows Michael Rogers residing at the same address he gave in the Titanic, when signing on as ‘M. Rogers’. Both the ship’s manifest and the census confirm him to be from Dublin, the latter showing his occupation as ‘steward at sea’.
Rogers had been staying with Dublin-born Ann Harris, her husband Tom (a night-watchman in a prison) and their five children. He was engaged to one of the Harris daughters. Son Edward Harris, 18, was a pantryman on the Titanic and also died. Michael had previously served on the Olympic and the Adriatic, and was reported as ‘steward to the Marconi department of the Titanic’.
Kate Walsh (32) Lost
Stewardess.
From: Clonmel, County Tipperary.
57 Church Road, Woolston, Southampton.
Kate Walsh, formerly living in College Street, Clonmel, and afterwards married to a man named Roche, at one time storekeeper in Clonmel Asylum.
(Clonmel Chronicle, 19 April 1912)
I had just climbed into my berth when a stewardess came in. She was a sweet woman who had been very kind to me. I take this opportunity to thank her, for I shall never see her again. She went down with the Titanic.
‘Do you know where we are?’ she said pleasantly. ‘We are in what is called the Devil’s Hole.’
‘What does that mean?’ I asked.
‘That is a dangerous part of the ocean,’ she answered. ‘Many accidents have happened near there. They say that icebergs drift down as far as this. It’s getting to be very cold on deck, so perhaps there is ice around us now.’ She left the cabin and I soon dropped off to sleep, her talk of icebergs had not frightened me, but it shows that the crew were awake to the danger.
(Charlotte Collyer, Semi Monthly Magazine, May 1912)
Kay Walsh was the only one out of eighteen stewardesses to die in the disaster. She appears to have been assigned to Second Class.
Second-Class passenger Selina Rogers remembered: ‘We had a very nice stewardess and steward whose names were Miss Walsh and Mr Petty. I was feeling very sick. The stewardess was very kind and brought me a glass of milk.’
(Titanic Voices, 1997, Hyslop, Forsyth & Jemima)
James B. Williamson (36) Lost
Postal Sorter, transatlantic post office.
From: Botanic Road, Dublin.
An extra-large postcard of the Titanic sent by James Williamson to his girlfriend just before the ship sailed fetched a hammer price of £11,500 in September 2002. The souvenir, known as a bookpost, was intended as a token of affection but instead became a symbol of wretched hopes. It proved especially valuable at auction because Williamson worked in the RMS Titanic’s transatlantic post office and the card carries the vessel’s unique No. 7 postmark.
Williamson was from Botanic Road, Drumcondra, Dublin, and had just transferred to his post with five other sea post officers, all of whom were lost despite their heroic efforts to save the flooded mails. He met the young English beauty Gladys Copeland through her father, who operated the Queensland Hotel in Southampton. Gladys had promised him a kiss if he would provide her with a Titanic token before he sailed. Williamson wrote on the card: ‘George wanted me to wait last night for you to fulfil your promise. This is a souvenir of Titanic’s maiden voyage.’ He never collected on the pledge, but the postal sorter had unwittingly just contributed to philatelic history himself.
The mailroom on the Titanic was on the starboard side of the Orlop deck, forward of boiler room six, and was one of the first places flooded. The water roared in and the shocked officials suddenly realised they had to get out. Heroically, they lugged large sacks stuffed with some of the ship’s 500,000-plus pieces of mail up the ladder to the next level, F deck, where the post office proper was. Struggling through knee-level water, they tried to save registered mail first. But there was no going back for any more. From the deck above, they watched in alarm as water below began swallowing 3,418 mail bags.
Ten minutes after the collision, Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall was at the post office, learning from John Jago Smith the grim severity of the problem. There were five officials of the sea post office on board the vessel, three American and two from the British side. Not one was saved.
Another Dublin man engaged on the Titanic is a postal official – Mr J. Williamson – who up to three years ago was employed as a sorter in the Dublin GPO. He was subsequently transferred to the Southampton GPO.
(Irish Independent, 17 April 1912)
The 1901 census confirms that Williamson was a sorter at the GPO in Dublin, which was to become the centrepiece of the Easter Rising just four years after the Titanic sank. He was then living at 2 Downham Villas on the northside of the city, the only son (among four daughters) of his Scots Presbyterian mother, a widow.
Postal clerks all drowned
Reuter’s Cablegram Washington, Saturday
Of the five postal clerks employed on the Titanic, two were from the other side, namely respectively E. D. Williamson (Dublin) and Jago Smith. According to official advices received from the Postmaster-General here, all five completely disregarded their own safety when the vessel struck, and began to carry 200 sacks of registered mail to the upper deck, thinking they might be saved. As the situation became more desperate, they appealed to the stewards to assist them, and continued their work to the last. Every one of them was lost.
(Irish Independent, 22 April 1912)
Irish postal official
In reference to the postal official, Mr James B. Williamson, it should have been stated that he was unmarried, and that his widowed mother and sisters live at Botanic road, Glasnevin, Dublin.
(The Irish Times, 18 April 1912)
It appears that Fr Francis Browne, the renowned photographer of the Titanic, met Williamson. He wrote that as he passed down the gangplank in Cobh to leave the liner – with mailbags being taken on board – he encountered Purser McElroy ‘and Mr Nicholson, head of the mail department’. The only Nicholson on board was a passenger, and the five postal officials were named March, Gwinn, Woody, Smith – and Williamson. Fr Browne, not yet a priest, wrote in the 1912 edition of the school annual The Belvederian that he said to t
he pair: ‘Goodbye. I will give you copies of my photos when you come again. Pleasant voyage.’
He continued: ‘And so they went. They never came back, one dying at his post far down in the heart of the ship as he strove to save the more precious portion of his charge, the other calmly facing death as he strove to reassure the terror-stricken, and to render up the jewels given to his keeping.’
The Irish Independent, printing a picture of Williamson on 8 May 1912, also referred to his being ‘in charge of the mails on the Titanic’, and to his mother receiving a handwritten letter of sympathy from the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Aberdeen:
Viceroy and Dublin victim
His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant has written an autograph letter to Mrs Williamson, Botanic road, Dublin, mother of Mr J. B. Williamson, who was one of those in charge of the mails on the Titanic and who perished in the disaster, expressing deep sympathy on behalf of Lady Aberdeen and himself.
‘It is a matter of touching interest,’ said his Excellency, ‘to learn that as a mark of special confidence and approval, your son was selected for duty on the Titanic and that you have now received testimony that your son, after having, in conjunction with his brave colleagues, made every effort for the safety of the mails, devoted himself to the assistance of the women and children.
‘And so his name is securely placed in the illustrious and imperishable roll of fame for those, who, under the supreme test of an appalling experience, manifested calmness, fortitude and unselfish care for others, thus bequeathing lasting solace for sorrowing friends, and an inspiring example to mankind.’
(Irish Independent, 6 May 1912)
All ranks of the Southampton postal staff attended a memorial service at St Peter’s church yesterday in memory of their colleagues, Messrs Smith and Williamson, of the Sea Post Service, who went down with the Titanic.
(Daily Sketch, 6 May 1912)
WILLIAMSON – 15 April 1912, lost at sea in SS Titanic, James Bertram Williamson, postal official, Southampton, only surviving son of Eleanor G. Williamson, 11 Botanic Road, Dublin, and the late David Wallace Williamson; deeply mourned by his sorrowing mother and sisters.
(Cork Constitution, 25 April 1912)
The late Mr Williamson
A sympathetic reference to the late Mr J. B. Williamson, who was employed in the post office on the Titanic, appears in the Irish Postal and Telegraph Guardian.
Mr Williamson began his career in Dublin eighteen years ago. His ambition was to get on the sea post office staff, and with this end in view he obtained a transfer to Southampton and his wishes were granted.
He was in Dublin last March on a few weeks’ leave, and spoke enthusiastically of his work and adventures. Poor Williamson died at his post. It will be remembered that one of the officers of the Titanic stated that when he visited the mailroom, whose floor was covered with water, he found the clerks removing the registered portion of the mail to drier surroundings.
(Weekly Freeman, 8 June 1912)
Questions in parliament
Loss of the Steamship Titanic
Mr J. P. Farrell: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether his attention has been called to the case of James B. Williamson, a native of Dublin, who joined the sea-going post office at Southampton on 10th April 1911, and was lost in the Titanic wreck on 15th April 1912; whether he is aware that this young man was the sole support of his mother and three young sisters; whether he is aware that for one year in this service he contributed £90 towards their support; and whether, under the circumstances, a bulk sum of £150 is all that is proposed to give his widowed mother in compensation for the loss of such a son who in one year nearly gave that amount of his earnings?
Mr Herbert Samuel: I am aware of the circumstances of this sad case and regard it with much sympathy. The sum specified by the honourable member is that due to the executors of the late Mr Williamson under the Superannuation Act of 1909, and is quite apart from any question of compensation for his loss. That question is complicated by unexpected legal difficulties, which have rendered it necessary to consult the Law Officers of the Crown. I regret, therefore, that at the present moment I am unable to give a more specific answer.
(Longford Leader, 20 July 1912)
Eleanor Grace Williamson, widow, of 11 Botanic Road, backed in surety by her daughter Eleanor, a spinster and railway clerk, later sought administration of the estate of James Bertram Williamson, ‘Sorter in the Sea Post Office aboard the Titanic’. She declared that she was the lawful next-of-kin of her son, and agreed to pay his just due debts, certifying that his personal estate was worth £223. The family’s solicitor was Gerald Byron of 7 Lr Ormond Quay, Dublin.
Eleanor herself did not long outlast the crushing heartbreak of losing her only son, an unfairness piled on top of the death of her husband. She died on 6 July 1913 at the Adelaide Hospital. Her estate amounted to £851 7s.
A memorial plaque was erected by lamenting colleagues to the Dublin sorter aboard the Titanic. It is found in the Abbey Presbyterian Church on Parnell Square, Dublin, also known as Findlater’s Church:
To the Glory of God and in Memory of
James B. Williamson
Of the Transatlantic Post Office
Who died on duty in the foundering
of the SS ‘Titanic’ April 15th 1912
By this tablet the members of
the Postal and Telegraph Services
Record their Deep Sorrow at his death.
A Related Incident
Tragic Affair at the Curragh
Castlebar Man’s Brother Lost on Titanic
Inquest into the death of Private John T. Young of the Connaught Rangers.
Sergeant Thomas Duffy told the inquest that the deceased was 33 and unmarried. He had been corporal, but had been reduced to private on the 28th March last.
As store man, the deceased slept in the store by himself, and on entering yesterday a witness found him lying on his right side about 18 feet from the bed.
He saw the carbine examined that morning and an empty cartridge extracted from the bore of the rifle. Deceased had been worried about a brother of his who was on the Titanic and who had, he believed, been drowned.
Sergeant John Clinton RIC said the deceased’s body was very much stained with blood. Having pulled the trigger, the deceased must have fallen back and then got off the bed.
The jury found that the deceased died from gunshot wounds, self-inflicted, while of unsound mind. The deceased is a native of Castlebar.
(Western People, 18 May 1912)
Drowned fireman Francis Young of Russell Street, Southampton, was the only man with his surname on board. His picture appeared in the Daily Sketch, of 22 April 1912. Recent research indicates, however, that he had been born in Southampton and had no connection at all with Mayo. Therefore the soldier from Castlebar had deceived himself about his brother being lost on the Titanic.
Private John Young’s family lived at 11 Ellison Street, Castlebar, County Mayo. William Young and his wife, Emily, had had ten children, nine of whom lived. They had been married for 34 years. Son Francis appears to have been working as a seafarer from English ports, but was not on the maiden voyage.
In the 1911 census, as in previous population snapshots, Francis James Young of the Titanic disaster and of Russell Street, Southampton, is shown as having been born locally. His parents were Frank and Louisa, the former also a seafarer. Son Francis married Amy White at Southampton in 1901 and died in the North Atlantic at the age of 33.
Non-Irish passengers embarked
at Queenstown
First-Class Passengers Embarked
at Queenstown
William Edward Minahan (44) Lost
Lillian Minahan (37) Saved
Daisy (Ida) Minahan (33) Saved
Only three First-Class passengers went aboard the Titanic at Queenstown. They were members of the first-generation Irish family called the Minahans. Dr William Edward Minahan was a 44-year-old physician with a practice at
Fund Du Lac, Wisconsin. His wife, Lillian, was 37 years old and was formerly an artist’s muse. William was her second husband. Also travelling with them was William’s sister, Daisy Minahan, aged 33, from Green Bay, Wisconsin.
William and Daisy were both children of William Burke Minahan and Mary Shaughnessy, who had been childhood sweethearts from the village of Adare, County Limerick, before emigrating to a new life in America in the lean years after the Great Famine. The trio had been in Ireland on a sightseeing tour, and had stayed at the Imperial Hotel in Cork just prior to making the short journey to Queenstown and the luxury vessel that was supposed to convey them back to America. William lost his life in the ensuing tragedy. Lillian and Daisy were saved in lifeboat No. 14, launched from the port side.
They shared cabin C-78, dead amidships on the port side. Daisy told how she and her brother and his wife went to dinner at the Café Parisien on B deck at 7.15 p.m. on Sunday night, before the collision. When they entered a party of a dozen men and three women were already enjoying themselves at another table. The company included the Wideners, Major Archibald Butt (President Taft’s personal aide-de-camp) and Captain Edward John Smith. Daisy said Captain Smith remained at the gathering, drinking coffee, for more than two hours, finally bidding goodnight between 9.25 and 9.45 p.m. William Minahan also suggested going to bed at this time, but was persuaded to remain on for one more piece of music from the ship’s orchestra. The Tales of Hoffman was played and the Minahans retired.
Daisy told in an affidavit to the US inquiry what happened next:
I was awakened by the crying of a woman in the passageway. I roused my brother and his wife, and we began at once to dress. No one came to give us warning. We spent five minutes in dressing and went on deck to the port side. The frightful slant of the deck toward the bow of the boat gave us our first thought of danger.
An officer came and commanded all women to follow, and he led us to the boat deck on the starboard side. He told us there was no danger, but to get into a lifeboat as a precaution only. After making three attempts to get into boats, we succeeded in getting into lifeboat No. 14. The crowd surging around the boats was getting unruly.