Irish Aboard Titanic (18 page)

He is a County Clare man and lived in lodgings in Marlborough Road, Donnybrook.

Irish Independent,
18 April 1912

Daniel was born on 25 June 1876, and was aged 35 when the
Titanic
sailed. Administration of the estate of Daniel Keane, late of 4 Marlboro Road, Donnybrook, Dublin and Gallowshill, Cratloe, County Clare, tram conductor, who died on 14 April 1912 at sea off the coast of North America, was granted at Limerick to Honoria Keane, widow.

The papers show that Mrs Keane could neither read nor write. Solicitor R. Frost wrote that her affidavit had been ‘first read and explained, she being illiterate, and she seemed to understand same and made her mark thereto'.

Nora Keane (46) Saved

Ticket number 226593. Paid £12 7s.

Boarded at Queenstown. Second Class.

From: Gardenhill, Castleconnell, County Limerick.

Destination: 167 Paxton Street, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

A corset nearly got in the way of Nora Keane saving her own life. She was wasting so much time as she fumbled to put it on and lace it up that it became the object of a dispute with her travelling companion, Edwina Troutt. When Edwina returned to her cabin, one woman, Susie Webber, had already left. The other, Nora, was still dressing. Having replaced her dressing-gown with a warmer coat, Edwina dealt with the nervous Irishwoman. When Nora insisted on trying to put on a corset, Edwina grabbed it from her and sent it flying down the narrow passage leading to the porthole. Interestingly a similar confrontation over a corset is played out in the James Cameron movie
Titanic.
Edwina could not believe that Nora could put her life at risk over a foolish item of clothing at the height of a sinking.

The three women had been sharing compartment 101 on E deck aft. Edwina Celia Troutt (27) was from Bath, heading back to a sister in Massachusetts. Susie Webber (37) was from Devon, bound for Hartford, Connecticut. Both also survived. Edwina lived to be 100, dying in December 1984, while Susan Webber died in 1952 at the age of 77.

Edwina later recounted how their Irish companion, Nora Keane from Castleconnell, had undergone a sudden premonition that the
Titanic
would sink when boarding at Queenstown, speaking openly of her fears when the vessel was barely underway. It is one of a number of verified incidents of foreboding and one of the most chilling – Edwina later claimed that Nora told her she was so overcome with sudden dread as she tottered towards the towering
Titanic
that she dropped her Rosary and prayer book into the water as she was going up the gangway from a tender that had brought mainly Third-Class Irish passengers from Deepwater Quay.

Another member of the women's cabin had a story of foreboding to share: Nellie Hocking, a 21-year-old girl from Cornwall. Edwina later recounted how Nellie put the fear of God into Nora Keane by telling her how she had heard a cock-crow on the
Titanic
at dusk on the fateful Sunday. Hearing such a cry while travelling on a journey is viewed as an ill omen in Cornish custom. Nora told the unnerving story to Edwina, who laughed it off. But Nellie had not been imagining things – there was a live rooster and other poultry on the
Titanic.
First-Class passengers Marie Grice and Ella Holmes White were importing a clutch of French chickens to the United States.

Nora was on her way back to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where she and her brother ran the Union Hotel on Paxton Street. She told her story to a local paper:

Miss Keane Home; Her Complete Story

Survivor of Wreck tells how Ship Sank as those in Boats looked on – Drifted Eight Hours in Darkness and Cold before Aid Came

Miss Nora Keane, the only resident of this city who was aboard the
Titanic
when it was wrecked off the Newfoundland banks, arrived home at 7.10 o'clock last evening. She was accompanied by her brothers and their wives who met her at the Cunard line pier where the
Carpathia
docked Thursday evening at 9.15. Last night she told to
The Patriot
all the details of her terrible experience, from the time the giant ship first struck the iceberg until she was gathered into the arms of her four big brothers on the New York dock.

‘It was terrible that wreck … I felt a slight shock a little time before they came. I thought nothing of it. No person had any idea that the vessel was hurt. Even after we were told to get ready we didn't think there was any danger, for we had been told that the ship could not sink – that it was unsinkable. People had told me that it was an impossibility for it to go down. I went on deck with other persons. The officers had perfect control of everything. There was some excitement amongst some of the people but not what you would expect under the circumstances.

‘Officers called out just who were to go in the boats. I was fortunate to get out in the fourth or fifth boat that left. The crew showed every courtesy in lowering the women and children into the boats. The men passengers stood back. Without doubt, they sacrificed their lives to give women and children the preference … There was a foreigner of some kind ran from some part of the ship and jumped into our boat. No one saw him go. When we got into the boat, we tramped over him for some time but didn't see him or even know we were stepping on a human form.

‘Later he proved of great use. He could handle the boat. After we rowed away from the ship, we learned that he was in the boat and asked him if we hurt him when we walked over him. He said, “No, still living.” The boat had but one sailor in it and this man came in very useful in helping us work the boat. He did good work … Two men floated by us. Both of them had life preservers. One of them drooped low in the water. He did not call. The other called to us: “Take me on.” It was almost an impossibility to do anything. Our boat barely floated. “Goodbye,” the man in the water called. Then his head went down a little later. He disappeared out of sight. That was the case with many others. It was [a] terrible sight to witness. It cannot be forgotten. The sight of men in the sea was awful.'

From the lifeboat, Nora saw the
Titanic
go down. ‘The ship seemed to go down forward and raise to an awful height, all at once. There was a roar and a deafening sound. The cries and moans of those passengers and crew in the water were awful. Very soon there was nothing seen or heard. The ship went down about 100 yards from where our boat was. Bodies drifted past us. Pieces of the wreck were around.

‘And that band played, I don't know how the men did it, while we were getting on the boats. It played when we drifted away. Men jumped into the sea but the band played. Some of them must have stood in water that was then over that part of the deck while they played, for we were on nearly the same level with the deck then.

‘They played
Nearer My God to Thee
till the ship rose and they went out of sight. They must have been playing when it went down,' said Nora.

Nora and the 704 other survivors were picked up by the
Carpathia
about daybreak. And it was The Patriot which told her brothers in Harrisburg that she was safe, having previously reported their anxiety about her.

At 9.15 a.m. on 18 April, the
Carpathia
docked in New York where Nora was met by her brothers, Dennis, William, Patrick and John Keane.

Nora then returned to Harrisburg where she had made her home with another brother, Michael, who had a hotel there.

(
The Patriot,
20 April 1912)

The same newspaper the day before quoted Nora, in an account dictated to her brother Dennis, as saying that ‘some shots were fired on the ship. People said men had been shot. I don't know who they were … it is so awful I cannot think of all that happened.'

Nora, who discreetly carved eleven years off her age when signing aboard the
Titanic,
had been born in 1866 to John Keane (1819–1885) and his wife Nora Fee (d. 1916) of Gardenhill, Castleconnell, Limerick. Nora later bought and managed a pub in Harrisburg, using money she received from an inheritance. The American Red Cross assisted her to the tune of $100.

Nora told her family back in Ireland little about the disaster. She said the other women in her cabin were woken up by stewards and told to leave the ship immediately. She was in the lifeboat all night, dressed only in her nightgown –
sans
corset of course – and strictly enjoined her nephews and nieces in later life: ‘When they tell you to get off the boat, do what they say!'

She eventually returned to Ireland and died on 20 December 1944, at the County Infirmary in Limerick, aged 78. The cause of death was complications from a broken leg.

Annie Kate Kelly (20) Saved

Ticket number 9234. Paid £7 15s.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: Cuilmullagh, Addergoole, County Mayo.

Destination: 303 Eugenie Street, Chicago.

Annie Kate made a pact with God. If He would save her from the apocalyptic slaughter about to be visited on the
Titanic
, she would dedicate her life to His service. Annie was saved, and, true to her word, became a Dominican nun.

Weeks earlier she had no such intentions, writing to her cousin in the Windy City: ‘I am coming to America on the nicest ship in the world. And I am coming with some of the nicest people in the world, too. Isn't that just splendid? They live in Chicago and I shall be able to make the entire trip with them. They have told me all about Chicago, and I know I shall like it much better than I do Ireland.' But she was not able to make the entire trip with her friends.

Annie's account, as related to an American newspaper in 1912, is important because it contains a claim that steerage passengers were ‘held back until the last moment'. Annie was one of a party of young people from the Lahardane area of County Mayo, and appears to have been one of the very last Irish passengers to be rescued:

The young girls would talk about what they would do in America before they were married. That is, they would talk about it when they were not scurrying around the deck laughing and making friends here and there with everybody and joking with the stewards, and it's a God's mercy that Annie Kelly did joke with one of the stewards or he take notice of the girl, or she would not have been alive this moment.

The weather was grand and the waves that washed against the great boat were smooth as smooth could be, and the night it all happened was a grand night, with the stars as bright as moons and the water as if oil had been poured over it.

It was cold, to be sure, but they were always warm because their hearts were gay, dancing and singing. In that part of the boat everybody must be in bed early. There was a grand ball upstairs in the first cabin, and that was why when the call came so many of the women up there had all their jewels on.

The call came to them, but late. I do not know how it was with the others, but Kate Burke could not sleep after the steward opened the door, nor could John her husband; nor Kate McGowan, nor Annie, her niece; nor Annie Kelly, nor nobody at all of those that came from Mayo, though they talked and talked and said to each other it was nothing.

Then somebody said, ‘Let us tell the beads,' and they all got up and said the Rosary and their fear fell from them, and they went to bed again. The steward came again to them and said, ‘All hands on deck. For God's sake, hurry if you would have a chance for your lives,' and then they went in their nightgowns, just as they were. The first thing they saw was the people being held back from going up the stairs to the second deck.

You see, it was feared, for the excitement they would cause to the people up there who were getting away in the lifeboats, and they held them back to the last moment.

About half an hour before the boat went down was the time they called the Burkes and the others from Mayo from their berths.

And here it was that the steward, to whom Annie Kelly had been talking so often, saw her running with the Burkes and Mary Mannion and the others towards the ladder that went up to the second deck. For then they were not letting the steerage passengers up the stairway, and he screamed, ‘Miss Kelly, here's a chance for your life,' and took her by the hand and ran up the stairs without anyone stopping him, because then they were for letting all the people come up the stairs, and he called out to a boat that was just being sent away. ‘Let this young girl go with you. You've got room. Let her in,' and they shoved Annie Kelly on the boat, in her nightgown …

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 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.

But of poor John Burke and Kate, his wife, and jolly Kate McGowan and all the other light-hearted lads and lasses that started that day from Castlebar, save Annie Kelly and Annie McGowan, there will never be any more of them in this world, and may God rest their souls.

(
Chicago Record-Herald
interview with Annie Kate Kelly. Reprinted in the
Irish Independent
, May 1912, ‘The Story of how fifteen Girls and Boys from the West of Ireland started for America on the
Titanic,
and how two of them arrived'.)

Annie was born on 14 January 1892 in Castlebar, and was 20 when the
Titanic
sailed, although she preferred to view herself as 17. Her parents were John Kelly and Ellen Flaherty, and despite her age appearing as 10 on the 1901 census, Annie told US immigration she was a 17-year-old ‘helper'. She had been on her way to join her cousins Anna and Mary Garvey, who lived in Chicago.