Irish Aboard Titanic (29 page)

Her 93 years have not robbed the sparkle from her eyes or her quick smile and brogue as she talks of the past …

Hard of hearing, she leans forward to listen to questions but can give minute details of an event that happened 70 years ago today.

At the age of 23, Sister Mary Patricia, then known as Helen M. Mockler, left her home town of Currafarry, Ireland, with two other young women and three men of the village to begin a new life in the United States.

They had no idea they were soon to be involved in one of the greatest civilian disasters at sea. Bound for New York the ‘unsinkable'
Titanic
struck an iceberg 800 miles off Cape Race, Newfoundland, and sank, taking 1,517 men, women and children with her. The 46,328-ton ocean liner crashed into the iceberg at 11.40 p.m. By 2.20 a.m. the next morning the ship had sunk. Only 705 people survived.

Helen Mockler was on deck that night 70 years ago when suddenly the whole ship shook. ‘We knew something was wrong, but no one told us what.'

She remembers that chickens escaped from the kitchen and began running around on deck.

‘No one seemed to be worried,' she said. ‘I remembered one woman was playing the piano.'

At one point Miss Mockler decided to go back to her room and get her bag, which contained all of her belongings. But a man stopped her and said, ‘Forget about your bag. If you save yourself you'll be lucky.' At another point, she remembers that she and her five companions knelt on the deck and said the rosary.

‘Everyone was calm on the ship,' she said. ‘No one knew what was happening.' Finally someone told her and the two women to get in a lifeboat. About 20 minutes later ‘we saw the ship go down.'

The three men with her did not survive. ‘The three boys went back downstairs.'

Why was Sister Mary coming to the United States? She chuckled. ‘I was coming here to make my fortune.'

The youngest in a family of four, Sister Mary's Third-Class passage was paid by her two sisters who were already in New York.

She spent five years working for the National Biscuit Company in New York (‘the best place in the country') before joining the Sisters of Mercy on Sept. 8, 1917, and being assigned to Worcester, where she later served as sacristan at St Paul's Cathedral for 30 years.

Sixty-four years later, Sister Mary admits that her calling to religious life was probably always there. Recalling the night of the sinking, [she] said, ‘There were only seven in our lifeboat. Many passengers stayed below deck. No one told them to come up. We probably would have gone to our rooms if the three boys with us didn't tell us to stay on deck.'

She spent the frigid night in the lifeboat wearing only a dress and her lifejacket. ‘It was a very cold night,' she said. She was in the lifeboat from 2 to 9 a.m. until rescued by the
Carpathia
.

‘We watched the
Titanic
sink until the last light went under water. Then everything was calm and smooth. You wouldn't even have known there was a ship.'

The two men in the lifeboat rowed during the night. ‘We didn't see any other lifeboats.'

Is the tale true that the band played ‘Nearer My God to Thee' until the ship went under? ‘If they did, I never heard it,' she said.

The survivors were taken to New York. ‘We were taken to a hospital and given an examination before we were able to see our families.' She said: ‘I remember that Sunday, the New York police gave a party for the survivors after Mass.'

Two years after the above interview, Helen Mary Mockler, the name on her death certificate, passed away. She was aged 95 and it was 1 April 1984. In an obituary, the same newspaper reported another nun recalling that she had been initially reluctant to go over the side of the ship into a lifeboat. ‘She asked, “Is there a bottom to it?” She was fearful. She didn't want to step into the water.'

Later, when away from the ship, the sister recalled her fellow religious saying that the lifeboat began to leak. ‘They were scooping it out with their hands when they saw the
Carpathia
.'

The newspaper further noted:

‘When the news of the
Titanic'
s fate reached New York [Ellen] was listed as missing and presumed drowned,' the sister said. ‘Of course the first news got was that she was drowned,' so they sent for the parish priest.

‘He said, “I don't believe that we're going to pray. Get your coats and come with me”,' the sister said. So the priest and the sisters went to the New York hospital where survivors were held overnight for examinations.

‘The priest stood on a chair and he shouted her name out and said, “If you're there, stand up and wave.” She stood up and waved,' the friend said. And one of her sisters immediately fainted.

Sister Mary did not talk willingly about that cold April night, the sister said. ‘It was such an experience, she never really talked about it much. You had to probe her.' Even then, ‘she only answered the questions that you asked her.'

Her experience aboard the
Titanic
and just after ‘had nothing to do' with her decision to enter the Sisters of Mercy, her friend said.

Perhaps – but consider this contemporary report from the
New York Herald
of April 1912, quoting Ellen Mockler and two other Irish female survivors:

A priest's heroism – Rev. Thomas R.D. Byles

Three of the survivors who vividly remember the last hours of the heroic English priest are Miss Ellen Mocklare [
sic
], a pretty dark-haired young girl from Galway, now at her sister's home, number 412 West Seventeenth Street, Miss Bertha Moran, who had gone to Troy, New York, and Miss McCoy who is in St Vincent's Hospital.

These told their story in concert at the hospital.

‘When the crash came we were thrown from our berths,' said Miss Mocklare. ‘Slightly dressed, we prepared to find out what had happened. We saw before us, coming down the passageway with hand uplifted, Fr Byles.

‘We knew him because he had visited us several times on board and celebrated Mass for us that very morning. “Be calm, my good people,” he said, and then he went about the steerage giving absolution and blessings.

‘A few around us became very excited,' Miss Mocklare continued. ‘And then it was that the priest again raised his hand and instantly they were calm once more. The passengers were at once impressed by the absolute self-control of the priest.

‘He began the recitation of the Rosary. The prayers of all, regardless of creed, were mingled and the responses “Holy Mary” were loud and strong.

‘One sailor,' said Miss Mocklare, ‘warned the priest of his danger and begged him to board a boat, but Fr Byles refused. The same seaman spoke to him again and seemed anxious to help him, but he refused again. Fr Byles could have been saved, but he would not leave while one was left, and the sailor's entreaties were not heeded.

‘After I got in the boat, which was the last one to leave, and we were slowly going further away from the ship, I could hear distinctly the voice of the priest and the responses to his prayers.

‘Then they became fainter and fainter until I could only hear the strains of “Nearer My God to Thee” and the screams of the people left behind. We were told by the man who rowed our boat that we were mistaken as to the screams and that it was the people singing, but we knew otherwise.'

‘Did all the steerage get a chance to get on deck?' she was asked.

‘I don't think so because a great many were there when our boat went out, but there were no more boats and I saw Fr Byles among them.

‘A young man who was in steerage with us helped me into the boat. It was cold and I had no wrap. Taking off the shirt he was wearing, he put it around my shoulders and the suspenders to keep it from blowing undone, and then stepped back into the crowd.'

(New York Herald,
24 April 1912)

The man who gave Ellen his shirt was Thomas Kilgannon, and nine years later, on a visit home to Ireland, Ellen presented the garment to the dead man's mother.

There are contradictions and implausibilities in some areas of the above interviews. Ellen Mockler said she was on deck and in her berth when the iceberg struck. She said there were only seven in her lifeboat, while the least-full lifeboat contained twelve occupants, all of whom are known. And being in an under-populated lifeboat is not consistent with it being one of the ‘last to leave', nor being able to see both Fr Byles and the
Titanic'
s last moments, while paradoxically not being able to see any other lifeboats all night.

Sister Mary Patricia's very advanced age must be considered at the time of the later interviews, while the 1912 account seems to include much that belongs exclusively to the journalist – such as the strains of ‘Nearer My God to Thee', when the survivor herself later said she never heard the hymn.

Ellen told US immigration on arrival that she was to join her sister, Bridget Lynch, at West 17th Street. She also told the Red Cross that she was 19, and received a $100 relief payment. The organisation noted that Ellen, case number 315, had been injured during her ordeal.

Meanwhile word had been sent back to Ellen's elderly father in Ireland soon after the sinking that his daughter had been lost. As a result he had a heart attack and died. Sister Mary Patricia sometimes reflected sadly to her family in subsequent years how sad it was that he never knew she had survived.

Ellen Mockler was born on 1 April 1889 and died on 1 April 1984, her 95th birthday. She is buried in St Joseph's Cemetery in Leicester, Massachusetts.

1911 census – Mocklare, Currafarry.

Parents: Andrew (72), Catherine (70). 35 years married.

Children: Michael (29),
Ellie (20)
.

Daniel J. Moran (27) Lost

Bertha Moran (28) Saved

Joint ticket number 371110. Paid £24 3s.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: Toomdeely North, Askeaton, County Limerick.

Destination: 22 Dow Street, Troy, New York.

The night before Daniel and Bertha left home to board the
Titanic
all the dogs in the house began howling, making them both distinctly uneasy, as Bertha later told her children.

New York policeman Daniel Moran was 27, his sister Bridget, known as Bertha, a year older. He drowned and she survived. Both were originally from the Askeaton area of County Limerick, although each had been living in America for some time, Bertha working in the Peabody Shirt Factory in Troy, New York. They travelled with Patrick Ryan.

The
New York Sun
reported on 22 April 1912, that Daniel, a New York city precinct officer, had been home to claim an inheritance of $12–15,000 from the estate of his deceased father. Daniel's own life, by contrast, was worth only £100 in a 1913 London High Court ruling. He had first emigrated at age 17 aboard the Cunard Line's Etruria, from Queenstown in 1901. In 1912:

Mr [Michael] O'Mahoney, a Customs officer at Queenstown, saw off three Limerick friends of his safely on board the
Titanic
and saw them settled down very comfortably. They were Mr D. J. Moran, a New York policeman, his sister Margaret, and Patrick Ryan.

I can find no evidence of either having been saved, but the lists received here are very incomplete.

(
T
he Cork Examiner
,
19 April 1912)

Daniel and Bertha appear to have been held back in steerage at the stern. Bertha told her family in later life that they were ‘barred from getting up to the lifeboats until some managed to break through', finally reaching the boat deck when all but the most aft lifeboats appeared to have left. Bertha was spoken to by the
New York Herald
in St Vincent's Hospital as she recovered from her ordeal. She told how she was in the company of English priest Fr Thomas R. D. Byles from Ongar, Essex, who had been acting as a kind of chaplain to the steerage passengers the entire voyage, saying Mass for them that Sunday when the vessel struck. ‘Continuing the prayers, he led us to where the boats were being lowered. Helping the women in, he whispered to them words of comfort and encouragement.'

Daniel was left behind. The boats were full of women, and as a policeman, it is likely that he relied upon instilled discipline to suppress his own fear and help others as best he could. His body was not recovered.

Bertha is thought to have been saved in lifeboat No. 15. Bertha said half a dozen of the fifty passengers on the boat died before the
Carpathia
came to the rescue.

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

No. 319. (Irish.) A policeman, 27 years old, was lost, while returning from a visit to Ireland with his sister, a laundry worker, 28 years old. She lost baggage valued at $300, and was ill from shock and exposure and unable to work for several weeks. An invalid sister was dependent upon her and the deceased brother. Hospital care and clothing and $650 was provided from other American sources of relief. The Committee gave $300 for emergent relief, and later set aside $600 to be used for the benefit of the invalid sister. ($900)

The invalid sister was 33-year-old Mary, known as Minnie Moran. She also applied for funds from the
New York American
newspaper, which had held a disaster appeal. Money seems to have been a recurring motif in the Moran saga, with the likelihood that a huge amount of inheritance cash was lost when the
Titanic
went down. Bertha launched her own claim for compensation in the American courts, while an action for the loss of Daniel's life resulted in the derisory £100 award by Mr Justice Bailhache in June 1913, following a five-day trial.

From the papers of the US District Court, Southern District of New York:

I, Bertha Moran, residing at No. 22 Dow Street, in the city of Troy, N.Y., do hereby make and present my claim for damages, loss and injuries sustained by me by reason of the collision of the steamship
Titanic
with an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean …