Irish Aboard Titanic (37 page)

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 to 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 Egan 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.

It wasn't as if Margaret didn't have it hard enough herself. Aged 39, she had been widowed almost two years earlier when her engineer husband, William, was killed in a locomotive tragedy in America in late 1910. Originally from Athlone and home on a visit, she was returning to Spokane, Washington, with her five sons – Albert, George, Eric, Arthur and the baby, baptised Eugene, but whom she called Frank. All were drowned, and the destruction of the family is commemorated in the Cobh (Queenstown) memorial to the Irish passengers lost, which was unveiled in July 1998.

Mrs Rice's body was recovered, indicating that she managed to get on deck with her children – but the delay in organising them all probably cost the family a place in the boats. She was identified by a pill box she had on her person, which was dispensed to her by a chemist in Church Street, Athlone, two days before boarding. She is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia – on the opposite side of a continent to her husband.

Irish Passengers missing: some pathetic incidents Queenstown, Friday

As far as we can make out from the list of survivors to hand here so far, about one third of the 123 passengers who joined the
Titanic
at Queenstown on Thursday last have been saved. The percentage is not as long as was originally believed.

There are many pathetic incidents connected with those Irish passengers. We have turned in vain to every list for some trace of Mrs Rice and her fine young family of five children, with whom she had been in Athlone on a brief holiday, or what was more a rest after a great affliction, she having lost her husband recently.

Mrs Rice's fine handsome children evoked all round admiration. Two were quite young ones in arms and all seem to have perished.

(
The Cork Examiner,
19 April 1912)

Nellie O'Dwyer from Limerick may have witnessed the last moments of Margaret Rice and her offspring:

The cries that came from that ship I'll never forget. I could see just before the explosion, just dimly, the face of a woman who had six children with her on board. I think none of the little ones got up soon enough to be saved. The poor mother never left the ship.

(Irish Independent,
7 May 1912)

Nellie also spoke of ‘a sweet little boy' and of hearing ‘the grandest prayers that one could hear from a child', before adding: ‘I think he was lost. I don't remember seeing him next morning in any of the boats.'

Meanwhile Bertha Mulvihill also saw the Rices on the port side. She said she saw Mrs Rice with one child in her arms and the others clutching at her skirts, just before the end. Speaking on the forty-fourth anniversary of the sinking in 1956, she declared:

‘I don't know where they get all that women and children first business. I never saw it! I'll tell you what I saw. I saw a mother and her five children standing there on the ship. When the ship split in half, I saw the mother and five children drown.'

Mrs Rice and her children are pictured in the
Irish Independent
of 19 April 1912. The caption reported: ‘Mrs Rice and her five sons, who were returning to their home at Spokane, Washington. Mrs Rice is an Athlone woman. Her husband, who was an engineer, was killed last year on one of the American railways. She had been paying a visit to her uncle, Mr John Norton, Mardyke Street, Athlone.'