Irish Aboard Titanic (40 page)

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: Clooncoe, Lough Rynn, Mohill, County Leitrim.

Destination: Lakewood, New Jersey.

Matthew Sadlier's house was built on the stones of misery. It was little surprise, therefore, to some prognosticators of doom at least, when misfortune reached through the generations to inflict more anguish.

The Sadliers were land stewards on the Rynn estate in Leitrim, formerly the domain of a savage landlord. The notorious Lord Leitrim (William Sydney Clements) carried out a series of tyrannical evictions in the wake of the Irish Famine when his tenants could not pay punitive rents which had been arbitrarily increased. The new Sadlier house was built of the best stones of the knocked cottages, one cornerstone to this day bearing the initials and date of John Mulligan, a tenant who had built his frugal home in 1838, only to be forced into exile like thousands of others.

Lord Leitrim was finally assassinated – after many attempts – in 1878, and crowds in faraway Dublin, such was his infamy, would attempt to intercept the coffin and throw him in the River Liffey while on his way to the family vault. The estate then passed to a second cousin, since Leitrim hated his own kin, and by 1903 the Wyndham Land Act finally reformed tenant rights and dashed the old landlord system forever. The new owner, Henry Clements, left the one-time feudal seat and turned to book collecting in London.

Matt Sadlier, the youngest child of a family now turned to farming, also wanted to get away. The baby of seven children, he simply saw no future on the lake-dotted land around Mohill. But he had no future on the
Titanic
either. Matthew Sadlier was drowned before he could reach his twentieth birthday.

He was due to stay in Lakewood, New Jersey, with his brother Tom, eleven years his senior, whose address was only given as a
poste-restante
number. His parents didn't wish him to leave, his mother being particularly attached to her youngest, having already seen offspring William, Thomas and Fanny take the American boat.

On the morning he was to leave, a cockerel came to the doorstep and crowed three times. His mother, seizing on superstition for her own ends, declared, ‘That's enough now!', grabbing Matthew's suitcase from his hand. It was unspoken knowledge that a cockcrow at the door meant sad news. Matthew patiently retrieved his case from his mother's grasp, said farewells and went about his journey.

Days later, according to oral tradition, a Mr Easterbrook was cycling home when he met the ghost of a sister of Matthew's, who had died before the
Titanic
disaster, walking along the estate avenue. Water was running down the hair of the ghost, which vanished with Easterbrook's balance as bike and rider crashed to the ground.

The worst feared

Up to the present no word has been received of the young man, Matthew Sadlier, of Cloncoo, Lough Rynn, Mohill, being saved.

Fears are now entertained by his parents and friends that he is amongst the seventeen hundred victims that perished in the wreck. He was going out to two or three brothers in the States, much against the wish of his parents, it is stated.

(
Longford Independent
, 20 April 1912)

1911 census:

Matthew (56), shepherd. Wife Catherine (59).

Married 30 years; nine children born, seven surviving.

Catherine (19),
Matthew (18),
agricultural labourer.

James Scanlan (21) Lost

Ticket number 36209. Paid £7 14s 6d.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: The Bodhreen, Rathkeale, County Limerick.

Destination: The Plaza, New York city.

Reputed to have been born in a workhouse, James Scanlan had a tough start in life, even by the dirt-poor standards he saw all around him. His father, John, was a labourer, with a wife ten years older, and James was the second eldest of their offspring.

His sister Kate, two years younger than James, had been the first to emigrate to America. Now she had an impressive-sounding address at a place called The Plaza, and the streets seemed to be paved with gold in New York. She had sent home for James to join her in New York.

Boarding the
Titanic
at Queenstown, James described himself as a 20-year-old farm labourer. But he was fated never to see his sister at the pier on the Hudson.

County Limerick Victims: Abbeyfeale, Sunday

The list of survivors published Friday contains no reference to the names of Mr Patrick Colbert, Kilconlea, Abbeyfeale, Mr James Scanlan, Rathkeale, nor of other young men and women said to have been on board from East and North Kerry.

(
The Cork Examiner
, 22 April 1912)

1911 census:

John (45), labourer, Catherine (45).

Married 20 years, ten children, six alive.

William (24), labourer,
James (20)
, labourer, Patrick (11), Edward (9), Cornelius (7).

PaTRick Shaughnessy (28) Lost

Ticket number 370374. Paid £7 15s.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: Tynagh, County Galway.

Destination: 1509 Lexington Avenue, New York.

‘Pake' Shaughnessy was lost for the sake of a horse. He delayed travelling to the United States because he was owed money for a steed he'd sold. Pake was promised the cash – it could have been £10 – and decided to wait.

When he didn't receive the money after repeated assurances, he gave it up as a bad job and prepared to take the
Titanic
. His unhappiness at his lot in life was expressed in a letter written to brother Willie on the other side of the Atlantic divide. In it Pake complained that ‘there is nothing around Tynagh' and that he had ‘most of the fellows around here bet' – meaning beaten.

An Apparition in Galway

A young man named Tynagh, in the Banagher district, it is stated, decided upon emigrating to America in opposition to the wishes of his mother, whose only son he was, and on the morning on which he left home for Queenstown she refused to shake hands with him. The parting scene was a very sad one.

He perished in the disaster, and the moment the big ship went down Mrs Lynch heard a noise outside her house and saw the figure of her son approaching her in the same attire he wore the morning he left.

Thinking he had changed his mind, she rushed forward, exclaiming ‘Have you come back again, Tom?' when suddenly the figure vanished.

(
Irish Independent
,
27 May 1912)

The family of Pake confirm the substance of the above error-strewn story. Ellen Shaughnessy did indeed have a vision of her son in broad daylight and knew at that moment he was dead. A namesake nephew, Pat Shaughnessy, declares: ‘She didn't want him to go because he was the youngest and the favourite.'

A physically tough man, equine trader Pake was also described, somewhat paradoxically, as a stylish dresser, always concerned to cut a dashing figure. He was envied too for a new bicycle, the best in the village.

On the gravestone of his brother Thomas in Tynagh today is the inscription: ‘His brother, Patrick ‘Pake' who was lost in the
Titanic
Apr 14 1912 aged 28 years'.

Being the eldest, Thomas had stayed at home, as he would inherit the family farm. By the 1911 census, Tom is the farmer on the land, while mother Ellen is a widowed housekeeper. Tom's younger brother, Patrick, in a place of subservience, is described as a farmer's labourer.

Pake was initially travelling out to America to join his sister Bridget, who had married a man named Burke and had moved to New York. The Burkes lived on Lexington Avenue, and Pake was assured of a hearty welcome in his newly adopted home. He hoped to pick up some kind of manual work and had already lopped some years off his age to prepare for hiring-fair competition with younger men. He told the record-takers for the
Titanic
that he was 20, but had hit that mark at least six years earlier if the 1911 census or later grave inscription are to be believed.

Pake was one of those originally slated to travel on the White Star's
Cymric
, but transferred to the more luxurious
Titanic
by reason of the coal strike and crossing cancellations.

1911 census:

Ellen (65), housekeeper, widow.

Thomas (40), farmer;
Patrick (24)
, farmer's labourer.

Ellen Shine (17) Saved

Ticket number 330968. Paid £7 12s 7d, plus 4s extra.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: Lisrobin, Newmarket, County Cork.

Destination: 205 Eighth Avenue, New York city.

The longest-lived Irish survivor of the
Titanic
was Ellen Shine. She reached the age of 98 (although she had convinced herself she was 101), dying in Long Island, New York, in 1993.

She told a story of the men in steerage being kept back and was quoted as witnessing actual killings.

Cork girl's story

A thrilling story was told by Ellen Shine, a 20-year-old girl from County Cork who crossed to America to visit her brother.

‘Those who were able to get out of bed,' said Miss Shine, ‘rushed to the upper deck where they were met by members of the crew who endeavoured to keep them in the steerage quarters.

‘The women however rushed past the men and finally reached the upper deck. When they were informed that the boat was sinking, most of them fell on their knees and began to pray. I saw one of the lifeboats and made for it.

‘In it there were already four men from the steerage who refused to obey an officer who ordered them out. They were however finally turned out.' –
Reuter

That report, carried in The Times of London on Saturday 20 April, is exactly the same as quotes attributed to Ellen Shine and carried in the
Denver Post
, the
Daily Times
, and other US newspapers on the previous day, with one difference. The American reports continued:

… in it were four men from the steerage. They were ordered out by an officer and refused to leave. And then one of the officers jumped into the boat, and, drawing a revolver, shot the four men dead. Their bodies were picked out from the bottom of the boat and thrown into the ocean.

How can posterity reconcile these two versions? Were the claimed killings the product of a survivor's fevered mind or a journalist's reckless embellishment? Did Reuter deliberately choose to tone down the story in plucking it from another source, or was there simply no mention by Ellen of any killings in the first place? No other witnesses described four men being callously shot inside a lifeboat by an officer of the White Star Line, and no bodies were ever recovered with discernible gunshot wounds.

Ellen Shine appears to have escaped in lifeboat No. 13, which was located as the second-last boat on the starboard side, towards the stern. Eugene Daly frankly confesses that he was a steerage passenger who climbed into a lifeboat in defiance of orders at this location. Daly said he was forced from a boat at the ‘second cabin deck', an area of promenade for middle-ranking passengers, and talks of being on the starboard side, where boat No. 13 was lowering:

We afterwards went to the second cabin deck and the two girls and myself got into a boat. An officer called on me to go back, but I would not stir. Then they got a hold of me and pulled me out.

No one testified to any disorder at boat No. 13 at the two official inquiries. Steward Frederick Ray, who was in this boat, told the US Senate investigators, in reply to questions, that he saw no male passengers or men of the crew ‘ordered out or thrown out of these lifeboats on the starboard side. Everybody was very orderly.' But Irish passenger Dannie Buckley declared: ‘Time and again officers would drag men from the boats … ' Resolution of the problem is elusive. Should one disregard the claims of men shot dead for staying stubbornly in a lifeboat? Someone somewhere is spinning pure invention.

Ellen Shine told her story once and would never be drawn on it again. According to the embarkation records, she was an 18-year-old spinster, but by the time US immigration had come aboard the
Carpathia
, she declared herself to be a 16-year-old servant from Newmarket, County Cork. She was actually aged 17 when she boarded the
Titanic
and from the small hamlet of Lisrobin (Buckley mistakenly referred to her as ‘the Shine girl from Lismore' in a letter home composed on the
Carpathia
). She was on her way to join her brother Jeremiah in New York.

Ellen collapsed in hysterics when met by Jeremiah and other relatives at the Cunard pier in New York, according to the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
. It reported the next day that she and other women had knocked down crewmen who tried to prevent steerage passengers from reaching the boat deck.

Ellen's was case number 418 to be dealt with by the American Red Cross. The notes from this report record her saying she was aged 16 and that she had lost clothing and a cash sum of $500. She was awarded $100 in aid.

In later years, Ellen Shine married and became Mrs John Callaghan. Her husband, a firefighter, hailed from Kiskeam, also in Cork, and they settled in New York. They first returned to Ireland only in 1959, on the
Mauretania
, but made a number of visits thereafter. The couple had two daughters, Julia and Mary, whom Ellen would be fated to outlive.

In 1976 she moved from Manhattan to Long Island to be with her family following the death of her husband. In 1982 she entered Glengariff nursing home where she celebrated her 100th birthday in 1991 – three years early. By this stage, however, Ellen was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease. Never having discussed the
Titanic
disaster in nearly seventy years, she suddenly could not stop babbling about it. A torrent of
Titanic
revelations flowed from her loosened tongue, to the irritation of other residents. When Ellen finally wanted to talk about the disaster, no one was listening.