89 Years Ago: 
The Irish on the Titanic
Edward T. O'Donnell * The Irish Echo * April 11, 2001

 Eighty-nine years ago this week, on April 15, 1912, the Titanic went to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean.  With it went more than 1,500 passengers and crew.  Although Titanic was a British ship, the story of its tragic sinking has many Irish dimensions to it.  Among the most prominent are the fact that the famed liner was built in Belfast and made its last port of call in Cobh (then Queenstown) in Cork.  As one survivor later put it, “The last we saw of Europe was the Irish mountains dim and faint in the dropping darkness.”

 Titanic was the dream of J. Bruce Ismay, the flamboyant owner of the White Star Line.  It was also the product of an age of exuberant optimism and supreme confidence in technology and engineering.  Few raised an eyebrow when Ismay declared his ship not only the world’s largest, but also “unsinkable.” 

 Fittingly, the world’s largest ship was constructed at the world’s largest shipyard.  Founded in 1853, the massive Harland & Wolff yard was the pride of Belfast.  Or more accurately, the pride of Protestant Belfast, for the shipyard was notorious among Belfast Catholics for its “no Catholics need apply” hiring policies.  And with 15,000 men employed at the yard, there was a lot to be bitter about.

 Titanic was also designed by an Irishman, County Down-born Thomas Andrews. As Harland & Wolff’s Managing Director, he also headed up the company’s “Guarantee Group” -- a team of eight men sent on the ship’s maiden voyage to advise the captain and crew and handle any problems that might arise.  None of the eight survived the trip. 

 After a gala launching, Titanic left Belfast on April 2, 1912 and traveled to Southampton, England.  On April 10 the ship took on nearly a thousand passengers and steamed for Cherbourg, France.  After picking up 200 or so more passengers, the ship headed for Cobh, in Cork.  There on April 11 the final 113 passengers – mostly Irish immigrants traveling in Third Class – boarded the vessel. 

 One Irishman, however, stepped off the ship in Cobh.  Cork-born Edward Browne was a theology student intent upon joining the Jesuits (he later did).  With a ticket courtesy of his uncle, he traveled only the first few legs of the journey from Southampton to Cherbourg to Cobh.  While aboard the amateur photographer took dozens of pictures of the ship and its crew, including the last photo taken of Captain Edward Smith.  When he stepped off in Cobh he carried with him the most important photographic record of the ship’s only voyage.

 The rest of the story, especially since James Cameron’s 1998 blockbuster movie, is well known.  Despite warnings of icebergs, Captain Smith kept the Titanic at high speed during the night of April 14.  At just before midnight, the ship struck an iceberg off its starboard bow causing a 300-foot long series of punctures along the hull.  Crippled and taking in more water than its pumps could handle, the “unsinkable” ship went under two hours and 40 minutes later at 2:27 a.m.. 

 Of the ship’s 2,223 passengers and crew, only 712 were saved.  The hubris that suffused the age led the White Star Line to install lifeboats for only half the passengers.  Moreover, the intense class prejudice of British society ensured that not everyone was equal when it came to survival.  Two-thirds of the Titanic’s First Class passengers survived, including Margaret Tobin Brown, an Irish American known as thereafter as the “Unsinkable Molly Brown.”  Bertha Mulvihill, one of the fortunate Third Class passengers who made it to a boat remembered the next morning when the ship Carpathia arrived.  “[T]wo big green lights broke through the mist above it, and we knew it was a ship coming to rescue us.  We cheered and cheered.  Some cried.  I just sat still and offered up a little prayer.” 

Most of her fellow steerage passengers were not so lucky.  Fully three-quarters of Titanic’s Third Class passengers (including 50 of 73 children) perished.  Among those who died were 74 of the 113 passengers who embarked at Cobh, including Margaret Rice of Mayo and her five children.  Five of ten additional Irish-born passengers who boarded at Southampton also died, bringing the total Irish-born dead to 79.  Dozens more Irish-born died as members of the ship’s crew, including one Joseph Dawson, perhaps the inspiration behind Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Jack Dawson in the film.  His and the stories of the other Irish passengers aboard the Titanic are chronicled in a recent book by Senan Molony, The Irish Aboard the Titanic (Wolfhound Press, 2000).  They relate countless tales of tragedy and loss, but also many of heroism and survival.

The memory of the Titanic and its victims of all nationalities is kept alive today by several organizations, including the Titanic Historical Society, the Irish Titanic Historical Society, the Ulster Titanic Historical Society, and the British Titanic Historical Society (all have websites). 

In Ireland, a memorial was unveiled in Cobh in 1998.  It depicts Margaret Rice and her five children heading for the Titanic aboard a tender.  Their story reminds us that while the dominant image of the Titanic remains that of a luxury liner catering vacationing high society types like J. J. Astor and Molly Brown, the great majority of its passengers saw it as a means to an end – a ship that would carry them across the sea to a new life in America.

Note: for more information about the Titanic, go to www.encyclopedia-titanica.org

HIBERNIAN HISTORY WEEK

April 12, 1847: The U.S. ship Jamestown, loaded with Famine relief supplies, arrives in Cork.

April 13, 1829: Catholic Emancipation takes effect, removing the last vestiges of the Penal Laws against Catholics in Ireland.

April 15, 1848: The Irish tricolor flag is flown for the first time in Dublin by members of the Young Ireland movement. 

HIBERNIAN BIRTHDATES:

April 13, 1866: Playwright Samuel Beckett, born in Foxrock, Co. Dublin.

April 14, 1866: Teacher of Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan Macy, born in Tuscumbia, Alabama.

April 16, 1871: Writer John Millington Synge, is born in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin.

(c) Edward T. O'Donnell, 2001