113 Irish lives lost when Titanic sank - from long-lost loves to family of six
This week commemorates the 113th anniversary of the sinking of the world's most infamous ship, the Titanic, in 1912, a disaster that claimed over 100 Irish lives. It's estimated that around 110 people from Ireland were among the 1,517 passengers and crew who perished. The catastrophe had a far-reaching impact across Ireland, with fatalities recorded from 22 counties including, Armagh, Cork, Donegal, Dublin,, Galway, Kerry, among others. The Titanic, the largest ocean liner of its time, was designed by Irishman Alexander Montgomery Carlisle, hailing from Ballymena in Antrim. It collided with an iceberg just before midnight on April 14, 1912, and rapidly sank into the icy depths of the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately 600 km south of Newfoundland, Canada, in the early morning hours.
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The ship, globally acclaimed as unsinkable, was constructed in Belfast and embarked on its maiden voyage from Southampton, making a stop in Cork. Tragically, five men lost their lives during the construction of the ship at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, while only 54 Irish individuals survived the sinking.
RMS Titanic
As many as 14 hailed from the small Mayo village of Addergoole, all en route to New York in America to start anew. They boarded the ship at Cobh, known as Queenstown until 1922, along with others from Belfast and the Cork towns of Ballydesmond and Ballydehob. The research also uncovered records of passengers like Neal McNamee from Donegal and his British wife Eileen, who tragically lost their lives while celebrating their three-month-old marriage. In a heartbreaking twist of fate, six members of the Rice family from Athlone in Westmeath – mother Margaret and her five children – perished when they sailed to America. Thomas O'Brien, a farmer from Limerick, met his end on the Titanic, while his wife Johanna O'Brien Godfrey survived, as women and children were prioritised during the evacuation when the Titanic sank at 2:20 a.m. local time on April 15, just two hours and 40 minutes after hitting an iceberg. Other Irish passengers included Tom McCormack, who endured 80 minutes in the icy sea. He managed to survive and recounted how a crew member started hitting him over the head and shoulders with a paddle as he tried to get on a lifeboat. Miraculously, he was rescued when kind-hearted sisters Mary and Kate Murphy, from Longford, stepped in and pulled him aboard. The daring acts of the Murphy sisters are depicted in the 1997 Hollywood hit Titanic, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Their story intertwines with that of another survivor: Irish-American Margaret Tobin Brown from Fermoy in Cork. Portrayed by Kathy Bates in the movie, her real-life persona earned the moniker "unsinkable Molly Brown" for her efforts to rescue others, insisting that those in the water be allowed onto the lifeboats. Another remarkable tale of survival comes from Cork native Daniel Buckley, who was 21 at the time. He lived through the disaster thanks to Madeleine Astor, the young spouse of the wealthiest man in the world, who gave him a shawl to conceal himself as officers were removing men from the lifeboats. Also among the notable survivors was a youthful priest named Fr Francis Browne, an avid photographer. His time on the Titanic lasted only one night, during which he sailed from Southampton to Cobh and captured numerous photographs of the ship's gym, dining saloon and passengers strolling on deck. His photographs survived to tell the tale because, as legend has it, he was commanded to leave the ship in Cobh by a superior ordering him to "get off that ship." Many Irish passengers, traveling in Third Class, were confined there by the ship's officers and crew until the final moments of the liner's sinking. Such firsthand accounts were initially brushed off as fabrications by a British inquiry, yet later evidence in 1985, through photographs of the shattered wreck at the bottom of the ocean, confirmed the ship did indeed break apart.
