Irish Aboard Titanic by Senan Molony Read Free Book Online Page A

homestead door was slammed in her face. ‘Murderer!’ was the bitter label hurled at Margaret by her own parents.
    In fact Catherine had been one of a number of Irish passengers originally booked to cross the Atlantic on the White Star liner Cymric , which ought to have sailed on 7 April, but was trapped by the coal strike which had paralysed shipping. The passengers were transferred to the newest and grandest addition to the White Star fleet.
    A full two weeks after the numbing disaster, on 28 April 1912, the search vessel MacKay-Bennett recovered Catherine’s body. It was embalmed on board and returned to Halifax, Nova Scotia. There, in an ice rink converted into a morgue, the body was identified by means of Catherine’s ticket:
    Body No. 299 Female. Estimated age 18. False teeth top. Dark.
    Clothing – Long blue overcoat; blue serge jacket and skirt; white blouse; blue corsets; grey knickers; 10s in silver; £1 in gold; $5 note in purse; satchel; Third Class ticket no. 329944.
    Third Class. Name – Catherine Buckley.
    Catherine had been a maid to two old ladies, Annie and Emma Evans, at 3 Adelaide Terrace in Cork, where her name appears in the 1911 census. She wrote from this address to her sister on 19 March: ‘just a hurried line, hoping you are well and to tell you I am to sail for the U. States on 11th April by the new steamer Titanic .’ She added: ‘Too bad I couldn’t go direct to Boston on the account of the coal strike … there is a lot of liners put off on account of the strike, so I have to go the way I am told.’
    Her army boyfriend, George, wrote to her sister in July 1912: ‘Margaret, I am very sorry to hear that she has gone to her eternal home and left me in this dark world of ours alone.’
    The Titanic International Society marked Catherine’s grave with a new headstone in May 2010 in a ceremony attended by the Irish consul general.
    Daniel Buckley (21) Saved
    Ticket number 330920. Paid £7 12s 7d, plus 3s 10d extra.
    Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
    From: Kingwilliamstown (now Ballydesmond), County Cork.
    Destination: 855 Trement Avenue, Bronx, New York city.
    Daniel Buckley lived because a woman in a lifeboat threw a shawl over him. Her action cloaked his presence as officers fired shots and ordered men who had rushed a boat to leave it – or die. A moment’s humanity had turned Dannie Buckley female.
    He was an ambitious and enterprising young man who wanted to go to America to make some money, as he told Senator William Alden Smith at the US inquiry. ‘I came in the Titanic because she was a new steamer.’
    But his good luck lasted for only another six years. Daniel Buckley was killed in 1918, a month before the end of the First World War, while helping to evacuate American Expeditionary Force wounded from the front line on the French/Belgian border.
    Buckley was born on 28 September 1890 and baptised the same day in the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boherbue, County Cork. His proud parents were Daniel Snr and Abigail Sullivan. The family moved to neighbouring Kingwilliamstown in 1905, where Daniel Snr became the town baker.
    By 1912, Buckley and a number of young friends had decided on emigration to the United States, where opportunities would be better for a jobbing labourer like himself. The night before the party left for Queenstown to embark, there was an American wake in the town with strong drink, set-dancing and a singsong send-off. Buckley had penned a ballad to ‘Sweet Kingwilliamstown’, a tuneful tribute that endures in the area, but chose that night to sing an optimistic valediction: ‘When the Fields are White with Daisies, I’ll Return’.
    Aboard the White Star vessel, Buckley and three friends found a Third-Class compartment near the bow. He shared the cramped room with his near neighbours Patrick O’Connell, Patrick O’Connor and Michael Linehan. Here is