Irish Aboard Titanic (36 page)

‘I was among the last, and there was only one boat left. Yes, it is true about the old couple. I could hear her husband bidding her to get into the boat, and the last I heard her say was “No, no, no!” As we came along, the last thing I saw was the priest, waving his hand towards us, like as if it might have been absolving all. The poor man was going towards the steerage.'

Afraid to go into the boats

‘Do you know, we still had no notion the ship was going down? We were a little afraid about going into the boats. That is, all of them, men or women, were afraid, except the stewards. There was a queer look on their faces as they helped us along. I didn't understand then – none of us did. Now we who were saved know what that look meant.

‘There was some trouble with the nurses [stewardesses]. They were supposed to place lifebelts on the people. A few of them tried to escape. But the officers shouted at them, and they came back to their work.

‘The poor girl that was to go into the boat just before me was afraid. She jumped and missed the boat, all but one ankle, and a man at the oars grabbed her. She slipped from his hold and was drowned. I got afraid and an officer lifted me. Some one said “Careful there”, and I was dropped into the boat. She pulled away, and I sat up to look at the big ship. It could not have been more than seven minutes before there was a terrible explosion. O God, be merciful to us all! The cries that came from the ship I'll never forget. I could see 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.

‘Then those in charge began to give orders, keeping the boats a little apart. A little while after, we could see one boat with a green light on it. Some man was giving orders in it. In our boat was a tall man with a moustache, and he seemed to have some giving of orders. We had sixty-five in the boat, and they started taking people out and putting them in boats that had very few in them.

‘Five or six Chinamen were found in the bottom of one boat. The way they were saved was by fixing their hair down their backs, and putting their blankets about them. They were taken for women when the boats were leaving the ship. When they took some of the people from our boat we had a sailor and an Italian stoker to row us. It was awful, so it was. The Italian knew no English, and he didn't seem to understand the sailors telling him to “back water”. There was no other man now. So, to try and save the people, I took the oar from the Italian and the sailor and I rowed about as best we could. Sometimes the green light I told you about on the boat made me think now and then a ship was coming, and we were afraid it would run us down before we could be saved. We would often mistake a bright star, do you know, for the top light of the vessel.

‘Towards morning we rowed over the place where the
Titanic
went down, but there were only pieces of wreckage floating, except the new lifebelts that poor souls had adjusted the wrong way before they left the ship.'

There have been varying accounts as to the air that the ship's band played as the vessel was sinking, but Nellie O'Dwyer declares without hesitation that it was ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee'. She declares that her boat was equipped with neither water nor provisions of any kind. She knew the names of none of the persons in her boat.

The awful period of sorrow aboard the
Carpathia
was relieved by Nellie O'Dwyer, who was an angel of mercy. Her robust constitution had been disturbed but little by the trying privations of the night on the open sea, and she went among the suffering survivors tenderly nursing them, making tea for them, and with the characteristic buoyancy of her Celtic heart, forcing a smile and cheering the forlorn with a word of comfort.

(Limerick Chronicle
, 7 May 1912)

Nellie O'Dwyer could have been rescued in lifeboat No. 10, hanging at a gap of a yard or so from the deck because the
Titanic
was listing heavily to port. It also has an attested case of a woman jumper falling between the boat and the ship, but instead of plunging into the water and drowning, she was caught on the deck below and pulled in. First Officer William Murdoch was in charge of filling the lifeboat. No crewman later made any mention of shooting at this location. People were transferred from overcrowded boat No. 10, as reflected in Nellie's account, when Fifth Officer Harold Lowe formed a flotilla of lifeboats. The woman who had six children on board appears to have been Margaret Rice, who had five sons – one of whom may have been the child who was praying so beautifully.

Dining room steward William Burke put a man he believed to be an Italian at an oar after the transfer of seamen from boat No. 10 to boat No. 14, the latter craft going back to the wreck site to search for survivors. But the Italian confided he was actually Armenian when Burke tried to talk to him.

Nellie O'Dwyer was treated in hospital on landing, and later went to the home of her brother John at East 3rd Street in Brooklyn, where she gave her newspaper interview. She later attempted to get work as a domestic servant. Nellie was aided by the American Red Cross in case number 351, with a grant of fifty dollars.

List of personal property lost by Miss Nellie O'Dwyer, 138 East 3rd St., Brooklyn, NY: 2 ostrich plumes – $10; 2 sets of dishes – $15; 2 suits – $30; Irish lace – $25; 2 hats – $8; watch and chain – $50; set of furs – $20; 4 pictures – $10; white shawl – $5; silver mesh bag – $3.50; 2 pair shoes – $5; coat – $10; ring – $10; silk skirt – $8; underwear – $20; 2 Irish linen table cloths – $15; house dresses & aprons – $15; white dress – $10; music book, stockings, ties – $4; trunk – $10; suit case – $5. Total: $288.50.

Patrick O'Keeffe (30) Saved

Ticket number 368402. Paid £7 15s.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: Spring Garden Alley, Waterford city, County Waterford.

Destination: 416 West 38th Street, New York city.

Patrick O'Keeffe had a dream the
Titanic
was going to sink. The vision came to him before he ever went on board, and he tried to sell his ticket for the crossing, but got no takers. He had been home to Ireland on holiday, visiting his father in Waterford, but as soon as he reached Queenstown for the return journey, he was filled with a sense of foreboding.

The
Evening Telegraph
of 20 April 1912 described his woe:

The principal topic of discussion in the city during the week has been the terrible ending to the maiden voyage of the
Titanic
. Amongst the passengers was Patrick O'Keeffe, son of Mr O'Keeffe, Spring Garden alley, who was returning to the States after a month's holiday in this city. As if the poor fellow had some premonition of what was to happen, the following postcard was received by his father prior to his departure from Queenstown:

‘I feel it very hard to leave. I am down-hearted. Cheer up, I think I'll be alright. – Paddy.'

And
The Cork Examiner
subsequently amplified the reasons for O'Keeffe's unease:

Waterford Survivor

Letters have been received by his father and friends from Patrick O'Keeffe, the only passenger from the city of Waterford on the ill-fated
Titanic
, and who was saved.

He says he dreamt before embarking at Queenstown that the steamer was sinking and would sell his steerage ticket for £7 if he got anyone to buy it. He says he escaped quite easily with two Londoners on a raft and attributes his luck to a cool head.

On 16 May 1912, the same paper printed his picture with the caption ‘Another
Titanic
Hero'. It related:

An act of heroism was performed by Mr Patrick O'Keeffe, who, plunging into the sea from the steerage deck, managed to capture a collapsible raft on which he first pulled an Englishman from Southampton and then a Guernsey islander, and after that, with the assistance of those he had already rescued, some twenty other men and women who were finally landed safely on board the
Carpathia
.

The
Enniscorthy Echo
recorded:

Waterford Passenger's Escape

On Saturday Mr John O'Keeffe, Waterford, received a telegram from his son Patrick, who was on board the
Titanic,
stating that he was safe in the St Vincent Hospital, New York. Mr O'Keeffe, who was to have Masses said in the Waterford churches on Sunday for the repose of his son's soul, changed them to Masses of thanksgiving for his rescue.

(
Enniscorthy Echo,
27 April 1912)

Hospital visitor Fr Michael Kenny told the
Brooklyn Eagle,
23 April 1912, of the heroics of ‘James O'Keeffe', a Waterford boy, whom he had met and spoken to. He told the newspaper: ‘O'Keeffe's success in rescuing lives after he assumed absolute command on the raft was one of the many providential avenues of escape provided for the steerage passengers of which I heard many recitals during my visit to St Vincent's.'

Two collapsible boats floated off the
Titanic
in its final moments. Collapsible B remained upside down throughout the night, while A was low in the water and flooded. The use of the word ‘raft' and some other details have led to it being considered more likely that O'Keeffe saved himself on capsized B.

Two things stood to O'Keeffe. One was the fact that he was a strong swimmer, used to cold water because he swam in the sea each Christmas Day. Another was his occupation as a porter (although he had been signed aboard the vessel as an agricultural labourer), which meant he was capable of handling heavy weights.

Harold Bride, one of the ship's wireless operators, had been trapped under collapsible B, but swam out from below and tried to clamber aboard. He spoke fleetingly in testimony to the US inquiry about a passenger who seemed to be at the centre of assistance efforts:

Bride:
And there was a passenger; I could not see whether he was first, second or third.

Senator Smith:
What kind of looking man?

Bride:
I could not say, sir.

Smith:
Have you learned who it was?

Bride:
No, sir; I heard him say at the time he was a passenger.

Smith:
Was it Col. Gracie?

Bride:
I could not say. He merely said he was a passenger.

Smith:
Where did he get on?

Bride:
I could not say. I was the last man they invited on board.

Smith:
Were there others struggling to get on?

Bride:
Yes, sir.

Smith:
How many?

Bride:
Dozens.

O'Keeffe was registered on arrival in New York as a 21-year-old porter. In aid case number 352, in a report of the American Red Cross, he is also described as a 21-year-old porter, Irish, who was ‘severely bruised and unable to work for several weeks'. He was given a grant of $102.

Pat remained in New York, moving to an address at Second Avenue, and then Eighth Avenue, Manhattan. He found work as a window dresser for a big store. On 19 September 1923, 41-year-old O'Keeffe married Anna Nolan. His Irish bride was aged only 18. A bookbinder by profession, she had an address just a few doors away from the home of the cousin with whom Pat had first stayed. The couple were immediately blessed with a daughter, Margaret, likely conceived on honeymoon, since she was born nine months and one week after their marriage on 26 June 1924. Margaret lived to be 63, and died in January 1988.

Within a few years the O'Keeffe marriage had hit trouble, due in part to the wide disparity in ages and Anna's difficulty in understanding the demons that still attended her husband. They reluctantly divorced. Several years later, however, Anna and Pat returned to each other's embrace. They decided to formalise their rekindled relationship and in 1936 they married each other again.

This time Pat was 54 and Anna 30 as they walked down the aisle at the Church of the Ascension on 8 February that year. Twelve-year-old Margaret may have acted as a page girl – and the couple covered up what would have been a deeply sinful charade in the eyes of the Church by claiming it was a first marriage for them both.

Another child was born, a son, Edward. He later had two girls.

Within three years of his second wedding, Patrick O'Keeffe was dead. He succumbed to a heart attack brought on by angina at the age of 57 – his heart possibly having been fatally weakened by his ordeal in the
Titanic
a quarter of a century before. The death certificate states that he was born in Ireland, the son of John O'Keeffe and Catherine Fitzgerald, and had been working as an elevator operator in an office building. He was a resident of New York for thirty-five years, placing his first arrival in 1904 when he was aged 13. He lies buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

Just before he had sailed with White Star, Pat O'Keeffe had had his photograph taken at the Poole portrait studios in Waterford city. It is an image of an undoubtedly brave man who, within days, was put sorely to the test and triumphed magnificently.

Nora O'Leary (17) Saved

Ticket number 330919. Paid £7 12s 7d, plus 4s extra.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: Glencollins, Kingwilliamstown, County Cork.

Destination: 2873 Eighth Avenue, New York city.

Nora O'Leary was awakened by a crash. The teenager didn't know what it was – and even when water began seeping into her cabin she thought that a pipe had burst, according to the story she would later tell when safely back in her home town. She felt an uncomfortable atmosphere after being woken, although there was very little confusion. She decided to make her way on deck and when she got there asked crewmen what was the matter. She didn't get an answer.

Nora said a lifeboat was being filled and an officer was calling for people to get in. She decided to enter the craft as a precaution, believing it would soon return to the
Titanic
. As the lifeboat was being rowed away, she realised something dreadful was happening.