Cork firm produces commemorative Titanic chart
A Cork company, Know Thy Place, has produced a commemorative Titanic chart telling the story of the ill-fated luxury liner's connections with Ireland.
Company director Damian Shiels said: "The story of the Titanic's connections with Ireland begins with the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, where she was designed and built. We explain her building with the aid of a Belfast docks map, showing the key sites associated with the White Star Liner."
A total of 123 passengers embarked from Cobh, which was then called Queenstown, on the doomed ship, and the firm looked at their journey from 'Titanic Pier', behind the James Scott and Company offices, aboard the tenders that took them to liner anchored off Roche's Point.
The central part of the chart's story looks at the Irish passengers and crew who were aboard the Titanic, telling some of their stories; while a map of Ireland marks with individual crosses the home places of each of the 129 people from all around the country that researchers identified as being lost in the tragedy.
Mr Shiels said: "We discovered that many publications cite wildly different numbers in this regard. There are many reasons for this - some exclude Irish crew members from their totals, while others fail to include Northern Ireland in their calculations. We found the only solution was to create our own list of individuals specifically for the chart."
"We eventually generated a list of 129 passengers and crew from around the country who were lost; a number that was almost certainly higher, as only scant details survive for many of the crew."
Many of the Irish on board had been travelling in groups, meaning that some localities suffered disproportionally. Fourteen people from the parish of Addergoole, Co. Mayo were on board, yet only three survived. Individual families also suffered disproportionally, and one such example is that of Margaret Rice from Athlone and her five young sons were among those lost.
Mr Shiels said: "We discovered that, for the family of Jeremiah Burke, a 19-year-old from White’s Cross, Cork, a remarkable memento of their lost son, washed up at nearby Dunkettle in 1913 – sealed in a bottle was his last message - 'From Titanic. Good Bye all. Burke of Glanmire, Cork.'."
