Titanic and Irish Immigration

Bonjour!

Comme promis je vous partage mes recherches sur les liens entre le naufrage du Titanic et les mémoires de l'immigration Irlandaise. Enjoy et merci pour votre aide!

“It’s an Irish Ship [...] 15000 Irishmen built this ship, solid as a rock”, stated Tommy Ryan, a third class passenger in the 11 oscars movie Titanic (1997). A few days later, the 15th April of 1912, the ship sank in the abyss of the Atlantic, with 1512 people still on board, while 711 survived. This movie, while not the first to put this episode on screen, gave to the tragedy an important timeless aura, along with confirming its place in worldwide popular culture, thanks to the biggest box office successes. However, Tommy’s speech was not the only reference to Irish culture in the movie. Irishness can be felt in the music, among them the Irish party in third class or the use of Uilleann pipes in the main theme, or when a third class mother told an Irish tale, about Tir Na Nog, to her kids so they would die in their sleep.
If James Cameron gave such place to Irish culture in the movie, there are reasons. It was indeed built in Belfast, and Queenstown (actual Cobh) was the last stop before New York, after Southampton and Cherbourg. That was where the large majority of Irish passengers embarked. Most of them were poor immigrants, being part of the 709 passengers from 33 different nationalities travelling in third class, giving to the sinking its international aspect. The tragedy indeed happened during a peak time of mass migration towards the United States. This was the golden age of Ellis Island, which opened in 1892 and received between 1900 and 1920 14,5 millions people . However, only 25% of the third class immigrants, and 54 Irish on the 164, landed in New York. It is therefore historically linked with History of Emigration, while Irish were a significative part of Titanic’s immigrants. We found out that Irish culture was represented in Cameron’s Titanic, a very important work in popular culture, but It should only be integrated it in a wider corpus that would solve this problematic:

How the construction of Titanic’s memory and the memory of exile were interlinked? Is the sinking of the RMS Titanic an “Irish tragedy”?

At first, we should tell the stories of the Irish aboard the Titanic, to answer those questions. Who were they? Did the sinking really impacted Ireland and its diaspora in particular? How were both interlinked by different kind of representations?


Irish represented 7% of people on board (passengers and crew). Beyond a presentation of various datas about both Titanic and immigration, descriptions of third class on the most famous transatlantic journey could help to picture how it was to live on board. Most of them didn’t survive, but some of their stories did survive and integrated this memory, and one of them would serves as a Red string: the Addergoole 14.

The large majority of the Irish passengers embarked in Queenstown, and large majority of Irish people embarked there. In his anthology Irish aboard Titanic, Senan Molony listed only about 10 who didn’t embarke there and 5 non irish passengers who embarked in Queenstown, none of them being in third class. The ship was born in Belfast, in Ulster, just seven years before the Irish Revolution, in a place torn by the debates about the Home Rule, therefore Irish autonomy, especially in the industrial sector. Within this context, 1912 was a special year in Irish political history. After the Parliament Act of August 1911, this Home Rule, still not as radical as an Independence, seemed imminent, to which the leading industrial organisations of the city were opposed. The Ship set sail from Southampton only the day before the third Irish Home Rule Bill was introduced into the House of Common.
To a less political extent, this was also a period when lots of people migrated from Ireland . Among them, 14 came from the same parish, Addergoole, in county Mayo, one of the more densely populated county but also one of the poorest. According to the researches of Tony Donohoe, there were the only ones from Mayo on board. There were friends, 3 men and 11 women from 17 to 42, from this locality to decide to emigrate together. Immigration in Ireland was very important: According to the 1919 general report, which contains reports for the whole decade, 19.338 people left Ireland each year on average and It was much more important in its beginning, when 29,344 people left in 1912. This was not the most important year, but still an important year for Irish immigration. Before living the port of Queenstown, Eugene Patrick Daly, third class passenger from Athlone, played on his pipes Erin’s Lament, A Nation Once Again, as most of them already knew would never see Ireland again. However, a journey aboard Titanic is a very singular immigration experience.


What is interesting us here is life condition of migrants, so this description would only focus on the third class . Testimonies and photographs shows that standards were higher than those of other migrants. We were already far from the coffin ships of mid-XIXth century where about 80,000 people died, but also far from a certain image of the steerages that can be seen in other works of fictions about “white migrations” like Le Soleil des Scorta or Golden Door (about Italian immigration). The Titanic was extremely luxurious and this also applied to his steerage. This was on this installations that this kind of company made its best profites. A travel there would cost 7 dollars of 1912, and that represented a fortune for immigrants. There was, usually, no way back. The documentary about the Addergoole fourteen, Waking the Titanic, set up the frame of the Ireland of the beginning of the XXth century, where people did not have other choice than migration, and replayed the party before they left . The installations they benefited on the ship, as simple as running water, were therefore extremely new for them, as the documentary underlined. Why were there so special on this context? A Slovak-born French passenger, Michel Navratil, interestingly summarized from an external point of view to his children the reasons with these words:

“Les émigrants qui partent vivre avec leur famille aux Etats-Unis sont beaucoup mieux logés en 3ème classe sur le Titanic que sur les autres transatlantiques où ils sont très mal traités et pour le même prix qu'ici. Figure toi qu' on les entasse souvent sur un pont juste au dessus du niveau de l'eau, tout près des machines. Il règne un bruit abominable, les murs vibrent de manière insupportable. La nuit, on couche par terre, en plein air, où on s'entasse dans une petite salle empuantie. Pas d' eau pour se laver, très peu de cabines d' aisance. On sert une nourriture infecte dans des gamelles, la plupart du temps sans couverts. Les migrants font la queue comme à la soupe populaire.

Tandis qu' ici, chacun a sa cabine particulière, sa place à la salle à manger où on lui sert de l'excellente nourriture. Les 3ème classes disposent d' un pont-promenade, d' un salon où se réunir et d' un fumoir, bref, de tout le confort de 1ère classe en plus petit et en moins luxueux”

His description of usual third class is indeed what could be seen in Crialese and Gaudé’s work. Unfortunately, after a party in third class similar to the one we could see in the 1997 movie Titanic, the “Unsinkable” hit an Iceberg the 14 April at 23h40.



The ensuing tragedy remained stuck in popular and maritime memory, as both dramatic and controversial. After hitting the iceberg, she sank at 2h20 in the morning, with an insufficient amount of lifeboat insufficiently filled themselves, with 711 survivors out of 2223 while 1178 could have been saved. There were important class disparities among the victims. 60% of first class survived, 36% of the second class and 24% of the steerage. The harrowing destiny of the steerage passengers, and the reasons they died in such high proportions, are still on debate. Therefore, in contrast with the good material life conditions of passengers, the souvenir of the sacrifice of the immigrants remained. Why Was it so hard for them to reach the lifeboats, is it only because of classism? Titanic by James Cameron, by far the most famous adaptation, was sometimes described as Marxist, because he viewed the boat as a metaphor for the intemporal question of class war and denounced the abuses of steward towards passengers while shutting the doors. An Irish Woman even told to her children that they had to wait, that after the first class made it to the lifeboat it will be their turn. She was the mother we saw telling an Irish tale to her children, because she never reached them. It was true that there was a lack of organization, that doors were shut to separate classes and that a lot were not open. However, other sources stated the opposite, as An Illustrated History, explaining that the stewards tried to help immigrants, like John Hart. Even the British Government spoke: They were not unfairly treated. The Irish passengers embarked in first, second and third class and died in similar proportions than the other, about ⅔ of mortality, maybe Irish passengers were advantaged by their practice of English. However, very tragic stories are remembered. The Rice family, a Roman Catholic from County Westmouth, the widowed mother and her five very young boys, all died in the tragedy. Out of the 14 people who left together the small Addergoole parish, only 3 women survived (there was 8 other women in the group, and they died despite of their privilege access to lifeboats, while 75% of Titanic women survived), Annie Kate Kelly, 20, Annie McGowan, 17 and Delia McDermott, 31. The last one was lucky enough to survive even she went back from a lifeboat to retrieve her hat she bought just before, showing how important these belongings could be to Immigrants leaving for a new home. How did their village, and the whole country of Ireland, deal with this loss?



It was a traumatic event, on various scales, individual and collective. Their individual fate shows how people and communities were traumatized. It also had a special political impact on the country itself. Could we talk in history of a post-titanic period?


The testimonies of the 3 survivors from Addergoole, who lost 11 of their friends, could be an evocative example of a trauma. The three women experienced also a material loss and were completely destitute once in New York. Once settled in the United States, hey refused to talk about It for a long time, as did the village. The whole community itself was traumatized, as underlined by both Waking the Titanic, and the website of the Addergoole Titanic society. When Annie McGowan’s daughter Mary Kapornek discovered what happened to her mother in 1948, time let it forget and she refused to speak about this tragedy. The locals had the same reaction, because, as the association put in perspective, this represented 0,3% of Addergoole’s population (and most of them were from Lahardane, with a population of...96) and 2% of the sterrage. Bridgie Leonard was 17 in 1912 and in mid-1980’s she told in an interview that she heard the people talking and crying in the village and all over. Affected by extreme poverty and still bearing the stigmas of the famine, these people had already lost a lot of relatives because of emigration. As their website summarized: This was truly, an extraordinary loss for our small parish.. Eugene Patrick Daly survived as well and declared to the doctors that treated him after the sinking My god, If only I could forget! He nearly died, ending up in the water, and was affected physically and psychologically. As well, the trauma extended to the entreprises that were involved in the building of the ship. They were overwhelmingly protestant and opposed to the Home Rule, in opposition to the immigrants destinies we explored. To provide a further interpretation, that was a double symbol for both English and Irish that fell that night.
The arrival of those immigrants was reported by the Ellis Island foundation. They are counted among famous arrivals, while they did not pass through the Island. Another fact that makes them belong to history of immigration.
How was It reported after, in the Irish press?


The sinking was covered by the press all around the world. And in Ireland, perhaps the most affected country? To commemorate the anniversary of the tragedy, the Irish times made an anthology of Irish press frontlines following the tragedy. We can see that It cohabited in the front page with the Home Rule Bill on the 16 of April. In the Weekly Irish Times, the frontline of the 20 april reported Enormous Loss of Life, Many Irish Passengers on Board. Two weeks later, many survivors told their story in the Derry People. However, the frontline did not put an emphasis on what are nowadays considered as crually symbolic stories. There was articles about the loss experienced by the parish as well...almost a century after. The press addressing directly our topic is indeed extremely recent. According to the Newspaper archives, the first articles evoking their case were published after the James Cameron movie came out to theatre. With the key words “titanic” and “addergoole”, the oldest article we could find was published the 4 february 1998 and in a regional newspaper, Connaught Telegraph. This article quotes that Titanic is being hailed as the biggest ever event in Irish cinema history, emphasizing how this movie was important for the memory of the sinking, and “sure provoke strong emotional feelings for the people of Addergoole Parish” . For the Rice family, whose destiny could be used as a symbol of Irish immigrants tragedy, the oldest mentions came immediately after the sinking, when the Carpathia arrived at New York city and list of passengers were elaborated, but that was all. Irish press about Titanic was more diverse and curious of this impact in Ireland. They could see this impact to various extent. For example, the small newspaper The Nationalist, which represents the nationalist views of the Tipperary County wrote an article about Irish links with the sinking. They evoked Eugene Daly as one of the most amazing stories, along with the figures of the immigrants starting a new life in what they still think of as a promised land This [the steerage] is where most of the Irish passengers were based, and as the ship made its way across the Atlantic, whether it was in disappointment at leaving their native land or nervous anticipation of life in the New World, the journey in steerage soon turned into a non-stop party, with music and dance the order of the day. That demonstrates the importance of time to permit to see those links.

Therefore, could we talk about a post-Titanic period? If we put this event in a mere chronology, the timing is interesting, It was just before two fundamental episodes of Irish history, the first world war and the Irish Independence. Even if there is no correlations between these events, his place in the XXth century reinforced his legend. However, according to some survivors there was indeed a post-Titanic period. “In my mind, the world of today awoke April 15, 1912,” wrote Jack Thayer, an american first class passenger, in his late and recently published memories of the sinking in the early 1940’s.
In the context of migrations, this was shortly before the american administration adopted more and more drastic regulations, especially against more recent immigration waves, Irish relatively spared. That was because, when in 1921 that the Emergency Quota Act was adopted, restricted the number of immigrants admitted from any country annually to 3% of the number of residents from that same country living in the United States as of the U.S Census of 1910. In the meantime, the first world war already hardened migrations, including from Ireland, as proved by the datas in the 56th detailed annual report of the registrar-general for Ireland, in 1919, when the fall of immigration is impressive: from 29,344 in 1912 to 7,302 in 1916 and 980 in 1918. For those who continued to migrate, ships were required to have more boat on board, mostly during the SOLAS convention in 1914 ( International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea). Anyway, this was at the end of an age of migration, but it’s not the only important period of Irish History the sinking was en end of.
During almost all this post-Titanic period, Ireland was independent. The Titanic museum, which opened the 31 march of 2012 for the centenary in Belfast, linked both of them. The beginning of the permanent exposition put a light on the past of the city and visitors can see among others historical elements some slogan about the Home Rule on Newspapers. An analysis of this choice summarized it that way: The Trauma of the Titanic also stands in for another trauma that left unspoken: The IRA and the trauma of the civil war in Ireland. [...] Why has the Titanic became an International Brand?” do they ask. This example show that not only historical fact can link Titanic to Irish history, but that this memory is constructed as well.

How was this illustrated by the representations ulteriorly made? How do they interlink memory of migration, sinking and Irish history?


We’ll answer this question articulating the responses to this question given by 3 relays of memory : The historians and their way to link the events between them, fictional representation of the sinking, and public memory.

What’s the place of Titanic’s sinking in history of migrations? How could History provide a link between the Titanic and Irish immigration? During our research, in addition to the works previously used and quoted, we were able to find Senan Molony Irish Aboard Titanic was a precious reference on the subject , and references precisely the story of all Irish passengers abroad. Among vulgarisation litterature, Titanic for Dummies saw How the Titanic passengers personified the Immigrant story worth a chapter: The Titanic story is not just the story of the ship of dreams sinking to the bottom of the North Atlantic. It is also part of an older and ongoing story: the epic journey of people coming to the United States to live the American dream. In Titanic Tragedy by Vincent McDonnell, a large contextualisation of Irish immigration is provided, going back as far as the Irish Famine, reminding the Coffin Ships, as many of these ships sank on the journey. It’s even more important considering how the book is short. In Irish Film: The Emergence of Contemporary Cinema, Martin McLoone argues that the Irish on board of the ship had a special symbolic on board of the ship, this close world, providing the cultural leadership of a new democratic and ethnically diverse America that stands in Sharp contrast with the Old order of Wasp privilege, represented by the first class passenger. He is quoted in the Immigration Story Relaunching Titanic, Memory and Marketing in the New Belfast written by William Neill, Michael Murray and Berna Grist, where this memory is explored with attention.
This work also paid attention to the representation of Irish emigrants in fictions about the Titanic seeking. What could we learn from It?


Titanic by James Cameron was, considering the success of the movie, very often quoted in this work as the main reference in Titanic representation in culture. However, there were a lot of other fictions about the Titanic published. Some of them are indeed studied by Neill’s work. He seems surprised that in movies such as Titanic 1943 and Titanic 1953 the Irish are not represented despite of the presence of third class passengers, considering their important presence of Irish immigrants. Among other sources addressing this problem, the Titanic museum put an emphasis on the fact that A night to Remember was made by a Belfast man. And this is the first movies to give importance to Irish character. Contrary to James Cameron’s movie, we do see people who embarked in Queenstown. Before Titanic 1997, he also addressed classism. Saving women and children, yes, but above all those of rich people!
However, we quoted that the earlier movie was made by a man from Belfast but it also implies a depiction of southern Irish as more backward. He also contextualised the 1997 movie,at the end of the Troubles. While the movie forgets that the builder of the ship were overwhelmingly protestant, and opposed to the Home Rule, in opposition to Tommy’s statement in our introduction, this may have well assisted the local reception of the movie. However, despite of his central influence, It’s not the last movie about the ship. In Julian Fellowes’s miniserie, created for the centenary. As Irish représentation, Jim Maloney took part in the building of the ship, and explains that as a Catholic he didn’t see his future in Belfast and wanted to join New York. He travelled in the steerage, therefore he’s separated from his family on gender-basis. Unfortunately, while at first he found, contrary to so many other immigrants, a place in a lifeboat, he didn’t survive the sinking. Finally, a community play, therefore scenarized, was created. This fiction was obviously a tribute to the fourteen. A way to commemorate them.

Eventually, indeed, these are commemorations. By commemorations, we don’t mean here anniversaries but all the attempts, by monuments or touristic instances, to let this memory perdure. There are permanents reminders of this catastrophe in Ireland itself. We’ve already evoked the Titanic Museum in Belfast,catching the attention of an important amount of tourists and providing necessary informations of historical context. In the locality of Lahardane, a monument figuring human figures walking towards a ship’s prow, along with stones of the fourteen’s cottages, reminded the links between Titanic and Ireland, and Titanic and migrations. A special attention was put in celebrating the centenary by the Addergoole Titanic Society created in 2002. The tremendous loss of the parish led to a week of celebrations and benefits on this memory, including a memorabilia shop, the ringing of the church's bell, a costume Titanic ball, or the coming to Ireland of descendants now part of the immense Irish Diaspora. It was in 2012, during an economical crisis that continued to push the young generation out of the Island. In an interview, Pauline Barrett, the niece of one of the fourteen, wonders “What is wrong with this country that we cannot get work for our youngsters?” . Therefore, in this commemoration week, the Titanic and his immigrants were linked spontaneously to the immigration crisis the country experienced after 2008.
However, this is not limited to Belfast or Lahardane. The simple fact that the sinking was commemorated in Ireland is important, precisely because the Irish Free State had little interest in commemorating It. It is present in touristic guides, as is the commemorative park in Cobh. The success of the Titanic was probably the origin of It. And the fate of the Addergoole fifteen was not the only short-scaled tragedy to be commemorated with a monument. In 1998, representing the Rice family, whose story was described by the Titanic Experience in Cobh as one of the most heartbreaking one. It was an Irish family who wanted to migrate to the United States and died in the Atlantic, and the family is represented in a bas relief toward emigration. We also can name at least one other monument of that kind, in Waterford. In Canada, the most visited grave of a victim is the grave of an Irishman, Joseph Dawson, because of its homonymy with the Titanic character.
Now, let’s focus on the American monuments, as It was a nation built on emigration. In the small town of Audubon, the 106 passengers who were heading to Pennsylvania are commemorated on a park bench, so the important is not their origin but where they wanted to restart a new life, they would never reach.



To conclude, is the RMS Titanic an “Irish” tragedy, how is its memory interlinked with the Irish emigration? The fate of the fifteen of Addergoole and especially are probably the best example of It. The Addergoole Titanic Society made an important work in conserving their memory, and their website, as the documentary about it, really put an emphasis on the immigration’s importance in the village’s life and Irish society. It was even important enough to be addressed by historians. However, the study of secondary sources, including numerous press articles and archives, allows us to see how much the surrounding reflections and the attention paid to this figures is recent.
We can interpret, here, a fatality, a reminding of an old trauma. 80,000 persons,we can quote to show the improve in migrants conditions, died in the coffin ships during the Great Famine. But things didn’t change. They can experience all the decent conditions they could hope, these migrants would die without seeing America.



Bibliography



Primary sources)

Annual registrar report extract (1919)

Press

“15 boys and girls were longing for a new life… but most perished “ , Connaught Telegraph, 04/02/1998
“Appalling Disaster in Atlantic”, Weekly Irish Times, 20/04/1912
A Supreme Tragedy: The Irish times view on the sinking of the Titanic”, Irish Times, 15/04/2019
CARJAVAL Doreen, “A Village Embraces his Haunted Legacy”, New York Times, 8/04/1912
“First hand account of Titanic’s sinking to be published”, Business Standard, 20/01/2013
“Irish passengers on the Titanic”, Evening Herald, 17/04/1912
LYNCH Donald, Titanic: An Illustrated History, Hyperion, 1995, p.118
“Michael Molloy of the Addergoole Titanic Society tells the remarkable story of how 11 people from just one Co Mayo Paris perished on board the Titanic”, The Irish Independent, 31/05/2011
MULRANEY Frances, “Irish characters in the 1997 Titanic movie”, Irish Central, 15/12/2017
“The Lost Titanic”, Irish Times, 16/04/1912

Online Resources

Addergoole Titanic Society website < http://www.addergoole-titanic.com/ >
Ellis Island foundation article about Titanic < https://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/Titanic-Survivors-and-Famous-Arrivals-Featured >
Irish Newspapers archives < https://archive-irishnewsarchive-com.ucd.idm.oclc.org/Olive/APA/INA.Edu/Default.aspx#panel=search&search=1 >
Statistics of the Titanic Belfast Museum < https://www.statista.com/statistics/649119/titanic-belfast-visitor-numbers-northern-ireland-uk/ >
“Third Class Passengers”, on Encyclopedia Titanica.
Titanic Experience Cobh Website < https://www.titanicexperiencecobh.ie/titanic-cobh/ >

Corpus of analyzed works of art

BAKER Roy Ward, A Night To Remember, 1958
CAMERON James, Titanic, 1997
CRIALESE Emmanuel, Golden Door, 2006
DELANEY Francis, Waking the Titanic, 2012
Gaudé Laurent, Le Soleil des Scorta, Actes sud Littérature, 2004, 250p.
HORNER James, An Irish Party in Third Class, < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_CsykS5YHI > and Hymn to the Sea < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqzqWLdsBUA >
NAVRATIL Elisabeth, Les Enfants du Titanic, Hachette, 1998, 352p.
NEGULESCO Jean, Titanic, 1953
SELPIN Herbet, KLINGER Werner, Titanic, 1943

Titanic scenes (James Cameron):

< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gg4Eb5Lve8 > CAMERON James, Titanic, 1997





Secondary Sources)

Documentary

DELANEY Francis, Waking the Titanic, 2012

Books

ARNOLD-DE-SIMINE Silke, Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia, Springer, 2013, 239p.
DONOHOE Tony, Addergoole, It’s Land and People, 288p.
FITCH Tad, On a Sea of Glass, The Life and Loss of the RMS Titanic, Amberley Publishing Limited, 2013, 448p.
HADI Saputra, The Representation of Class Struggle in the movie Titanic, Faculty of Humanities, Diponegoro University, 2011.
MCDONNELL Vincent, Titanic Tragedy, Gill & MacMillan Ltd, 2007, 156p.
MCLOONE Martin, Irish Film: The Emergence of Contemporary Cinema, British Film Institute, 264p.
MOLONY Senan, Irish Aboard Titanic, Wolfhound Press, 2000, p.242.
NEILL William and all, Relaunching Titanic: Memory and Marketing in the New Belfast, Routledge, 2013, 160p.
NEWMAN David, Sociology: Exploring the architecture of Everyday life, Pine Forge Press, 2008, p.291
O’MURCHADHA Ciaran, The Great Famine: Ireland’s Agony (1845-1852), A&C Black, 2011, p.149
RYGIEL Philippe, Le temps des migrations blanches, EPU, 2010, 258p.
SPIGNESI Stephen, The Titanic for Dummies, For Dummies, 336p., 2012.

Articles

DOWNEY Sarah, A Tragedy’s Echo, Chicago, July 2004.
KOMAN Rita, “Ellis Island: The Immigrants Experience”, OAH Magazine of History 13 (4) 31-37, 1999

Très belle histoire et trop intéressante. Par ailleurs ses détails sont magnifiques. C’est vrai que le peuple irlandais avait plusieurs des problèmes le siècle dernier. Thank you for the contribution to this forum Bébé historienne

Merci beaucoup! Je serais vraiment ravie de discuter de ce sujet avec vous! Surtout avec les gens qui m'ont aidé!
J'aurais pu traduire ce texte en français pour vous mais ça demande du temps et...et j'ai pas beaucoup de temps.

Pas de soucis Bébé. C’est une belle histoire en tout cas

Update un an plus tard: j'ai obtenu la note de 17/20. Damn, j'étais fière et accomplie.

Bravo. Toutes mes félicitations

Congratulations!

C'est une excellente note ! Tu continues dans ce domaine ?

Joris

Joris a écrit:Congratulations!

C'est une excellente note ! Tu continues dans ce domaine ?

Joris

Titanic non, histoire irlandaise oui, ça peut intéresser des gens sur ce site j'ai vu. M'enfin ça reste une histoire chère à mon coeur c'est pour ça que je continue de poster un an après ^^