by Senan Molony
Senator Smith: ‘Do you know who the woman was?’
– ‘No sir; I did not know her.’
Senator Fletcher: ‘Do you know whether she succeeded in getting into another boat or not?’
– ‘I couldn’t say. I supposed she got into another boat.’
(US Inquiry, pp. 821–826)
Able seaman Frank Evans said that the woman wore a black dress, and suggested that perhaps her heel had caught in the Titanic’s rail as she jumped. He testified that after her rescue she came back up to the boat deck, jumped, and this time landed safely in lifeboat No. 10.
Burke later returned to England on the Red Star Line’s SS Lapland. He stayed working on the sea and in related trades, and retired to Liverpool, originally White Star’s home port.
The late William Burke, from Albert Edward Road in Wavertree, was a ship steward. He was woken by a fellow crewmember, who came up to his bunk bed brandishing a piece of ice which had sheered off the iceberg as it hit the ship.
In an interview with the Echo, he recalled: ‘I was sent to lifeboat station number ten and when a woman passenger leapt to board it, she slipped and was about to fall into the sea when I grabbed her.
‘I hung on to her, but it was a terrific strain. Then, just as I thought I must let go, we reached the level of the next deck and two sailors clasped her by the head and shoulders and hauled her to safety.
‘Our boat was so full that everyone had to stand. At first we could not believe the Titanic would sink … but sink she did, and the hours from when I was roused from my bunk to the time we got picked up by the Carpathia are not ones which I am anxious to recall.’
(Liverpool Echo, 1956)
Timothy Casey (38) Lost
Trimmer.
From: County Cork.
Sailors’ Home, Southampton.
Nothing much is known about Casey, apart from the fact that his death benefited relatives in the United States. His nephew, William James Casey, of Texas and five nieces received compensation payments after they were tracked down by a diligent lawyer and offered a deal. Relatives continue to live in Longview, Texas.
It appears he may have been an agricultural labourer from Rea, Castlehaven, near the small ports of Castletownshend, Union Hall and Glandore, all of which had strong seafaring traditions. Living alone with his elderly mother, Johanna, by the 1901 census, he may have gone to sea following her death.
William Clark (36) Saved
Fireman.
From: Greenore, County Louth.
30 Paget Street, Southampton.
Clark had previously served on the sister ship Olympic. As a fireman, he was very lucky to escape the wreck of the Titanic (his means of doing so remains unknown), since only thirty-six out of a total of 167 stokers lived. More remarkably still, Clark also survived a proportionately greater maritime disaster just two years later, when the 14,000-ton Empress of Ireland was struck by the collier Storstad in the St Lawrence river, sinking in just a quarter of an hour and taking the lives of 1,014 of her 1,477 passengers and crew.
This is from The Times account of interviews with Empress of Ireland crewmen on their return to Britain aboard the Corsican in June 1914. It was submitted by the newspaper’s Glasgow correspondent:
A Comparison with the Titanic
Much the most interesting of the personal statements given in answer to questions was made to me by William Clarke [sic] a fireman of Liverpool – actually a survivor of the Titanic disaster – a quiet, matter-of-fact old man with a grey moustache and kindly eyes, rather toil-worn. He said:
‘I was a fireman on both the ships. It was my luck to be on duty at the time of both accidents. The Titanic disaster was much the worst of the two. I mean it was the most awful. The waiting was the terrible thing. There was no waiting with the Empress of Ireland. You just saw what you had to do and did it.
‘The Titanic went down straight, like a baby goes to sleep. The Empress rolled over like a hog in a ditch. I was shovelling coals when the Empress was struck. I heard the engines stop. I ran up to my boat, No. 5. We swung her down, but the list of the ship threw her out from the side into the water, and then the hooks of the davits loosed off and she floated away.
‘I had to dive into the water to catch her. By that time the ship was just going. I heard screaming and then helped to pull people out of the water. We were picked up by the Storstad.’
(The Times, 10 June 1914)
A major follow-up interview with Clark appeared less than a fortnight later in an Irish newspaper. It revealed amazing new details about how he had cheated death before. From the Dundalk Democrat of Saturday 27 June 1914:
If ever a fireman bore a charmed life it is Fireman William Clark, of the ill-fated liner Empress of Ireland.
An insatiable thirst for adventure has carried him all over the world. He has heard the thunder of big guns on the warships of Britain’s fleet; he has been wounded by sniping Boers on the blood-stained veldt of South Africa; he has been given up for lost when suffering agonies on a sick bed in a military hospital; has been carried to almost certain death in the mighty Titanic; hurled from the torn deck of the Empress of Ireland when she plunged to her doom in the dark waters of the St Lawrence – and, fit and well in spite of it all, he still survives to tell the tale.
Flirting with death
Ever since he came to man’s estate, William Clark, the quiet, unassuming fireman of the lost Empress, has flirted with death. Not once in generations is it given to a man to face peril after peril in this way and come practically unscathed through it all. Yet, if you ask William Clark whether he has not tired of adventure and intends to settle down to a quiet life, he will answer you quietly: ‘I shall go down to the sea again when I am ready and as soon as I can get another ship!’
I found Clark at his home in Bootle yesterday. Let me describe him to you. In appearance he is a typical Irishman, with the soft dark hair and big blue eyes which have earned for the lassies of his race a reputation for beauty that is known throughout the world. There is a look of fearless honesty in those blue eyes of his, and when you talk to him you get the impression of a calm, quiet man, calculated to keep his head and act with coolness even in moments of the greatest excitement and danger.
A full dark moustache hides the lines of his mouth, and he strikes you as being too kindly of disposition to be what one would describe as a ‘firm man’. But there is an air of quiet courage about him, and you feel instinctively that this is a man you could rely upon in any emergency involving danger. He is about 43 years of age and unmarried.
When I saw him he was still wearing the clothes cut on the American style, which were supplied to him after the Empress catastrophe, in which he lost everything he had with him. He looks grotesque, and it is almost amusing to see him walking in the square-toed, dome-capped boots beloved of the Yankee – brown boots with soft felt uppers.
They are very small, and it is a strange thing about this remarkable man that one of his few vanities is an abounding pride in the smallness of his feet.
William Clark could tell of many hairsbreadth escapes on land and sea if he would, but though he has come safely through them all, the horror still clings to them and has left its mark upon him. He does not like to talk of these things, and it is with difficulty that one can persuade him to unfold the pages of the past.
Except in his appearance one can hardly call him a typical Irishman. He lacks much of that spontaneous gaiety and vivacity of bearing – that quick impulsiveness which has set a kind of trademark on Irishmen all the world over. But his looks stamp him as Irish beyond question, and that craving for adventure may also be counted among the attributes conferred upon him by his nationality.
The lure of the sea
Clark was born at Greenore, County Louth, about 43 years ago. What he did as a lad, I do not know, but the love of roaming, coupled with a passionate longing for the sea, asserted itself early in life and before he was twenty he left his native land and came to Liverpo
ol to seek his fortune.
As may be imagined, he found his way down to the docks. The big ships called to him and the restless tides of the Mersey sang an eternal song of invitation, luring him out to stormy seas and strange lands. But he loved the sea not only for its own sake, it was the adventure, the excitement, and the change of a seafaring life which called to him with an insistent attraction that would not be denied, and before long he found himself on a British warship.
But life in the navy nowadays lacks much of the charm of olden time, and for the bluejacket of today there are no wild adventures on the Spanish Main, no exciting chases after French privateers in the Bay of Biscay, no gold to be wrested from the Indies, and no prize money. All that sort of thing belonged to the days of the wooden walls now gone for ever, and now the navy man gets plenty of discipline, not a little monotony and no fighting.
It was hardly to be wondered at that Clark’s restless temperament soon tired of the necessary restrictions of a modern warship and before long he made up his mind to quit. He deserted and got clear away, but the lure of the sea still held him and he shipped as a fireman on board a merchant steamer.
A knock-about time in many oceans followed, and eventually Clark found himself on a ship in Durban port when South Africa was seething with the unrest which culminated in the war.
The thirst for adventure and excitement was too much for him. There was going to be fighting, and men were needed. He left his ship, gave himself up to the naval authorities as a deserter, and in the height of the war fever was let off lightly when it was understood he was anxious to volunteer for the front.
Fighting the Boers
He went to the military riding school in Pietermaritzburg and learned to ride like a cowboy. Then he joined Brabant’s Horse and went right through the war in the army of Lord Methuen.
He had many exciting adventures, but shot and shell and bayonet, which laid so many of his comrades low, left him for a long time untouched.
At last his luck changed a little. During a fierce scrap at Blackfontein, Clark was wounded; but here again he got off lightly. A bullet struck a bit of woodwork and one of the splintered fragments struck his arm and opened a nasty cut along the wrist. It was a little affair; Clark’s time had not come.
The hardships of the campaign, however, did not altogether pass him by. Towards the end of the war he was stricken down with disease, and for eighteen months he lay in hospital hovering between life and death. But his splendid constitution stood him in good stead, and he was discharged from the hospital fit and well.
Again he took to seafaring, and eventually he shipped aboard the huge Titanic and helped to keep her fires going on that first and last voyage, the awful end of which remains one of the most terrible incidents in our history.
Clark went down in the ship when the mighty iceberg ripped her side open and hurled her to her doom.
How he escaped he does not know. He was caught in the swirl of waters as the vessel plunged down – dragged down into the ocean depths with the crippled leviathan as she sank to her last resting place. Even then his abnormal luck did not desert him. He never thought to come up again, but the force of the boiler explosion lifted him and rushed him up to the surface. He struck out vigorously; was pulled aboard one of the boats, and came home to tell the tale.
This awful experience did not cure him of his craving for the sea and he continued to serve in the stoke-hold of various liners, among which was the Empress of Britain, the sister ship to the one of which he has again had a miraculous escape from death.
Titanic and Empress Compared
It was his first voyage on the Empress of Ireland. When the crash came and the vessel’s stokehold filled with water, his thoughts instantly went back to his awful experience of the Titanic.
The scenes on the Titanic were the worst, he said, because there was more time to realise the full horror of the situation. On the Empress, death came more swiftly.
Clark was on duty in the stokehold of the Empress when the collision came. The water came pouring in, driving the firemen higher and higher up the vessel, like rats trying to escape rising water in a well. His lifeboat station was No. 5, and somehow or other he got there, but he cannot remember how she was launched. His mind is a blank concerning some of those awful moments spent on the canting decks of the doomed liner.
They had to crawl on hands and knees on the sloping hull in order to get the boat clear, and then their best chance of escape was to plunge into the water in the hope of being able to scramble aboard. Clark was drawn under several times before he got into the boat, and afterwards, he said, they were able to pull about sixty men into her.
And so this man who has faced death time after time was again snatched from the grave. He came home in the Corsican and is now once more in Liverpool.
In spite of all he has passed through he is still well, although he complains that sometimes he cannot sleep for thinking of the terrible experiences he has just come through. He is grateful for his good fortune and realises how close he has come to death.
Had all the luck
‘If there is any luck on the sea, surely I have had it all,’ he says.
But he still intends to follow a seafaring life, and until he gets another boat he is spending his time ashore with old friends and comrades, in true sailor fashion.
Clark is a Roman Catholic and has a great regard for religious observances. Often after a heavy voyage he returns home late at night tired out; but he is up again first thing in the morning to attend Mass.
He is the luckiest sailor afloat.
He has come face to face with death on land and sea – but death has passed him by.
The 1911 census shows Clark living with a wife nine years his senior, the former Mary Jane Humpreys. A Somerset woman, she had six children, all born in Southampton, but all using her surname. His life subsequent to Titanic is unknown.
John Coffey (23) Deserted
Fireman.
From: Cottrell’s Row, Queenstown, County Cork.
12 Sherbourne Terrace, Southampton.
John Coffey was the last man off the Titanic before the ice hit the hull. Days after the tragedy, newspapers from the Enniscorthy Echo to the Belfast Newsletter reported: ‘It is said that one fireman, who felt that something was sure to happen, deserted at Queenstown.’ The first such report was on 17 April 1912. Two days later, The Cork Examiner ran the following:
Lucky stoker – quits ship at Queenstown.
A young man named Coffey had a lucky escape from being amongst those lost on the Titanic. Coffey joined the Titanic at Southampton and on the passage to Queenstown, decided to get out of her as he did not relish his job.
Accordingly, at Queenstown, he stealthily got on board the tender which took the passengers out, and secreted himself on board and got clear at Queenstown successfully, and remained here until Sunday morning last when he joined the Mauretania.
An account of the escape was given in May 1912 to the Southampton Evening Echo by his fellow fireman on board the Titanic, Jack Podesta.
All the White Star boats and Cunard liners outward bound called here to pick up mails and passengers by tender and it was the custom for we firemen and trimmers to go up on deck and carry the mail from the tender to the mail room.
A fireman whom I knew very well, John Coffee [sic] – I was in the SS Oceanic and Adriatic with him – said to me, ‘Ack, I’m going down to this tender to see my mother.’
He asked me if anyone was looking and I said ‘No’ and bid him good luck. A few seconds later he was gone!
The story has always been that Coffey hid himself under a pile of mailbags taken off the ship for Ireland.
He was equally adept at achieving what he wanted three days later – that fateful Sunday 14 April – when he persuaded the Mauretania to take him on board as a crewman despite not having an official stamp to his Book of Continuous Discharge. From the available evidence it seems clear that Coffey used the Titanic as a taxi –
to obtain a free ride to his home port having been left penniless in Southampton by the crippling coal strike.
Coffey stood as the most famous deserter in maritime history – a footnote without a face, until the efforts of his grandson, Brian Payne, once again brought his likeness to light in 2001. Coffey was a careless, carefree man and a serial deserter. He had quit the similar-sounding RMS Teutonic at Queenstown almost exactly a year earlier (on 20 April 1911), his Royal Naval Reserve records show. It may not be a coincidence, for he was born in Queenstown on 3 January 1889. Coffey’s father, David, was himself a fireman, and the family was living at Cottrell’s Row in the town. When John was born there, his mother, Elizabeth, neglected to tell the authorities until St Patrick’s Day, a delay that played havoc with the birth registration.
It may have been inevitable that he followed his father into the calling of marine fireman, joining the Royal Naval Reserve in 1909. Another rite of passage took place – he had his initials tattooed onto his right forearm, common among sailors in case they drown. Titanic Quartermaster Robert Hichens, for instance, had his entire surname etched into his flesh. Coffey later added a star in the same place, and the name of a girlfriend, Kate.
Kate was water under the keel by the time Coffey met one Louisa Trevor in Southampton. She was only 17, Coffey had just turned 20, but he was smitten. He added a year to his age so that he would not have to seek his parental permission for the match, and took his teenage bride to the altar on 1 March 1909.
By 1910 Coffey was a fireman on the mighty Lusitania, the famed ocean greyhound. Later that year he blotted his copybook by failing to join her sister ship the Mauretania, having signed ship’s articles. That abortive voyage was his last association with the Mauretania until he used her as a meal ticket in 1912.
