Cobh and the Titanic

On the map (purchased in desperation at a gas station in some small country village miles away from where we thought we were) it looks like the anemic road from Midleton to Cobh should take no more than ten or fifteen minutes. But it’s three and then three-thirty and eventually four before Mr. Lynch make an illegal U-turn in front of the Mauretania bar and wedges our once unblemished rental (Mr. Lynch thinks the side-mirror that clipped another vehicle’s side-mirror can be easily repaired) into a just-vacated parking spot on the street.

By the time we find the Cobh Heritage Centre, where we were to meet Bernard and his group at three, it is quarter past four. They’re not here, I tell Mr. Lynch after having a look around. They’ve come and gone. We should make quick work of it, then.

Mr. Lynch is not so sure. Enquiries are made. We’ve been expecting you, says the stout woman reading a romance novel inside the ticket booth. You’re late. We are, we are. And what of the other group? Have they already gone through? Not at all. They’re late as well. Are they not with you? They’re not. We came separately.

Separate it is, then. Tickets are issued, brochures distributed, and then down a dark gangway to relive the Famine and Emigration (you know it’s serious when it’s capitalized) of the late 18^th century. Dark inside, like the holds of the coffin ships, recreated here with dummy families sleeping on the floor and hunched over mannequins hurling their oats in tin buckets.

Then a cut-out lad in an Irish cap holding the Evening News: TITANIC DISASTER GREAT LOSS OF LIFE. For it was here (at what was then known as Queenstown) that the newly built luxury liner embarked upon her maiden voyage on April 11, 1912. “At 1:30pm an exchange of whistles indicated that the tenders’ business was complete and the Titanic weighed anchor to the strains of ‘Erin’s Lament’ and ‘A Nation Once Again’ played on the bagpipes by steerage passenger Eugene Daly. A total of 1,308 passengers were on board as they left Queenstown together with 898 crew members making a total of 2,206 souls on board as she embarked on her final journey.”

Mr. Lynch seems quite entranced by the photos and displays. I’ll just wait for you outside, by that little café, says I. Are you feeling all right? asks Mr. Lynch. No, I’m fine. Just need a little fresh air, I think. It’s close in here, isn’t it?

It is, says Mr. Lynch. Like the tight quarters of a ship.

I hurry out of the darkness, into the daylight where the salty breeze coming in from the bay smells sweetly of life.