Cobh

The boarded up Titanic restaurant in Cobh. Photo by David Lansing.

A letter from Ireland

Walking along the seawall in Cobh, past a stand selling sea-salt ice cream from Dingle (why ice cream from Dingle?) where a small fella no more than three takes a lick, his chin pointing to the sky, and rolls the melting brown scoop off his cone and—plop!—on to the sidewalk. Seagulls scurry over, flapping their wings and fighting over the drippy mess as the small fella looks at his mom and balls.

It’s no matter, she says, grabbing at his free hand and dragging him away from the disaster. We’ll get you another. Stop your bawlin’ now. But the child, inconsolable, cries on. As do the gulls.

Just behind the spot of the ice cream disaster is a boarded up building with a real estate sign hanging over the front door. Across a broad gate with two porthole windows, bronze letters, a foot high, say TITANIC. It was from this very building that the last of the ill-fated liner’s passengers boarded on the 11^th of April, 1912. Inside the sealed building were the three first-class passengers and seven second-class passengers, sipping tea and eating biscuits while waiting for the tender that would ferry them out to the waiting liner. In front of the large gate with the porthole windows would have been the other 113 steerage passengers, waiting to board a separate tender (couldn’t mix the first-class passengers with the third-class passengers, even for a 15 minute ferry in a tender, now could you?).

The ice cream slowly melts. The brown ooze of the chocolate cone spreads like a stain on the worn concrete. And it was here—right here—that those passengers last stood on land. Ever.

Pity something useful isn’t done with this building. For a few years it was a restaurant. Odd story. Seems there was an Irish man on the dole who, after getting his support check, promptly went off and bought a lottery ticket. Won over a million pounds (this was before the euro). Good for him. Not two days later he gets a notice from social services saying his name has been removed from the roles. Don’t come calling again. Well, at the time, the social services office was in this very building which were once the offices for the White Star Line. So what does our man do but go out and buy the building. And double the rent of the social services. How do you like them crackers? Social services moves out, of course. So our man spends a good portion of his winnings to turn the building into a restaurant called Titanic, going so far as to replicate the look of one of the ship’s dining rooms. Cost a bloody fortune. And then the Celtic Tiger dies. Economy tanks. Restaurant goes bankrupt. And our man is now out of money. Probably back on the dole.

So there she sits. The former offices of the White Star Line, the very spot where the last passengers boarded the Titanic for her maiden voyage. Now just a boarded up, bankrupt restaurant. As sad looking as a child’s ice cream cone melting on the sidewalk.

Seagulls flapping in the breeze, crying. Good stiff wind. Cold enough to make me wish I’d dug out my jacket from the boot. Still, it’s bracing. Better than the stale moist air inside those gloomy Titanic rooms. Could hardly breathe in there. Just imagining the air in steerage on a ship like that. As it was going down. Worst way to drown, I should think. Trapped below deck, icy water rushing in. Must have been a lot of screaming. Last thing you’d hear. Cries of drowning men.

And here, looking out over the water is young Annie Moore and her two brothers. First immigrant to pass through newly-opened Ellis Island on January 1, 1892. Imagine a 14-year-old girl crossing the ocean with brothers only 11 and 7. Parents in New York already for several years. Annie and the boys left behind in Cork, waiting. Until a letter comes with money for passage. Just enough to crowd into steerage and spend 12 days making the crossing, seasick almost every day, scared out of her wits.

Sail pass the Statue of Liberty on New Year’s Day, 1892. Which just happens to be Annie’s 15^th birthday. What was she thinking? Probably tough as nails by then. Had to be. Can’t spend almost two weeks in the hold of a ship with two boys to look after and not age quickly. A barge unloads them and shuttles them to the new landing place, Ellis Island. A ramp is lowered. And the first one down, tripping as she goes, is Miss Annie Moore. And there to meet her is an official with a bushy walrus mustache who hands her a $10 gold piece. What’s this for? she asks. For being first, says he. First what? The first immigrant to pass through Ellis Island.

What must she have thought? More money than she’d ever seen in her life, she tells a newsman. I’ll keep it forever as a memento, she says. But surely it was spent. No doubt she held out her palm to show her father, who was waiting for her and the boys, and she never saw it again. Can’t hold on to a gold piece like it was a ticket stub. Not in a poor Irish family with four children trying to make a go of it in New York. That gold coin was spent. No doubt.

And what of Annie? Married a German immigrant, of all things. A fish monger. And had eleven children with him, some of whom died before they could walk. And Annie died young herself of heart failure. Only fifty. Buried in Queens. Never did see Ireland again. Maybe that’s why they designed her sculpture here the way they did; with her gazing back towards Ireland. Forever gazing back.

Photo by David Lansing.

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.