A beautiful, moving experience at Titanic Belfast today.  As 11th April marks the centenary of Titanic’s last port of call to pick up passengers – at Queenstown (now Cobh) in County Cork – a special ‘Titanic Diary’ event drew together the stories of the descendants of those who boarded there.

And what incredible stories… I learnt of a small village in Co. Mayo, Addergoole, whose 96 inhabitants in 1912 led a hand-to-mouth existence, dreaming of the New World.  And in April 1912, 14 of them – a huge proportion of the tiny town – took their chance, spent their savings and travelled to Cobh to board the Ship of Dreams… After three days enjoying (even in Steerage class) the kind of luxury they had never experienced before, they stayed together during the panicked rush for the lifeboats on 14th April.  11 of them were lost that night, but the three who were rescued from the lifeboats and made it to New York started families, handed down the stories – and some of those descendants were present at the event today.

The telling of the story made every little detail count; every aspect was worth treasuring.  Did you know that Titanic’s passengers are the only immigrants ever to have entered the USA without passing through Ellis Island? – their paperwork was hastily completed on board Carpathia as it neared New York (and many of the female passengers used the opportunity to knock a few years off their age on the official documents!)  Did you know that in 1912, and most of the preceding half-decade, 3 times more money entered the Irish economy through ‘remittances’ – money sent home to family members from the USA – than through home-grown industry?  Can you imagine what it was like for the present-day family members of those 3 survivors, who only heard the stories for the first time as the survivors reached the end of their lives – the preceding decades having been spent (as with so many of those who were connected to the Titanic) in silence and shame?

Lump-in-throat time, a huge privilege to be there.  Yet another new angle on the old story, a new perspective which uncovers yet more human stories of boundless interest.  More history which illuminates and inspires the present and the future.  Well worth checking out this trailer of the documentary telling the Addergoole story: