Titanic message in a bottle goes on display
The family of Jeremiah Burke, 19, from Ballinoe, White’s Cross in Co Cork, officially handed his tragic farewell note over to the Cobh Heritage Centre yesterday.
“It has been in our family for almost 100 years but it wasn’t a difficult decision to hand it over,” said his niece, Cllr Mary Woods, the mayor of Midleton.
She paid tribute to her sister-in-law, Betty Burke, her sister Kitty O’Flynn, her brother, Jerry Burke, and their first cousins, Gretta Lynch and Declan Burke, for the decision.
“The note was in a frame, along with Jeremiah’s photograph, in our old family home in Ballinoe and people have come over the years to see it,” Ms Woods said.
“But we decided with the centenary of the Titanic sinking coming up next year, it would be a good thing to do — to hand it over. Now it will be on show for everyone.”
Her uncle wrote the note, dated either April 12 or 13, 1912, on a scrap of paper while on board the “unsinkable” luxury liner. It reads: “From Titanic, Goodbye All, Burke of Glanmire, Cork.”
It is now one of the key Titanic artefacts in the heritage centre’s Queenstown Story visitor attraction.
“We have the photographic and military medals of Titanic photographer Fr Frank Browne, and a pressure gauge that was used in Titanic’s sea trials, but this note is a fantastic addition to our collection,” said centre manager, Debbie Walsh.
Titanic anchored off Roche’s Point in Cork at 11.30am on April 11, 1912, as tenders ferried passengers, including Mr Burke, from Cobh to the vessel.
He was travelling with his cousin, Nora Hegarty, and planned to join his two sisters who had emigrated to Boston.
The White Star Line vessel weighed anchor at 1.30pm and steamed out into the Atlantic. It struck an iceberg two days later and sank.
Of the 2,228 on board, only 705 people survived. Mr Burke and Ms Hegarty drowned. Their bodies were never found.
Despite reports that Mr Burke threw the note overboard as the liner was sinking, it is believed he tossed it into the sea a few miles off the Irish coast.
Ms Walsh said he was probably moved to write it as the enormity of emigration hit home.
“You have to remember that at that time, emigration meant that people were leaving Ireland forever,” she said. “He, like other Irish people on board, would have watched the cathedral in Cobh fade into the distance.”
Incredibly, the bottle washed up a year later on the shoreline at Dunkettle, close to his family home near White’s Cross, and was returned to his family.
Tragically, his mother, Catherine, who was devastated by her son’s death, died in January 1913 and never saw his note.
It has been carefully conserved by conservation expert Paul Curtin, at Muckross House, and reframed for public display.
Meanwhile, Ms Walsh said a record 80,000 people have visited Cobh Heritage Centre so far this year ahead of next year’s Titanic centenary celebrations.
The centre is open 9.30pm to 6pm, seven days a week.
*www.cobhheritage.com or search on Facebook for Cobh, The Queenstown Story.
