Real-life love story which inspired characters in Titanic among artefacts digitised in Cobh
Luke, aged 8, and Charlie Mullen, 4, explore some of the memorabilia associated with Irish emigration which have been donated to and digitised at the Cobh Heritage Centre. Pictures: Chani Anderson
Artefacts linked to Ireland’s remarkable story of emigration, including the real-life love story which inspired the characters of Jack and Rose in the Hollywood blockbuster , have been digitised by a heritage centre in Cork Harbour, from where thousands of emigrants set sail.
The Cobh Heritage Centre, in the town’s restored former Victorian railway station, says it has finally completed the massive two-year digitisation project to catalogue every single one of its many thousands of artefacts.
Among them is the incredible story of Mary Mullins and Denis Lennon who eloped on the ill-fated Titanic which sailed from Cobh, then Queenstown, its last port of call on April 11, 1912, with 1,308 passengers and 898 crew members on board.
Despite her family forbidding the relationship, Mary, from Galway, and Denis, from Longford, fell in love and made secret plans to sail to America on the Cymric, only for a coal strike to force a change of plan.
Their tickets were transferred to the Titanic and they boarded the vessel at Queenstown as third-class passengers, using the names Dennis and Mary Lennon, pretending to be brother and sister.
When Mary’s family got wind of their plan, her brother, Joe, armed himself with a pistol and pursued them from Galway by train but reached Queenstown too late to stop them.
The couple died when the ship sank four days later. Their bodies, if recovered, were never identified.
Jack Walsh, the manager of the Cobh Heritage Centre, said their names were among the hundreds who boarded Titanic at Cobh which were woven into a quilt by members of a local retired ladies group about a decade ago, and which was displayed near the centre entrance.
“We didn’t realise the significance of their story until one day, a woman on a tour of the centre, came up to us afterwards and told us that their names were quite famous,” he said.
“She said she worked as a script writer on the movie, Titanic, and that they used the story of Denis and Mary, because they had eloped, as the inspiration for the characters Jack and Rose. It’s just one of the many amazing stories we have in the centre.”
Other items which have been digitised include those linked to the story of Jeremiah Burke, 19, from Glanmire in Cork, who also boarded Titanic at Cobh, and who threw a message in a holy water bottle from the deck of Titanic.
The bottle was washed ashore a year later in Dunkettle, only a few miles from his family home. The note, which read "From Titanic, goodbye all, Burke of Glanmire, Cork". Both Jeremiah and his sister Nora drowned in the tragedy.
Other items include a selection of artefacts donated last summer by Irish American France-based Julie Briel Thomas.
She has donated a shillelagh or blackthorn stick, which was used by her ancestor, John O’Leary, from Rathmore, who left Rathmore in the 1850s, to join his daughter, Catherine, who had emigrated to the US about a decade earlier.
Included is a dinner platter she took with her to the States, and a water canteen used by another ancestor who fought in the US Civil War.
“She is the last in her line of the famiy and she said she wanted to material to go back to a museum in Ireland,” Mr Walsh said.
Other artefacts which have been digitised include a letter written on the Titanic by Edward Colley to his cousin, and which was posted when the Titanic arrived in Queenstown, and two flags — a United States and a company flag — that were hanging on the SS America on its last voyage into Cobh.
Mr Walsh said they are always looking for new artefacts for the centre which welcomes more than 80,000 visitors a year.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
