The harrowing events of April 15th, 1912 when the Titanic sank with the loss of 1,500 lives scarred many communities, but none more deeply than the parish of Addergoole (Lahardane), Co Mayo. Of 15 people who left the area, 12 young men and women intent on making new lives in America, perished in the disaster.
Addergoole remembered its loss just over a week ago at a ceremony in the parish church of Lahardane, on the eve of the 90th anniversary of the sinking, when relatives gathered for the unveiling of a wall plaque to the local victims. According to one of the organisers, Mr "Toss" Gibbons, the loss of so many young lives was a calamity from which it took the parish a long time to recover.
Local historian Mr Tony Donohoe says the Addergoole people were the only ones from Mayo on the passenger list. The next nearest contingent came from a small village in south Galway. He says their trip was organised by an older woman who was home from the US, Ms Kate McGowna, who owned a rooming house in Chicago and returned to Mayo in October, 1911. He also points out that all the Addergoole group were related to each other in some way.
The day before the group started out for Queenstown Harbour to board the Titanic, there was an Irish wake at Castlebar. "Never were 15 voyages to a strange land launched on their journey with such a plenitude of goodwill and good wishes," reported the Connaught Telegraph newspaper at the time.
The Mayo passengers were assigned to the third-class quarters and were all asleep when the vessel struck the iceberg at 23 knots. A steward roused them and told them the ship had struck something, but there was no danger.
Although they believed the steward they did not go to sleep again and when Mrs Burke suggested prayer, they all knelt to say the Rosary. Survivors Annie Kelly and Annie McGowan were cared for in a hospital in New York before being sent to relatives in Chicago.
Delia McDermott was also lucky. She was one of the first to find a lifeboat, but returned to her cabin for the new hat she had bought in Crossmolina before the journey. Her niece, Delia Melody says "it was perhaps a foolish thing to do", but she managed to get a place in a boat.
"She had to jump 15 feet from a rope ladder onto the lifeboat. At this stage, the Titanic was sideways. It was going down."
Delia McDermott survived and later prospered in the US. She married a Galwayman named Thomas Lynch and had three children, two girls and a boy. However, 33-year- old Mary Mangan of Carrowskehine was one of the unlucky ones, but a memento of her short life survives to this very day.
Mary and her sister Ellen were experienced travellers having just returned from America. Mary was engaged to be married on her return. Her inscribed gold watch was taken from her body and eventually found its way back to the village where she was born. It is now one of the proudest and saddest possessions of her nephew, Mr Anthony Mangan.