Harking back to early boundary crux

By John Rainsford

AS the Government debates the proposed extension of Limerick City into Clare, an amazing story of early 20th century emigration reveals that the spirit of adventure has no boundaries.
Christina Madden (née McMahon) departed for New York on board the SS Teutonic, which she boarded at Queenstown (Cobh) on April 28, 1910. She was just 19 years old and registered as being from Rhebouge (Rhebogue) in County Clare when she set first foot on American soil, bypassing Ellis Island, on May 5, 1910.
A cursory examination of the Townlands Index (1851) published by Her Majesty’s (HM) Stationary Office in 1861, however, reveals that Reboge, as it was then called, lay clearly within the confines of Limerick. The location is confirmed in the Census of 1911, when it is referred to as Rebogue and in the 1923 Census, where it is called Rhebogue.
Indeed, Christina was joined later by her future husband, John J Madden, who had stayed behind to play in the All-Ireland hurling final of that year when his team (Limerick) lost by one point to Wexford. Limerick had previously won the Munster final.
The cost of a sea voyage to America was then seven pounds for a seven-day voyage. Christina and John Madden later married on April 25, 1915 in Montclair, New Jersey.
During the crossing, Christina met a charming radio officer who told her of his plans to work aboard the greatest liner of the day, the ill-fated Titanic. He was then getting experience on board several ships and hoped to get a berth on the new liner when she was finally completed in Belfast.
Sadly, that was the last time that Christina saw her friend, Jack Phillips, alive. A week after the Titanic sank in 1912 she went to the dockside on New York Bay in the hope that he had survived. Like many others, there was to be no sign of him. He had, in fact, stayed at his post right up to the end in the vain pursuit of a passing ship that might come to their assistance.
Christina’s story was revealed from archival information obtained by her daughter, Gouldie Madden, who now lives near her mother’s old family home near Limerick City.
The priceless information came from the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation Inc, an agency that holds archives of passengers who made transatlantic crossings between 1892 and 1924.
In copies of documents, the originals of which are held in museums, libraries, national archives, private collections and through the American Family Immigration History Centre, Gouldie was able to retrace her mother’s steps.
“In those times, ships could take weeks to reach America but the SS Teutonic made it in only seven days,” explained Gouldie. “In a copy of the ship’s manifest, which is an official record of the details of each passenger and crew member on transatlantic crossings, Christina McMahon was recorded as being passenger number 009.
“The SS Teutonic was built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast in 1889. It was 582ft long and 57ft wide and weighed approximately 9,686 gross tonnes. Even with 1,490 passengers, divided into 300 first-class, 190 second-class and 1,000 third-class, it could easily travel at over 20 knots.
“The ship was built for the White Star and Dominion Lines specifically for the Liverpool to New York passage. It was finally scrapped in Germany in 1921, having being awarded the Blue Ribbon for the fastest transatlantic crossing in 1891,” said Gouldie.
John and Christina Madden finally returned to Limerick from America in the 1920s with the Great Depression looming. However, on December 15, 1962, John Madden was invited back to New York to present medals to the winning team from the hurling championships of New York and Pennsylvania at Gaelic Park, 50 years after he had won the same event as captain in 1912.
Gouldie’s father was born in 1888 at Park Lough in Limerick, where his great-grandfather, David Madden, was a lock keeper in 1830 and his father, Thomas Madden, was a lock keeper in 1850.
His mother, named Kate, had eight children in all, seven boys and one girl. In a strange coincidence, John’s brother, Thomas Madden, was drowned in a boating tragedy at the Black Bridge, separating Limerick from Clare, in February 1930.
Gouldie Madden said, “When Teutonic was launched on January 19, 1889, she was the first White Star ship not to have square rigged sails. Together with her sister ship, the Majestic, they were the first liners to carry three separate classes of passenger. The White Star Line was very popular with Irish emigrants back then, perhaps because it was Irish built. Up to 800 passengers would join the ship as she berthed in Queenstown from Liverpool before travelling 2,500 miles across the Atlantic to New York.
“As with many of the larger passenger liners of the time, she was built to play a role in war time and she duly served as a troop transporter in the Boer War of 1900. In 1901, a tsunami nearly capsized her but she survived to serve in WWI. She narrowly avoided being sunk by an iceberg off Newfoundland in October 1918. According to the Chicago Tribune, she avoided a collision by only 20 feet, sailing in thick fog. In 1921, she was finally scrapped at Emden.”
Jack Phillips was a wireless telegraph operator on board the Titanic when it sank. He was trained to use the latest SOS code, which had replaced the older CQD warning system, with a range of 700 miles. He was the son of Mr and Mrs G A Phillips of Farncombe, Godalming.
The courageous man was certainly ill-fated in his choice of ships. The Mauretania, Lusitania and Oceanic, on board which he served before Titanic, witnessed similar tragic events.
The Mauretania was launched on September 20, 1906 as the largest and fastest ship in the world and was the sister ship of the Lusitania. In World War I, she served as a troop carrier and hospital ship.
On January 26, 1914, while she was being refitted in Liverpool, four men were killed and six injured when a gas cylinder exploded as they were working on one of her steam turbines. She was finally scrapped in 1934 during the Great Depression.
The Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915 around 10 miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people aboard. One hundred of the casualties were children. The sinking brought the USA into the Great War but controversy still surrounds the nature of her cargo, with some experts claiming she was carrying large quantities of munitions. Even though Germany’s embassy in America had warned non-neutral passenger liners that they would be targeted, Lusitania sailed without special paint called dazzle camouflage.
Lusitania’s Captain William Thomas Turner (Bowler Bill) was washed from the wheel house and taken unconscious from the freezing seas after clinging to a floating chair for over three hours.
On September 5, 1917, the U-20 commander, Walther Schwieger was himself drowned aboard the U-88, following contact with a British mine.
It was said that his quartermaster, Charles Voegele, would not take part in an attack on women and children and refused to pass on Schwieger’s order to the torpedo room to ‘sink the Lusitania’. After a court martial, he served three years in a prison in Kiel. Although Lusitania had sufficient life boats (48) for all aboard – ironically as a result of the Titanic inquiry – she sank too quickly to deploy them properly.
The RMS Oceanic, known as the Queen of the Ocean, made her maiden voyage on September 6, 1899 and until 1901 was the largest ship in the world with 17,272 gross tons. She cost approximately one million pounds sterling to build. In 1905, she was the first White Star Liner ever to suffer a mutiny with 35 stokers being imprisoned in a dispute over working conditions. In 1912, she was deployed to retrieve bodies from the sinking of the Titanic.
In 1901, in heavy fog, she rammed and sank the Waterford Steamship Company’s SS Kincora, killing seven people. The ship subsequently ran aground in calm weather patrolling the Scottish coast around the Shetland Islands, at the notorious Shaalds (reefs) of Foula on September 8, 1914.
Lieutenant David Blair subsequently received a court martial at Devonport in November 1914. She was also the first allied passenger ship to be lost in World War I. Such was the embarrassment, however, that the matter was kept secret for many years.
RMS Titanic hit an iceberg during her maiden voyage on April 14, 1912, killing 1,517 of the 2,223 people on board, including the ill-fated Jack Phillips. It was one of the worst maritime disasters in history. The ship carried a total lifeboat capacity for only 1,178 passengers, which was just sufficient to comply with regulations at that time.
Amazingly, the two Marconi wireless radio operators, Jack Phillips and his colleague Harold Bride were not obliged to relay iceberg warnings to the bridge. Marconi paid them to relay messages to and from passengers only.
The nearest ship to the Titanic that night, the SS Californian, had shut down its own wireless for the night with its operator having gone to bed. Ironically, Phillips had cut off the Californian’s radio operator earlier for sending what he regarded as “non-essential” iceberg warnings.
The Cunard Line’s Carpathia, which was 58 miles away, took four hours to arrive at the scene and deposited the survivors at Pier 54 in New York. The lifeboats, which were the property of the White Star line, were left at Pier 59 on April 18.
Only 706 passengers survived the disaster with 1,517 dying, mostly from hypothermia, in water temperatures of minus two degrees Celsius. In an indictment of the class system of the day, less than half of all third-class passengers survived.
The amazing adventures of Christina McMahon reveal that for all the current inter-county feuding, a person’s place of residence is clearly no boundary to their spirit of adventure.