A toast to Fermanagh's ghost of the 'Titanic'

MURIEL MARTIN and her daughter Lorna are on holidays from Australia retracing the route of the Titanic from Belfast to Southampton and still marvelling at how Muriel’s father – known in the family as the ghost of the Titanic – avoided the icy waters of the Atlantic.

It seems Michael Tiernan, from the Castle Archdale area of Co Fermanagh, was born lucky. Not only did kind providence prevent him sinking with the great ship 100 years ago, but he also managed to survive the Battle of Gallipoli in the first World War three years later.

We’re sitting in the Wellington Park Hotel in Belfast where, ahead of a flight to Britain, Muriel, a spry and charming 87-year-old from Melbourne, is recounting how her father was something of a family maverick – her daughter Lorna filling in any missing links.

“Dad worked in a convent in Fermanagh when he was young. But, you see, the Tiernans were Protestants and there was a row with his father, who was also called Michael. My dad took the hump and rode his bicycle to Belfast. He was 14,” she says.

“He got a job, first of all on the trams, and later he got work in the shipyard in Harland and Wolff where his older brother William was working – I think William got him the job,” Muriel says.

“Dad worked on the building of the Titanic – I think as a riveter. But when the Titanic sailed from Belfast to Southampton he managed to get a job on the ship as a fireman or stoker in the engine room.”

In Southampton, Michael and William had time to kill. The Titanic sailed into the city’s White Star dock shortly after midnight on April 4th but did not leave Southampton again until April 10th. Her father never talked about the Titanic, or Gallipoli, to Muriel – they appeared to be forbidden subjects – but, as she heard it from her aunts, Lily and Ezeeta, some of that time was spent in the Grapes pub in Southampton, which is still there.

“I don’t think he wanted to speak of either the Titanic or Gallipoli out of respect for all the people that died,” says Lorna.

It seems also that William had no plans to continue working on the Titanic but had taken work elsewhere, while Michael was hell-bent on sailing on the ship all the way to New York. On the night before the Titanic sailed to Cherbourg, Cobh and, it was hoped, on to New York, Michael and William repaired to their favourite watering hole.

“His brother was a bit of a hard drinker and they fell out in the pub,” says Muriel, who explained that the brothers had quite a skinful in the Grapes. “William left before him and when Michael went to the White Star dock he couldn’t get on the Titanic because the gates were closed that bit early. You could imagine his disappointment.

“I heard that there were a few others that missed the sailing as well. The attitude seemed to be that it was too bad for the Irish who stayed back in the pub – the drunken Irish, that kind of thing – and that they gave the work to others who would have been lined up,” she adds.

Michael, as was his way, registered on another ship, still managed to see New York, and ultimately ended up working in Liverpool. “He didn’t write home,” says Muriel. William did go home and told his parents Michael was lost on the Titanic.

Then two years later Michael enlisted with the British army when the first World War broke out. “And that meant he got leave. So he came back to Ireland and to Fermanagh,” says Muriel. “When he walked in the door his mother, Rebecca, thought he was a ghost – she was sure he had gone down with the ship.”

There was a double happy ending in that Michael was also reconciled with his father.

Michael went back to war and was wounded in the bloody Battle of Gallipoli in 1915 but survived. He remained in the British army for 21 years and ended up living and working in London. He married Doris in 1921 and Muriel was born in October 1924.

Muriel emigrated to Australia in 1961 with her husband Victor Martin, a maths teacher who flew in Lancaster bombers during the second World War. “I am 88 this year and feel it is time to tell the story. My dad was a little eccentric. He was a very, kind gentle man,” she said. “He lived until he was 81.”

Muriel and Lorna are in Southampton this weekend where they plan to drink a toast to the great family survivor, Michael Tiernan, in the Grapes.