Cork ship’s role in the Mary Celeste mystery

Tim Morley’s query last week about a house on the Southside of Cork city where Daniel Corkery lived in later life?

Ted Neville writes helpfully to say: “The slate-fronted house at the Lough Road side of the Lough is still there, but it had its weather-slating removed about 20 years ago, I’d say. I’m sure Lough locals would know more about its occupancy through the years.”

Well, thank-you for that, Ted! And it prompted Jerry Holt, now living in Mayo, but with a long history of working for the railways in Cork, to a story of his own.

“As usual your Throwback Thursday column has acted as a trigger. Tim was wondering about the slate-fronted house by the Lough, and you suggested that somebody go round and knock on the door to ask. Well, that reminds me of the day back in the 1960s that we got a knock on the door in Ballintemple, where we had a first-floor flat.

“The house was called Sun Lodge (still there, I think), and our landlady was Mrs Shanahan. She used to call around for the rent on Friday evenings.

One day she was at the door and our cat jumped up onto her shoulders, as she was inclined to do! Of course we denied all knowledge of the cat...

“But the knock I am reporting today was from two people, a nun and a Capuchin monk. They were brother and sister, and Sun Lodge had been their family home that they were looking up for old time’s sake. I forget the nun’s name but the man was Father Xavier.

“We became good friends and when we moved to Togher, he would call to us regularly for a cuppa and a cigarette. Our son Barry was a lad forthright in his questions, ‘Father Xavier, why have you got such a big nose?’ The jolly man just laughed and asked my wife for another cigarette.”

Jerry moves on to another topic discussed in last week’s Throwback Thursday.

“And that great discussion last week about pubs and sing-songs, I used to go to Noel Murphy’s pub in Ballyphehane for a pint or two (no ladies, of course). The craic was mighty. Everyone had their party piece, and all ed in the singing.

“The poor ladies were definitely second class citizens in those days. My wife was at least five or six months gone with one of ours, and on a blazing hot autumn day we went out to the fields beyond Togher (all houses now) to pick blacka’s.

“On the way back we called into the Deanrock Bar. I ordered a pint for myself and razza for the children. Poor Doris said, ‘I’m parched, get me a pint too’. ‘Sorry, we don’t serve pints to ladies.’ So she had two half pints! That was OK.”

Yes, we those strange times, when a woman wasn’t welcome in the main bar, being relegated to the snug where possible, and, once they were allowed in, could in no way be served a pint. Can anyone the reasoning behind that unwritten rule? We would like to hear your thoughts, if so.

When we took Pat Kelly down to the Echo offices in Blackpool the other day, he was a mine of information both going and coming. He now writes to remind us that on that trip he had pointed out the ornate doorway into Murphy’s brewery.

It was built in the 1700s as the Cork poor house, where they also took babies into the foundling hospital there. Young boys were trained for the English army or navy, as an inexhaustible supply was always needed, and young girls were trained as servants.

You’re right as always, Pat, more power to your vast knowledge and memory! Following a 1735 Act of the Irish Parliament, it was decided to establish a foundling hospital in Leitrim Street. The buildings were based around a small quadrangle with a chapel, school-rooms, boys’ dormitories, girls’ dormitories, and staff apartments.

“The hospital opened in 1747. Those who know their Dickens will his vivid descriptions of just such a place in Oliver Twist.

The Union Workhouse on Douglas Road, Pat also told us, was opened in 1841, while the foundling hospital in Leitrim Street closed in July, 1855, when it was converted to use as an emigration depot.

“Cork had several prisons or houses of correction back then,” continues Pat. “One was built on the Southside, which was later demolished, and much later on the city general hospital was built here. The doorway may have survived the destruction of the building.

“This became the blind asylum, where inmates would have their chairs brought out, and they would work on making baskets of all kinds, and even chairs, all out of wicker.

“The South Infirmary was a mental hospital first, later becoming a general hospital. Many of our city’s older buildings were repurposed as times and needs changed.

Pat continued: “Somebody asked a while back on Throwback Thursday, where did the river channel under Patrick Street emerge. We know that you can see the archway just under Patrick’s Bridge, but there is at least one other, at the corner of Union Quay, across from the Phoenix, where at low tide, you can see a non-return valve, where swans, ducks and gulls congregate to find something edible in the grey, disgusting waters!”

Keep looking about you, advises Pat, and you will be bound to discover something new.

The story that he was delivering to the Echo last week was not, he reminds us, about himself, but his grandfather’s experiences at sea.

That reminds me - some years ago, a book was written about a ship returning from the Caribbean, where the captain was convinced that some of the crew were mutinying, so he threatened them with arrest and hanging when they landed in Cork, but later killed several of them.

Yes, indeed, we know that book, Pat. The Ship Of Seven Murders, A True Story, by Alannah Hopkin and Kathy Bunney, published by the Collins Press in 2011.

In 1828, the Mary Russell sailed into Cork from the West Indies. Seven crewmen were found lying in the main saloon, brutally murdered by the captain. The subsequent trial was a sensation as survivors revealed a tale of danger and delusion, but nobody was sure what really happened. In that excellent book, the facts of the case are reconstructed against the background of trade between Cork and Cobh and the West Indies.

How would today’s psychiatrists and courts view Captain Stewart’s behaviour? Was his later decline into homicidal mania prompted by guilt, or was mental illness following its natural course? And why has such a strange, intriguing story remained buried for so many years?

This bizarre tragedy, the dramatic court case, and its place in history and folklore are unravelled in this gripping tale.

Speaking of sea and shipping mysteries, of course, brings up that most celebrated of all, the story of the Mary Celeste. Everyone knows how it was discovered adrift and completely deserted off the Azores in 1872, cargo intact, but lifeboat missing. She had left New York for Genoa a month earlier, the ship’s log’s last entry was ten days before she was discovered sailing alone and unmanned, and all the subsequent enquiries could not establish what had happened.

(Originally named the Mary Celeste, she was renamed Marie Celeste in a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the latter name somehow stuck and became the established one by which she is known today.)

How many realise, though, that the Dei Gratia, the Canadian-owned ship which leapt to fame by discovering it, has an unbreakable link to Cork, more especially Cobh and Youghal?

The Dei Gratia salvaged the abandoned ship and took her into port, where various possibilities of foul play were seriously considered, including mutiny by Mary Celeste’s crew, piracy by the Dei Gratia crew or others, and conspiracy to carry out insurance or salvage fraud.

No convincing evidence ed these theories, but unresolved suspicions led to a relatively low salvage award. Since then, many hypotheses have been advanced, and fantasies created, including submarine earthquakes, waterspouts, attacks by giant squid, and even paranormal intervention.

The mystery, however, has never been satisfactorily solved.

After the Gibraltar hearings, Mary Celeste continued in service under new owners. In 1885, her captain deliberately wrecked her off the coast of Haiti as part of an attempted insurance fraud.

A bad luck ship, then, as many would say.

But the story of the Dei Gratia takes quite a different twist. She had been making her way from Cobh (then called Queenstown) down along the Spanish coast when she spotted the abandoned vessel and towed her into a safe port.

The captain’s claim for salvage, though, led to so many attacks and accusations that, after another transatlantic voyage between Ireland and New Brunswick in 1881, her owners decided to sell her to a successful businessman and ship owner in Youghal, one Martin Fleming.

Mr Fleming immediately put her into active use bringing coal across from Wales and she worked this route busily and happily for 25 years. Any descendants of Mr Fleming reading this page? Be sure to make and continue the story!

Alas, in 1907, fate caught up with the feisty little Dei Gratia. Sheltering from a December gale in Milford Haven, she slipped her moorings and was blown on to a dangerous reef known as Blackrock near Dale. Here she lay, becoming more and more damaged by the wind and waves, as the local Lloyds agent worriedly indicated in a flurry of telegrams to his head office:

1. Sent steam trawler to her assistance.

2. Sent steamer down this morning to tow her off; not successful. If not successful tonight’s tide, will go down early morning and wire you from Dale.

3. Re Dei Gratia: Full of water last night, badly holed, deck breaking up. Fear total loss. Will remain here till I can inspect her at low water. Vessel lying against rocks.

Although that is as far as the records go on the UK side of the water, the story continues on the Irish side. Presumably determined to avoid all the hassle of salvage claims and court cases, the Fleming company had the Dei Gratia towed back to her home base.

After that, she became, somewhat ignobly in view of her celebrated history, a coal hulk at the quays in Cobh.

And today? Well, the story of the Dei Gratia has gone into hiding, but is never forgotten. The remains of the boat that discovered the Mary Celeste are said to lie actually under the piers of Haulbowline Island, close by where engers on today’s super cruise liners, their gigantic size unthinkable in the days of that long-ago mystery, can gaze as they sail by.

What stories could that courageous little brigantine tell of that strange sea mystery of long ago, what unrevealed secrets does she hold to herself under those dark, lapping waters?

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