A NATIVE of Cobh, Co Cork, who died in the sinking of the Titanicwas remembered at a special ceremony yesterday, 98 years after the Titanicstopped at on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. All of those who died when the ship sank were recalled at the commemoration in her last port of call.
Of special note this year was the remembrance for the first time of able seaman Lionel Leonard. Leonard was born in Queenstown (now Cobh) in 1876. Christened Andrew Shannon in St Colman's Cathedral, he went to England at the age of 16 and joined the royal navy. He went absent from the navy in 1908 and married Annie Matilda Gould in Poole, Dorset, the same year. In 1912, having become a US citizen and changing his name to Lionel Leonard to work in the merchant fleet, he was a quartermaster on the SS Philadelphiaof the American Line.
Arising out of a miners strike, the Philadelphia's passage to New York was cancelled and Leonard was instructed to sail to New York on the Titanic. He travelled as a third-class passenger along with four fellow American Line employees. His body, if recovered, was never identified. .
When the Titanicstruck an iceberg in the north Atlantic in April 1912, it sank with the loss of more than 1,500 lives, including 79 of those who boarded in Cobh.
Yesterday's ceremony, which inclued prayers and hymns, at the TitanicMemorial in Pearse Square was followed by the ceremonial placing of a wreath in the sea by the mayor of Cobh, Paddy Whitty, in honour of all those who lost their lives when the ship sank.
Members of the Irish Lebanese Cultural Foundation also remembered the 154 Lebanese passengers who boarded in Cherbourg, of whom only 29 were saved.