…we are all in good spirits, even though it feels like we are a very long way from home now. We’re always talking of the people we’ve left behind though – one of us will remember something somebody said or a time they made us laugh and we try to get the time of day right in our heads so as to imagine what they are doing while we steam further away from them across the ocean.
April 13th 1912
Day 3 at sea
….the general recreation room is for steerage passengers to use for reading or playing cards or a bit of dancing. It’s a big room with a piano for us to play whenever we like. Some French fella plays most of the time, he’s very good. He likes to play some of the ragtime music I’ve heard a little. I think John O’Dea back home would have mighty craic with that piano, it would put the small yoke he plays in D’Arcy’s pub to shame! The man with the Uilleann pipes plays a fair bit too. He’s very good and gets a good old sing song going among us Irish – there’s plenty of us, I’d say we take up at least half of the steerage if not more.
…today Peggy and me played with some of the young ones. One woman has seven children with her and is travelling all alone, God love her. I think she might be Italian or something, none of us can understand a word she says, but she’s nice and her kids are nice. I played with the baby a lot. He likes to drop things and watch you pick them up again. Maura Brennan was talking with a family from a place called Wiltshire in England. The mam and da are taking their five little ones to join relatives in Philadelphia. The youngest is just two year old and the eldest is turned sixteen. She’s a nice girl, Elsie is her name. She told me about her home and it sounds a bit like ours with the fields and the lake.
….Ellen Joyce has found another woman who is to be married when they arrive in America so they are all talk about wedding gowns and veils and admire each other’s rings all the time. There are four other newly-wed couples in our section of the ship who are headed out on honeymoon and Maura has been talking with another woman who’ll be having a baby soon. It’s quite a social gathering altogether! Peggy and Katie have taken to fanciful talk again about what they’ll do when they are in America and what the fancy homes they will live in will look like.
…There are some sad stories of people who are unhappy to be leaving loved ones behind, or who are travelling to visit a sick or dying family member. I heard someone say there are over two thousand people on board this ship, so I would imagine in all of that there are plenty of sad hearts as well as many happy ones.
…the English steward Harry (Lucky Harry is his nickname) is very sweet on Peggy. He talks to her at any opportunity and makes up all sorts of excuses to knock on the cabin door, or to fuss over her at dinner. He admired her hat yesterday and she was practically married to him then! He’s a nice fella and is great craic altogether with the stories he tells us. Like the sailing from Southampton with the bands playing and people standing on the quay to cheer and wave as the boat set out. He swears he saw five grand pianos and a motor car being loaded onto the ship before they left Southampton – but I think he’s pulling our legs. He says that the stewards on the upper decks wish they were assigned to Third Class – they have a pain in their arses with all the fussing and complaining of the First Class passengers. Some of them can be awful rude apparently and demand that their rooms are cleaned several times a day and grumble about the wrong sort of linen on their bed covers! He told us that one of the stewards says he wouldn’t be surprised if they asked him to wipe their arses for them next! Peggy told him all about the tealeaves and the strange man at Queenstown. He told her not to be worrying because he had personally seen a priest blessing the lifejackets!
…it’s nice to walk on the deck in the sunshine and breathe in the fresh, sea air, although it is chilly up so high and with the ship going along at such a rate of knots there’s a fierce breeze all the time. Pat fancies himself as a bit of a crew member giving us daily reports of speed and iceberg warnings. These are posted every day outside the dining room and we let him tell us the latest news. He enjoys it!
…Lucky Harry is friendly with the radio operators who work for the Marconi Telegraph Company in the radio room on the ship. He told us that the First Class passengers can pay to send messages from the ship to loved ones back in England or France or in America! Apparently some actress has been sending messages to her mother in New York telling her how much she and her fiancée are looking forward to setting a date for their wedding when they are back home and then she sends other messages to her sister telling her about a handsome millionaire she’s got friendly with and that she has ‘confused feelings’! I said that only an actress would be able to lead such a strange life! I’d love to be able to send a message to Séamus. I don’t even know how the messages work though because he certainly doesn’t have a wireless in his house. I think I’ll ask Harry about it all.