Agnes McCoy was a passenger on the Titanic.
Background[]
Catherine Agnes McCoy was her original name. She was one of the 13 children of John McCoy and Bridget Cole brought onto this world after marrying in 1867, in County Longford, Ireland. Catherine was from the small village of Ballinamuck in County Longford where she was emanated on a Thursday, June 29, 1882.
Agnes’ eldest sister was her mother’s namesake, Bridget. She had sprung in 1869. She got a sister in 1870, Margaret. They became the sisters of William in 1872, who preceeded Mary from 1874, whose brother was Patrick since 1878, with Elizabeth Bessie being Catherine’s last elder sibling in 1881. Following Catherine Agnes was Alice Sue in 1885, with a younger brother, Bernard, emerging in 1887. John, named after his father, appeared in 1891 and much later, in 1897, the McCoys gave life to Luke, who remarkably would get very old, to be still alive in 2002. Two of the other children would die young.
The McCoys had a modest family farm and Catherine had adopted the Roman Catholic belief. Throughout the years, surely but steadily, the family in Ireland became smaller. The grown up children of Bridget and John left for America one after another. Their migration led them to New York, where they would settle. It had already started before the birth of the youngest three children. Each of them would send money back home to help in the financing of the next-of-kin to make the crossing. At some point, so did Catherine. She was 18 years old when she went on the Cymric from the White Star Line. A New York citizen, she went by her middle name Agnes from now on. She had established herself as a maid.
For the parents, these were tough times. They would obviously miss their off-spring. They now had 8 children living in the United States. In the Spring of 1912, Agnes and her sister Alice were back in their native town to meet their father and mother again. However, they would have to say goodbye to them and their son Bernard as well. The girls had come to take him to this new world. On April 10th, he and his sisters loaded the horse-wagon that would take them to the railway station in Longford to begin a great adventure. Many other Irish people went to the station in Longford, to sail across the Atlantic Ocean. As the McCoys boarded the train for Cobh, they were joined by several friends from the local area.
Titanic[]
In Queenstown, on the 11th of April, a huge ocean liner would show up. Agnes was 29 years old and single at the time. They boarded the postal ship America, which was ferrying them as Third Class passengers out to the massive ocean liner. As they came round Spike Island, they saw the Titanic for the first time, anchored just outside of the harbor near Roche’s Point. Around 1:30 P.M, the giant ocean liner weighed anchor and set sail on the most famous passenger liner trip in history. They had only been at anchor for about 2 hours. As the ship pulled away from Ireland, she had made several friends and watched the scenery they would leave behind. The young woman developed feelings for another Irishman and could often be found in his vicinity. He was Tom McCornack.
The dream of many passengers would shatter into many pieces, as Titanic would never complete her first ever voyage. The joy for the McCoys would come to a jolting end when at 11:40 P.M, the night of April 14th, the Titanic’s hull scraped along that fatal iceberg. Her starboard side was slightly ripped, damaging six of her 16 compartments. The water went into the ship fast. The energy from the hit had been felt by Agnes, her sister and her compagnions. Agnes had been at rest.
Agnes and Alice put on some clothes and went out on the hallway, to try and make their way up for information, but one crew member had told them there was no need for worries. Having returned to the cabin, the two sisters saw commotion and other passengers were in disarray and went different ways. There were stewards who had come to drive people out of their beds and informed them to slip into their lifebelts, which the girls also did. At one of the highest two decks, Agnes was close to a lifeboat under watch by an officer. He wielded a gun and threatened the male passengers not to make a move. Although there was enough space in one of the boats, the officer told the three McCoys that they would be safe and could take the stairs back to Third Class.
The three listened and headed back down, but somewhere, the water came seeping in and Agnes with her siblings went back to the higher decks whenthey encountered a locked barrier with a member of the crew guarding it. Other Longford girls and young men had gathered here as well.Thanks to fellow Irishman James Ferrell, Agnes, Alice and most of the other young women from Longford could find their way up to the Boat Deck. He had intimidated the crewmember with his powerful voice and muscly stature, as he shouted to let the women through.
Agnes and her siblings stood near lifeboat 16, near the same officer that had misguided them. Father Thomas Byles was spotted there by Agnes as well. Because the men were held back and therefore Agnes and Alice had to be seperated from Bernard, Agnes refused and said that they would rather drown together, but she was rudely dumped into the boat with Alice. Agnes would scream and shout. Later, she would tell of a shocking scene unfolding in lifeboat 16. Her brother Bernard, who was not allowed any access as being a man, had jumped off the ship long before she would go down and had swum toward boat 16. Agnes recognized him immediately and Alice was close. As the sisters tried to haul their brother into the lifeboat, they were sabotaged by crew members who disagreed with the rescue of the poor man and hit him in order to make him stop clinging on. Agnes had a moment of utmost strength, when she threw herself at a sailor to push him to the bottom of the boat to pin him down. She doesn’t remember if she had slapped him as well, but in the meantime Alice could rescue her brother, which was a relief to many of the occupants in the boat.
There is no consenscus whether this story holds any truth. With all three McCoys safe, they could only watch how Titanic had set herself up for an ever deeper descent to the world below the surface. The mighty levithian would give way to a desperate fight for survival, with two-thirds of her people onboard losing their lives.
After the sinking[]
Agnes and Alice hadn’t had time to get dressed thorougly and struggled to keep warm at the open ocean. There was help underway. A ship named Carpathia had received a distress signal from the Titanic at 12:17 A.M. It would take the Carpathia more than three hours to arrive. She attracted the attention of the lifeboats with her fireworks and at 9:30 A.M, her captain was finished bringing every living soul on board his vessel.
Agnes was happy to discover that one young man, who she had befriended onboard Titanic, was still alive: Tom McCormack. The last she had seen of him was waving her goodbye before lifeboat 16 was lowered.
On the 18th of April, Carpathia was back in New York. After disembarking, the family was bedbound at Saint Vincent’s Hospital. Being released from there, called on the good grace of the Red Cross. They also wanted to see money from the White Star Line, as they had to leave lots of valuable possessions to go down with the ship and they wanted to be reimbursed for the health problems that followed the night spending hours in the cold. They were given a tip by someone to exaggerate the sum they had, to ensure there was enough left of their claim to be paid out. There was no mention of injuries sustained for Bernard following the supposed beating by an oar from the lifeboat 16's sailors, who had prevented him from getting in, as told by Alice.
That same year, Agnes, Alice and Bernard were included into the household of their elder brother William McCoy, who had a wife, Delia, who had given him 4 children, of which two had the same name as Alice and Bernard. Their residence was in Brooklyn, New York. They stayed there, while trying to find work.
Later life[]
Agnes was the pivot in leading family events, where the sibling would often come together. Family was everything for her. They often saw eachother at their sister Mary’s house in New Jersey.
She also initiated the installment of John into the USA in 1914. However, when he was finally in America, he had wandered off to an unknown place without showing any sign of life to his family and Agnes became very agitated and wasted no money or effort to track him down, but she was unsuccesful. This mysterious vanishing bothered Agnes for many years.
Agnes lived in her own house in New York and went on to do her old job, this time she was a maid in higher class households, like at the home of actor Douglas Fairbanks. Fairbanks' son took a liking to Agnes. Agnes was very popular in her profession so she was in high demand. She was naturalised on August 18, 1925. Her anxious spirit, being dismayed by her brother John being evanesced, had further thump with the passing of Patrick, another brother. Patrick labored in a chemcial plant, where something had gone wrong in 1929, costing his life. Agnes was crushed by this news and she never would get over this. She had tried so hard to keep the family together but they drifted apart eventually in the next decades. In the later years, Agnes became more withdrawn and was living isolated from the family after her retirement. As far as is known, she never had given herself to someone either.
On January 14th, 1957, Agnes lived her last day. Officially, the cause of her death was stated as caused by a heart problem, but the reality was different. Her end was unnatural and violent as parts of her skin were contused upon further research. It might have been a possible result of a breaking-in by an unwanted visitor who had mistreated and possibly murdered her, probably a robber.