James R. Kelly was a passenger on the Titanic, not to be confused with the much younger, Scottish Third Class passenger James Kelly, or the James Kelly assigned as a Greaser.
Background[]
James Kelly came into this world in the 1860s, with his sole brother being John William, who preceeded him in 1859. William Kelly was their father, who was with Catherine Goffe when they enabled new life. Wiliam enemated from County Kildare, with his wife’s early days also tracing back to the region, in perticular Leixlip. This was also the native town of the two new Kellys.
In his mid-teens, James procured the love of his life and was bound to her officially on January 31, 1887, in Leixlip. The woman that said yes to devouting her life to him was Catherine Goffe, originally from County Kildare as well.
Their off-shoot was more than considerable. The first to make his debut was John, in 1887. Any happiness that usually comes with receiving a boy, must have been erased one year later when he was no longer amongst them. The death, which was caused by a spasm at 10 months since brith, didn’t stop them from creating more stock. Perhaps a consolation to Catherine was that her Margaret was the first daughter to reveal herself to the family in 1891. She brought forth a namesake as well, in 1893. The young Catherine would have a younger sister in 1895 that went by the name Mary Josephine. Making her way onto earth in 1895. She would be in the middle of the pack, as she was followed by William John in 1900, Elizabeth in 1902 and two others would come even later. There was additional moarning to be done in 1902 however, as Elizabeth was not viable enough to last until the next year. It was the same illness that had befallen John.
The joy of a fourth boy came in 1904 with James Christopher. The conclusive fledling would be Patrick would shortly surpass James as the youngest in 1906, until he became the third child whose candle was blown out, in the next year. He had come out in a bad way and was incapacitated already from the first day.
Between 1901 and 1911 they would hole up in Allenswood, Leixlip, in the same street, but were in the adjacent house in 1911. James was unlettered and was laying asphalt as a daily chore to get by.
Margaret, the eldest of the bunch, felt it was time for a change of scenery and took the pioneering position to trek to the United States. She was happy to put down roots in New Haven, Connecticut and soon enough, found work for herself, as a corselette maker at the very first producer of that nation, a firm named Adler-Strouse. She would have at least one familiar face nearby, as James’ brother John had also moved to New Haven purchased a house there, doing engineering work.
With her wage, she could later enable the other Kellys to join her over the next few years. Life in Ireland was rought in those days, many people were poor and had only basic attire. James would be the first after Margaret to elected to have his first taste of the new, wonderous world of the Americas. Therefore, he needed to get onboard an ocean liner.
Titanic[]
The new super ship of the White Star Line, the RMS Titanic, was launched in endeavor by April. New standards would be set even in her Third Class department, for which James had just enough money spared so he could hop on. He did, on the 11th of April, as the Titanic was a welcome guest of Queenstown, although she couldn’t get close to the town as it was undeep in the bay. Small boats would instead carry her mail, crew and passengers back and forth. One of them was James Kelly.
Life onboard the ship had settled into a rythym by the Sunday of April 14, though the ship’s rythym itself changed. Gradually, more of her power was released, despite the captain’s awareness of ice on her route, but he had made adjustments to the ship’s course to get a bit clear. He had 6 lookouts who each did a 4 hour shifts in pairs. Tense moments came for the Titanic at 11:39 P.M. as they had discovered to their dismay that they had missed the sight of one large iceberg for a long period even though it should have been picked up on with 11 miles to go. As if there had been a mirage, it had not been foreseeable within the horizon, until the berg.
The lookouts had a telephone and a ship’s bell and both were rang in quick succession. The head Officer of the watch, was enlightened at the moment he saw the iceberg too, so he conjured the quartermaster at the helm to take a turn to hard-to-port, which would shove the rudder into hard-to-starboard position, to get clear from the danger close ahead. His next action was getting Titanic to a stop, to also desiring the Engineers to course her backwards eventually. There was no time for this and Titanic only started to point into the right direction when they were alongside the iceberg, which tagged the mammoth and casted some chuncks of her frozen mass on the Forward Well Deck.
The water squeezed in from the side, which had made a brush with the iceberg, causing Titanic to quiver a bit and more than 6 shallow clefts were carved into her metal, opening the rivetted seams like gates to the sea. No matter how shallow they were, tons of water were dispersed into the ship in the first minute.
The designer of the ship, Thomas Andrews, was on board and consulted by Captain Smith immediately after the words of the Mail Clerk, who brought forward that his bags of letters where floating around. Captain Smith had set his own sights on the disarray by midnight, just like Andrews, who then confronted Smith with the harsh reality. The way that Titanic’s hull had been yawned, would lead to her ruination. They could only fight the sea for 2 hours tops, as was the calculation of the chief designer who knew his ship better than anybody and Smith could not dispute him.
The captain had no time to reflect on any mistake that could have led to this state of play. The lifeboats had to be unsnared and shoved into position to receive passengers. He knew he couldn’t get any more than half of the people onboard off the doomed liner, but still tried to at least get people away, so he supervised his crew, with his officers overseeing the priming of the boats.
They hadn’t used their given time well. Not only were there way too many people still on the ship just past 2:00 A.M, there were still two boats that were proven to be almost hurculenean to get shaped up for shipping people off the sinking liner, which by then had picked up pace in her descent. The entire bridgewings were consumed by the ocean when the boats were finally removed from the top of the Officer’s accomodations. James may not have been on any boat, nor the last ones, as the water had them in their grasp, along with pertubed people that were knocked off their feet by the inflow on the already heavily canting deck. Many Third Class passengers were held back very long, so they never have a chance to choose live and board a boat.
Minutes later, Titanic lost a funnel when the water spreaded further aft, with her camber worsening by the moment. The rear of the ship was clearly visible to the people in the nearest boats, with her entirity not longer resting on the water but being impelled upwards due to the overbalance of the soaked stem. The rounded part of the ship reached such a high angle that it dislodged from the rest of the ship, which quickly foundered seconds after that. Only the keel hadn’t come apart yet. Because of this, the occiput was pulled along in the sinking motion and inverted into an almost straight position.
The stern upended fully and then placidly surrendered to the sea. At 2:20 A.M, no one would ever see Titanic again.
The same could be said about James, who was unaccounted for since that night for at least a few days, as he could not make it out of this disaster alive. Titanic spilt not only furnuture, structure parts and other wreckage, but also more than 1200 people on the ocean surface, with others being stuck inside the ship. The frigid waters made people numb and they couldn’t breathe very well. It was a terror and a very harsh death-struggle that most had to undergo.
After his death[]
There was soon news about James Kelly, but it was not distributed as fast and not before a mistake was made. By a stroke of luck, The CS Mackay-Bennett cable layer had dragged him out of the water along with 306 others as per assignment by the White Star Line. The corpse was sadly not conserved and brought to land, but given back to the sea, but at least identification had been done. He was the 70th that they had come across. There was not enough room so most of the people that were ranked lower in society’s standards, had been given an official send-off on the waters.
Another, but much younger James Kelly from Scotland, was also travelling on a Third Class ticket. The newspaper of Carluke, his hometown, was the Gazette, which was led to believe that the Cinia had taken hold of his body and erratically shot the headlines into the world.
The economic disposition Catherine was brought in was not so pretty. Relief Funds had to stand by her and her young ones. Although some arraignments by descandents or relatives of deceased were dismissed by White Star Line, they sometimes showed they had a heart, as they charged no fees for the passage on the Baltic for Catherine and her litter as a way of balancing things out, thus enabling the completion of their mgiration as well as speeding it up in the process, as they could now stick together and travel as a whole. Their destination was of course New Haven, to get to the property of her father-in-law, James’ his only brother John and of course they wished to see how things went with Margaret.
Their free Third Class tickets for the Baltic were provided for within months of the sinking of Titanic, as a newspaper had spread the word about their move on June 30, 1912, though a mistake was made as her late love, James, was referred to as ‘William’. It is not incognitable that they mixed his name with his father’s.
A weeping Margaret came to greet her 6 siblings and mother, when she saw them at Union Station.
Although now only 6 children were left, most of them did however prosper, with several of them reaching the 1980s and Bridget Beatrice would be close to 90 years old, as the last remaining off the off-spring and experienced the 1990s.
One exception was William, whose days came to an end in 1916, while being in Mesopotamia, what is now called Iraq. He was a soldier during World War 1 and a victim in battle.
Catherine didn’t seem to have been espoused once more since James. She was on her last hurrah in 1955, just a month shy of her 90th birthday before her death came in October that year.