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John Coffey was a fireman onboard Titanic, for a short while.

Background[]

John Coffey was an Irishman and Queenstown native, being born there in the County Cork on January 3, 1889. Queenstown was renamed many decaded later and is now known as Cobh.

Titanic[]

In 1912, John Coffey worked for White Star Line and came over from the Olympic to her sister ship, having been a stoker on the White Star’s first new giant. He would do the same work on the RMS Titanic, putting his name on the list of the crew at the 6th of April in Southampton. Titanic would leave Southampton behind on April 10 in the afternoon. John would have a shift shovelling coal into the large furnuces of the luxury vessel.

John would only be on the first small leg of the Maiden Voyage, as he had planned to jump ship as soon as Titanic would reach Queenstown. Titanic first made a stop-over in the evening at Cherbourg, France, before directly steaming to the important Irish harbor on April 11.

Titanic was also notorious for having had a coal fire in one of her bunkers during the first day of her Maiden Voyage. John was rumoured to just have felt uneasy with a bad omen, but he possibly was feeling a bit unwell and wanted to see his family in his hometown. The Titanic could provide him with a free, easy passage. Before leaving the Titanic, he said goodbye to Fireman John Alexander Podesta before he hid among the mail bags leaving the Titanic. The mighty steamer left Queenstown at half past one without him.

Because of her size, Titanic was too big to berth directly by the quayside in Cobh, as Queenstown is now named, so all passenger embarkations and mail deliveries had to be undertaken by smaller ships or tenders. One of the last tenders to leave Titanic brought sacks of mail and the young man had carefully hidden himself under the hessian sacks. When the tender reached the quayside in Cobh, Coffey grabbed his opportunity and crept ashore undetected. He was just minutes away from his parents’ house.

Coffey therefore missed the disaster that would happen on April 14. The Titanic was brought down by an iceberg that had caused ruptures before midnight. Two hours and 40 minutes laters, she was completely filled with seawater to slid down the Atlantic Ocean which resulted in the death of 1503 people, of which many were crew, lots of stokers included. The news reached Queenstown when Coffey was still there. Because of this, he gained fame and boasted to the press that he had already had a foresight of trouble.

Later life[]

Coffey went on to America a while later in April, with another big and impressive ocean liner, from rivaling company Cunard Line: The Mauretania. For many more decades, he kept doing his job as a fireman on a variety of ships. In the days of World War 2, he would count his lucky stars again.

A 1941 newsreport in the Daily Mail tells us about an incident Coffey had on a day in November, 1940. He had dropped into the river Hull and, however strange that sounds for someone with such marine experience, he couldn’t swim, as it turned out. Mr. James Bielby, a fellow fireman, was given a royal humane society award for rescuing Coffey. With this knowledge, it was certainly a good thing that Coffey had not continued on the sailing of Titanic in Queenstown, back in 1912.

Not having become victim of either Titanic or the river in Hull, John Coffey passed away in Hull on June 12, 1957 when he reached the age of 68. He has an unmarked grave in Eastern Cemetery, Hull, England.

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