Thomas Casey was a Trimmer on the Titanic.
Background[]
Thomas Casey stemmed from either Country Cork in Ireland, or Liverpool in Lancashire, England. He was placed there by two Irish people. There names were Thomas Casey and Margaret Byrne. She saw her son for the first time on 29 July 1867. It was a busy day for the baby, who immediately was immersed in the water of the local Holy Cross Church, as part of the christian ritual of cleansing. Of only his parents, who both hailed from County Sligo knew that he would be properly rinsed in later life. It is nowhere stated that their love was compounded ceremonially. Thomas senior was a longshoreman.
The son that made them into parents was Michael, who was brought into being in 1859. He was the elder sibling of 4 others, with Thomas being the second youngest. The first girl bore the name Mary, since 1862. The migration of the parents must have come after that, as Michael and Mary were both pure Irish by origin. Mary’s first sister received the name Honor, in 1863, but in daily life must have often been referred to as ‘Annie’. Annie’s baby sister, who followed in 1869, was Bridget, but to the horror of the family, she was taken out of their lives in 1870.
To see the family in 1881, one had to be in the core center of Liverpool. At the time, Thomas followed education. Thomas must have later tagged along with Annie, who had been espoused in 1889, the same year that the family lost their biggest source of income, the father. Annie’s other half was another wharf worker, also from Ireland named Dennis Caroll. Annie had an extensive number of brood, but her married life got unhitched when Dennis lost his life in 1905.
Thomas’ mother stepped out of life in 1907. The cause of her death is not given. At some point, Thomas had headed to the salt chuck while Annie had to raise her young ones, together with him. They were still Liverpudlians.
Titanic[]
In 1912, the Hampshire town of Southampton got visited by a passenger ship that had her credentials preceed her. She was the younger sister of the new and prestigious Olympic, named Titanic. Her elegance and strength as a floating palace were very adored by the seafaring place. Back then, the southern English people were beguiled by the two supersized ships of White Star Line. With Titanic's arrival, it was like the town had shrunk in size. Thomas was meanwhile roomed in the harbor’s Seaman’s Hangout. The ship he had been on in the last days was the Saint Paul. It could not compare in he slightest to the beautiful heavyweight that had her special pier. She needed crew for just about anything imaginable. The machines of the vessel were also tremendous in scale and required a good sum of handymen and Engineers, with the boilers that fed those steam engines, also necessitated the employment of hundreds of men to keep them scorching hot. These strong men were the Firemen and the Trimmers, who took care of the coal. In his late thirtees, Casey also was designated a Trimmer on the 6th of April.
Titanic was cheered and acclaimed for her prestige by the mass of hundreds along the docks as she hovered off from the pier, on April 10. Casey would be on the First Watch, which lasted a total of 8 hours a day, split in two 4 hour allocations. Casey would be active from 12:00 to 4:00, with 21 other men. They must have shared an enclosure on E-Deck, three existed for each watchgroup, well at the front. Their duty would be awarded with 5 pounds, 10 shillings per month, not too bad of a payment at the 1912’s currency and inflation rate. When Thomas was hungry, he could sit down at the Firemen’s table.
Just minutes into her first ever voyage, Titanic almost had a scuffle with another ship, far lower than her. It was the Inman Line’s New York, which slithered about when Titanic’s motion on the river had given it the incentive to break loose from her fixings and sail without steam towards the Titanic uncontrollable. It was a very touch and go situation but Titanic was spared from a perforation and could get to France with just an hour loss.
The green and lush Ireland was also hosting Titanic on the next day, April 11. Thomas would see his own roots for one more time before the Titanic would continue on her trans-Atlantic crossing. The passage should lead to New York within a week.
What entailed on the 14th of April, was even worse than anyone could have ever imagined. Titanic’s reputation had grown before she was even setting off on her voyage, as a ship of infragibility, due to her proportions. Nothing could topple her.
The iceberg that was glossed over on that night however, was still a size too much for her. When two lookouts peered into the distance, she was doing 22,5 knots and had only a minute to react. The firmament above their heads was cluttered with stars but the moon was covert, hardly a rustle or a breeze. The abscence of the moon proved crucial for it changed the visual effect entirely by giving off a higher horizon. By the time that the iceberg’s silhouette couldn’t longer be missed, she was just moments away from being hit by the dashing Titanic.
The First Officer had gotten word and also saw it himself when he supplicated the Quartermaster Robert Hichens to heave the wheel over to the left, as part of the Hard-to-Starboard tiller command. The telegraph rinkeled and the handle bar was tweaked into Full Astern to temper Titanic’s forward movement. When the crucial moment came, Titanic was edging to port slightly, just moments away from bypassing it, but her starboard was aligned with the ice below sea level, so it grinded itself over the thic ice and the popnails flew out, leaving Titanic with 6 rabbets, on 300 feet of her hull.
Titanic’s lowest deck immediately began to percolate with water. The effects became imminent. It was an emergancy as soon as the captain spoke with Thomas Andrews, the man that had shaped the liner to his imagionation. The designer had considered everything that he had viddied down below, along with the captain.
Rougly twenty minutes after the contingence, he expressed his concern. 6 secluded compartments of the ship were rapidly filling with water. By the time that 2 hours had passed, they would have gotten over the thick steel walls that seperated them and the rest of the ship would be inundated. There was no stopping it. Only pumps could slow down the rate of foundering. When it was evident that the Titanic couldn’t keep her head above the water, the captain knew that he could remove the maximum of roughly 1200 men, women and children from the sinking vessel, out of 2209 in total.
For that, they had only 20 lifeboats. On April 15, 12:05 A.M, the men began working on them to get them available to the passengers. All we know about Thomas was that his stint, in normal conditions, would have just begun.
The time it took to launch lifeboats was too much, with the ship even holding out for longer than 2 hours. With the last 15 minutes left, only 18 lifeboats had departed Titanic. The remaining two still had to be securely vailed down, but the ship itself did that as the water had seeped into the wheelhouse and came on top of the people that awaited the valediction of boats A and B.
The boats were swamped in second and the highest deck was flooded rapidly. The tension and drama onboard hightened. The ship’s last defenses were overcome. Over the course of the next 10 minutes, the water had brought the ship to such a positure that it fractured. At 2:20 A.M, Titanic was hidden from view as she had set off into the darkness. Casey had not gotten into a lifeboat.
The death of the giant ensured the most horrific icebath for over a 1000 of people. There may have also been a lot that never escaped the ship itself. Thomas’ presence on Titanic is surrounded by question marks. We simply don’t know anything about his time onboard. It would be hard to breathe for anyone in water of such temperatures. The life expectancy from the moment that anyone would hit the water, would be 20 minutes on average, although a some fatalities were attributed to intense shock from this same cold. Either the seas, or the Titanic itself, became Thomas’ tomb. No sign of any of his remains were ever determined.
After his death[]
As they co-habitated, the Titanic Relief Fund surmised that Anna Carroll should be staked with a boon that would balance out the missed sum of income that stemmed from Thomas’ parting.
Annie’s home never left Liverpool, which remained her place to stay until her passing in 1935.