On the Move – Part Three

For Liam Sheridan the S.S. Baltic moved off at last, and the two banks, lined with English military barracks, the English naval depot, and the English powder magazine on Rocky Island, slipped past like two wide ribbons being unwound as the ship passed by St. Colman’s Gothic Cathedral along the seaport, navigated past the two English forts on Roche’s Point and entered the St. George Channel for the voyage to America.  There was a sharp bracing air; the sea was crisp and clear; the sun diffused an abundance of light; and everything was fresh and lively.  Many of the first-class passengers read the latest penny edition of the Cork Examiner, the daily newspaper for the Cork Harbor.

Soon the S.S. Baltic was launched upon the deep; for a week it seemed lost in its unshored harborless immensities.  Eight days later, on a Friday, far down in the lower bay of New York City, Liam Sheridan crowded to the rail of the S.S. Baltic to glimpse his first sight of America in the clean summer air.  The day was June 24, 1906.  Ships at anchor choked the harbor.  Amid the trunks and suitcases, Liam Sheridan and Delia Flynn stood pressed to each other, enraptured by the sight of the Statue of Liberty.  Their bodies leaned forward, and their hands gripped the railing of the ship as they waited to land.

In the early 1900s there could be as many as 15,000 immigrants arriving in one day, and the ships had to drop anchor and wait.  Yet there, on the horizon, stood Manhattan. Closer, it grew into a cluster of pinnacles known as skyscrapers.  And then the midtown skyscrapers topped the ones first seen.  To most Europeans, New York was unlike any other city in the world.

Until 1892, European immigrants were cleared for entry at Castle Garden, once a fort, then a theater and a public amusement place down at the Battery.  However, the volume of immigrants grew so great, and so many of them managed to disappear into Manhattan before being “processed,” that a larger and more isolated sorting point was necessary. So, from 1892 on, once immigrants were tagged with numbers they were shipped aboard a ferry or a barge to Ellis Island.

After being inspected and receiving permission to leave the island, Delia Flynn made travel arrangements to St. Louis.  Like so many immigrants, they were given tags to pin to their hats or coats.  The tags showed the railroad conductors what lines the immigrants were traveling and what connections to make to reach their destinations.  For Liam Sheridan, this was the time to relinquish all his sovereigns – the shillings, sixpences, half crowns and crowns – for American currency: pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollars and dollars.

Waiting in St. Louis was Brendan Sheridan and his wife of two years, the 43-year-old Kate.  Brendan was already 54-years-old, and had not seen his son in more than six years.

Like thousands of Irish in St. Louis, Brendan Sheridan and his sisters, Bridget Harrington and Annie O’Malley, originally lived near Kerry Patch, commonly known as “the Irish ghetto.”  Located in Old North St. Louis, Kerry Patch deteriorated into slums immediately after the Civil War.  According to convention, the “shanty” Irish of Kerry Patch specialized in drinking, fighting, politics and religion.  Some of the other nicknames for specific neighborhoods within Kerry Patch included Clabber Alley, Thunder Alley and Wild Cat chute.

Brendan Sheridan benefited greatly from pre-existing kinship networks in the “urban village” of Kerry Patch.  He began his American experience with comforts and advantages which his three sisters had lacked originally.  Brendan Sheridan could also rely on the O’Malley brothers to help him find steady work.  John O’Malley, an acquaintance in Balla, was now family through marriage to Annie Sheridan.

Before Brendan Sheridan’s marriage to Kate Callahan, he already lived near the western edge of Kerry Patch.  Shortly after their marriage, Brendan and Kate Sheridan purchased property two blocks west of Grand Avenue at 2519 North Spring Avenue, in the St. Teresa of Avila parish.  The Sheridan house was a detached, two-story structure standing on its own lot in the company of other freestanding houses on the west side of the street.  The house, built in 1887, was purchased in late 1904.

At the turn of the 20th century, North Spring Avenue was regarded as a sedate and respectable neighborhood, solidly middle class and not at all as shabby as what is left of it today.  In 1906, it was a typical St. Louis street, and the red bricks absorbed the sun.  Over the southeastern horizon of the row houses and flats opposite the house at 2519 North Spring Avenue was the steeple of St. Teresa’s Church.

The new Sheridan house was Late Victorian (1880-1900), and did not depend for its effect on fancy landscaping and a large lot.  Instead, the house favored a two-story shape on a small lot set back from the street; it had a token front yard, and a modest backyard.  The house had a predominance of red brick for the body of the building, with an entablature resting above the white cornice, supported by stone brackets.  The single-family dwelling featured a flat roof, with stone exterior windowsills of limestone, some contemporary plumbing, and two back porches.  The foundation was native stone or Carthage stone from Carthage, Missouri.

From the sidewalk, two limestone steps led directly across a small walkway to four more limestone steps to the protruding front entrance.  Once inside the main door, there was a small vestibule, with another door into the house, common in cold weather towns like St. Louis.  A staircase, just beyond the front door, ran along the north wall for access to the bedrooms on the second floor.  At the top of the stairs there was a window for cross ventilation, from east-to-west.  The layout of the house, on both floors, followed a “side-hall plan.”  A typical floor plan had double-parlors with the support spaces behind this.

However, the house had no electricity; gas lamps provided illumination.

To Brendan Sheridan, his American home must have felt like an extravagant domestic setting, in its spaciousness and the specialized uses of its several rooms.  The cabins of Western Ireland were, by comparison, small, cramped quarters.  The freestanding house itself was a rarity in Dublin and other European cities.  Europeans at the beginning of the 20th century were dwellers of flats and row houses.  And for the occupancy of two-to-four people, the Sheridan house was very big – enormous, in fact, by Irish standards.  Yet there at 2519 North Spring Avenue, Brendan Sheridan dined with his wife, Kate, surrounded by simple furniture that still lent him dignity and probably expressed the values he held dear.  In these rooms he relaxed and slept and eventually enjoyed the intimacy of his immediate family.

In St. Louis, the big news toward the end of June, 1906 was how Frank Shaw rescued Mathilda Strassberger, when their small boat capsized in fifteen-feet of water on Creve Coeur Lake.  In Illinois, the mayor of Springfield led a posse that pursued a bandit for 18 miles, after the gunman fatally wounded the police chief in a shoot-out.

The approach of the train from New York City was made more and more evident by a bustle of preparation in Union Station, the rush of porters, the appearance of attendants, and the arrival of people meeting the train.  Through the steamy vapor could be seen workmen crossing the network of rails.  The whistle of an engine and the rumble of something heavy could be heard in the distance.

At last the passenger coaches jolted to a standstill.  An attendant jumped out, blowing his whistle as he did so, and then one by one the impatient passengers began to get down.

After so many years, Liam finally saw his father and stepmother.  Brendan Sheridan looked at his 10-year-old son, as he used to look at him years before.  And he grasped him by both arms, and would not let him go.

– I am so overjoyed to see you.

Liam brushed away the tears that his utmost resolution had not been able to keep back.

– Would you like to go home?
– I would.  What sort of place is it?
– Oh, a fine place.

Liam approached his new stepmother bashfully, yet Kate’s smile of quiet affection quickly reassured him.  A dull hum of movement came from the waiting room of the station, as from a beehive.  Kate gave Liam her hand and they set off side by side across the length of Union Station and walked up the great flight of stairs to Market Street.

The Sheridan family, reunited after six years, left Union Station with numerous suitcases.

Everyone stood together on Market Street, opposite Union Station, and waited patiently for a westbound electric streetcar.  Delia Flynn, with all her luggage, looked like a female Robinson Crusoe.  After a transfer at Grand Avenue, just north of Olive Street, the group boarded a northbound streetcar.  They traveled as far as Cass Avenue, and then walked a few blocks to the Sheridan house on North Spring Avenue.

Liam entered the two-story house, pausing in the hallway, which was ablaze with a gaslight, only long enough to see his face for an instant in the mirror.  Later that first night in St. Louis, Liam dozed lightly in his chair, no longer aware of what his father was saying. There was a discrete murmur of voices, and shoes could be heard squeaking across the wooden floor.  Liam began to dream.  It was towards 10 p.m., the time Brendan Sheridan generally said goodnight.  He pulled out a wisp of straw and gently tickled his son’s ear.  Brendan burst out laughing when he saw the young boy sit up straight.

– Ah, Liam, a bouchal dhas (my handsome boy), you are beaten by the sleep at last. Leave the chair and go to bed.

Liam looked at the clock.  He had not felt the time passing.  At that moment, the stillness of the humid St. Louis night overwhelmed the household.  It was a hot June night.  On Sunday, the temperature had all ready reached 88 degrees by 7 a.m.  Luckily, the forecast called for showers and cooler temperatures by Monday night.  Cooler weather was predicted over the next 24 hours.  Holding onto the banister, Liam pulled himself up the stairs and then into his room.  He looked at nothing, but fell face down on his own bed.  For the first time in six years, he was home with his father.

© Dancing at My Wake 2011-2012

On the Move – Part Two

Now the day soon came for going to St. Louis.  It was such an early day that it came soon, even to Liam, who was probably in a fever of expectation for a 10-year-old boy, and half afraid some calamity might impede with the trip.  He had not seen his father since he was four-years-old.

A light breeze passed Liam’s forehead, fanning softly his brown hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in his blue eyes.  Two shafts of subtle daylight fell across the cottage floor, and at the meeting of their rays, a cloud of turf smoke floated, turning in the morning air.

Aunt Mary carried a dish of food and a large teapot over to the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief.  For a moment the entering darkened the doorway form of Uncle Padrig, who carried a large milk jug.  Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak, Uncle Padrig with his wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs, filled a special jug’s worth of milk for the young Sheridan.  Liam watched Aunt Mary pour the fresh milk into a cup.

– The food is ready.  Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts.
In ainm an Athar, agus an Mhic, agus an spioraid Naoimh.
[In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy spirit.]

– In Amerikay you will speak no more Irish, not even for the blessing and consecration.  But it’s a beautiful language by them that knows.

After breakfast, Liam went in a carrier’s cart to the train station in Balla.  Time to say goodbye.  Goodbye Aunt Mary and all the cousins.  Goodbye to the boys and girls at the crossroads in the evening time.  Goodbye to a drink of milk and a chat with the old people across the half door, or on a stool beside the hearth.  Goodbye to Balla, the quiet  village where a man and a goose have the street all to themselves.  Goodbye Father John McDermott, forgive us our sins.  Goodbye old Shamrock.  Goodbye, everybody …. goodbye now.

Everyone parted in an affectionate manner, and Aunt Mary did not turn back toward the cottage until Uncle Padrig drove out of sight.  At that instant, tears rose freshly in her eyes, and gathering up her shawl, Aunt Mary covered her face with it.  She stopped for a moment before going inside, as if she had something to say; but she offered no further comments.  Making a low, dreary, wretched moaning in her shawl, Aunt Mary finally went inside.

Padrig Larkin directed the horse-drawn cart toward Balla.  The 56-year-old Larkin sat on the carrier’s seat, affable and serene in the soiled light-gray trousers, the white collarless shirt and the tweed cap.  The cart moved steadily beyond the sunny loneliness of Carrownahan, as the few miles of countryside unrolled beneath the tireless feet of the old horse, beneath the creaking and clanking cartwheels.

Liam Sheridan wore his best clothes for the four-hour trip from Balla-to-Cork, on the Midland & Great Western railway to the Southern Coast of Ireland.  There was one stop at the Limerick Junction, the half-way point between Balla and Cork.  Liam was escorted by his 24-year-old cousin, Delia Flynn, on his journey to America.

The railway engine screamed and Padrig Larkin, isolated in the smoky glare, dwindled among the crowd and tender.  Heritage, history, and family also dwindled there. Liam closed his eyes.  A bag of fig rolls lay snugly in his pocket.  He curled them between his palms and swallowed them softly.  Crumbs adhered to his lips.  The track swerved to a greener world: outside the railway carriage there was a deep blue summer sky in South Mayo, with patches of fleecy clouds which blotched the bare hillsides with shadows.  Liam’s face gazed out the window as grass lands rolled away in long undulating miles to the sky rim, crossed here and there by grassy ridges running from east to west.  He had abundant occupation for his thoughts, in every conspicuous landmark on the journey immediately away from Balla.

Along the horizon low ranges of mountains mingled their deep tints with the silvery whiteness of the clouds.  There were no woodlands, no groves, and scarcely any trees at all, stripped away by the British long ago.  There was no agriculture, the fertile desert uncultivated from end to end.  From the carriage window to the crest of the far-off ridges, the public road stretched in a straight line across the valley, between the stonewalls, breast high, which separated it from the silent fields on either side.

Long before the train reached the Limerick Junction, Liam began to think of the old Sheridan cabin in Knocknamoglaun as altogether abandoned, of the weeds growing tall in the yard, and the fallen leaves lying thick and wet upon the paths.  He imagined how the winds of winter would howl around it, how the cold rain would beat against the windows, how the moon would make ghosts on the walls of the empty rooms, watching their solitude all night.  Liam thought of the family graves – his mother and Sheridan grandparents – left behind in the Mayo Abbey Parish, and it seemed as if his connection to Ireland was already dead too.

As Liam scanned the Irish landscape for the last time, pausing to listen to Delia Flynn, who chattered away without ceasing, and at the same time all sorts of images to do with St. Louis and a new family life presented themselves disjointedly before his imagination.

Four hours later, the train finally pulled into the Queenstown Railway Station on Westbourne Place, next to the port.  Built in 1890, the railway station replaced the original station that stood a short distance to the west of the building.

Delia Flynn and her charge walked east along Westbourne Place, one of the busiest streets in Queenstown.  Westbourne Place was an airy, spacious, well-proportioned thoroughfare.  The sidewalks were wide and smooth and there was plenty of light by night and day.  A double electric tramcar line ran along the middle of the street, and the posts that carried the overhead wires had large arc lamps.  Seven other kinds of vehicles were prominent on Westbourne Place, including the automobile, the jaunting car, the landau, the brougham, the inside car, the hansom cab, and the covered car.

For several minutes, Liam stood and watched the people pass by, as if he really were a stranger on earth.  They were well dressed, both men and women, and carried themselves gracefully.  From a nearby cellar grating floated up the flabby gush of porter.  Through the open doorway of a bar squirted out whiffs of ginger, tea dust, biscuit mush.  Later, the small group passed by a tobacconist against which news boards leaned and told of a dreadful catastrophe in New York City.  In America those things were constantly happening.  Moored under some nearby trees was a turf barge, a bargeman with a hat of dirty straw seated amid ship, smoking and staring at a branch of poplar above him.

Yet the unceremonious pushing and hustling that Liam received, soon recalled him from that reverie.  Taking Delia by the arm, Liam drew her along as if piloting her through danger.

At his age, Liam saved up three and ten pence in a red tin moneybox.  He shook out the three-penny bits and a sixpence and coaxed out the pennies with the blade of a knife.  Two and three in silver and one and seven in coppers.  Later Liam purchased one and four pence worth of brawn and four slices of pan loaf at a Queenstown dining room.  Outside on Westbourne Place, Delia and Liam walked past more Hackney carts, cabs, delivery wagons, mail-vans, and private broughams.  Liam stopped again and bought from an old apple woman two Banbury cakes for a penny.

The twosome walked by the tree shade of sunny winking leaves and towards them came a Sacsanach (English) sailor.

– Very well, indeed.  And you?

The twosome was wonderfully well indeed.  They would all go to St. Louis, Missouri.  Neither of them ever planned to return to Ireland. The two continued east, toward the Post Office building, at the intersection of Westbourne Place and Casement Square.  The mid-19th century building was one of the busiest sites in Queenstown.  In 1876 it housed the Post Office, the Postal Telegraph Office and the Government Emigration office.  James Scott and Co., shipping agents, also had their office in the building.  Scott and Co. were agents for the White Star Line and emigrants for White Star ships usually departed from the rear of the building.  Delia Flynn bought passage to New York City from Scott and Co., for the S.S. Baltic.

On Thursday, June 16, 1906, the S.S. Baltic docked in Queenstown harbor, ready to sail, with clouds of smoke pouring from its two funnels.  The ship originated in Liverpool the day before, with 1,619 passengers already on board.  Many of the travelers were from the United Kingdom, but others were from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Russia, and Persia.  One servant was from Japan.  After the 208 outgoing Irish immigrants took a tender to the ship near the harbor entrance, people hurried to their quarters.  Captain Edward J. Smith and the crew ignored all inquiries from people who constantly bumped into one another; and the din merged into the hissing steam, which, escaping through some iron plates, wrapped the whole scene in a white mist, while the bell in the bows went on clanging incessantly.

The 53-year-old Captain Edward J. Smith was the master of the S.S. Baltic and Commodore of the White Star fleet.  He was a quiet man with shaggy eyebrows.  Captain Smith, starting out in sail, had earned his master’s certificate at the age of 25 and had served 26 years with White Star.  He was known as a prudent, experienced seaman.

Yet Captain Smith’s career ended tragically six years later as the master of the Titanic.  When the Titanic hit an iceberg at 11:48 p.m., April 14, 1912, off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the S.S. Baltic was 200 miles to the southeast, and could not arrive in time to help.  The disaster resulted in the loss of 1,513 lives.  Thirteen people from the Castlebar area of County Mayo died in the tragedy.

© Dancing at My Wake 2011-2012