17-year old Katie Gilnagh in 1912
Kate "Katie" Gilnagh was a Third Class passenger of the Titanic. She survived the sinking.
I love you Katie!
Early life[]
Kate Gilnagh was a native of Rhyne, Cloonee, Co Longford, Ireland, born there on 29 October 1894. She had one older sister, two younger brothers and 6 younger sisters. Her father was Hugh Gilnagh, who was married to Johanna Duffy. The family was Roman Catholic and made a living of a farm.
On April 9, 1911, a year before Titanic would set sail, her older sister Mary migrated to the United States as a passenger of the SS Laurentic, and settled in Manhattan. She wrote her sister that she wanted her to come too.
Titanic[]
She joined the Titanic at Queenstown on April 11th, 1912 as a Third Class passenger (ticket number 35851 which cost £7, 14s, 8d). Whilst aboard she stayed in cabin 161 on E-Deck aft with three other Longford girls, Katie Mullin and the Murphy sisters, Margaret and Kate. She also became acquainted with fellow-Longford passengers James Farrell, Thomas McCormack and the Kiernan brothers, John and Philip among other Irish passengers, including possibly Eugene Daly from Co Westmeath. Kate was 17 years old at the time.
On the night of April 14, Katie and other steerage passengers had been enjoying a party in the communal Third Class areas. A rat scuttled across the floor, sending the party into excited disarray.
She and her cabin mates later went to bed and seemingly slept through the collision, when moments later, A man with whom they were acquainted aboard rapped their door, telling them to get up as something was amiss with the ship. The four girls dressed and headed out to the upper decks but found their way to the lifeboats impeded by crew members blocking their way and being determined to keep the steerage passengers in their place.
When they were trying to pass through one barrier, a crew member halted her but the intervention of James Farrell, who threatened the offending man with a punch if he didn't let the women through, perhaps helped save her life and she later referred to Farrell as her guardian angel. Katie eventually managed to get to a higher deck with the lifeboats tantalisingly close in sight, but she couldn't find her way any further. A man close by offered her a lift up on his shoulders, which she gratefully accepted, and she climbed over the railing to the Boat Deck.
Spying a boat close by, she made for it but a crew member again held her back, telling her it was full. Crying out that her sister was in the boat, the crew member relented and let her pass. In years later, Katie recounted that the magnitude of the disaster unfolding at the time escaped her and she naïvely thought that this was the regular way to make it to America.
The impact of the tragedy that she managed to survive, must have landed after she reached New York on the Carpathia on the 18th of April. Katie found her distraught sister Molly making arrangements for a Requiem Mass as she thought her sibling had perished.
Later life[]
Unfortunaly one year later a family member was lost. It was her younger sister Elizabeth. She was felled on 3 September 1913 because of tuberculosis.
Other family members would make the crossing later, sister Margaret and brother William joined Kate and Mary in America but William sadly perished in 1917. John Joseph Manning, a chauffeur, became Kate's husband that same year. Four children were born from this marriage, one girl, Catherine who was the third child, and 3 boys: her older brothers John, Thomas and Joseph Eugene was her younger brother.
During World War 2, her father passed away on 6 September 1939 and her mother had passed on 12 October 1941.
She lost her husband on 19 April 1955. After his death, she would take part in the Titanic Historical Society after being a member of the 'Titanic Enthusiasts of America' association. When Walter Lord was busy with his book 'A Night to Remember' in 1953, she contributed by giving her side of the story.
Kate Gilnagh passed away on March 1st, 1971, aged 76. She was in Long Island City. The burial took places days later: she was laid to rest in company of her hsuband in the Woodside Cemetery at Queens in New York.