Titanic exhibition opens in Cork

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Old illustration of a newspaper man just after the sinking of the Titanic

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Visit our Titanic Centenary Commemoration section here

A farewell message in a bottle that was thrown from the Titanic can now be seen at the Titanic Exhibition in the Cobh Heritage Center. The letter, which was presented by a family member of the victim, goes on display just as next year's centenary of the ship's sinking approaches.

Jeremiah Burke didn’t have much time to write a last note to his family as  the Titanic went down. The 19-year-old, who was traveling from his home in Glanmire, Co. Cork with his 18-year-old cousin Nora Hegarty, simply said “goodbye all” in his last note.

The note was left in a holy water bottle which Jeremiah was given at the quayside in Cobh by his mother before he set off for the United States.

As the Titanic sank in the early hours of 15 April, 1912, he threw the bottle and message into the sea.

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The bottle was washed ashore a year later in Dunkettle, only a few miles from his family home. The note, which read “From Titanic, goodbye all, Burke of Glanmire, Cork” has remained in the Burke family for nearly a century.

One of Jeremiah’s nieces, Mary Woods, has donated it to the Cobh Heritage Center.

Woods, who is a local councilor in Cork, said Jeremiah and his cousin Nora had been traveling to America to meet up with his two sisters who had left for Boston a year previously.  Both Jeremiah and Nora drowned in the tragedy.

The bottle was donated at the same time as a 12-part television series, 'Titanic – Blood and Steel,' is being filmed in Ireland. The series tells the story of the people who built the doomed ship.

Visit our Titanic Centenary Commemoration section here

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