Chance discussion unveils Titanic link

Chance discussion unveils Titanic link

By Joanne Fleming

IN all the many, many, stories that my grandmother used to tell me, she never mentioned her father was a carpenter on the Titanic.

But amidst all the Titanic wall to wall coverage in the past few weeks I came across this little piece of family history and a long lost family photo into the bargain.

In recent weeks my great-grandfather's Titanic link was casually ped into family conversation. Considering the hundreds who worked on her, many could claim the same link, but I was a bit bewildered as to why no-one had mentioned it before Titanic fever and the unveiling of a multi-million pound tourist attraction on our doorstep.

But as my dad explained, "No-one talked about it." Apparently nobody in Belfast did after it sank, after the initial shock which saw grown men crying in the streets. Sadly there must have been a sense of shame attached.

Thomas Meharry's daughter Martha was my Nanny Fleming, who simply remembered he "cried sore" when the ship sunk. After that, she had nothing to say.

Curiosity roused, and hearing this week that archive material relating to the Titanic was to be released online, I went to take a look, just in case there was any documentation of the workers. Before I got there, however, a simple google search uncovered what appeared to be a photo of my great-grandfather at the shipyard beside my great uncle. Named after his father, my great uncle Tommy had also worked at the shipyard.

Kept in Scottish archives following publication in the Herald newspaper in Scotland in March 1960, it shows them at the Harland and Wolff launch of one of the last great liners, The Canberra.

I recognised my great uncle Tommy who died only three years ago at the age of 97, and was surprised to see the jovial man I remembered looking so formal and stern. The photo-caption explained, however, the striking boiler suit and bowler hat contrast between my ancestors — great uncle Tommy was head foreman at the shipyard and therefore his father's boss.

Tommy's son Norman said his father also found memories of the Titanic difficult to deal with and wouldn't attend any events in connection with it.

"I remember when the Titanic film was released and I said to him — do you want me to get this out for you? He said no, it would be too upsetting.

"My great grandfather Thomas Meharry worked on the hull of the ship apparently. I remember him as a quiet, nice man. He was very mild mannered, very pleasant and couldn't do enough to please.  

"I think he belonged to a different generation, where people knew their place and weren't terribly ambitious.

"However, I believe he was also a bit of a writer."<\n>Sadly my great-grandmother, widely acknowledged as wearing the trousers in the relationship, didn't keep any record of what he had composed at the end of a long day in the ship yard.

"Apparently she destroyed all the things he had written," said Norman. "I don't know why, maybe she thought it wasn't worth keeping.

"But this quiet man had a whole other side to him. He had this urge to write."

As for what my quiet, secretly ambitious great-grandfather would have thought of some of this week's Titanic 'celebration' events, I'm not sure. But I hope he allows us at least to reflect on the hard work and dedication of men such as himself, who helped make Northern Ireland an industrial leader of its time, and felt the loss of Titanic too deeply to talk about it.