FOOLISH DREAMS? by Donal Kennedy

Pearse staked all on his dream, and those who signed the 1916 Proclamation

did likewise, and faced British firing squads cheerfully. His followers that Easter

Week followed that dream and within four years in Parliamentary, Municipal,

County Council and other local elections in Ireland the voters of Ireland endorsed

it.

As a result Britain dared not enforce conscription in Ireland in the century

which followed and innumerable Irish and other human lives – far outnumbering

those killed in  Easter Week, the ‘Tan War, the Irish Civil War, and later troubles

arising from British rule and misrule in Ireland, were saved.

A few years before Pearse wrote of his “foolish” dream another man had a dream.

A Gigantic, you might say a “Titanic” one and thousands of men built a bloody

great Death-Trap and launched it in Belfast.  The dreamer owned The White Star

Line and sailed first class  on its maiden voyage bound for America.He completed

his journey on another vessel. But one thousand, five hundred passengers

and crew drowned. The passengers were mainly “steerage”  (third class) passengers

and insufficient lifeboats had been carried for them. Though many male First Class

Passengers stayed on the sinking ship in order that women and children be saved,

Joseph Bruce Ismay, Chairman of the White Star line jumped on a lifeboat.

He survived the disaster for another 25 years. When he died in 1937 THE TIMES

of London carried an Obituary recalling his charity to sailors’ dependants, but not

mentioning THE WHITE STAR LINE, THE TITANIC, nor Ismay’s connection with

them. The DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY carries THE TIMES’S

OBITUARY exactly as written and offers no further information.

It seems very strange that so many people in Belfast and environs are so proud

of the death-trap designed and built in that city but too shy to erect a statue of

Joseph Bruce Ismay, or to commemorate his role symbolically with a mural of a Rat

Deserting A Sinking Ship.