Jump to content

Grace Hanagan

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 173.35.162.67 (talk) at 20:38, 9 September 2012. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Grace Hanagan
Born(1906-05-16)May 16, 1906
Oshawa, Ontario
DiedMay 15, 1995(1995-05-15) (aged 88)
St. Catharines, Ontario
SpouseMaurice Martyn
Children1

Grace Hanagan Martyn (May 16, 1906 - May 15, 1995) was the youngest and last survivor of the sinking of the "Empress of Ireland" on May 29, 1914.[1] Only four out of one hundred and thirty eight children survived the Empress of Ireland sinking and Grace Hanagan was one of them.

Early life

Grace Hanagan was born in Oshawa, Ont., on May 16, 1906[2][3][4] and was the daughter of Edward and Edith Hanagan. Later she moved with her parents to Toronto because her father was the bandmaster of the Salvation Army.

Empress of Ireland

With her parents

On May 28, 1914, Grace's father was taking her and her mother along with other Salvation Army members (like the Evans family, Staff Captain Meyers, Mr. and Mrs. Maidment, the Leader of the Salvation Army Commissioner David Rees and his family, etc…) on a cruse ship called the Empress of Ireland that will take them from Quebec City to Liverpool, England for the third International Congress, and then there would be a holiday for the three of them. Mean while, her father conducted the orchestra on the ship in the afternoon. And as they did at 4:27 in the afternoon, they started to set sail. When they started Grace and her father’s boss Commissioner David Rees’s son Harold went on a tour of the ship. To her it was beautiful like a lovely hotel and she was quiet thrilled with it. After that she and her parents went to dinner in the ship's second class dining room at 7:00 and then they prepared to turn in for the night. Grace refused to sleep in a berth that was next to a porthole as she believed this would be "where the water will come in",[5] the memory of the sinking of the “Titanic” that sank two years earlier, still fresh in everyone’s mind.

Surviving the sinking

Grace's premonition was correct because on that very night she and her parents were woken up by a noise that sounded like a firecracker (to her.) They didn’t know what it was until Edward said that it was the pilot coming for the mail then they didn’t bother about it. But then somebody came into there cabin and told them to get out because the Empress of Ireland is sinking. So Grace and her parents ran out as they were, and they finally got out on the deck. They were so close to some stairs, but the ship was listing so fast and they could hardly climb. So they sat on the high part of the railing of the stairs until the ship went down and then the three of them were thrown into the water. Grace went under the water twice until she finally got a hold of a piece of wreckage. But then she lost sight of her parents in the panicking crowd in the water. A few minutes later Grace saw a couple of lifeboats then she called for help. One crowded one came over and the people in the lifeboat pulled Grace in. In the lifeboat, Grace lost consciousness, and woke up in a bed on the Storstad (the ship that collided with the Empress and it woke her and her parents up), asking for her mother.

Loss of her Parents

Grace was then taken to a Hospital in Rimouski. And then the next day the hospital arranged for a train to take her and some other survivors back to Toronto, with Mrs. Atwell (another survivor) watching over her. Before she went to the hospital, an officer promised to find her mother, and Grace clung to that promise even after showing her father's dead body in Toronto Mortuary. She still thought her mother will still come but she never did. In a year Grace assumed that her mother was really dead.

After the Sinking

Following the death of her parents, Grace lived with her grandparents, uncle, and aunt; her uncle became her legal guardian.[1] Every year on the anniversary of the sinking she went to Toronto to place a wreath at a cemetery monument honoring the Empress victims, but mostly her parents. She even had a photo of her taken with nine other Salvation Army members that survived the sinking, (Thomas and Margaret Greenaway, David MacAmmond, Ernest Green, Rufus Spooner, Alfred Keith, Mary Atwell, and Frank and Henrietta Brooks) in 1934 And missed only two years. When she grew older she married Maurice Martyn, became Grace Martyn, had one son and settled in St. Catharine’s, Ontario. In 1992, she was reported to be in the Toronto area, and attending Highland Road Baptist Church. But even after all of those years, she still felt close to her parents in the water before they were killed. And she still had nightmares over the tragedy, because ever since she survived the sinking of the Empress of Ireland, a tap of water running in the bathtub would frighten her into terrible shivers and once again experience the panic of going down in the water. She didn’t talk about the disaster unless somebody brought up the subject. Except for one time at school, when she did a composition about the Empress.

Connection with other Empress Survivors

At 78 years old and feeling pretty well despite a number of heart attacks in recent years, Grace believed there were other survivors from the Empress that were still alive. One of them was Ron Fergusin, the wireless operator on the Empress of Ireland. She got in touch with him on Christmas in 1985 when he was living in or near Chelmsford, England, at 91 years old.

Grace also kept in contact with some other survivors and Salvation Army members until they died. She remained very involved with the Empress of Ireland throughout her life. And she was never portrayed as a celebrity after the tragedy. “Nor would I want to be,” she says.[1]

Death

Grace Hanagan Martyn died in St. Catharines, Ontario, one day before her 89th birthday and two weeks before the 1995 memorial service.

References

  1. ^ a b c Empress of Ireland sinking living history for woman. Calgary Herald, May 26, 1985, (p. E8).
  2. ^ Archives of Ontario. Registrations of Births and Stillbirths – 1869-1913. MS 929, reels 1-245. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Archives of Ontario
  3. ^ Ontario Register of Births
  4. ^ http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/economy-business/transport/empress-of-ireland-sinks-in-the-st-lawrence.html
  5. ^ Knowles, H. and Caldwell, D. (2003) The Empress of Ireland: An Essay. Northern Atlantic Dive Expeditions, Inc.

See also

http://www.sea-viewdiving.com/shipwreck_info/empress_home/guestbookarchive.htm (Empress of Ireland - Guest Book Archive - Sea-View Diving) and http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-170389.html (Empress of Ireland survivor [Archive] - ScubaBoard) and http://www.sea-viewdiving.com/shipwreck_info/empress_home/empbook/empressguests.htm (Empress of Ireland - Guestbook - Sea-View Diving)


Template:Persondata

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Grace_Hanagan&oldid=511589640"