PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

My mother's paternal grandfather and his immediate family immigrated to this country from Ireland (fortunately, no insurrectionist wanted to build a sea wall to keep them out of Eliis Island), and traveled from New York City to rural Indiana, where they operated a fairly large, and modestly successful, dairy farm.

My mother's grandfather had somewhat disappointed his family by abandoning Ireland, and the family trade of welding, to become a farmer in the New World.  His family had practiced skilled welding as a trade for several generations; it was taught from father to his male children, and by older siblings to younger; and that particular family consisted of many siblings and many cousins.  They lived in Belfast.

My mother was told, by her paternal aunts and uncles, that those members of the family still resident in Belfast (which would be all of them except my great grandfather and his immediate family) worked in the shipyards of Harland and Wolff, and had participated in the construction of the RMS Titanic.

Once I had, somewhat gingerly at first, entered the internet, and learned how e-mail worked, I sent an e-mail to the offices of Harland and Wolff, stating my great-grandfather's surname and asking if confirmation could be given that some of his relatives had been employed in the construction of the Titanic.  They replied quite graciously, but with the difficult answer that---thanks to the upstart Bavarian corporal and housepainter---the Blitz over London had destroyed their office in that city, and that office had contained all of the personnel files.  But they also explained something that seemed to confirm what my mother had believed:  that, short of a professional degree (as in medical or jurisprudence), there were only five types of careers available in Belfast.  One could work for the Government or the banking system; or in a shop; or as a domestic servant; or in the shipyyard.  And a family that had followed the same trade for generations (perhaps since the Industrial Revolution began to require metalworking), the only real employment would have been the shipyward.  The corporate office of Harland and Wolff said that chances were very good that what my mother had been told was entirely and accurately correct.

Starward