‘Going down with Lusitania. Goodbye.’

Bodies and debris continue to come ashore along the west coast

Cork, 22 June 1915 - ‘Going down with Lusitania. Mr. McManus. Goodbye.’ So read a message that was inside a bottle that washed up on Carthy’s Cove near Youghal, Co. Cork yesterday.

Debris from the sunken vessel continues to wash up on the south and west coasts of Ireland. Meanwhile, several bodies picked up off the Aran Islands have been buried at Kilronan, the main village on Inis Mór.

Right to bury

A dispute has arisen in Galway after more victims of the Lusitania were buried at Killeany. At the Galway Board of Guardians meeting it was recorded that Mr. O’Flaherty, a local government official, said that he had been told by the parish priest, Fr. Farragher, that he had no right to bury the bodies in consecrated ground as there was no evidence the victims were catholic. Fr. Farragher further stated that he would have to write to the Bishop, and that the bodies would probably have to be exhumed.

A cartoon showing the children who died in the Lusitania disaster asking the Kaiser: 'But why did you kill us?' (Image: National Library of Ireland)

Mr. O’Flaherty said that he informed Fr. Farragher that he did not know what denomination the bodies were but that he had no other place to bury them. He continued that he had seen Protestants buried in catholic cemeteries in Inishene and in Galway.

The meeting noted that the victims of the Lusitania were all human beings and that they deserved appropriate treatment such as that provided by Mr. O’Flaherty.

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]