He was from the village of Glanmire, just outside Cork City, and he was on his way to join his sisters in America. But on April 14, 1912 the Titanic struck an Iceberg and Jeremiah Burke went down with the ship.
Before the ship went under he wrote a short note, sealed it in a Holy Water bottle his mother had given him just days before, and threw it in the water. What happened next is incredible.
A message in a bottle usually disappears. If it does make it to shore it’s discarded by the finder. Perhaps that’s what Jeremiah Burke thought would happen as he stood on the Titanic and it sank beneath the waves. Nevertheless he felt that human urge to say goodbye.
But incredibly this bottle washed up just miles from Glanmire just one year later. The finder brought the bottle to the family who were sceptical. But then his mother recognised both the bottle and Jeremiahs writing.
The note simply read, “From Titanic, goodbye all, Burke of Glanmire, Cork.”
It remained in the family’s possession until 2011 when it was first donated to the Titanic exhibition in Cobh – the last landfall the Titanic ever made and the place where Jeremiah and his cousin boarded.
