People on board

INGLIS, Joseph Dodson

Joseph Dodson Inglis was born in Dublin in 1877 to Robert Wainwright Inglis and Sarah Anne Owen. Born in Liverpool, Robert was a ‘Coppersmith’ and he married Sarah Owen in Dublin in 1864. She was born in Dublin. They had four children born in 14 Monck Place in Phibsborough, though only two lived. Joseph was born in 10 Lower Gloucester Street, in the City Quay area of Dublin, but shortly afterwards the family moved to Holyhead. Robert and Sarah, with Emma, Alice and Joseph were living at 8 Trearddur Square at the time of the 1881 census, when Robert still gave his occupation as ‘Coppersmith’. Two more girls were born in 1882 and 1884 and Robert died in 1885 aged only forty nine.

Sarah stayed with the family in Holyhead, with the children going to the local school. According to the local newspaper Joseph won a prize in December 1890 for not missing a day in the previous year. In the 1891 census he was an eighteen year old scholar living in Armenia Terrace with his mother and the two younger girls who had been born in Holyhead.

In 1900 he started work with the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company as Fourth Steward on RMS Ulster, and in the 1901 census he was on RMS Connaught in Kingstown Harbour. He had moved up to Third Steward by 1906 and in 1916 he was Second Steward on RMS Connaught when it had been commandeered as a troop ship.
In the 1911 census he was living with his mother and youngest sister Florence in 52 Newry Street. In 1915 he married Ida Plant from Fylde in Lancashire, an area which includes Blackpool, and they had their first child, Allan, there. They had moved to Holyhead by 1918 living in 7 Newry-Fawr Street. Joseph was Second Steward on RMS Leinster on 10 October 1918 and he did not survive the sinking of the ship. His body was not found but he is commemorated on the Tower Hill Memorial. He was awarded the Mercantile Marine Medal and British War Medal.

A second child, James, was born to Ida in early 1919, but by then she was a widow. She remarried in 1928 to Lewis Hanson and they lived in Blackpool, where she died in 1957.

Joseph’s mother, Sarah Inglis née Owen, died in Holyhead in 1937 aged eighty nine.