People on board

SMYTH, Adam

Adam Smyth was born in 1875 to Daniel Smyth, a Bootmaker from Dalkey, and Ellen Magee from Rathdrum in County Wicklow. He was second eldest of eleven children, one of whom died in early childhood, seven being girls. Daniel and Ellen were married in early 1872 and the family lived in 19 Sandycove Road, Glasthule for many decades with all of the children born there. The eldest, John, born in November 1872, studied for the priesthood in London and Liege and was ordained in 1899 by the Missionary Order, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and was sent to Fremantle in Western Australia. He was very popular with his parishioners, and when his mother died in Sandycove in 1916 there was an obituary published in a Perth newspaper. He was sent back to Ireland for ten months in 1913 for his health, but he then contacted influenza in late 1918 and died in January 1919. A large headstone was erected in his memory by his parishioners.

When Adam Smyth married Elizabeth Bergin in July 1900 he was a ‘Sorting Clerk’, living in Talbot Place in the city centre, and they stayed there through the births of their first five children, in Buckingham St., Sandwith St. and two addresses at North Strand, throughout employed at the G.P.O

His father Daniel died in 1906 and his brother Daniel married in 1909 and Adam moved out to the family home on Sandycove Road, where four more children were born. In the 1911 census his mother Ellen was living with the newly married Daniel in Eden Terrace, but she then moved to Windsor Terrace on the seafront, where she died in 1916. About that time Daniel moved to his in-laws in Tivoli Terrace North and Adam moved his family to Tivoli Terrace East.

On the 10th October 1918 Adam was not rostered for duty but was called to take the place of a sick colleague and so was on board RMS Leinster when it was torpedoed. His eldest son, seventeen year old Daniel Patrick, was working that same day as ‘Assistant Steward’ on RMS Ulster which was working the reverse leg of the sailing and so was at Kingstown as survivors were brought ashore. Adam’s body was not found however. He is remembered on the headstone of the family grave in Deansgrange, on the memorial in Dun Laoghaire Post Office and the memorial in the G.P.O.

In Memoriam notices from his wife and family and his brother Daniel were published in the newspapers in 1920 and 1930.