Miss Ellen Mary Mockler

Miss Ellen Mary Mockler was born on 1 April 1889 in the village of Currafarry in County Galway. She was the daughter of Andrew Mockler and Catherine Mitchell. She had one brother and two sisters. Her sisters, Bridget and Margaret, were already living in New York City and it was there Ellen was going.

She travelled in the group from Caltra parish in County Galway led by Martin Gallagher, and including Thomas Kilgannon, Tom Smyth, and Margaret Mannion.

She boarded the Titanic at Queenstown as a third class passenger (ticket number 330980, £7, 17s, 7d).

On the night of the sinking Ellen claimed that many steerage passengers were staying below decks, and that she would have done the same if it had not been for three Irish men that she was travelling with, who told her to stay put. She also remembered that not one of the crew seemed particularly helpful, and no-one told them what to do or where to go and everybody just milled round aimlessly.

Both Ellen Mockler and Margaret Mannion were rescued in Lifeboat 16, which Helen described as only partially full.

In years after the disaster Ellen Mocklare lived in New York City where she worked for the National Biscuit Company. In 1917 she was ordained into an order of nuns, the Sisters of Mercy Motherhouse and moved to Worcester, Massachusetts. At ordination she took the name Sister Mary Patricia.

In Worcester, Sister Mary Patricia taught in schools and later worked an administrator in the Catholic School Diocese. She eventually entered a retired nun's convent where she died on 1 April 1984, her 95th birthday.

She was buried at St. Joseph's Cemetery, Leicester, Massachusetts. One of her former pupils, now a nun herself, remembered Sister Mary Patricia often telling about the Titanic disaster in the classroom. She particularly remembered "hearing chickens and hens" as she headed up to the boat deck, and how, when she reached the boat deck, "several of her friends, including Martin Gallagher, fell to their knees in prayer and recited the rosary."

Notes
Alternative spellings exist: "Ellie", "Ellen", "Helen", "Mocklare", "Mockler" etc.

Sources
Contract Ticket List, White Star Line 1912 (National Archives, New York; NRAN-21-SDNYCIVCAS-55[279]).
Worcester Telegram (Massachusetts), 1982
Titanic Commutator, Winter 1983
Noel Ray (1999) List of Passengers who Boarded RMS Titanic at Queenstown, April 11, 1912. The Irish Titanic Historical Society

Contributors
Robert L. Bracken, USA
Michael A. Findlay, USA
Noel Ray, Ireland