Blue Sea Glass

“Come on, Greatgran, hurry up! We are going to miss some treasure.”

“You go ahead, dear, and start the search. I’ll sit here on this old dune for a bit. Bring me what treasures you find.”

“Okay!”

And with that, twelve-year-old Aggie ran off to explore the now-quiet shoreline that, only twelve hours before, had been the scene of a tumultuous Atlantic coastal storm that had socked the Cape with strong winds, heavy rain, and waves ten to fifteen feet high. As was often the case with such storms, the following day dawned clear, bright, and calm, leaving behind on the beach loads of driftwood, plastic bags, old bottles, shells, and sometimes beautiful pieces of glass. It was called “sea glass” because years of churning in the ocean had left these bits of glass and porcelain polished and smooth, and usually just the right size for making jewelry or simply collecting in a clear glass bottle to be set in the kitchen window.

Eighty-one-year-old Muriel Sullivan reached the top of a sand dune, laid out her blanket, and watched her great-granddaughter carefully survey the beach near the tide line. From time to time, Aggie would stoop, pick up something, and place it into her small bucket.

As she sat there, Muriel looked out across the now-calm sea, eastward toward Ireland, where she had been born at the end of the nineteenth century. It was also in that direction that, on a night in April 1912, young Muriel’s life had changed forever.

Muriel’s father, Dr. Augustus Murphy, and his brother, Herbert, also a doctor, had decided to make a trip from their home in Cork, Ireland, to New York and from there to Boston to attend an international medical conference. The only hesitation Dr. Murphy had about the trip was what to do with his fifteen-year-old daughter. Her mother had died in childbirth ten years before; the newborn child had died as well, leaving Augustus a widower with a young daughter to raise. Out of devotion to his late wife’s memory, and because of the demands of his career as chief of surgery at Cork’s largest hospital, he would not consider remarriage. With the help of his sister-in-law, Herbert’s wife, who had two children of her own, Augustus raised Muriel himself.

So, it was decided that, at fifteen, she was old enough to travel with her father and uncle. They had cousins in Boston with whom Muriel could stay while the two doctors attended the conference. Then the three of them would do a bit of sightseeing in America: Niagara Falls, New York City, and the nation’s capital in Washington. This was the first trip across the Atlantic for any of them, so they booked two staterooms on the maiden voyage of the new and state-of-the-art liner, the RMS Titanic, from Queenstown, in Cork Harbour, to New York.

Muriel still remembered the day of departure and got their first look at the massive vessel anchored offshore and were carried out to the Titanic aboard a tender. It was huge and powerful, with its four stacks towering above the ship. Once on board, they were amazed by the luxury: multiple dining rooms, beautifully appointed staterooms and, everywhere one looked, uniformed staff, well-dressed and beautiful people. It was a different world. When Muriel was told that the ship carried more than 2,200 passengers and crew, she was afraid the whole ship would sink. But the Titanic had been described as ‘unsinkable,’ which made her feel safer. The appellation would prove incorrect before they arrived in New York.

As she sat there, lost in her thoughts of the sad and ill-fated voyage, Muriel recalled one small aspect of the ship that had caught her eye from the moment she first noticed it and that, over the years, would return to her in moments of reverie: a small stained-glass window alongside one of the staircases. It was a picture of a young woman, probably about Muriel’s age at the time, walking on the waves and looking upward, with one arm outstretched as if grasping for something just outside the picture. The young lady wore a dress of the most unusual color of blue—not indigo or turquoise, but an iridescent sea blue with a touch of green. Muriel told her father that she’d like to have a dress that color someday, and he told her that, after the conference, they would see if they could find one in one of the grand department stores in New York.

That never happened.

Her father and uncle never made it to the conference, and Muriel was one of seven hundred and twelve survivors of the sinking of that great ship. She was taken aboard the RMS Carpathia with the other survivors and brought to New York, where she was placed in temporary shelter. After several days, a cousin arrived from Boston to ‘claim’ her.

For a while, the plan was to send her back to Cork. White Star Line was being very generous in accommodating the survivors and their families and offered complimentary transportation back to Europe to anyone who wished to return. After some thought and discussion with Muriel herself, it was decided that she could stay with her Boston cousins, at least until she could recover from some of the grief and trauma of what she had been through. She had as much family in Boston as she did in Ireland, and the city was more interesting to a young woman than Cork. After several exchanges of letters and visits with U.S. immigration officials, it was settled that Muriel could remain with her relatives in Boston.

She never returned to Ireland.

She completed her education in Boston, met and married a good-looking boy from the local Irish community, became an American citizen, and watched most of the twentieth century pass by from her home in the working-class town of Arlington, Massachusetts.

Suddenly, Muriel was shocked out of her thoughts by her great-granddaughter running up the sand dune, her pail rattling with the sound of newly found “beach treasures.”

“Oh, Greatgran, I’m so glad we came this morning. There are a lot of things washed up on the beach, and I found some really lovely treasures.”

“Well, dear, let me see what you found.”