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This is an account of the events leading to the marriage of my mother, Gertrude Glenn of Magherafelt, Co. Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in the fall [autumn] of 1939. There are no family members alive today who can corroborate the details, so this story is told from memory, put to paper as best as I can recall from family accounts heard throughout my childhood.

My father, Samuel Black of Omagh, Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland, was in Bermuda with the British Admiralty, where he worked in communications. I do not know if he was commissioned or simply contracted by the Admiralty. In any case, prior to leaving Northern Ireland in early 1938 he proposed to my mother, a girl from a nearby town whom he did not know especially well.

Mother was older than Dad

Mother was older than Dad, her birth date being 11 January 1911 and his 7 November 1915. I suppose she considered herself a candidate for spinsterhood, but, a graduate of Queen’s University, Belfast, she enjoyed a very full life. She taught school and, in her spare time, excelled at field hockey and tennis, two of her greatest passions.

At 30, I suspect marriage and the prospect of sunny Bermuda held great promise, and so, during 1938, she planned and prepared her trousseau, furnishings and so on for the wedding, set for September 1939.

Atlantic crossing

As September approached, my grandmother became increasingly anxious. The gathering clouds of war gave her the facts she needed to dissuade my mother from making the risky Atlantic voyage.

But mother would pay no heed. She set out from Northern Ireland to Liverpool on the cross-channel steamer with all her worldly goods and the fresh innocence and idealism of a happy bride-to-be.

Sailing to a new life

Dad, my father and her husband to be, had arranged passage for her on the Athenia, due to sail on 3 September 1939. Upon arrival in Liverpool, mother transferred her goods and furnishings from the steamer to the Athenia and prepared for the 11pm sailing.

According to family history, the Athenia was to sail in a black-out, accompanied by an air and sea convoy. I often reflect on the courage and fortitude of my mother that night, travelling to a new life with no idea of what fate had in store for her, alongside her fellow passengers.

Emergency at home

At 6pm, a knock on her cabin door brought the purser with a telegram from my grandmother in Magherafelt. It read, ‘Emergency at home. Come at once.’ With communications severely restricted that week due to the breakout of the war, mother could not simply call from the ship to her village to clarify the situation. Besides, grandmother did not have a phone.

The Athenia was due to sail in a few hours. A hasty plan took shape. Through the purser, mother organised for her furnishings and goods to be delivered to Samuel Black in Hamilton, Bermuda, while she disembarked and made her way back to Northern Ireland that same night. Her intention was to satisfy my grandmother’s request, then take the next possible transportation to Bermuda to be married.

The sinking of the Athenia

Upon arrival in Magherafelt the next morning, mother was told by my grandmother that the Nazis had sunk the Athenia. Everyone and everything was lost at sea.

For years, I believed that all the ship’s passengers went down with the ship. Only recently have I come to realise that this was not the case. According to Ken Williams of Australia, there were many survivors, and they were taken to Galway. We hope to learn more about them and their stories.

The power of the intuition

When asked about the family emergency that had called my mother home at the eleventh hour, my grandmother explained it in terms of her fey intuition. She had felt she had no choice but to make the appeal, because she knew instinctively that something untoward was about to happen.

Mother, though grateful, was undaunted. Within the week she had organised her passage on a cargo vessel, one of some 12 passengers to make the reputedly wretched passage to Bermuda.

Marriage in Bermuda

When the Athenia went down, Dad initially thought the worst. Thankfully, he was advised, via family and Admiralty communications, that mother had not sailed with the ship.

On 20 September 1939, they were married in Bermuda. My family has a lovely photo of them both, in white-linen suits, standing in the famous Moongate at the old Bermudiana Hotel (which is now, I believe, the famous Princess Hotel in Hamilton).

A sense of courage and adventure

These are the facts as I know them, gleaned from my parents during my young years and no doubt coloured by the romance and adventure of the times. These facts are supported by contemporary documents in my possession, such as pay records, housing receipts, photographs of their days in Bermuda and other historical data. They tell a captivating story of two people who began their life together at the beginning of World War Two with a sense of courage and a spirit of adventure that remained with them throughout their lives.

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