RMS Titanic Book 2

Edward Pomeroy Colley

April 15th, 1875 - April 15th, 1912

He is a Aries.

Edward Pomeroy Colley was born in Celbridge, Co Mildare, Ireland from a well-to-do Anglo-Irish Church of Ireland family and his parents were Henry Fitzgerald Colley (born 1827), a magistrate and landowner, and Elizabeth Isabella Wingfield (born 1832) who had married in Abbeyleix, Queen's County (modern-day Co Laois) on August 12th, 1858 before seemingly settling in Lucan, Dublin where several of their children were born. Edward's known siblings were: Elizabeth Maria (1860 - 1895; later Frederick Selwyn Copleston), Florence Isabella (1864 - 1912; later Mrs. Henry Cole Bowen), George Pomeroy Arthur (1866 - 1933), Laura Emily (1867 - 1942), William Wingfield (1868 - 1947), Gerald Henry Pomeroy (1870 - 1924), Constance Helena (1871 - 1912), and Gertrude Theodosia (1873 - 1934; later Mrs. Albert Arthur Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes).

The Colley family had established itself in Ireland in the 16th century and served under Henry VIII through Elizabeth I. His grandfather, George Francis Colley (1797 - 1879) was a commander in the Royal Navy and was the 3rd son of the 4th Viscount Haberton, John Pomeroy (1758 - 1823). His uncle George Pomeroy Colley (1835 - 1881) was a highly decorated British Army Officer who became the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Natal and High Commissioner for South Eastern Africa. He was later killed by Boers in 1881. Edward, through Gertrude, is the great-great uncle of Joseph and Ralph Fiennes; they are the grandsons of Gertrude's son Maurice (1907 - 1994), an English industrialist. By Florence he is the uncle of novelist Elizabeth Bowen.

It's believed that Edward grew up in Mount Temple Dublin. His father died on November 24th, 1866 and his mother on November 18th, 1903, born in Dublin. Elizabeth, who married a civil servant based in India, died in 1895. A graduate of Dublin University and a civil engineer, during the Klondike Gold Rush Edward opened a mining brokerage firm in Vancouver, British Columbia and successfully speculated in mining stocks and and surveyed Yukon for miners. He had business interests on both sides of the Atlantic and frequently travelled between Dublin and a home on Vancouver Island in Victoria's affluent English Bay neighborhood. He remained unmarried but it's believed that he had affection to a woman in Victoria but feared his family would disprove of the match.

He appears on the 1901 Canadian census at a lodger in Victoria, British Columbia following which he appears on the 1911 Irish census living at the home of his deaf brother George, a landowner and magistrate, at an house on Orwell Road in Rathmines, Dublin. Later that year he travelled back across the Atlantic aboard the RMS Lusitania, arriving in New York on April 14th, 1911. He is believed to have returned to Ireland for Christmas of 1911. Whilst still in Ireland Constance, an unmarried woman medical practitioner working in Oxfordshire, died on February 15th, 1912 and was buried in Folkestone, Kent 2 days later; he possibly journeyed in England to help settle her estate and it seems he remained there until April of 1912. A few days before sailing he went to see the George Bernard Shaw play Man and Superman in the West End. 

Aboard Titanic/April 14th-15th, 1912:
Edward planned to return to Vancouver to work as a consultant to the prominent British Columbia industrialist James Dunsmuir. Presumedly, because of season-changing, he boarded the RMS Titanic at Southampton and occupied cabin E-58. Whilst aboard he wrote a letter to his sister-in-law Edith, the wife of his brother George. Onboard he and 4 other men attached themselves to American socialite Mrs. Helen Candee Churchill and the group became known as her "coterie". Little is known about Edward, but one passenger recalled he was "a roly poly Irishman who laughed a lot but said little." On the night of the sinking he attended a concert in the 1st class reception area on D-Deck and retired to his cabin just before 11:00 PM.

On the morning of April 15th, Edward turned 37. He was lost in the sinking and his body, if recovered, was never identified. George Colley travelled across the Atlantic aboard the RMS Adriatic, departing from Liverpool on July 5th, 1912. Florence died 5 months later on September 23rd, 1912. George died in Dublin on February 23rd, 1933. Several of his siblings died in London; Gerald on November 12th, 1923, George Henry Pomeroy on February 23rd, 1924; and Gertrude on November 12th, 1934. Laura spent her final days as a spinster in Harpenden, Hertfordshire where she died on February 26th, 1942. William, who had become a congregational minister, died in London on April 7th, 1947.

Sources:
www.encyclopedia-titanica.org

Rest In Peace Edward Pomeroy Colley.

Note: Ralph Fiennes is the voice of Ramses from The Prince of Egypt. Joseph Fiennes is the voice of Proteus from Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. Holy fucking shit.