Daniel Buckley

Daniel Buckley, Jr. was the son of Daniel Buckley, Sr., the town's baker,(b. 1863) and Abigail O'Sullivan (b. 1865) of Boherbue, Cork.[1][2] His father died on November 22, 1902 and the family moved to Ballydesmond (then Kingwilliamstown). It was common to travel from England, Scotland, or Ireland to the United States by ship. Two of his siblings already left for the United States when, on September 14, 1907, his sister Catherine and half-sister Jane Mary O'Sullivan sailed on the RMS Lucania to New York City and were employed as domestic servants. Daniel Buckley also felt that he could have a better life in the United States.[3] By 1912, he organized a group of cousins and friends to make the long transatlantic voyage on the RMS Titanic.

As Buckley slept in a third-class cabin near the ship's bow, he could hear the sound of the crash when the ship hit an iceberg. He immediately thought that something was wrong, although his bunk-mates did not initially believe it was serious, when he turned on the light they could see ankle-deep seawater on the floor. Buckley went up to the boat deck and was among a group of steerage passengers who forced their way through the locked gate. He forgot his lifebelt and saw a first class passenger had two lifebelts. Daniel asked for the spare and the man helped him put it on. Daniel made his way up to the lifeboat station. He testified that he made himself useful helping to put women and children in at least five lifeboats. He was standing by a lifeboat when some of the men jumped in a lifeboat. Daniel made a quick decision to jump in with them. Two officers ordered the men to get out, supposedly at gunpoint. However, Buckley testified that he started to cry and a female passenger took pity on him. She threw a shawl over his head to disguise him as a woman. She pushed him down to hide him in the bottom of the boat (Boat 13).[3] He believed that his savior was Madeleine Astor, though according to historical record, she was in another lifeboat (Boat 4).

On May 3, 1912, less than a month after the Titanic disaster, Buckley appeared before the United States Senate as part of an investigation into the ship's sinking.[3] Questioned by Senator William Alden Smith, Buckley's testimony, one of the few third class passengers called to testify, provided the unique perspective of a steerage passenger. Many decades later, his testimony was influential in shaping several of the steerage scenes of filmmaker James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster film, Titanic.

After his safe arrival in the United States, Buckley settled in Manhattan, where he worked in a hotel.[4] In June 1917, two months after the American entry into World War I, he joined the United States Army. He was assigned to the 69th Infantry Regiment, which included many other Irish-Americans. After undergoing basic training at Camp Mills, Long Island, Buckley arrived in France on the Western Front in the fall of 1917 with Company "K" of the 165th Infantry Regiment (which the 69th Regiment had been reconstituted as), amongst the first soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) to arrive there. He was slightly wounded on March 21, 1918. On 15 October 1918, just under a month before the Armistice with Germany which ended the war, Buckley was killed in action by a sniper while helping to retrieve wounded soldiers on the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. He was initially buried in France, but his remains were taken to Ireland in the spring of 1919.[5]

Buckley is also credited as having written Sweet Kingwilliamstown, a folk song of the Sliabh Luachra region in Munster, Ireland.[2]

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