Calls from readers who have memorabilia associated with the Lusitania continue to reach the column. The latest concerns an ashtray. "My father used to stub out his cigarettes in it," remembers a reader. The ashtray washed up along the Garryvoe/Ballycotton shoreline in east Cork around the time of the liner's sinking.
It left its finder, Eily Hilliard, from Midleton, in no doubt about what she had stumbled on. Although only 14 at the time, she knew she was looking at an ashtray that had been used on board the Lusitania.
All the evidence was there. It bore the red crest of the great liner, and in the raised trough of the ashtray the legend RMS Lusitania. Eily Hilliard was born in 1899. Her daughter, Eileen Byrne, from Glanthaune near Cork, still has the ashtray in her safe-keeping. It was cast in brass.
Her mother was a keen swimmer and would cycle down to the beach for a dip. Her find was made in and around the time the ship went under on May 7th, 1915. Eileen Byrne is a smoker, but unlike her late father, Jim Lyons, she no longer uses it to snuff out her last puffs.
She used to polish it but has now been advised not to interfere with it in any way. Most likely it would fetch a fine price. Would she sell it? "Never." Her idea is to pass it along the family chain to her grandchildren.
In the meantime, she may give it on loan to an institution like the Heritage Centre in Cobh. It is, she says, a treasured thing and would never leave the family.