Old Church Cemetery (Cobh)

Jack Doyle's grave

Sinking of RMS Lusitania Memorial

The Old Church Cemetery is an ancient cemetery on the outskirts of the town of Cobh, County Cork, Ireland which contains a significant number of important burials, including a number 3 mass graves and several individual graves containing the remains of 193^[1] victims of the passenger ship RMS Lusitania which was sunk by a German torpedo off the Old Head of Kinsale during the First World War in May 1915 with the loss of more than 1,100 lives. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission register and maintain the graves of 127 identified Commonwealth service personnel (including Lusitania victims) from the same war.^[2]

Notable burials

• Jack Doyle, (1913-1978) - boxer, singer and actor.
• Dr James Roche Verling, (1787-1858) - personal physician to Napoleon Bonaparte during his exile on St. Helena
• Robert Forde, (1875-1959)- Antarctic explorer
• Frederick Daniel Parslow, (1856-1915) posthumous recipient of the Victoria Cross and first member of British Mercantile Marine to receive the award.
• Captain Thomas Brierley, awarded a medal for his part in rescue of survivors from RMS Lusitania.
• Charles Wolfe (1791–1823) poet, remembered for "The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna"
• Six members of the crew of the British submarine HMS A5 which was destroyed in an accidental explosion at nearby Haulbowline Naval Base in February 1905.
• Louis Piatt (1876–1884), son of American poets John James Piatt and Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt; drowned in a boating accident in Cork Harbor.

References