Name
Lifeboat from Titanic
Lifeboat to Carpathia
Confidence Level
Daly, Miss Margaret
15 15 4.83


Margaret Daly did not give a detailed account of her escape from Titanic.  However, details can be gleaned from the accounts of fellow Third Class passengers, including her cousin Eugene Daly and friend Bertha Mulvihill, who she was traveling with.

Eugene Daly wrote the following letter to his sister in Ireland, which was published in the Daily Sketch on May 4, 1912:
    “We went to the deck but there were no boats going off.  Then we went to the second cabin deck.  A boat was being lowered there.  It was being filled with women.  Maggie and Bertha got in, and I got in.  The officer called on me to go back, but I got in.  Life was sweet to me and I wanted to save myself.  They told me to get out but I didn’t stir.  Then they got hold of me and pulled me out…”

Daly’s account states that Margaret Daly and Bertha Mulvihill were rescued in the same lifeboat.  Margaret wrote a letter home to her sister that partially corroborates Eugene Daly’s account, and which appeared in the Cork Examiner on May 7, 1912:
    “I thought I had a hard fight but I would never have been saved only for Eugene.  He fought very hard for our lives…”

Bertha Mulvihill oddly does not mention Margaret Daly in her press accounts, although in conversation with her children, she did mention being in the same lifeboat as Margaret.  Bertha’s account, as it appears in The Sunday Tribune on April 28, 1912, specifically states that she was rescued in boat #15:
    “‘...a number of women seated in rocking chairs and calmly rocking away as they waited on the deck.  They were on the starboard side and as the boat in which I left the ship, No. 15, was the last boat lowered on that side of the ship, I believe they must have perished when the steamer went down!’
    Mrs. Mulvehill (sic) escaped through her own exertions, aided by a young man (Daly) whose acquaintance she made on board ship and who lives in Brooklyn…
    ‘…We had to wait until boat 13 was launched ahead of ours and I saw in the newspaper accounts that we nearly swamped them.’

This account incorrectly states that Mulvihill met Eugene Daly on Titanic, when in fact, they were traveling together.  Mulvihill confirmed her presence in #15 in later accounts as well.

Since there are no known direct statements from Margaret Daly describing her escape, we must rely on the accounts of her traveling companions, Eugene Daly and Bertha Mulvihill, to determine which lifeboat she was in.  Since we concluded that the evidence strongly indicates that Mulvihill was in #15, and Eugene Daly’s account supports Margaret being in the same boat as her, we concluded that she was also very likely in #15.