A packed Jimmy MacCarthy concert, at Cork’s Opera House, where he sang “The Contender,” prompted a visit to the grave of Jack Doyle in Cobh’s Old Church Cemetery. Jimmy MacCarthy is one of Ireland’s most celebrated singer-songwriters. In addition to The Contender, he wrote some of the country’s best-known songs, including Mystic Lipstick, Ride On, No Frontiers and Katie. During the concert, Jimmy mentioned that after Doyle died penniless in London, a group of Cork people came together to bring his body home for burial in Cobh. That story prompted my visit to his grave.
Jack Doyle ( 1913 – 1978) , known as the “Gorgeous Gael,” was born at 12 Queen Street, Cobh. He rose to become one of Ireland and Britain’s best-known heavyweight boxers and challenged for the British heavyweight title in 1933. A boxer, film actor and celebrated tenor, Doyle married Hollywood actress Judith Allen in 1935, they later divorced, and he went on to marry Hollywood actress Movita Castaneda in 1939, who later married Marlon Brando. At his height, Doyle earned enormous sums of money but eventually lost his fortune and died in poverty in London. By the age of 30, he had earned and squandered an estimated £250,000, a fortune that would equate to roughly £15 million in today’s money. He lost his fortune, through his extravagant lifestyle, including gambling and heavy drinking. As Jimmy MacCarthy wrote in The Contender, “By the bottle live, by the bottle I will fall” a haunting reflection of Doyle’s descent from celebrity and wealth into alcoholism and poverty.
After he died in 1978, The Cork Ex-Boxers Association, with Cobh undertaker Peter Barry along with Frank and Pat O’Shea of the Commodore Hotel, helped bring his body home, and he was buried in Old Church Cemetery, Cobh.
His life story inspired Jimmy MacCarthy’s “The Contender”, which was also recorded by Christy Moore twenty five years ago.
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This historic graveyard is well worth a visit, not only to see the grave of Cobh’s own Jack Doyle, but also for its poignant connection to the First World War and the Lusitania tragedy. The great ocean liner was sailing from New York to Liverpool when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the Cork coast on 7 May 1915, sinking in just 18 minutes with the loss of almost 1,200 lives. Although the Lusitania was not due to call at Cobh, then known as Queenstown, the town became the centre of the rescue and recovery operation. Of the 289 bodies recovered, 169 were laid to rest in Old Church Cemetery, many in three mass graves, while 45 could not be identified at the time. It remains one of Cobh’s most striking reminders of the tragedy and of the town’s important place in the Lusitania story.
History buffs will also be interested in Old Church Cemetery because of the grave of Antarctic explorer Robert Forde (1875 to 1959), from Moviddy near Bandon. He was selected alongside Kerry’s Tom Crean for Captain Scott’s famous Terra Nova Antarctic Expedition of 1910 – 13. Severe frostbite forced Forde to return home early, a misfortune that may well have saved his life, as Scott and four companions later died on their return from the South Pole. Mount Forde in Antarctica was later named in his honour.
Another grave in this distinguished cemetery is Dr James Roche Verling (1787 to 1858), a Cobh-born surgeon who became Napoleon Bonaparte’s doctor during his exile on St Helena. Verling sailed onboard the HMS Northumberland when Napoleon was transported to the island in 1815 and served as his doctor there. He later returned home to Cobh, where he lived at Bella Vista, and today lies buried in Old Church Cemetery.
Located at Ticknock, opposite Cobh Wanderers, the historic Old Church Cemetery is one of the stops on Cobh’s Heritage Town Trail and is well worth checking out. For anyone interested in history, this old graveyard holds some remarkable stories and is the final resting place of people whose lives connect Cobh to events around the world.
Jimmy McCarthy’s last album THE SONG OF THE SINGING HORSEMAN is on sale now at all major Irish music retailers or goldendiscs.ie
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