I wrote this song in 1980 while working on an RTE programme called 'My Ireland', a series of shows with and Irish theme running through them and presented by a different singer each week.
As I was well known for my singing of songs dealing with the curse of emigration, my programme was called 'The Emigrant Island'. It dealt with the many different reasons why Irish people had to leave the land of their birth down through the years to try and make a better life for themselves on some foreign shore.
The story is set in 1912 and is about a young man who has grown tired and frustrated with the poverty and the hard times of Ireland at that time. Like millions of people before him, he decides to leave it all behind.
With hopes and dreams of a new life in America, and with his young bride on his arm, he boards the doomed Titanic in Queenstown and sails away to meet his fate in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic.
Of course, the character of John Williams is fictional and you wont find his name on the ship's manifest, either as a victim or survivor. I intended him to be symbolic of the mostly forgotten passengers travelling in steerage who suffered the greatest number of casualties.