Delia McDermott was a farmer's daughter.

One of four living children, Delia (whose first name was actually Bridget) was born in Addergoole, Co. Mayo, Ireland, in March of 1881.

Delia had planned to visit her cousin, Maria, who had emigrated to St. Louis, Missouri. Emigration via passenger ships had incentivized a thriving network of local businesses who purveyed in tickets for such trips. According to the BBC, "Ticket agents went door to door, shops of every kind sold tickets and even schoolteachers supplemented their income selling passage on the White Star Line" around Ireland.

Delia McDermott turned to Thomas Durcan, one of the ticket brokers (then called a "shipping agent"), and purchased a steerage ticket for the maiden voyage of Titanic.

At age 31, Delia McDermott was at last emigrating to America.

Some days prior to her scheduled departure, Delia made her way into the town of Crossmina to buy herself some proper garments for her journey.

Somewhere along the way, she had been assured that all the fancy ladies in America wore fine hats.

It was certainly a splurge. Whether with her own funds or, as some retellings have it, with the help of her mother, Delia left Crawley's shop in Crossmina with a very fancy hat.

It was her pride and joy. Reflecting on the matter, Delia's daughter is reported to have said, "Hats being what they were in those days, it was no doubt a huge expenditure for her family and it was a going-away gift."

But according to family lore, Delia's joy was snuffed out that very evening before she departed for Queenstown, when a stranger greeted her with foreboding.

However unnerved she may have been, the next day Delia McDermott set out for the port of Queenstown in spite of the stranger's augury.

At Queenstown, Delia met up with the others in her party who had also purchased tickets via ticket agent Thomas Durcan; there were fourteen of them in all, including herself.

The group would thereafter be called The Addergoole Fourteen.

There is no record of how the Addergoole Fourteen might have spent that final night ashore before embarking on Titanic on April 11th.

On the night of the iceberg strike, Delia and her cabin-mates were already in their beds. They reportedly felt nothing of the crash.

A steward then came to their cabin and insisted that the ladies rise, get dressed, and get up topside to the boat deck; he also reassured them that there was no danger. Delia reportedly remembered that unidentified officers and/or crew had kept passengers at bay, informing them that preparations were not yet ready.

Yet--somehow--Delia was an early arrival to the lifeboats. She readily took her seat.

And then promptly forfeited it.

Because, once seated in the lifeboat, Delia realized in a panic that she had left what might have been her most precious possession--her prized hat--behind in her cabin.

So she jumped from the lifeboat back onto boat deck, and made her way down into steerage, where cabins had begun flooding. All in order to salvage the hat.

Having done so, Delia then had to find her way back up top.

And quite miraculously, she did.

With the aid of two men named John Rourke and Pat Canavan, both of the Addergoole Fourteen, Delia and other steerage girls were saved. The group was shepherded to the upper decks via a ladder that Pat and John had discovered while exploring the ship in the days prior.

Back on the boat deck, Delia McDermott somehow found her way to another lifeboat. According to Delia's niece, "[Saving her hat] was perhaps a foolish thing to do, but luckily she managed to get a place in another boat. She had to jump 15 feet from a rope ladder onto the lifeboat. At this stage the Titanic was sideways. It was going down."

The lifeboat that saved Delia McDermott, while not conclusively identified, is often speculated to have been Lifeboat 13.

Delia went on to successfully settle in the United States. She married a man from Co. Galway, Ireland, who had emigrated around 1915, and the new family made their home in New Jersey.

Of the Addergoole Fourteen, Delia McDermott was one of only three to survive the sinking of the Titanic.

Back home in Ireland, Thomas Durcan contacted the White Star Line and confirmed the devastating losses to their distressed families.

In such a small community, mostly everyone was intertwined with one another via family or dear friendship.

Grief decimated the village.

The loss was profound, even financially.

Most Addergoole families had no means to reimburse the funds they might have borrowed to facilitate the emigration on Titanic, where they had invested all their hopes. Many could not afford to spend further money to attempt another family member's emigration.

"The delicate chain of emigration," writes BBC News, "was broken."

There was little, if any, financial reprieve. Thomas Durcan and a Mrs. Walsh worked desperately for remediation to help the bereft families, lobbying the White Star Line and even the Lord Mayor of London. There appears to be no record of their success in these matters.

As for Delia McDermott, she reportedly rarely spoke of Titanic other than to admit she had gone back for her hat. Her children were forbidden from asking her anything about it.

And, refusing to ever cross the ocean again, she never returned to Ireland.

She died in 1959.