Of course the thing to consider with much family history, as remembered and re-told many years after the event, is that facts can get distorted. Stories become buffed-up to better reflect the long lost loved one and, can often depart from the absolute truth.

Actually, memory definitely has a "use by date"

That is why the "true account as told to me" shown here is actually not wholly true.

Captain James Martin is my GGF and he was the Master of the Abydos on this voyage when it was lost with all hands off the southern coast of IoM.

Where family history and fact part company is that this vessel was not bound for America but the north coast of Italy (Carrying Coal)

It was a cruel quirk of fate that put him at the helm of the Abydos on that doomed voyage. The usual incumbent became ill and was too sick to make the voyage.
Captain Martin had his Masters Ticket and was asked to take over. So in fact it was his first trip as Master of the Abydos not his last, but of course it would prove to be so.

Both my Grandparents immediate families lived on the Wirral at the time, so Captain Martin would not normally have been sailing out of Glasgow. Unless of course he had previously taken a different vessel there from either Liverpool or Birkenhead.

I suppose that all these years later, as his family, the only thing we really know for sure is that he was the Master of the SS Abydos, it foundered off the IoM and he is buried in the Churchyard at Kilmuckridge, Ireland. All the rest is just so much conjecture.