Titanic (30 page)

Joseph Boxhall

Joseph Boxhall, twenty-eight years old, was fourth officer on the
Titanic
. He came from a seafaring family and joined his first ship at the age of fifteen. He began working for the White Star Line in 1907 and met Charles Lightoller while serving on the
Oceanic
. He served in the Royal Navy Reserve during World War I and then returned to the White Star Line. Boxhall agreed to serve as a technical advisor for the 1958 film
A Night to Remember
. He died on April 25, 1967, and, according to his wishes, his ashes were scattered where he believed the ship had gone down. Joseph Boxhall’s voice can be heard in a BBC interview in 1962 at www.bbc.co.uk/archive/titanic/5049.shtml.

Harold Bride

Twenty-two-year-old Harold Bride of London was the junior wireless operator on the
Titanic
. He had completed his training as a Marconi operator in July 1911. He and senior wireless operator Jack Phillips were employed by the Marconi company. Bride managed to escape on Collapsible B but suffered injuries to his feet from the cold and his position on the lifeboat. He survived and, while on board the
Carpathia
,
helped operator Harold Cottam send personal messages from survivors. After the disaster, he continued to work as a wireless operator. He married in 1919 and had three children; his son was named Jack. Bride was deeply affected by the disaster and the death of Jack Phillips and it is said that he moved to Scotland to avoid the celebrity that came with his survivor status. Harold Bride died in 1956 at the age of sixty-six.

Margaret (“Molly”) Brown

Margaret Brown was born in Missouri in 1867 and later moved to Colorado, where she married Joseph (“J.J.”) Brown, who eventually became a rich and successful miner. A supporter of women’s rights, she ran for the U.S. Senate before women had the right to vote. She became chair of the survivor’s committee of the
Titanic
and continued to raise funds for victims of the disaster and speak out on issues close to her heart including education, women’s rights, and labor rights. The nickname “Unsinkable Molly Brown” came about after her death in 1932.

Francis (Father Frank) Browne

Frank Browne was born in Cork, Ireland, on July 3, 1880, making him almost thirty-two at the time of the
Titanic
’s sailing. He began studying to be a Jesuit priest in 1897, was ordained in 1915, and served in World War I as a chaplain. Father Browne was injured five times during his war service. A dedicated photographer, he is most famous for the photographs he took during the first days of the
Titanic
’s voyage before he departed at Queenstown, but by the end of his life he had collected nearly 42,000 photographs. He died in July 1960. His photographs and more information on Father Browne can be found at: www.titanicphotographs.com.

Charlotte Collyer

Thirty-one-year-old Charlotte Collyer traveled on the
Titanic
with her husband, Harvey, and eight-year-old daughter, Marjorie. She and her daughter were rescued in Lifeboat 14, but her husband died in the sinking. Everything Charlotte had was wiped out in the disaster, and she received some relief funds. Although Charlotte returned to England and remarried, she died from tuberculosis just two years later. Marjorie was sent to live with her uncle in Surrey until she married in 1927. She died in 1965.

May Futrelle

Lily May Futrelle, age thirty-five, of Scituate, Massachusetts, was traveling in first class with her husband, Jacques, who was a newspaper reporter and science fiction novelist. The couple had been traveling in Europe for several weeks while their children remained at home. May was rescued in Collapsible D, but her husband perished in the sinking. She died on October 29, 1967, at the age of ninety-one.

Frank Goldsmith

Nine-year-old Frank “Frankie” Goldsmith, from Strood, Kent, in England, was traveling third class with his parents. After the sinking, in which his father was lost, he and his mother settled near Detroit, Michigan. Frank married, and he and his wife, Vickie, had three children. He ran a photo supply store. Frank’s memoirs of the disaster,
Titanic Eyewitness: My Story,
were published in April 2007 by the
Titanic
Historical Society. Frank died on January 27, 1982.

Colonel Archibald Gracie

Archibald Gracie, born on January 17, 1859, was part of a wealthy New York family. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Gracie had just completed a book about the Civil War and was returning from a vacation in Europe when he boarded the
Titanic
as a first class passenger. He survived by swimming to Collapsible B. Almost immediately after the sinking, Gracie began working on an account of the disaster, entitled
The Truth About the Titanic
, which was published in 1913. Gracie himself did not live to see its publication. He died on December 4, 1912, apparently of complications from diabetes. It is also thought that his health suffered because of the exposure he underwent the night of the sinking.

Henry Harper

Aged forty-eight, Henry Harper was a first class passenger on his way home to New York. He was the grandson of Joseph Harper, one of the founders of a major American publishing firm. He was traveling with his wife, Myra; a young Egyptian servant and guide from Cairo named Hammad Hassab; and the family’s Pekinese, Sun Yat-Sen. The entire party, including the dog, were rescued in Lifeboat 3. Henry Harper returned to the family business and died on March 1, 1944.

Esther and Eva Hart

Esther Hart was traveling with her seven-year-old daughter, Eva, and husband, Benjamin, to Canada in second class. Eva and her mother were rescued in Lifeboat 14, but Benjamin perished. Following their arrival in New York, they returned to England, where Eva had been born. Esther Hart remarried, and died when Eva was twenty-three. Eva was an active
Titanic
survivor, speaking out about her strong memories of hearing the screams of the victims and about the lack of lifeboats. To listen to a BBC radio interview with Eva Hart that aired on April 11, 1987, go to www.bbc.co.uk/archive/titanic/5058.shtml. Eva died in 1996 at the age of ninety-one.

Samuel Hemming

Lamp trimmer Samuel Hemming, gone to sea at age fifteen, had been working for the White Star Line for about five years. Forty-three at the time of the disaster, he served as a lamp trimmer on board the ship. Hemming assisted with the loading of lifeboats and was plucked from the water by Lifeboat 4. He died in 1928.

J. Bruce Ismay

Joseph Bruce Ismay, the son of Thomas Henry Ismay, owner of the White Star Line, was born in England in 1862. He began working for the White Star Line as an apprentice and also served as the company agent in New York. Married in 1888, he and his wife had four children. After several years in New York, he returned to England in 1891 and became a partner in the firm. When his father died in 1899, he became managing director of the company, which eventually became part of J. P. Morgan’s International Mercantile Maritime Company (IMM). Sometime in 1907, Ismay and Lord Pirrie, a partner in the Belfast shipbuilding firm of Harland and Wolff, decided to build the Olympic class of ships, more luxurious than anything existing at the time. Ismay made a practice of going on the maiden voyage of his ships. At the time of the
Titanic
’s sinking, h
e
famously jumped into Collapsible C, for which he was widely criticized at the time. In 1913, Ismay resigned from the company and largely withdrew from public life.

Violet Jessop

Born in 1887 in Argentina, where her Irish parents had immigrated, Violet Jessop returned with her mother and five younger siblings to Great Britain after her father’s death. The eldest of six children, Violet left school to become a stewardess to help support the family. She served on three White Star Line ships — first on the
Olympic
, then on the
Titanic
’s maiden voyage, and lastly on the
Britannic
. She was rescued in Lifeboat 16. During World War I, she served as a nurse and was on board the
Titanic
’s sister ship, the
Britannic
, when it was sunk in 1916. She died in 1971.

Charles Joughin

Chief baker on the
Titani
c, Charles Joughin was born in Liverpool on August 3, 1878. He had served on the
Olympic
before joining the
Titanic
, where he had thirteen bakers working under him. He reported to the British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry that he sent thirteen men up with four loaves of bread each to put in the lifeboats after the collision. Joughin is known for his extraordinary survival story; he claimed to be in the water for over two hours. Although he reported that he had a “drop” of liquor in his cabin, in the film
A Night to Remember
he is shown as being drunk, providing comic relief. Joughin was eventually rescued in Collapsible B. He continued to work on ships and died on December 9, 1956.

Charles Herbert Lightoller

Thirty-eight-year-old Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller was the most senior surviving officer of the
Titanic.
He went to sea at age thirteen, and by twenty-one had already survived a shipwreck and a cyclone. He took a break from the sea for adventures that included prospecting for gold in the Klondike and being a cowboy in Canada, then joined the White Star Line in 1900. Lightoller took an active role in helping to load the lifeboats, and as the ship was sinking, was able to save himself on Collapsible B. He served as commander of a destroyer in World War I. “Lights,” as he was nicknamed, died on December 8, 1952. His voice can be heard in a 1936 interview with the BBC at: www .bbc.co.uk/archive/titanic/5047.shtml.

Harold G. Lowe

Fifth Officer Harold Lowe, age twenty-nine, had been at sea since he ran away from home at the age of fourteen. Originally from Wales, he had been with the White Star Line for a little more than a year; this was his first North Atlantic crossing. After the
Titanic
struck the iceberg, Lowe was in charge of Lifeboat 14, and kept five lifeboats together and organized a party to return to the site where the ship had sunk to search for survivors. Lowe was married in 1913 and the couple had two children. He continued his career at sea and was made a commander in the Royal Naval Reserve in World War I. He died on May 12, 1944.

Pierre Maréchal

A twenty-eight-year-old Frenchman who boarded the
Titanic
as a first class passenger at Cherbourg on April 10, Pierre Maréchal was a businessman who was playing cards with friends in the Café Parisien when the collision took place. He was rescued in Lifeboat 7. Along with two other French survivors, Alfred Omont and Paul Chevré, he wrote an account of his experiences, which was sent to France for publication. In it he said that the only item he had saved was a Sherlock Holmes book. Helen Bishop, another passenger in Lifeboat 7, is reported to have said that Monsieur Maréchal never removed his monocle, even while rowing.

Ernst Persson

Ernst Persson was a twenty-five-year-old chauffeur from Stockholm, Sweden, traveling to the United States as a third class passenger. He escaped in Lifeboat 15, but his sister, Elna Strom, and two-year-old niece, Telma (sometimes spelled “Selma”), who had been visiting family in Sweden, were lost in the sinking. Ernst moved to Indiana, where he lived with his widowed brother-in-law, Wilhelm, and became a bricklayer. His wife and children joined him later in 1912. Ernst Persson, who changed his last name to “Pearson,” died on October 17, 1951.

Arthur H. Rostron

Nearly forty-three, Arthur Rostron had already been at sea for thirty years. He went to work for the Cunard Line in 1895, subsequently serving on several different ships. In January 1912, he was given command of the
Carpathia
, which regularly traveled between New York and Italy. Awakened by wireless operator Harold Cottam, Rostron immediately went to the
Titanic
’s aid, becoming one of the heroes of the disaster. He later received a silver cup from the survivors and was invited to the White House to meet President Taft. He continued to command Cunard ships, served as a ship captain for troop and hospital ships in World War I, and in 1926 was named a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He retired in 1931 and died in 1940 at the age of seventy-one.

Elizabeth Shutes

Forty-year-old Elizabeth Shutes (her name is also sometimes spelled “Shute”) from New York was traveling on the
Titanic
as a governess to first class passenger Margaret Graham. Elizabeth was rescued from Lifeboat 3. Her personal account of the sinking was included in Colonel Gracie’s book. She died in 1949.

E. J. Smith

Born in England in 1850, sixty-two-year-old Edward John Smith, the
Titanic
’s captain, began his sea career at the age of thirteen. He had been with the White Star Line since 1880, and received his first command seven years later at the age of thirty-seven. The most popular White Star captain, he was a natural to be chosen to command the
Titanic
on her maiden voyage. Captain Smith was last seen on the bridge of the
Titanic.

Jack Thayer

Seventeen at the time of the sinking, high-school student Jack Thayer traveled in first class with his parents, John B. and Marian Thayer. Separated from them, he managed to survive by leaping from the ship and swimming to Collapsible B. His father, a vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, perished, but Jack was reunited with his mother on board the
Carpathia
. He went on to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, married, and had two sons. He later became vice president and treasurer of the university. After the death of his son Edward in World War II, Jack Thayer apparently became deeply depressed. He took his own life in September 1945.