Voices from the Titanic (80 page)

Smith, Senator William Alden
– Republican lawyer from Michigan who conducted the US Senate investigation into the
Titanic
disaster.

Snyder, John P.
– Born in Minneapolis, John Pillsbury Snyder, twenty-six, was returning to America on the
Titanic
with his new bride Nelle. Some newspapers reported that a crewman called out, ‘Put in the brides and grooms first' and so the couple felt justified in climbing into a lifeboat. After becoming a father of three, John P. Snyder died in 1959 while playing golf.

Stead, William T.
– British journalist and editor who was travelling to America to address a peace conference at the specific request of President Taft. A noted spiritualist, Stead may have foreseen his own death. For in 1892 he had written a novel,
From the Old World to the New
, in which a ship sank after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. In Stead's tale, survivors were picked up by a vessel captained by E. J. Smith. The captain of the
Titanic
was also named E. J. Smith.

Stengel, Charles Emil Henry
– Patent-leather manufacturer from Newark, New Jersey, who boarded at Cherbourg with his wife Annie. He was saved from the
Titanic
but died in 1914, aged fifty-six.

Stengel, Mrs Annie
– Forty-three-year-old wife of Charles Stengel, of whom she said in an interview: ‘The nearest thing I've ever known to Heaven on earth was meeting my husband again on the deck of the
Carpathia
.' She died in 1956.

Stone, Herbert
– Second Officer on the
Californian
and the watch officer between midnight and 4 a.m. on 15 April 1912.

Straus, Ida
– Elderly wife of Isidor Straus who co-owned Macy's department store in New York with his brother. Isidor had begun to slow down by 1912 and enjoyed travelling with his wife. They had decided that the perfect way to round off their spring holiday was to return home on the maiden voyage of the
Titanic
. She famously refused to escape the stricken ship in a lifeboat, preferring to stay and die with her beloved husband.

Thayer, John B.
– Second vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. The Thayer family had been in Berlin as guests of the United States Consul and returned home on the
Titanic
. On the fateful evening, they joined Captain Smith at a dinner party. John Borland Thayer died on the
Titanic
, but his wife Marion and son Jack survived.

Thayer, Jack
– Known as Jack, John Borland Thayer Jr was seventeen at the time of the disaster. Reunited with his mother on the
Carpathia
, he subsequently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and went into banking. He duly married but when his son Edward was killed while serving in the Pacific during the Second World War, Jack sank into depression and committed suicide in 1945.

Warren, Mrs Anna
– Sixty-year-old wife of Frank Warren with whom she had been on a tour of Europe. They boarded the
Titanic
at Cherbourg, but only she survived the sinking. A resident of Portland, Oregon, she became a prominent member of the Young Women's Christian Association and following her death in 1925, she left $14,000 to various religious organisations.

White Star Line
– Leading British steamship company, the owners of the
Titanic
. The White Star flag was first flown around 1850 by a line of sailing vessels which ferried hopeful British emigrants to Australia following the discovery of gold in that continent. Under the leadership of Thomas Henry Ismay, son of a Cumberland shipbuilder, the company concentrated on the more profitable transatlantic routes. Following Ismay's death in 1899, he was succeeded by his son, J. Bruce Ismay.

Widener, George
– Fifty-year-old head of a Philadelphia banking and railroad family with a personal wealth estimated at $30 million. His wife Eleanor travelled with a pearl necklace insured for $600,000, the equivalent of $4 million today. The Wideners had been staying at the Paris Ritz Hotel and had the distinction of hosting the last great dinner party aboard the
Titanic
– in honour of Captain Smith. George Widener and his twenty-seven-year-old son Harry were both lost in the tragedy.

Wilde, Henry Tingle
– Liverpool-born Chief Officer of the
Titanic
, switched from the
Olympic
at the last minute because of his knowledge of huge liners. It was he who suggested that the officers might need guns and ammunition to control the passengers. Thirty-nine-year-old Wilde went down with the ship.

Willard, Miss Constance
– A twenty-one-year-old from Duluth, Minnesota. At first she refused to get into a lifeboat whereupon the officer in charge said: ‘Don't waste time – let her go if she won't get in.' Finally she reconsidered. She never married and died in California in 1964.

Wright, Miss Marion
– Farmer's daughter Marion Wright from Yeovil, Somerset, boarded the
Titanic
as a second-class passenger at Southampton to sail to America to marry her sweetheart Arthur Woolcott. The latter had relocated to the US in 1907, initially as a draughts-man and then as an Oregon fruit farmer. The pair married in New York within a week of the disaster and stayed together on their Oregon farm for another fifty-three years, raising three sons. Arthur Woolcott died in 1961, his wife four years later at the age of eighty.

Young, Miss Marie
– An accomplished musician once employed as music teacher to Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, Ethel. She shared first-class quarters with Mrs J. Stuart White who remained in her cabin for the entire voyage. Miss Young's luggage included a number of valuable live chickens and she befriended one of the ship's carpenters, John Hutchinson, who took her below decks each day to check on the fowl. When she rewarded him with gold coins, he remarked: ‘It's such good luck to receive gold on a first voyage.' She died in 1959, aged eighty-three.