Voices from the Titanic

by Geoff Tibballs

  McGough, James – A thirty-sex-year-old buyer from Philadelphia who boarded at Southampton and shared first-class cabin E25 with fellow buyer John Flynn. Both men survived the sinking, McGough returning to live in Philadelphia until his death in 1937.

  Mersey, Lord – Head of the British Court of Inquiry into the Titanic disaster.

  Meyer, Mrs Leila – While holidaying in Europe with her husband Edgar J. Meyer, twenty-five-year-old Leila received a cable informing her that her father, prominent New York merchant Andrew Saks, had died on 9 April 1912. The couple, who had been married for just over two years, made immediate plans to return home for the funeral and booked a reservation on the first available ship – the Titanic. They boarded at Cherbourg. She survived and was reunited with their young daughter who had stayed behind in the US, but he was lost at sea. Mrs Meyer later remarried and died in 1957.

  Millet, Frank D. – The son of a Massachusetts surgeon, Frank Millet became city editor of the Boston Courier before embarking on a career as an artist. He won a gold medal in only his second year as a student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and went on to earn great acclaim. Sixty-five-year-old Millet accompanied Major Butt on board the Titanic and met the same fate. In a letter to a friend posted from Queenstown, he wrote of his fellow passengers: ‘Queer lot of people on the ship. There are a number of obnoxious, ostentatious American women, the scourge of any place they infest and worse on shipboard than anywhere.’

  Minahan, Miss Daisy – A thirty-three-year-old schoolteacher from Green Bay, Wisconsin, the daughter of Irish immigrants. She travelled first-class on the ill-fated liner with her doctor brother William and sister-in-law Lillian. Dr Minahan went down with the ship. His last words to his wife and sister were: ‘Be brave.’ Daisy never recovered from her ordeal and less than a month later was admitted to a sanatorium to be treated for pneumonia. She moved to Los Angeles but died there in 1919.

  Mocklare, Miss Ellen – Hailing from Galway, Ellen Mocklare was sailing to New York to join her sisters Bridget and Margaret. She went on to work for the National Biscuit Company in New York before becoming a nun in 1917. Taking the name Sister Mary Patricia, she moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, where she taught in a number of schools. She died in a retired nun’s convent on 1 April 1984, her ninety-fifth birthday.

  Moody, James P. – Born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, twenty-four-year-old Moody was the Titanic’s Sixth Officer. He was last seen at 2.18 a.m. by Second Officer Lightoller trying to launch the collapsible boats.

  Morgan, John Pierpont – Aggressive American steel tycoon who acquired the White Star Line in 1902 and was thus the real owner of the Titanic. Morgan curiously backed out of the ship’s maiden voyage at the last minute, citing ill health. But two days after the disaster a reporter tracked the seventy-five-year-old down to a hotel in France where he was found to be in perfectly good health and enjoying the company of his French mistress. However, Morgan died the following year.

  Murdoch, William – Scottish-born First Officer of the Titanic. forty-one-year-old Murdoch took over on the bridge from Second Officer Lightoller at 10 p.m. on 14 April and issued the orders which avoided a head-on collision with the iceberg. He was last seen, in the company of Chief Officer Wilde, trying to free one of the collapsible boats, and it is believed that he went down with the ship. However some accounts state that Murdoch committed suicide on the bridge by shooting himself because he felt he was partly to blame for the collision, and when this suggestion was repeated in James Cameron’s Titanic movie, residents of Murdoch’s home town – Dalbeattie – were angered by the slur on his character and demanded an apology.

  Navratil, Michel – The last male survivor of the Titanic, he died in January 2001 at his home in Nice at the age of ninety-two. Four-year-old Michel and his brother Edmond were travelling on the Titanic with their Czech father under the names of Hoffman because his father was separated from his French wife and did not have permission to take the children to the United States. The father saved the boys’ lives by passing them to passenger Margaret Hays in one of the lifeboats. Michel, who went on to lecture in philosophy at Montpelier University, later recalled his father’s parting words: ‘My child, when your mother comes for you, as she surely will, tell her that I loved her dearly and still do. Tell her I expected her to follow us, so that we might all live happily together in the peace and freedom of the New World.’

  Nye, Mrs Elizabeth – The daughter of a Folkestone Salvation Army bandsman, she lost her husband Edward in 1911 after seven years of marriage. After landing a job for the Salvation Army in its uniform department in New York, she decided to visit her parents in England. Elizabeth was due to return to the United States on the Philadelphia but the coal strike in Britain meant that the voyage was cancelled and she was transferred to the Titanic instead. She was twenty-nine at the time of the sinking and later married a Salvation Army colonel, George Darby, by whom she had a son George. She died in 1963.

  Olsen, Arthur – Following the death of his mother in 1906, young Arthur Olsen remained in his native Norway while his father Karl went to America and remarried. Arthur lived with his grandmother but when she, too, died in 1911, Karl Olsen returned to collect the boy and take him to the United States. Father and son were originally booked to sail on the Philadelphia but were transferred to the Titanic on which they travelled third-class. Karl went down with the ship, but eight-year-old Arthur survived. Showing no fear of the sea, he later joined the navy but ultimately worked as a house-painter in St Petersburg, Florida. He had a brief, unhappy marriage and died on 1 January 1975.

  Peuchen, Major Arthur – Born in Montreal, Peuchen served as a marshalling officer at the coronation of George V and made frequent trips to Europe in his capacity as president of the Standard Chemical Company. He considered himself to be an expert sailor and on hearing that Captain Smith was in charge of the Titanic, is said to have remarked: ‘Surely not that man!’ As it became clear that the ship was listing, he snatched three oranges from his cabin but left behind $200,000 in stocks and bonds. He repeated this feat in the 1920s when he lost a considerable sum of money through bad investments. He died in Toronto in 1929 at the age of sixty-nine.

  Phillips, Jack – Twenty-four-year-old senior Marconi wireless operator on board the Titanic. He remained at his post until the last but, although he managed to reach one of the collapsible boats, he died from exposure. His body was never recovered.

  Pitman, Herbert John – Thirty-four-year-old from Somerset, the Titanic’s Third Officer. He remained at sea, serving with the Merchant Navy during the Second World War. In 1946 he was awarded the MBE for ‘long and meritorious service at sea and in dangerous waters during the war.’ He died in 1961, aged eighty-four.

  Queenstown – Town in southern Ireland (renamed Cobh), the last scheduled port of call for the Titanic before New York. She arrived at 11.30 a.m. on 11 April and left two hours later. Since Queenstown was too small to accommodate the huge liner, anchor was dropped two miles off shore and a flotilla of small boats sailed out to the Titanic to offer goods for sale. From one of these enterprising vendors, Colonel John Jacob Astor bought a £165 lace shawl for his young wife.

  Robert, Mrs Elisabeth – Born in Pennsylvania, Elisabeth McMillan married the elderly Judge Madill but in 1901, after just six years together, she found herself a widow. Three years later, she married Edward Scott Robert, a pallbearer at her first husband’s funeral, but in December 1911 he, too, died. To recover from the shock of being a widow for the second time at the age of forty-three, Elisabeth went to Europe, accompanied by Georgette (her daughter from her first marriage), niece Elisabeth and maid Emilie Kreuchen, the party returning home on the Titanic. Following her rescue, she lived to a ripe old age in St Louis, Missouri, eventually dying in 1956.

  Romaine, Charles Hallace – Forty-five-year-old sometime gambler from Georgetown, Kentucky, who travelled under the alias of C. Rolmane. He survived the disaster and went to work in a New York bank. He was k
illed after being knocked down by a taxi cab in 1922.

  Rostron, Arthur Henry – Lancashire-born captain of the rescue ship Carpathia. He was subsequently awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and the American Cross of Honor and went on to command many other ships, notably the Mauretania. In 1926 he was knighted and awarded the freedom of New York. Sir Arthur retired from the sea in 1931 and went to live in Southampton where he died of pneumonia in 1940.

  Rothes, Countess of – Redoubtable aristocrat who took the tiller on lifeboat No. 8 and also assisted with the rowing. Londoner Lucy Dyer-Edwards married the Nineteenth Earl of Rothes in 1900 and they had two sons, Malcolm and John. The Countess was thirty-three when she boarded the Titanic at Southampton with cousin Gladys Cherry and maid Roberta Maioni, bound for Vancouver. The Earl of Rothes died in 1927 and nine months later the Countess remarried. She died in Hove, Sussex, in 1956.

  Rowe, George – Quartermaster who served on the Titanic for a monthly wage of £5. Three months after the disaster he signed on to the Oceanic and when he quit the life at sea, he worked as a ship repairer in Southampton until he was over eighty. His devotion to duty earned him the British Empire Medal. He died in 1974, aged ninety-one.

  Ryerson, Arthur – Sixty-one-year-old Philadelphia steel magnate who boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg with his wife and three children, the family hurrying back to New York after learning of the death of son Arthur Jnr. Arthur Ryerson senior finished a game of cards on board the doomed liner before going to his death.

  Smith, Edward John – sixty-two-year-old Staffordshire-born captain of the Titanic who was planning to retire after the ship’s maiden voyage. Smith had been in charge of her sister ship, the Olympic, when she collided with the cruiser HMS Hawke off the Isle of Wight in 1911, sustaining considerable damage. Nevertheless he had an excellent reputation and many passengers said they would only cross the Atlantic on a ship in his command. His precise fate remains shrouded in mystery. Some said he was last seen with a child in his arms; others that he reached a collapsible boat but chose to return to the sinking ship. The most reliable witnesses stated that he stayed on the bridge before going down with his ship in the finest tradition. He was subsequently criticized by the US inquiry for his failure to reduce speed knowing that there was ice in the vicinity. Senator William Alden Smith castigated his namesake for his ‘indifference to danger, overconfidence, and neglect to heed the oft-repeated warnings of his friends’. In 1914 a statue of Captain Smith was unveiled in Lichfield, Staffordshire, even though he had been born at Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, some 20 miles away. Rumours circulated that Stoke-on-Trent wished to disassociate itself from the captain of the Titanic. Smith’s widow Eleanor died in 1931 after being knocked down by a taxi outside her London home.

  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 h
er 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.