by Steve Turner
John Frederick Preston Clarke, bass player on the Titanic, was born at 2 Churchill Terrace in the Manchester suburb of Chorlton-cum-Hardy on July 28, 1883, the son of a seventeen-year-old solicitor’s clerk named John Robert Clarke and his twenty-two-year-old wife, Ellen Preston. The story is told in the ages and dates. Their wedding date—January 21, 1883—must have been set when Ellen knew she was pregnant. During the next four years they had two daughters, Ellen and Emily, and then between Emily’s birth in 1887 and the census of 1891, John Robert apparently had deserted the family. Emily told her daughter Freda that he fled to America with his brother Edward, where they both started new lives.
John Frederick, known to everyone as Fred, was sent to live with his paternal grandparents in Croydon while Ellen Clarke and her girls settled with her spinster sister Mary in the Toxteth Park area of Liverpool. In the census of 1891, she described her marital state as “married” and her occupation as “dressmaker.” Robert Clarke, the grandfather with whom Fred went to live, was a solicitor’s clerk and his wife, Mary Ann, a schoolmistress. By 1901 Robert was on his own in Eastbourne and Clarke had returned to his mother at 174 Tunstall Street and was working as an insurance clerk. Aunt Mary, a music teacher, was still with the family.
The Liverpool street, about to be demolished, where Fred Clarke lived with his family.
In 1884, the year after Clarke was born, another of his mother’s sisters, Elizabeth, married an up-and-coming violinist from Bradford named Vasco Akeroyd. By the turn of the century, Vasco was in Liverpool playing violin for the Liverpool Philharmonic and giving lessons from his home at 35 Falkner Square. Clarke became one of his pupils and during the coming years Vasco would use his influence to get him work.
In 1909 the Vasco Akeroyd Symphony Orchestra was founded and Clarke became one of its six bass players. The orchestra would play eight concerts each season at the Philharmonic Hall, almost always to rapturous reviews from the Liverpool press who admired Vasco’s choice of music, the quality of his leadership, and the high standards of the musicians. Early in the second season, the Liverpool Post commented that the local public had been “quick to appreciate the excellencies of the orchestral and other fare that Mr Akeroyd is seeking to provide,” and in January 1911 the Liverpool Evening Express said: “Excellent as these concerts invariably are, their promoters surpassed all previous efforts with the programme submitted last night. It is doubtful if a more attractive and interesting concert has been given in Liverpool for some time past, and a packed and warmly appreciative audience testified their approbation in unmistakable fashion.”
As part of this orchestra, Clarke performed everything from Bach concertos and Tchaikovsky symphonies to contemporary works by Szigeti, Saint-Saens, and Dvorak. There were guest vocalists, guest conductors, and the occasional child prodigy visiting from America. One of the most popular concerts in each series featured a program chosen entirely by the audience.
At the same time Clarke was in the orchestra at the Argyle Theatre of Varieties in Birkenhead, which was over the Mersey on the Wirral Peninsula, where the Black brothers had their home. The theater, built as a music hall in 1868 and able to seat an audience of eight hundred, was one of Britain’s best-known entertainment venues. Artists of the era who appeared there include, Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel (of Laurel and Hardy), W. C. Fields, Dan Leno, and Harry Lauder.
Clarke would have worked in the orchestra pit providing backing to vocalists and incidental music for sketches. There were two shows a night for six days of the week and a matinee at 2:30 p.m. every Thursday. During the same period he also appeared with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Port Sunlight and at the Kardomah Café. Port Sunlight was a model village built by William Lever for employees of his soap factory on the Wirral. It had almost thirty societies ranging from an Anti-Cigarette League to a Scientific and Literary Society. On June 22, 1911, Clarke played with the orchestra to celebrate the coronation of King George V.
Clarke’s connection with Charlie Black could have come through his Uncle Vasco, who for several years played violin alongside him in the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. According to family legend originating with Emily Clarke, Clarke’s reason for taking work on the Titanic was to make it to New York because he had heard that his father, John Robert Clarke, had lately been killed there in a house fire. He wanted to work his passage to America and, once there, sort out his father’s estate.
John Robert appears to have eluded the record books after he left his family. He doesn’t show up in British censuses after 1881 and there is no record in the UK of his death. His common name makes him hard to track in American records. The rumor about his brother leaving his family in Croydon and moving to New York, however, is confirmed by living relatives in Canada. Edward Fulcher Clarke went to America ahead of his wife and four children ostensibly to settle in before they joined him, but instead had affairs with several other women. When his wife eventually showed up, he was caught and they separated.
Georges Alexandre Krins was born in Paris on March 18, 1889, but moved with his family to the town of Spa in Belgium in 1895, where his parents opened a haberdashery store. His father, Auguste, was part Russian, part Belgian. His mother, Louise, was French. He had two sisters, Madeleine and Anne, and a brother, Marcel.
Spa was a very musical city with a number of orchestras, including la Grande Symphonie of seventy musicians. He developed an early love for the violin but there were no music schools in Spa, so at the age of thirteen he enrolled at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liege where he would study for the next six years. Early on he was recognized as a brilliant and hardworking student. In the academic year 1904–1905, he won second prize in musical theory and also in violin. The next year he won first prize for violin and in 1906–1907 he again won second prize. His professor considered him a “model pupil” who exhibited a solid grasp of technique. “Georges Krins has made enormous progress in one year.” The Spa newspaper Saison de Spa marked his achievement in its issue of July 24, 1907: “We note with pleasure that Mr Georges Krins, who has played in the Grande Symphonie, won the second prize for violin at the Conservatoire Royal de Liege. We give him our congratulations.”
Georges Krins with two friends in London, 1911.
He left the Conservatoire in 1908 after again winning first prize in violin and returned to Spa where he joined La Grande Symphonie for the 1908 and 1909 seasons. Then, early in 1910, he was engaged as first violin at the Trianon Lyrique in Paris, a theater at the foot of Montmartre that at the time was specializing in comic opera. It was from Paris that he left for London to join the orchestra at the recently opened (1906) Ritz Hotel on Piccadilly. Here he played in the elegant Palm Court where the celebrated “tea at the Ritz” was served.
Georges Krins with his father and sister at the Promenade des Artistes, Spa, Belgium.
While in London, Krins took a flat at 10 Villa Road, a short walk from Percy Taylor’s home in Fentiman Road. For a while he contemplated joining the army, mainly because he had a deep fascination with the Napoleonic Wars, but his father managed to talk him out of it by telling him how dangerous it was. He should stick to music. It was far safer.
9
“THE TITANIC IS NOW
ABOUT COMPLETE.”
It would have been with a sense of excitement and relief that cellist Wes Woodward sailed into Liverpool on the Caronia on March 30, 1912— relief that such a long journey was finally over and excitement at seeing his family and being able to share his adventures with them. We know that he was in Headington before leaving to meet the Titanic, so we can assume that he took a train down to Oxford, possibly after visiting Charlie Black in Castle Street to sort out his contract.
It could be that Woodward was a last-minute replacement for Seth Lancaster, the musician who was first offered the job. Lancaster apparently at this point still thought he was set to sail with the Titanic. Maybe Hume or Edgar Heap had pushed Woodward’s name. He was certainly older than Lancaster and had a mo
re impressive track record.
Woodward’s mother was living at the Firs, Windmill Road, with his unmarried brother, Herbert, who was working as a gardener. He would probably have visited his brother Thomas, who was still singing at Magdalen College, and it was maybe through this meeting that the plan was hatched for him to come and play at the college’s May Ball on the night of April 30, when he arrived back on the Titanic. He may also have gone down to Eastbourne to meet up with old friends, such as the newspaper advertising executive Syd Wardingly and local musicians Bill Read and Edward Peilgen.
The house (center) in Headington from which Wes Woodward left to join the Titanic.
The Britain he came back to was enduring a miners’ strike that was threatening to disrupt everything from train services to shipping, so dependent was the country on coal. The Daily Mirror was mounting a self-congratulatory campaign to provide milk for children whose fathers had lost employment because of the strike. “Child victim of the coal strike fed with milk by generous readers of the Daily Mirror” ran one of its headlines on the day that Woodward got back.
Suffragettes (or “suffragists” as the Mirror referred to them), who were upset by the progress of the Women’s Bill, were planning to exert their economic power to show that they were a force to be reckoned with. “The time has now arrived,” said a Mrs. Despard of the Women’s Freedom League, “for us to take deeper and more general militant action. I do not believe in injuring private property, but the commerce of this country depends a great deal for its success on the women of the country. I want all of our women to become a hatless brigade and boycott the male makers of hats. In fact, not to buy anything that is not absolutely necessary. That would more seriously affect tradesmen than the breaking of their windows.”
In Hertfordshire hundreds of women were taking part in mock military maneuvers in readiness for the possibility that a European nation might try to invade. They were marching, camping, digging trenches, and performing rescue operations on “wounded” comrades. A photo of them wearing long dresses and tin helmets appeared in the newspapers along with the observation that women troops were far more cost-effective because they ate less than men.
If there was a fear that women were challenging male domination, there was an equal concern that men were becoming too feminine. The annual Oxford and Cambridge boat race taking place that day would be distinguished by the fact that “for the first time in the annals of the historic contest a long-haired crew will appear on the Thames.” The Oxford crew had apparently gone all tousled and had become the subject of mockery. The Mirror caught the mood: “In the dim past, when the boat race was young and innocent, be-whiskered and bearded young gentlemen may have rowed for their respective Varsities, but never, never did they appear with their locks blowing blithely in the breeze.”
But there were still real men around. Men like Captain Robert Falcon Scott who had set off in June 1910 to be the first person to reach the South Pole only to find, when he arrived on January 17, 1912, that he had been beaten by the Norwegian explorer Captain Roald Amundsen, who had arrived a month earlier using a different route. It was a harrowing journey of exploration in the most inhumane of climates without any of the benefits of modern communications. Messages back to civilization took months. One such message appeared in the British newspapers on April 1, 1912. When the British Antarctic Expedition ship arrived in New Zealand, there was an expectation that Scott would be on board, but instead all the commander had was a note from the explorer that read: “I am remaining in the Antarctic for another winter in order to continue and complete my work.”
This stoicism and determination to finish the job in hand turned Scott into a hero. He was a man willing to put his country and the progress of science ahead of his own personal comfort and well-being. His story was also an illustration of humanity’s increasing ability to use nature rather than be used by it. Few places on earth now seemed to be out of bounds and the earth itself was giving up its secrets to determined scientists. “Motor-Cars and telephones at work on Antarctic Ice,” crowed a Mirror headline. “Astounding narrative of Man’s triumph over nature.”
What the world didn’t know at the time was that Scott and his comrades were already dead. They had perished through exhaustion, hunger, and extreme cold. Scott made his last diary entry on March 29, the day he is presumed to have died, and left calmly composed letters to his family, the families of his fellow explorers, and a nation he hoped would understand his sacrifice. “Had we lived,” he wrote, “I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.” Their bodies weren’t found for another eight months.
At 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday April 2, the Titanic began moving slowly down the Belfast Lough, pulled by the tugs Hercules, Huskisson, Herculaneum, Hornby, and Herald. Despite the early hour the banks of the river were lined with cheering crowds. This was a big day for the city, especially if you were one of the people who had directly or indirectly helped to bring the great ship into being. As the largest man-made movable object slid down toward the sea, there was the sure knowledge that history was being made.
Two miles off Carrickfergus the tugs withdrew their support and the giant liner had to turn its propeller in the sea for the first time. On board was a skeleton crew of seventy-eight needed to feed the boilers, stoke them, and keep all the wheels greased. There were also forty-one officers, cooks, and storekeepers. Chief radio engineer Jack Phillips was fine-tuning the new Marconi equipment, assisted by Harold Bride. Thomas Andrews, the designer from Harland & Wolff, monitored every movement of the ship he had nurtured all the way from the drawing board to launch and fitting. Most importantly there was Mr. Carruthers, the surveyor from the Board of Trade, whose job it was to decide whether the vessel was seaworthy and could be given an Agreement on Account of Voyage and Crew, which would be valid for the next twelve months.
Olympic (left) and Titanic in the Thompson Graving Dock, Belfast, 1911.
Once the Titanic began churning up the sea and it was taken up to a speed of twenty knots, it was time to test its ability to stop, to turn using only the rudder, to turn using only propellers, and then to alter its direction. At 2:00 p.m. it took a straight course out into the Irish Sea for its first uninterrupted journey; at 4:00 p.m. it made its way back to Belfast, where it let off anyone not staying for the transatlantic voyage and checked its anchors; and at 8:00 p.m. it began the six-hundred-mile journey to Southampton, where it would arrive on the morning of April 3 ready to stock up with fuel and provisions.
Jock Hume had arrived back in Liverpool on the Carmania the same day that the Titanic was undergoing its sea trials. Although he must have been desperate to get back to Dumfries to see his family and his expectant girlfriend, Mary, we know he stayed around in Liverpool for at least two days, because on Thursday, April 4, he paid a visit to the naval outfitter J. J. Rayner at their shop on Lord Street to collect his bandsman’s uniform. Actually, according to the receipt, it wasn’t so much a new uniform as whatever he had been wearing but cleaned up, mended, pressed, and with White Star buttons and a new collar sewn on. The uniforms recovered after the sinking were described as having “green facing,” which most likely referred to the collar, and Hume’s receipt refers to his “tunic” having a “new collar” (cost: two shillings and sixpence). He was also charged two shillings for a small lyre, the White Star emblem, to be worn on the lapel. It’s likely that he had handed in his uniform for alteration the day before, which would explain why he hadn’t been able to proceed to Dumfries immediately.
Fred Clarke played his last concert with the Vasco Akeroyd Symphony Orchestra at the Philharmonic Hall on February 27. On the night of April 6, knowing that he was about to leave Liverpool, he took the ferry over to Birkenhead to meet up with some
of his old colleagues still working at the Argyle Theatre. He struck his friends as being a little “morose.” They couldn’t tell whether he was feeling ill or whether he was just apprehensive about his first sea voyage. Rather than about the excitement of the journey, his talk was more about his hopes of making good tips from what would be a very rich collection of travelers. Maybe inspired by being back at the Argyle, he spoke of his desire to get back into the theater. “You know, it would be just my luck to go down with the ship,” he apparently said to his drinking companions. “I’ve kept away from it so long it might finish me on this trip.”
He went to the second performance of that Saturday night, which was a typical variety show of the period headlined by magician Gus Fowler (“the latest London novelty”) and comic singer Cissie Curlette and included some moving film images by Brooke and Brown’s Royal Bioscope. Fowler’s act was based around watches and clocks, which he could seemingly make appear and disappear at will, ending with the sound of thirty bells coming from his hat. Cissie Curlette, a British singer who’d made her American debut in 1910, was, according to the New York Dramatic Mirror, “a talented and quite good-looking English singer [with] songs which relied for their success solely upon the double entendre of their lyrics and theme, rather than any tunefulness or brightness of lines.” Among her songs were “Toodle-I-Oddle-I-Oo,” “Yea Verily Yea,” “I’d Rather Lather Father,” and “What You’ve Never Had You Never Miss.”
