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Chapter 1 - Stoker Barrett only escaped twice
Chapter 2 - No moon, no haze, no binoculars
Chapter 3 - The tale of the Titanic lives on - in Kitchener
Chapter 4 - The ship that ignored Titanic
Chapter 5 - Dit (dit) dah dit, the telegraph (man) lived on
Chapter 6 - What they said in 1912 ... I will follow later
Chapter 7 - Violet survived three disasters
a TCP publication honouring the story of the Titanic
click here to download the PDF feature
a guide to some intersting facts and info about Titanic's famous voyage
click here to donwload the PDF feature
From Titanic, the Musical:
Captain Smith: "Close the watertight doors, Mr. Lightoller,
and see that
the pumps are activated."
One hour after Titanic hit the iceberg, things were quite grim in the lower levels as water rushed in. However, in Boiler Room 5, the pumps were keeping up with the water inflow. Leading Fireman (Stoker) Fred Barrett had just pulled a grating off the floor to make some valve adjustments.
The room was full of steam and smoke.
At 12:45 am the entire bulkhead wall between Boiler Rooms 5 and 6 collapsed, drowning everyone in the room except for Barrett.
This was Barrett's second near-death that night. When Titanic first hit the iceberg, water flooded into Barrett's Boiler Room Number Six. Within moments, there were eight feet of water in the room. As the watertight doors started to close, only Barrett escaped. He then went to Boiler Room Five to help there.
From Titanic, the Musical:
Fred Barrett (after giving up his seat on a lifeboat):
"Be thee well
May the Lord who watches all
Watch over thee
May God's heaven be
Your blanket
As you softly sleep."
He would not have a third escape, in Titanic, the musical, but the 1912 Barrett escaped on Lifeboat 13. He was soaking wet (from his boiler room adventures) and was so cold in the open air that he had to be wrapped in canvas to keep him from freezing to death.
A few hours before Titanic’s departure from Southampton, 2nd officer David Blair was bumped from his position. He left the officer’s contingent and the ship, but inadvertently took some keys that opened a storage locker that contained the only binoculars (for the lookout crew).
At 10pm on Saturday April 14th, 1912, lookouts Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee started their watch in the crow’s nest. The crow’s nest was an open platform, exposed to the wind and cold. The air temperature was 31 degrees F and the ship was moving at 22.5 knots, meaning the lookouts had trouble even keeping their eyes open, because of the stinging cold air.
The binoculars they should have had were still locked up because David Blair had accidentally taken the keys with him.
In Titanic, the Musical you will hear Captain Smith talk about his confidence in the ‘naked eye’ when looking for icebergs.
Cold wind, naked eyes and missing binoculars didn’t work that night for lookouts Fleet and Lee.
Our area is home to several descendants of Titanic passengers. Some of them are, let us say, very far removed (one Kitchener man, for instance, reports that the ship’s architect, Thomas Andrews, was his mother-in-law's grandfather’s nephew), and there may well be local Titanic stories that we simply didn’t find, but one Kitchener woman, Freddi Goodman, is directly descended from two well-known first-class passengers who were the central figures in one of the saddest of the many tragic stories surrounding the ship’s sinking. (Ms. Goodman and her family will be attending the Saturday matinee.)
Ms. Goodman is the great-great-granddaughter of Arthur L. Ryerson of Haverford, Pennsylvania, who in early 1912 was traveling in Europe with his wife, Emily Ryerson; their two daughters, Emily, aged 18, and Suzette, 21; and their 13-year-old son, Jack. While in Paris, the family received a telegram that their eldest son, Arthur Jr., had been killed in a car accident back home. They immediately reserved space on the first ship to New York that they could find—which happened to be the Titanic. Ms. Goodman writes that when Captain Smith learned “that they were in traveling back to New York for their son's funeral, he gave them an additional stateroom for added comfort on their journey.” Their suite was next to that of J. Bruce Ismay, Managing Director of the White Star Line.
According to Ms. Goodman, the older Emily Ryerson “spoke to Bruce and was told that although there were icebergs in the area, the boilers were going to be lit so as to get to New York ahead of schedule. That night they hit the iceberg.” The mother and children survived the sinking; Arthur L. Ryerson was lost.
In fact, though history and numerous theatrical treatments, including Titanic: The Musical, have painted Ismay as the villain behind the tragedy, the truth is less clear. In a legal inquiry into the disaster, held in 1913, Mrs. Ryerson herself testified that in her brief discussion with Ismay before the Titanic struck, she recalled his saying that “We are not going very fast, 20 or 21 knots, but we are going to start up some extra boilers this evening.” She had only a “strong impression,” however, that he was trying to reach New York ahead of schedule. “I don’t know whether he used the word “record” but that was left on my mind,” Mrs. Ryerson testified. Other sources suggest that Ismay was in fact a notably prudent man, who strongly resisted urgings from other White Star officials that the Titanic make a special effort to arrive earlier than scheduled.
One fascinating footnote to the story of the Ryersons concerns the 1997 movie Titanic. In one scene, Jack Dawson, the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio, steals a first-class passenger’s jacket. The name inside that jacket, presumably chosen by the director from the ship’s passenger list, is A.L. Ryerson.
The ship that ignored Titanic, the Californian was blamed for not going to Titanic’s rescue. Inquiries conducted in the aftermath of the disaster were not kind to Captain Stanley Lord of the Californian.
But the Californian was probably quite far away.
Surviving eyewitnesses claimed there was a ship within visual range. Quartermaster Rowe and Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall were firing distress
rockets every five minutes or so. They saw a ship two to five miles away, based on the visibility of its marker lights. The mystery ship approached Titanic (based on the colour of marker lights people saw), but then steamed away in a different direction.
The mystery ship was NOT the Californian.
Fifty years after the disaster (1962) the Norwegian government released a report documenting that the ‘mystery ship’ was a Norwegian sealing ship Sampson. It did not have a wireless set (telegraph), but they did see the distress signals. They left the area because they had a huge cache of seals they had been illegally hunting and were afraid of being apprehended.
From Titanic, the Musical:
Radioman Harold Bride - “There was one other (ship), sir – the Californian – I’d put here within ten miles – but since the accident she hasn’t responded”.
Captain Smith: “You must rouse that ship!”
Unfortunately, they were trying to rouse the wrong ship!
From Titanic, the musical: Harold Bride (Marconi International Marine Signal Communications Company… Limited):
“And my life came alive
With a thousand voices
Tapping out each word
Like a thousand people
Joined in a single heartbeat”
The Marconi telegraph employees were not considered crew members. Their job was to sell the wireless services to passengers that could afford it. In those days, there was so much telegraph activity bouncing through the air that operators sometimes had difficulty hearing and sending messages. It could be a
cacophony of voices.
But to someone young like Harold Bride it was new and exciting technology.
From Titanic, the musical:
“And the night was alive
With a thousand voices
Fighting to be heard
And each and every one of them
Connected to me…”
Harold S. Bride, junior telegraph officer survived the Titanic and survives in
Titanic, the musical. His supervisor John (Jack) Phillips died of hypothermia
in one of the lifeboats.
Imagine young Harold Bride and his fascination with technology. He would live to see such marvels as the telephone, the television and air flight.
It was a Remarkable Age!
From: “The Titanic” The Fra
Elbert Hubbard, (1859-1915)
Author, Lecturer, Founder of the Arts and Crafts Roycroft Shop
Died on the Lusitania
May 1912
“ It is a night of a thousand stars. The date, Sunday April 14, 1912… The place, off Cape Race – that Cemetary of the Sea.
… As a lifeboat is being lowered, Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Straus come running with arms full of blankets, brought from their stateroom. They throw the bedding to the people in the boat.
“Help that woman in!” shouts an officer. Two sailors seize Mrs. Straus. She struggles, frees herself and proudly says, “Not I – I will not leave my husband.” Mr. Straus insists, quietly and gently, that she shall go. He will follow later. But Mrs. Straus is firm. “All these years we have traveled together, and shall we part now? No, our fate is one.”
She smiles a quiet smile, and pushes aside the hand of Major Butt, who has ordered the sailors to leave her alone. “We will help you – Mrs. Straus and I – come! It is the Law of the Sea – women and children first – come!” said Major Butt.
“No, major; you do not understand. I remain with my husband – we are one, no matter what comes – you do not understand!”
“See”, she cried, as if to change the subject, “there is a woman getting in the lifeboat with her baby; she has no wraps!” Mrs. Straus tears off her fur-lined robe and places it tenderly around the woman and the innocently sleeping babe…
One thing sure, there are just two respectable ways to die. One is of old age, and the other is by accident. All disease is indecent. Suicide is atrocious. But to pass out as did Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Straus is glorious. Few have such a privilege. Happy lovers, both. In life they were never separated, and in death they were not divided.”
Elbert Hubbard, May 1912
Stewardess (employee of White Star Line) Violet Jessop escaped Titanic in
Lifeboat 16. This was not her first shipping disaster.
As part of their ‘grand plan’ to dominate the Atlantic shipping and liner business, Bruce Ismay and White Star Line built three ships – the Olympic, the Titanic and
the Gigantic (White Star ship names always ended with the suffix ‘ic’).
Violet Jessop was aboard the Olympic (Titanic’s earlier twin ship) when it crashed into the H.M.S. Hawke on September 20, 1911. The Captain of the Olympic back then? A certain Captain E.J. Smith.
In Titanic, the Musical, Captain Smith claims:
“ I’ve been uncommonly lucky
In my 43 years at sea…
I’ve never been in, nor even seen
(any) calamity worth speaking of”.
Sometimes we only remember the things we want to remember.
Violet Jessop would surely remember her THIRD disaster with the grand trio of White Star Line ‘star ships’. The Gigantic was completed two years after the sinking of the Titanic, but was renamed Britannic.
It sank in September 1916 after hitting a mine in the Aegean Sea. Violet was once again, in one of the lifeboats.
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