B – A document number for primary sources reproduced in George Behe, On Board RMS Titanic: Memories of the Maiden Voyage (Stroud: The History Press, 2017).
LMQ – From the Lord-Macquitty Collection at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
PRONI – The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.
SHS – The archives of the Straus Historical Society.
TRNISM – Transcripts of letters, newspaper extracts and reports regarding the Titanic from the collections of Thomas Henry Ismay and Joseph Bruce Ismay at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
Both inquiries into the Titanic disaster have been digitised and can be found at Titanicinquiry.org.
For the printed version of the American inquiry, see Report of the Committee on Commerce, United States Senate, Pursuant to S. Res. 283, Directing the Committee on Commerce to Investigate the Causes leading to the Wreck of the White Star Liner ‘Titanic’, Report No. 86 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1912).
For the printed version of the British inquiry, see British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry: Report on the Loss of the ‘Titanic’ (s.s.) (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1912).
1 Tad Fitch, J. Kent Layton and Bill Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass: The Life and Loss of the RMS Titanic, 3rd edn (Stroud: Amberley, 2015), p. 269.
2 John Roach, ‘Titanic Was Found During Secret Cold War Navy Mission’, National Geographic, 21 November 2017.
3 This was the Hamburg-Amerika Line’s Imperator which, after the First World War, was requisitioned by the British government who gave it to the Cunard Line, where she was renamed Berengaria.
4 Second-class passenger Imanita Shelley in the Anaconda Standard, 6 May 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
5 Mark Chirnside, RMS Olympic: Titanic’s Sister, 2nd edn (Stroud: The History Press, 2015), pp. 65–8.
6 John Malcolm Brinnin, The Sway of the Grand Saloon: A Social History of the North Atlantic, 2nd edn (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2000), pp. 398–9.
7 Diana Preston, Wilful Murder: The Sinking of the Lusitania (London: Corgi Books, 2003), pp. 381–2.
8 Jeffrey Richards, A Night to Remember: The Definitive Titanic Film (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003), pp. 11–12.
9 The Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin, 16 July 1938; Professor Charles Barr, ‘Hitchcock’s Titanic Project’, filmed lecture for the British Film Institute, 11 April 2012; Mark Glancy, ‘The Titanic: Three Films’, History Extra, 12 April 2012. Atlantic was shot with an English and then German-speaking cast, by the same director, a standard movie-making procedure until the advent of dubbing.
10 David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 325.
11 Brian Hawkins, ‘Titanic’s Last Victim’, National Post, 14 April 2012.
12 Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, p. 270; CQD Titanic magazine, no. 54 (Glengormley: The Belfast Titanic Society, 2016).
13 Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, p. 279.
14 Robert P. Watson, The Nazi Titanic: The Incredible Untold Story of a Doomed Ship in World War II (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2017), Appendix I, ‘Why Did the Nazis Load Prisoners on the Ship?’, pp. 239–44.
15 Violet Jessop, Titanic Survivor: The Memoirs of Violet Jessop, Stewardess, ed. John Maxtone-Graham (Stroud: The History Press, 2010), pp. xxix–xxx.
16 Logan Marshall, The Sinking of the Titanic and Great Disasters (New York: L. T. Meyer, 1912), pp. 221–2.
17 Depending on the allocation of a bloc of cabins interchangeable between First and Second Class, her elder sister ship, the Olympic, sometimes had marginally more of her 1911–12 capacity set aside, as a percentage, for her first-class passengers.
1 It is now generally accepted that James V, King of Scots, was not the author of the poem. However, in 1910 the story that he was, and that he had written about Leslie, was still current.
2 Randy Bryan Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’, Encyclopedia Titanica (April 2006).
3 Sketch, 25 April 1900; the British Census of 1911 gives the future Countess’s date of birth as 25 December 1878.
4 Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’.
5 The Hon. Lilah Wingfield, daughter of the 7th Viscount Powerscourt, quoted in Jessica Douglas-Home, A Glimpse of Empire (Norwich: Michael Russell Publishing, 2011), p. 6.
6 The Sketch cited in Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’.
7 Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’.
8 Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 420.
9 Washington Post, 16 May 1900.
10 Bystander, 27 November 1907.
11 Scotsman, 31 March 1927.
12 Lucinda Gosling, Debutantes and the London Season (Oxford: Shire Publications, 2013), pp. 49–50.
13 Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’; The Times, 10 April 1919.
14 Her younger sister, Princess Victoria (1868–1935), had never married and their youngest, Maud (1869–1938), married the future King Haakon VII of Norway.
15 George Plumptre, Edward VII (London: Pavilion Books, 1995), p. 257.
16 Giles MacDonogh, The Last Kaiser: William the Impetuous (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000), p. 321; Kenneth Rose, King George V (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983), p. 76.
17 Rose, George V, p. 76.
18 Jane Ridley, Bertie: A Life of Edward VII (London: Chatto & Windus, 2012), p. 467. Alexandra of Denmark was the first British dowager queen to be styled Queen Mother since Henrietta Maria of France, Charles I’s widow, in the seventeenth century. The suggestion that the title be revived in 1910 was put forward by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had the title used instead of ‘Queen Dowager’ in the section of the Prayer Book dealing with prayers for the Royal Family – see G. K. A. Bell, Bishop of Chichester, Randall Davison, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935), vol. I, pp. 609–10. Outside of the prayer books, Mary of Teck did not use it during her own widowhood from 1936 to 1953, but it was famously revived for Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon from 1952 to 2002.
19 Rose, George V, pp. 76–7.
20 PRONI D/4091/A/6/1, Sir Schomberg McDonnell’s journal, ‘Edward VII’, May 1910, pp. 42–3.
21 Ridley, Bertie, p. 469.
22 Ibid., p. 463.
23 Ibid.
24 Piers Brendon and Philip Whitehead, The Windsors: A Dynasty Revealed (London: Pimlico, 2000), pp. 5–6; E. Digby Blatzell, The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1964), pp. vii–viii, doubted that Roosevelt regarded the pecking order with his professed equanimity.
25 Rose, George V, p. 77.
26 Ibid., p. 139.
27 Edward Gregg, Queen Anne (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 144. The Queen used the veto for the Militia of Scotland Bill in March 1708.
28 David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, 2nd edn (London: Picador, 1992), p. 524.
29 Ibid.
30 Rose, George V, pp. 121–31.
31 Mary of Teck was born at Kensington Palace on 26 May 1867. Between Queen Mary and Katherine Parr, there had been Lady Anne Hyde, born at Windsor in 1637, who married the future King James II in 1660, but she died before her husband succeeded to the throne.
32 Rose, George V, p. 103.
33 Stephen Cameron, Titanic: Belfast’s Own (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1998), p. 24. In total, eight men died during the ship’s construction, six of those before the launch. The first victim was Samuel Scott, a fifteen-year-old catch-boy. Unlike James Dobbin, most died as the result of falls.
34 Richard Clarke, The Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast: A History, 1797–1997 (Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 1997), pp. 71–2. The hospital, with its current site and name, was the descendant of various hospitals dating back to the eighteenth century. It had been opened by King Edward VII in 1903.
35 For the size of the crowd, see Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 26. The 1911 census for Ireland gives the population of Belfast at 386,947.
36 Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 45.
37 Michael Ross and John R. Hume, Shipbuilders to the World: 125 Years of Harland and Wolff, Belfast, 1861–1986 (Dundonald: The Blackstaff Press, 1986), p. 144.
38 Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 24; permanent exhibition at Titanic Belfast, author’s visit, 9 June 2018.
39 Belfast News-Letter, 1 June 1911; Pauline Matarasso, A Voyage Closed and Done (Norwich: Michael Russell, 2005), p. 17; Frances Wilson, How to Survive the Titanic, or, The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), pp. 88–9; Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The ‘Titanic’s’ First-Class Passengers and their World (New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2012), p. 12.
40 Charles R. Morris, The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy (New York: Henry Holt, 2005), p. 268.
41 The Olympic’s maiden voyage began in Southampton on 14 June 1911 and ended in New York on the 21st.
42 Belfast News-Letter, 1 June 1911.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Chirnside, RMS Olympic, p. 41.
47 An earlier White Star liner, the Adriatic, which entered service in 1906, was the first to have a ‘plunge bath’, but the Olympic was the first to offer a practically sized swimming pool, see ibid., p. 57.
48 Ibid., pp. 78–9.
49 Douglas-Home, Glimpse of Empire, p. 50.
50 Sir Robert Sanders, diary entry for Thursday 23 March 1911, cit. John Ramsden, (ed.), Real Old Tory Politics: The Political Diaries of Sir Robert Sanders, Lord Bayford, 1910–35 (London: The Historians’ Press, 1984), pp. 25–6.
51 Helen Rappaport, Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses (London: Macmillan, 2014), pp. 157–8.
52 Frederic Morton, Thunder at Twilight: Vienna, 1913–1914 (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2014), p. 79; Alan Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs: The Life and Times of the Emperor Francis Joseph (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994), p. 311; The Times, 23 October 1911.
53 Gordon Brook-Shepherd, The Last Empress: The Life and Times of Zita of Austria-Hungary, 1892–1989 (London: HarperCollins, 1991), pp. 18–20; James and Joanna Bogle, A Heart for Europe: The Lives of Emperor Charles and Empress Zita of Austria-Hungary (Leominster: Gracewing, 2000), pp. 35–6.
54 Princess Zita’s relation to the former French ruling house was through her father Roberto I, Duke of Parma (1848–1907), son of Louise-Marie-Thérèse of Artois, Duchess of Parma and Piacenza (1819–44), daughter of the Duke of Berry who was assassinated in 1820, younger son of Charles X, King of France, whose reign ended in the July Revolution of 1830. Her late sister, Princess Marie-Louise of Bourbon-Parma (1870–99), had been the first wife of the future Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria (1861–1948) and mother of Tsar Boris III (1894–1943). Her mother, Maria-Antonia of Portugal, Duchess of Parma (1862–1959), was a daughter of Miguel I, King of Portugal (1802–66), who had also been deposed in the 1830s as a result of his absolutist policies. He was also the father of Maria-Josepha of Portugal, Duchess in Bavaria (1857–1943), mother of Elisabeth of Bavaria, Queen of the Belgians (1876–1965).
55 R. W. B. Lewis, Edith Wharton: A Biography (London: Constable, 1975), pp. 314–15; Hermione Lee, Edith Wharton (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), p. 391.
56 Hugo Vickers, Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough (New York: Holt, Reinhart & Winston, 1979), pp. 129–30.
57 Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’.
58 Simon Thurley, Hampton Court: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 166, 182–4.
59 Unless otherwise stated, these descriptions of Leslie House and the chapter’s earlier description of the parish of Leslie come from compiling information in William Blackwood (ed.), The New Statistical Account of Scotland (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1836), pp. 111–16; John M. Leighton, History of the County of Fife, illus. Joseph Swan (Glasgow: George Brookman, 1840), pp. 188–90; Sir James Balfour Paul (ed.), The Scots Peerage: Founded on Wood’s Edition of Sir Robert Douglas’s Peerage of Scotland (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1910), pp. 305–6; and James Macaulay, The Classical Country House in Scotland, 1660–1800 (London: Faber & Faber, 1987), pp. 3–5, 51.
60 There remains some debate about the life of Bartholomew (sometimes referred to as Bartolf) Leslie, who was allegedly Malcolm Leslie’s father. If Bartholomew died in 1121, as tradition states, it would have made Malcolm extremely old by twelfth-century standards when he was knighted and then endowed with land by King William. The Scots Peerage did not doubt Bartholomew’s existence, but questioned on chronological grounds his paternity of Malcolm Leslie and in regards the legends of Bartholomew’s early career in Scotland noted ‘nothing of all this is authenticated’, see Paul, Scots Peerage, pp. 264–6.
61 It is possible, although perhaps unlikely, that the portrait was of Queen Mary’s mother Laura Martinozzi, Duchess of Modena (1639–87).
62 For the history of the earldom of Rothes see Leighton, History of the County of Fife, p. 189; Paul, Scots Peerage, pp. 264–309; Lodge’s Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage & Companionage of the British Empire for 1912, with which is incorporated Foster’s Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 81st edn (London: Kelly’s Directories, 1912), p. 1654; Caroline Bingham, James V: King of Scots (London: William Collins, 1971), pp. 74, 190; Norman MacDougall, James III: A Political Study (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1982), p. 39; Horace Walpole, Memoirs of King George II, ed. John Brooke (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), ii, p. 47; Macaulay, The Classical Country House in Scotland, pp. 3–5; Christine McGladdery, James II (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1990), p. 104; Gordon Donaldson, All the Queen’s Men: Power and Politics in Mary Stewart’s Scotland (London: Batsford Academic and Educational, 1983), pp. 20, 40–1, 51, 95, 123, 135, and Jenny Uglow, A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration, 1660–1670 (London: Faber & Faber, 2009), pp. 193, 482–4.
1 Norman Weatherall and George E. Templeton, South Belfast (Dublin: Nonsuch Publishing, 2008), pp. 41–3; Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 23.
2 As of 2018, the older name of Stockman’s Lane survives in the former top half of the road.
3 The peer in question was Thomas Bateson, 1st Baron Deramore of Belvoir (1819–90), who briefly served as Lord of the Treasury in the Cabinet of the Earl of Derby. The embankment-honoured countess was Anne Wellesley (née Hill-Trevor), Countess of Mornington (1742–1831), daughter of the 1st Viscount Dungannon and mother of the 1st Duke of Wellington. In the eighteenth century, many Irish members of Lady Mornington’s family spelled the family’s surname ‘Wesley’.
4 Wellington College was created after the merging of the Annadale and Carolan grammar schools.
5 Weatherall and Templeton, South Belfast, pp. 9–11.
6 In 1912, Dunallon House was 12 Windsor Avenue; it is now 20 Windsor Avenue.
7 Shan F. Bullock, Thomas Andrews: Shipbuilder (Dublin and London: Maunsel, 1912), p. 63.
8 According to the 1911 census for Ireland, Elizabeth’s nurse was forty-four-year-old Bessie Abernethy, who lived with the Andrews family.
9 Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 92.
10 Ronald Marshall, Methodist College Belfast: The First Hundred Years (Belfast: Methodist College Belfast, 1968), p. 49.
11 Belfast News Letter, 19 March 1912; Paul Fry (ed.), Methodist College Belfast 1st XV: 1875–76 to 1993–94 (Belfast: Methodist College Belfast, 1994). The 1912 match was played in Malone, in the grounds of the Royal Ulster Agricultural Society; the Schools’ Cup Final was given its current established venue elsewhere in south Belfast, at the Ravenhill Road, in 1924.
12 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 5; John Jamieson, The History of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, 1810–1960 (Belfast: William Mullan and Son, 1959), p. 165.
13 Victoria College, Belfast, is now spread over two campuses, both of them in Malone, only a few streets over from Thomas Andrews’ former home. However, in 1912 the school was located in the University Quarter, in a building which is, as of 2018, serving as the Crescent Arts Centre; see Paul Larmour, Belfast: An Illustrated Architectural Guide (Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1987), p. 12.
14 Keith Haines, Campbell College (Stroud: Tempus, 2004), pp. 8–20; 1 Peter 2:17.
15 Information courtesy of North Down Cricket Club.
16 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 3.
17 Ibid., pp. 1–2.
18 Ibid., p. 1.
19 William Pirrie was created a baron in 1906 and raised to a viscountcy in 1921, which became extinct upon his death in 1924.
20 W. H. Crawford (intro.), The Industries of Ireland: Part I – Belfast and the Towns of the North (Belfast: Friar’s Bush, reprint, 1986), p. 40
21 C. E. B. Brett, ‘The Edwardian City: Belfast around 1900’, in J. C. Beckett and R. E. Glasscock (eds), Belfast: The Origin and Growth of an Industrial City (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1967), p. 120; C. E. B. Brett, Buildings of Belfast, 1700–1914, 2nd edn (Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1985), p. 64.
22 Sean J. Connolly, ‘Belfast: The Rise and Fall of a Civic Culture’, in Olwen Purdue (ed.), Belfast: The Emerging City, 1850–1914 (Dublin and Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 2013), p. 26.
23 Brett, ‘The Edwardian City’, pp. 120–1.
24 Lyn Gallagher, The Grand Opera House Belfast (Dundonald: The Blackstaff Press, 1995), p. 5; Brett, Buildings of Belfast, p. 58.
25 Brett, ‘The Edwardian City’, p. 130; Pictorial World, 14 February 1889.
26 The 1901 census for Ireland gives the name of the head of the house as Jane Scott, a fifty-year-old dressmaker, living with her forty-three-year-old sister, Hannah Scott. Like Andrews, both listed their religion as ‘Unitarian’, a confessional label then generally denoting non-subscribing Presbyterians.
27 Brett, ‘The Edwardian City’, p. 126.
28 Ibid., pp. 125–6. The original sources describing the busts at Robinson and Cleaver’s state that one of them was of the Duchess of Marlborough; it is this author’s view that it must have been of the 8th Duke of Marlborough’s second wife, Lily, who was duchess at the time the busts were installed. After the Duke’s death, Lily had remarried into the Ascendancy with her wedding to Lord William Leslie de la Poer Beresford VC, a younger son of the 4th Marquess of Waterford.
29 Brett, ‘The Edwardian City’, p. 126.
30 The Britannic’s keel was laid on 30 November 1911.
31 The Britannic was not, however, the largest ship to fly the British flag in the same period. After her sinking in 1916, that accolade reverted to the Olympic and from 1922 to 1934 to the White Star flagship and Britannic’s replacement, the Majestic, which had been constructed at the Blohm and Voss shipyards in Hamburg and requisitioned as part of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The Britannic’s record as the largest British-built liner was broken with the launch of the 81,000-ton Queen Mary at the John Brown shipyards in Scotland in 1934.
32 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, pp. 51–2.
33 Connolly, ‘Belfast: The Rise and Fall of a Civic Culture’, p. 44.
34 Ibid., pp. 46–7; Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster (Dundonald: The Blackstaff Press, 1992), p. 387.
35 Bardon, History of Ulster, p. 387. Much of Ireland’s early twentieth-century anti-Semitism seems to have originated from the sermons of local Catholic priests, particularly the 1904 boycott in Limerick of local Jewish businesses, which was largely the result of sermons by the Redemptorist priest Father John Creagh; see Eugenio F. Biagini and Mary E. Daly (eds), The Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 445.
36 Connolly, ‘Belfast: The Rise and Fall of a Civic Culture’, p. 48.
37 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, pp. 52–3.
38 Ibid.
39 John Gray, City in Revolt: James Larkin and the Belfast Dock Strike of 1907 (Dundonald: The Blackstaff Press, 1985), p. 205.
40 Ibid., pp. 206–9.
41 Ibid., p. 212.
42 Ibid.
43 Gillian McIntosh, Belfast City Hall: One Hundred Years (Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 2006), pp. 10–11.
44 For the construction and the Victorian building craze’s impact in west Belfast, see Caroline M. McGee, ‘A Most Noble Church in the Most Catholic Quarter of a Bitterly Protestant and Presbyterian City: The Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, Clonard, West Belfast’, in Purdue, Belfast: The Emerging City, pp. 157–80.
45 Andrew R. Holmes and Eugenio F. Biagini, ‘Protestants’, in Biagini and Daly (eds), The Cambridge Social History of Ireland, p. 95.
46 Bardon, History of Ulster, pp. 419–22.
47 Eugenio F. Biagini, ‘Minorities’, in Biagini and Daly (eds), The Cambridge Social History of Ireland, p. 439.
48 Bardon, History of Ulster, pp. 400–2.
49 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 50.
50 Article 44.1.2 of the Bunreacht na hÉireann, enacted on 27 December 1937, declared, ‘The State recognises the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens. The State also recognises the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland, as well as the Jewish Congregations and the other religious denominations existing in Ireland at the date of the coming into operation of this Constitution.’ The stipulation of a ‘special position’ for Catholicism fell short of the granting of the status of state religion, as lobbied for by many Irish nationalists, but in practice it facilitated an enormous amount of cooperation between the Irish state and local Catholic hierarchy. Article 44 was removed as the fifth amendment to the Irish Constitution, which passed by plebiscite with a vote of 84.38 per cent in favour of repeal, on 7 December 1972.
51 Morning News from Belfast, 2 June 1886.
52 Pope Pius VI issued the rescript on St Joseph’s Day, 1785; Raymond M. Lee, ‘Intermarriage, Conflict and Social Control in Ireland: The Decree “Ne Temere”’, Economic and Social Review (October 1985), p. 16.
53 Marianne Elliott, When God Took Sides: Religion and Identity in Ireland: Unfinished History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 138–9.
54 Lee, ‘Intermarriage, Conflict and Social Control in Ireland’, p. 17.
55 Ibid., p. 19.
56 For the technical logistics of the Titanic’s sea trials, see Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 50–2.
57 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, pp. 54–5.
58 Its existence had not been continuous, however. The Order had gone into abeyance for eleven years before it was reconstituted in August 1847.
59 David Fitzpatrick, Descendancy: Irish Protestant Histories since 1795 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 83–4.
60 Andrew R. Holmes and Eugenio F. Biagini, ‘Protestants’, in Biagini and Daly (eds), The Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland, p. 94.
61 Feargal Cochrane, Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism Since the Anglo-Irish Agreement (Cork: Cork University Press, 1997), p. 76.
62 Thomas Andrews’ eldest brother, John, later served as Grand Master of the Orange Institution of Ireland from 1948 to 1954.
63 Letter from Matthew Banks Hogg of Keady, Co. Armagh, to the Belfast News-Letter, 2 April 1912.
64 John Frederick MacNeice, Carrickfergus and its Contacts: Some Chapters in the History of Ulster (London: Simpkin Marshall, 1928), p. 76.
65 Denis Gwynn, The Life of John Redmond (London: George G. Harrap, 1932), p. 201.
66 Fitzpatrick, Descendancy, p. 110.
67 Andrews’ father and two brothers all signed the Covenant – Thomas Sr at the local Orange Hall, his sons inside or in the grounds of the local Presbyterian church. There was a separate Declaration for women, which was signed at the Comber 1st Presbyterian Church by Andrews’ mother, Eliza.
68 Geoffrey Lewis, Carson: The Man Who Divided Ireland (London and New York: Hambledon & London, 2005), p. 143.
69 Joseph Valente, The Myth of Manliness in Irish National Culture, 1880–1922 (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011), p. 103.
70 Lewis, Carson, p. 113.
71 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 53.
1 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 53. The White Star Line’s original name was the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company and, although never formally changed, the popular nickname was eventually used on company literature, nameplates and buildings.
2 Bruce Beveridge et al., Titanic: The Ship Magnificent, 2 vols, 5th edn (Stroud: The History Press, 2016), vol. II: Interior Design & Fitting Out, p. 15; Grace Evans, Titanic Style: Dress and Fashions on the Voyage (Ludlow: Moonrise Press, 2011), pp. 15–48.
3 Andrews boarded at about six o’clock that morning. Using data provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 384, estimate the time of sunrise in Southampton on 10 April 1912 to have been approximately 5.23 a.m.
4 Chirnside, Olympic, pp. 91–7.
5 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 58; Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 60.
6 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 59; Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 56.
7 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, pp. 58–9.
8 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 90.
9 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, pp. 59–60.
10 Ibid., p. 60.
11 The 1912 British miners’ strike began on 29 February 1912, with industrial action initially beginning over the issue of a standardised minimum wage. In its opening few weeks, it attracted nearly one million participants. Wages were paid during the protest by the industry’s trade unions; however, between 2 and 4 April nearly 40,000 miners went back to work and a union vote by the Miners’ Federation to end the strike passed by 440 to 125 on 6 April. In the five weeks of the strike, an estimated 28 million tons of coal had been lost to British industry.
12 C. R. Vernon Gibbs, Passenger Liners of the Western Ocean: A Record of the North Atlantic Steam and Motor Passenger Vessels from 1838 to the Present Day (New York: P. Staples, 1952), pp. 122–4.
13 Laurence Dunn, Famous Liners of the Past: Belfast Built (London: Adlard Coles, 1964), p. 196.
14 Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, p. 23.
15 Ibid., p. 9.
16 R. A. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces: Luxury in Passenger Steamships (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1913), pp. 275–6.
17 Frank C. Bowen, A Century of Atlantic Travel, 1830–1930 (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1932), pp. 207–8; letter from third-class passenger Marion Meanwell to her cousin, posted from the Titanic at Queenstown on 11 April 1912 (B71); Ernest Townley, Daily Express, 16 April 1912; letter from third-class passenger Daniel Buckley to his mother, 18 April 1912; Whitehaven News, 2 May 1912.
18 Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, p. 15.
19 Bowen, Century of Atlantic Travel, p. 197.
20 ‘The Cholera of 1892 in Hamburg’, British Medical Journal (1893), vol. I, no. 1677, pp. 373–5; Paul S. B. Jackson, ‘Fearing Future Epidemics: The Cholera Crisis of 1892’, Cultural Geographies (2013), vol. XX, no. 1, pp. 43–65; Tara Zahra, The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016), pp. 35–6.
21 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, pp. 164–5.
22 Ibid., p. 140.
23 Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’.
24 United States District Court, Southern District of New York, In the Matter of the Petition of the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, Limited, for Limitation of its Liability as Owner of the Steamship ‘TITANIC’ – the Claim of The Rt. Hon. Lucy-Noel Dyer Martha, Countess of Rothes, 13 January 1913 (The National Archives at New York).
25 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 65.
26 There has been some confusion over why the train did not arrive at the Titanic until 11.30. There were two boat trains in operation that day from London, one for first-class passengers and another for second and third, in separate classes of carriages. Almost unanimously, passengers on the first-class train remembered leaving Waterloo at eight o’clock in the morning, meaning that they took nearly three times longer than expected to reach Southampton. A dissenting recollection is that of a trainee Jesuit priest, Francis Browne, who wrote later that the first-class train had pulled out of the station at quarter to ten. The train carrying the second- and third-class passengers left at eight o’clock, while First Class set off an hour and forty-five minutes later, something that would fit with the policy of trying to embark third-class travellers before those in First, although it remains difficult to find any other first-hand accounts, barring Browne’s, that square the respective arrival times in Southampton with the approximate journey duration. A possible explanation can be found in the account of Sidney Clarence Stuart Collett, another travelling clergyman, this time an ordained Baptist pastor whose vocation was taking him to Missouri via Titanic’s second-class quarters. In an interview on 23 April 1912 with the Auburn Citizen (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection), he stated that the first of the boat trains set off at eight in the morning, as timetabled, but ‘at the very start there was trouble. The train stopped because somebody had interfered with the brake valve’ – a version of events corroborated by Elizabeth Dowdell, a third-class ticket holder, who worried that the interruption might cause them to miss the sailing. That delay may, in its turn, have caused the first-class train’s departure to be pushed back until quarter to ten, the time recalled by Browne, which fits within an estimated travel time that got them to Southampton just before half-past eleven. It also helps explain the relatively short embarkation window eventually experienced by first-class passengers taking the train, who arrived in Southampton at half-past eleven in time for the ship’s noon departure.
27 Ibid., p. 67.
28 For the design of the White Star shed, see fig. 1-1 in Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, p. 10.
29 Brewster, Gilded Lives, p. 29.
30 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 144.
31 Titanic ticket number 110152.
32 Later, in their testimonies or memories, a few of the Titanic’s passengers and crew referred to the decks by name rather than letter.
33 There has been some confusion over where Maioni slept during her time on the Titanic. I am extremely grateful to Daniel Klistorner for sharing his research on cabin allocation with me, which proves that Maioni was not lodged next door to Lady Rothes, but was most probably allocated cabin E-11.
34 Paris Herald, 11 April 1912, which was then reprinted in the New York Herald; Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’.
35 For the deck plans consulted, please see figs 8-1 and 8-9 in Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 306–13.
36 Captain E. G. Diggle, The Romance of a Modern Liner (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1930), p. 172.
37 Fig. 8-1 in Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 306–7.
38 There was a Scottish baronet in the person of Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon and a man in Second Class, demanding to be upgraded to First Class, calling himself ‘Baron Alfred von Drachstedt’, but the name on his Dutch birth certificate identified him as Alfred Nourney.
39 For Edward VIII’s rejection of the suite, see Chirnside, Olympic, p. 201.
40 June Hall McCash, A Titanic Love Story: Ida and Isidor Straus (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2012), pp. 159, 181.
41 Ibid., p. 179.
42 Jessop, Titanic Survivor, p. 134.
43 Shelby Foote, The Civil War, a Narrative: Red River to Appomattox (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), p. 640.
44 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 156.
45 Colonel Archibald Gracie, Titanic: A Survivor’s Story (Stroud: The History Press, 2011), p. 6; McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 9.
46 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 170.
47 Ibid., pp. 167–9.
48 Ibid.
49 That is why a decommissioned ocean liner, like the former Cunard-White Star’s Queen Mary, which has served as a floating hotel at Long Beach, CA, since her retirement in 1967, contains signs advising patrons of increased noise in certain parts of the ship thanks to the silence of the retired engines. Author’s visit, 30–31 August 2017.
50 John P. Eaton and Charles A. Haas, Titanic: A Journey through Time (Yeovil: Patrick Stephens, 1999), pp. 46–8; Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 75.
51 Gracie, Titanic, p. 6.
52 Interview with passenger May Futrelle, given to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 29 April 1912.
53 For an excellent analysis of the logistics of the New York–Titanic incident, see Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 80–2.
54 Letter from second-class passenger Amelia Brown to her mother, 17 April 1912 (B109); Roberta Maioni, ‘My Maiden Voyage’, Daily Express (1926), accessible on Encylopedia Titanica, 2 October 2008.
55 Letter from Ida Straus to Lilian Burbidge, 10 April 1912 (LMQ/7/2/30). Ida’s handwriting has faded quite badly on the second page of the letter and elsewhere it has been transcribed as ‘in the pleasant anticipation of seeing you with us next Sunday’. On inspection, the words are ‘next summer’. The original is kept at the National Maritime Museum, with a copy owned by the Straus Historical Society.
1 Brewster, Gilded Lives, p. 5. As regards this chapter’s epigraph, the author of the original piece in the Standard made a mistake when he identified the Imperator and the Kronprinzessin Cecilie as ships of the Hamburg-Amerika Line. The former was, but the Cecilie was operated by the Norddeutscher Lloyd.
2 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 91–5.
3 Passenger Margaret Brown in the Newport Herald, 28 May 1912 (B149).
4 Passenger R. Norris Williams II, cit. Brewster, Gilded Lives, p. 18.
5 Morris, Tycoons, p. 272.
6 Charles Emmerson, 1913: The World before the Great War (London: The Bodley Head, 2013), pp. 145–6.
7 New York Herald Tribune, 7 October 1893; for the archducal letters from the United States, see Greg King and Sue Woolmans, The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Murder that Changed the World (London: Macmillan, 2013), pp. 24–6.
8 Zahra, Great Departure, p. 3; Morris, Tycoons, p. 277.
9 A notorious article actually naming the Four Hundred was published in the New York Times on 16 February 1892. See also Virginia Cowles, The Astors: The Story of a Transatlantic Family (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979), p. 96; Derek Wilson, The Astors: The Life and Times of the Astor Dynasty, 1763–1992 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993), pp. 105–6; Lloyd R. Morris, Incredible New York: High Life and Low Life from 1850 to 1950 (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1996), p. 145. For the relevant allusions and descriptions of the Virgin, scriptural and artistic, see Revelation 12:1 and Dante’s Paradiso, Canto XXII.
10 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 94.
11 John B. Thayer III, The Sinking of the S.S. Titanic: April 14–15, 1912 (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2010), p. 329.
12 Chirnside, Olympic, p. 43.
13 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 61.
14 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 92.
15 For the Titanic’s specifications, see The Shipbuilder: White Star Line Royal Mail Triple-Screw Steamers, ‘Olympic’ and ‘Titanic’, facsimile of the 1911 edition (Holywood, Co. Down: Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, 1987), p. 5, and Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, Appendix A, ‘Titanic’s Technical Specifications & Some Common Misconceptions’, pp. 283–5.
16 The Shipbuilder, p. 71.
17 Don Lynch and Ken Marschall, Titanic: An Illustrated History (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992), p. 20.
18 Emmerson, 1913, p. 68.
19 This was not the first time that the Archduchess had waged unsuccessful war on a mésalliance. Two decades earlier, she had regularly invited the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to her home in the hope of securing an engagement between him and one of her daughters. Instead, Franz Ferdinand fell in love with Isabella’s lady-in-waiting, Countess Sophie Chotek. Upon discovering this, Isabella summoned her entire household staff to berate and then dismiss Sophie, before launching herself headlong into a campaign of spreading wholly false and equally unkind rumours about Sophie’s morals. This seemed only to stiffen Franz Ferdinand’s resolve and the couple married in 1900, although their three subsequent children were barred from the line of succession.
20 New York Times, 25 October 1913; New York Times, 28 March 1924, John Leishman’s obituary.
21 The First Reich had been the Holy Roman Empire, a millennium-old political construct covering most of modern-day Germany with an elected emperor who had decreasing influence as the centuries passed. The emperors were often chosen from the Habsburg family, who retained their hereditary authority in their central European provinces after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.
22 Brinnin, Sway of the Grand Saloon, p. 306.
23 Ibid., p. 316.
24 Ibid., pp. 316–17.
25 The Kaiser personally launched both the first and last in the series; the second, the Kronprinz Wilhelm, was launched by his son and the ship’s namesake, the Crown Prince Wilhelm. The Kaiser did not launch the ship bearing his own name, but instead supervised as the champagne was released by Fräulein Weigand, daughter of the ship’s owner. That the Kaiser launched a ship bearing the name of his living and very popular daughter-in-law Cecilia speaks volumes for the deliberately reduced role of women in the Hohenzollern monarchy. He did the same at another launching ceremony that year for the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, named after his wife, who accompanied him to watch the launch.
26 Our Future Lies upon the Water by Arthur Heinrich Wilhelm Fitger, displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s ‘Ocean Liners: Speed and Style’ exhibition; author’s visit, 6 March 2018. The piece was on loan at that time from the Mariners’ Museum and Park, Newport News, VA.
27 Cf. William H. Miller, Famous Ocean Liners: The Story of Passenger Shipping, from the Turn of the Century to the Present Day (Wellingborough: Patrick Stephens, 1987), p. 133.
28 The Great Eastern, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and launched in 1858, had arguably been the first ‘super-ship’, but it had been a commercial disaster to the extent that no ship was tempted to outstrip her gross tonnage until 1901, with the maiden voyage of White Star’s Celtic.
29 Gerald Aylmer, R.M.S. ‘Mauretania’: The Ship and her Record (London: Percival Mansion, 1935), pp. 14–15.
30 Bowen, A Century of Atlantic Travel, 1830–1930, pp. 232–3.
31 Brinnin, Sway of the Grand Saloon, p. 330.
32 Ibid., pp. 330–5.
33 Aylmer, Mauretania, p. 15; Bowen, Century of Atlantic Travel, p. 244.
34 The Lusitania, named after the ancient Roman province covering modern Portugal and parts of Spain, was built at the John Clyde & Co. shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland; the Mauretania, named after Roman Morocco, at the Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson yards in Tyne and Wear.
35 The Kronprinzessin Cecilie weighed in at approximately 19,400 tons; the Mauretania was 32,000 tons.
36 Her record was broken by the maiden voyage of a German liner, the Bremen, in 1929.
37 Southampton Times, 18 May 1912.
38 Lawrence Beesley, The Loss of the S.S. Titanic: Its Story and its Lessons, facsimile of the 1912 edition (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2010), pp. 118–19.
39 Company correspondence, from both White Star and Harland and Wolff, proves that the decision to change the name had been taken before the Titanic left Belfast – minutes from meetings held on 19 and 26 May 1911 referred to the third ship as the Britannic, as did a Harland and Wolff order book entry for 17 October in the same year, by which point construction on the Imperator had begun. The most likely explanation is that Gigantic had been considered by White Star, until it was rejected by the company around the spring or summer of 1911, a move which they only made firm steps to publicise a year later after being pressured to by rumours regarding a by then ill-sounding name in the aftermath of the Titanic’s sinking. See Mark Chirnside and Paul Lee, ‘The Gigantic Question’, Titanic Commutator (Spring 2008), vol. 31, no. 180, pp. 181–92. Frustratingly, the minutes for the two May 1911 meetings at Harland and Wolff are not extant. However, they, and their use of the name Britannic, were mentioned at the British inquiry into the Titanic disaster in questions to the Rt Hon. Alexander Carlisle, former Chairman of the Harland and Wolff Board of Directors. We know from that question that the Britannic reference was apparently on page 21 of the now lost minutes. Some of the newspapers that continued to describe the ship incorrectly as the Gigantic after May 1912 include the Scientific American on 24 August 1912 and the Weekly Irish Times on 14 December 1912. Construction work on the Imperator began in the spring of 1910.
40 Interview with Paul Louden-Brown, ‘Five Titanic Myths Spread by Films’, BBC News, 2 April 2012.
41 My assessment of Ismay’s character is based on the convincing yet balanced rehabilitation offered by Frances Wilson in her biography of him, How to Survive the Titanic, or, The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay (London: Bloomsbury, 2012).
42 Yale Daily News, 11, 12 and 18 April 1912; Judith Schiff, ‘When the Titanic Went Down’, Yale Alumni Magazine (March/April 2012).
43 Brewster, Gilded Lives, p. 30.
44 Death notices in the New York Times, 20 May 1897 and 4 May 1912.
45 Preston Remington, ‘Two Gobelin Tapestries’, Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1955), pp. 155–8. The original was kept by the Mobilier National, but a copy had produced an exact replica for the Titanic.
46 This description of the Reception Room is based on deck plans and specifications given in Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 354–61, and figs 9-7, 9-13, 90-16.
47 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955 (LMQ7/7/20).
48 Elmer Zebley Taylor, Jigsaw Picture Puzzle of People Whom I Have Known and Sundry Experiences from 1864 to 1949, (privately reprinted, 2017), p. 173.
49 Relatively accurate recreations of the Saloon formed prominent set pieces in A Night to Remember (1958) and Titanic (1997).
50 John Malcolm Brinnin, Beau Voyage: Life Aboard the Last Great Ships (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981), p. 56.
51 Letter from Ewart Burr to Ethel Burr, 10 April 1912 (B25).
52 The Shipbuilder, p. 32.
53 This description of the Titanic’s Dining Saloon is based on a compilation from ibid., pp. 32–3; Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 361–5, figs 9-17 and 9-20; Chirnside, Olympic, Appendix III, ‘Cunard’s Spy’, pp. 304–8.
54 Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 166–9.
55 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 95.
1 The name Celtic Sea was not bestowed until 1921 when the marine biologist Ernest W. L. Holt announced it at a Dublin-based conference of fishery experts from England, France, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Those attending the conference concluded that the area had needed a proper name for years.
2 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 96.
3 White Star Line passenger information for the Olympic stated, ‘The Lounge will be closed at 11.30 p.m. and the Reception Room at 11 p.m.’
4 Zebley Taylor, Jigsaw Picture Puzzle, p. 173.
5 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 259. There is some debate over the length of Farthing’s service to the family. Joan Adler, Executive Director of the Straus Historical Society, doubts that he was in Isidor’s employ for as long as twenty years, as some modern accounts of the disaster have stated, on the grounds that Farthing is infrequently mentioned in Isidor’s letters; a telegram from Percy Straus to Maurice Rothschild, 27 April 1912 (SHS), implies strongly that he was unsure on the details of Farthing’s appearance, and that he is not listed in the 1910 US Census as a resident in the Straus household. It is possible that he was working for Isidor by 1910, since he was married and his wife did not live in the Straus home with him. Correspondence between the author and Joan Adler, 27 August and 12 November 2018.
6 Letter from Ida Straus to Rose Abraham, 30 March 1912 (SHS).
7 Ibid.; McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 181–2.
8 Ellen Bird’s cabin was C-97. Her age and occupation are based on the entries for her in the 1891 and 1901 British censuses.
9 Purser Charles Spedding, Reminiscences of Transatlantic Travellers (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1926), p. 61.
10 Moss and Hume, Shipbuilders to the World, pp. 146–7.
11 Unless otherwise stated, this chapter’s description of the weather surrounding the Titanic between Cherbourg and Queenstown is based on comments made in letters, all written on 11 April 1912, by first-class passengers Ramon Artagaveytia (B46), Elizabeth Bonnell (which she misdated to 9 April) (B50), Margaretha Frölicher-Stehli (B61) and Adolphe Saalfeld (B76); second-class passengers Kate Buss (B26), Harvey Collyer (B55), Samuel James Hocking (B65) and Thomas Mudd (B73); and third-class passenger Henry Olsen (B74), as well as the memoirs of second-class passenger Lawrence Beesley, Titanic, p. 11.
12 Beesley, Titanic, p. 10; letter from passenger Ramon Artagaveytia to Adolfo Artagaveytia, 11 April 1912; passenger Margaret Brown in the Newport Herald, 28 May 1912.
13 Evening Standard, 24 April 1912; Belfast Evening Telegraph, 15 April 1912.
14 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 96; a photograph by Francis Browne also shows the clouds shortly after sunrise.
15 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 30.
16 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 262.
17 White Star’s information for first-class passengers, ‘Breakfast from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.’.
18 Beesley, Titanic, p. 10.
19 The síneadh fada over the vowel in Cóbh is not always added today, but its absence alters the pronunciation significantly. My thanks to Scott De Buitléir for his advice on this.
20 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 236.
21 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 99. The time of arrival at Queenstown was about 11.30 a.m.
22 Beesley, Titanic, p. 11.
23 William Garner, Cobh: Architectural Heritage (Dublin: An Foras Forbartha, 1979), pp. 5–6.
24 ‘When Erin First Rose’, written c. 1795. Drennan’s Andrews descendants did not share his politics and by the middle of the nineteenth century they were firmly, if unsuccessfully, attempting to prevent his legacy’s appropriation by Irish nationalists – see Ian McBride, ‘Memory and Forgetting: Ulster Presbyterians and 1798’, in Thomas Bartlett, David Dickson, Dáire Keogh and Kevin Whelan (eds), 1798: A Bicentenary Perspective (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003), p. 489.
25 ‘That Jesuit on the Titanic’, L’Osservatore Romano, 24 April 2012.
26 Jennifer Roche, ‘How Holy Obedience Saved a Priest’s Life on Titanic’, National Catholic Register, 13 August 2017.
27 The best modern publication of Francis Browne’s photographs of 11 April 1912 is E. E. O’Donnell, SJ (ed.), Father Browne’s Titanic Album: A Passenger’s Photographs and Personal Memoir (Dublin: Messenger Publications Jesuits in Ireland, 2011).
28 A letter from one of the Titanic’s Assistant Engineers, Albert Ervine, 11 April 1912 (B58), confirms that Andrews’ inspection took place in the morning, before the stop at Queenstown.
29 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 106.
30 David Blair’s letter was auctioned by Henry Aldridge in 2007 and bought by an unnamed bidder.
31 Testimony of Frederick Fleet to the US Senate inquiry, 23 April 1912.
32 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, Appendix C, ‘The Question of Binoculars’, pp. 288–90. In a piece for the New York Times, on 8 May 1912, one of the Titanic’s survivors, Lawrence Beesley, also questioned ‘whether they [the binoculars] would have helped to avert the disaster … The ship was nearly a sixth of a mile long, and at the speed she was travelling it is doubtful whether she could be turned away from an object half a mile away without some part of her touching.’
33 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 262; Beesley, Titanic, p. 12.
34 Tea was also served in the Lounge, Café Parisian and Reception Room.
35 The musician was Eugene Patrick Daly (1883–1965), who was travelling to attend the May 1912 Gaelic Feis in Queens, New York. ‘Erin’s Lament’ was strongly anti-landlord in its sentiment, as well as critical of Irish people perceived as having betrayed their country by supporting legislation that either favoured the Ascendancy or tied the island politically closer to Great Britain. The song seems to have been written shortly after the Great Potato Famine. ‘A Nation Once More’ is generally associated with the Young Irelanders’ movement in the 1840s and attributed to Thomas Osborne Davis (1814–45), one of the movement’s early founders.
36 The Shipbuilder, p. 41; Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 248–56, fig. 6-42.
1 Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, p. 44n.
2 Titanic ticket numbers 24160 and 17760, respectively. Allen was travelling in stateroom B-5 and Young in C-32. Both women survived the sinking of the Titanic; Allen, by then Elisabeth Mennell, died in Tunbridge Wells in 1967 and Young in New York in 1959. Ethel Roosevelt came out into DC Society in 1909; Peter Collier, with David Horowitz, The Roosevelts: An American Saga (London: André Deutsch, 1995), pp. 123–4, 147.
3 In First Class, cabins E-1 through to E-42 were usually classed as first-class accommodation, as they were for the April 1912 voyage, but they could be switched over to Second Class, if the need arose. In Second Class, cabins E-43 to E-68 were typically Second Class but could be used for First, as was the case for the Titanic’s maiden voyage.
4 Most memorably, the idea that the Titanic was fully booked formed a major plot-point for the 1953 movie, Titanic, the first major English-language motion picture about the disaster. In it, the fictitious millionaire Richard Sturges (played by Clifton Webb) has to haggle for a third-class ticket at Cherbourg in order to get on the at-capacity ship in the hopes of reconciling with his estranged wife, Julia (Barbara Stanwyck), who is travelling with his children in First Class. It was also central to the story of the less well-known television mini-series Titanic (1996), in which Captain Smith was played by George C. Scott, with various fictitious passengers and crew depicted by Catherine Zeta-Jones, Eva Marie Saint, Peter Gallagher and Tim Curry.
5 Lynch and Marschall, Titanic: p. 33.
6 Chirnside, Olympic, p. 78.
7 Hays did not survive the sinking of the Titanic and, because of this, the Laurier’s proposed opening on 26 April was rescheduled and scaled down for 12 June.
8 Titanic ticket number 111320. Gee was one of those who lost their lives four days later.
9 Helen Churchill Candee, ‘Sealed Orders’, Collier’s Weekly, 4 May 1912.
10 Randy Bryan Bigham, Finding Dorothy: A Biography of Dorothy Gibson (Raleigh, NC: Lulu Press, 2012), p. 9.
11 The two stars’ salaries are sometimes incorrectly presented as comparable at this stage in their careers. Pickford had been on $225 during her brief stint with the Majestic Company in Chicago, but in December 1911 she re-signed with Biograph, accepting a drop to $150 in her weekly pay in order to pursue more challenging roles; see Scott Eyman, Mary Pickford: America’s Sweetheart (New York: Donald I. Fine, 1990), pp. 58–9.
12 John A. Brown’s death certificate, B1195959, New Jersey State Archives.
13 Pauline Gibson’s passport application (number 27124) to the State of New York in 1921 gives her date of birth as 30 June 1866.
14 For this overview of her career see ‘A New Harrison Fisher Girl: Miss Dorothy Gibson’, New York Sunday American (c.1909); ‘Harrison Fisher Girls Tell their Stories’, New York Morning Telegraph (c.1911); ‘Mr. Fisher Believes in Every Woman’s Beauty’, New York Herald (c.1911); ‘Harrison Fisher Discovered a New Type of Beauty’, New York Times, 22 January 1911; a profile of Jules Brulatour published in New York Dramatic Mirror, 31 January 1911; a profile of Harry Raver in the Moving Picture World, 1 October 1910; Benjamin B. Hampton, A History of the Movies (New York: Covici Friede Publishers, 1931), p. 134; Bigham, Finding Dorothy, pp. 5–11, 13–14, 16–26, 31, 33–5, 39, 47–52; and Philip Gowan and Brian Meister, ‘The Saga of the Gibson Women’, Atlantic Daily Bulletin (2002), vol. 3, pp. 10–12.
15 One of Marie Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting described the historical inspiration for Dorothy’s scene as taking place at one of Versailles’ ‘entertainments, when the most beautiful woman out of three hundred was selected to place a crown of laurels upon the white head of the American philosopher’: see Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan, La Vie privée de Marie-Antoinette (New York: 1500 Books, 2006), p. 162.
16 The argument that Pitcher is an amalgam of several individuals is cogently expressed in Ray Raphael, Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past, rev. edn (New York: New Press, 2004), pp. 49–71.
17 Passenger Edith Rosenbaum in Cassells magazine, 1913. My gratitude to Randy Bryan Bigham for sharing his research with me, establishing that the ladies Rosenbaum spoke with must have been Dorothy and Pauline Gibson.
18 Andrew Britton, SS Nieuw Amsterdam (Stroud: The History Press, 2015), p. 14.
19 Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 137–9, 142–3.
20 The description of Dorothy and Pauline Gibson’s cabin is based on ibid., pp. 395–7, and the relevant deck plans in figs 10-7 and 10-8. For the calmer weather on 11 April, see Beesley, Titanic, p. 10.
21 Dorothy and Pauline Gibson were travelling on ticket number 112378.
1 Captain Smith’s reply to Captain Caussin of La Touraine mentioned the ‘fine weather’ of the day, as does a surviving diary entry by third-class passenger Jakob Johansson, who wrote of ‘beautiful weather [and] no wind’ (B90). See also Beesley, Titanic, pp. 12–13, and Thayer, Titanic, p. 333.
2 Eaton and Haas, Titanic, Appendix 1, ‘Titanic’s American Flag’, p. 228; Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 63.
3 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 109; La Touraine’s warning arrived at 5.46 p.m., ship time.
4 Thayer, Titanic, p. 333.
5 Descriptions of the Titanic’s Reading and Writing Room are based on reports in The Shipbuilder, p. 45, and Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 237–41.
6 The Shipbuilder, p. 40.
7 Ibid., p. 43.
8 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 255.
9 Brinnin, Sway of the Grand Saloon, pp. 464–5.
10 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 255.
11 Moss and Hume, Shipbuilders to the World, p. 157.
12 Jessop, Titanic Survivor, pp. 139–40.
13 Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, p. 408.
14 Jessop, Titanic Survivor, p. 132.
15 Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 392, 408.
16 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 59. This was the galley that served the first-class à la carte Restaurant on B-Deck, which is discussed in fuller detail in Chapter 11.
17 This was Lutie Parrish (1852–1930), who was travelling in Second Class with her daughter, Imanita Shelley (1887–1954).
18 Titanic ticket number 17595. Ann Elizabeth Isham (1862–1912) lost her life in the sinking of the Titanic.
19 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, pp. 59–64; Thayer, Titanic, p. 332; Jessop, Titanic Survivor, p. 132; Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 107–10; Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 155n, 157–66, 184n, 388–95, and fig. 10-4.
20 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 107n.
21 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 59.
22 Jessop, Titanic Survivor, pp. 113–14, 131–2.
23 Robin Gardiner and Dan van der Vat, The Riddle of the Titanic (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995), p. 99.
24 Ibid., p. 94
25 Robin Gardiner, Titanic: The Ship That Never Sank? (Shepperton: Ian Allan, 1998), pp. 266–7.
26 Conspiracies: The Ship That Never Sank?, first broadcast on Sky One on 16 September 2004.
27 Gardiner, The Ship That Never Sank?, p. 265.
28 For a full list of the differences between the Olympic and the Titanic, see Steve Hall, Bruce Beveridge and Art Braunschweiger, Titanic or Olympic: Which Ship Sank? (Stroud: The History Press, 2012), Appendix I, ‘Almost Identical Sisters’, pp. 157–213. There is also strong evidence recently discussed by Titanic experts to suggest that there was another significant difference between the two sisters when it came to their propellers, with the Olympic’s central propeller having four blades, while the Titanic’s had three – see Mark Chirnside, ‘The Mystery of the Titanic’s Central Propeller’ in Voyage (Spring 2008), no. 63, pp. 123–8.
29 Gardiner and van der Vat, Riddle of the Titanic, p. 261.
30 Ibid., pp. 98–9.
31 Bowen, Century of Atlantic Travel, pp. 235–6, 241.
32 Hall, Beveridge and Braunschweiger, Titanic or Olympic, p. 156.
33 This refutation of Gardiner’s theories, in both his individual and his collaborative publications, is based on Hall, Beveridge and Braunschweiger’s Titanic or Olympic, which is the most thorough published critique of each point made in The Riddle of the Titanic and The Ship That Never Sank?. See also Mark Chirnside, ‘Olympic & Titanic: An Analysis of the Robin Gardiner Conspiracy Theory’ (BA thesis, University of Leicester, 2005); Chirnside, Olympic, pp. 91–110, 141–8, 257–64; Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 7, 39; Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 216, 219, 222, 225, 286–7, 355, 416–25, and figs 5-3, 5-17, 5-39; Mark Chirnside, ‘The Forward A-Deck Promenade’, an online lecture delivered for the Titanic Channel, accessed 2017; and Parks Stephenson, ‘The Identity Conspiracy’, an online lecture delivered for the Titanic Channel, accessed 2017.
34 Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 92.
35 Fitzpatrick, Descendancy, p. 275.
36 Letter from Mary Sloan to her mother, written from the SS Lapland, 27 April 1912, cit. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, pp. 63–4.
37 The description of this meeting in the Reception Room on Friday 12 April is based on ibid.
1 A menu for this dinner is one of the more potentially gruesome mementoes of the Titanic disaster – it was either retrieved from the flotsam and jetsam or from the corpse of a victim recovered by the SS Mackay Bennett. It was auctioned in New York as lot 2041 by Bonhams on 15 April 2012, the centenary of the sinking, for $35,250 (approximately £23,800).
2 Letter from Gladys Cherry, 18 April 1912 (B123).
3 Beesley, Titanic, p. 12.
4 Respectively, they were Margaretha Emerentia Frölicher-Stehli (1864–1955) and her daughter, Hedwig Margaritha Frölicher (1889–1972), Hélène Baxter (1862–1923) and Thomson Beattie (1875–1912). Jakob Johansson’s diary entry for 13 April (B93) mentions a few cases of seasickness in Third Class, and in Second Class Esther Hart’s letter of 14 April (B94), written to a friend in Essex but never posted, mentions that she had felt ‘very bad all day yesterday’, but concedes that the crew thought the ship was having a ‘wonderful passage’. That the nausea was not caused by adverse weather was corroborated in a letter from Hedwig Frölicher, dated 18 April, in which she states, ‘I took to my cabin and for three days was unbearably seasick, although the weather was beautiful and the sea calm.’
5 Cynthia Asquith, Remember and be Glad (London: Barrie 1952), p. 165.
6 Paul Poiret, My First Fifty Years (London: Victor Gollancz, 1931), p. 73; Laird Borrelli-Persson, ‘Poiret is being revived a century after its heyday – will it matter to fashion audiences in 2018?’, Vogue, 30 January 2018.
7 Evans, Titanic Style, pp. 28–32; Dorothy later submitted a claim to the White Star Line for the gloves she had bought in Paris and lost in the sinking.
8 United States District Court, Southern District of New York, In the Matter of the Petition of the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, Limited, for Limitation of its Liability as Owner of the Steamship ‘TITANIC’ – the Claim of The Rt. Hon. Lucy-Noel Dyer Martha, Countess of Rothes, 13 January 1913.
9 Robert Farquharson, The House of Commons from Within, and Other Memories (London: Williams and Norgate, 1912), pp. 211–12.
10 Eaton and Haas, Titanic, pp. 56–7.
11 Peter Engberg and Andrew Williams, ‘Mr Percy William Fletcher’, Encyclopedia Titanica (August 2017).
12 The other styles were Old and New Dutch, Renaissance, Tudor, Jacobean, William and Mary, Queen Anne, Georgian, Adams, Chippendale, Sheraton, Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI, Italian Renaissance and the First Empire.
13 These descriptions of the Countess of Rothes’ stateroom are based on Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, p. 326 and figs 7-28 and 8-16, and Tom McCluskie, Anatomy of the Titanic (London: PRC Publishing, 1998), pp. 146–8.
14 This is made from compiling accounts in 1870 and 1911 editions of ladies’ maid guides.
15 Ibid., pp. 61–2.
16 Tessa Boase, The Housekeeper’s Tale: The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House (London: Aurum Press, 2015), p. 110.
17 Letter from Gladys Cherry, 18 April 1912.
18 Roberta Maioni, Daily Express (1926).
19 Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’.
20 The Eton Register: Part VI, 1889–1899 (Eton: Spottiswoode, 1910), p. 39; The Eton Register: Part VIII, 1909–1919 (London: W. H. Smith & Son, 1932), p. 142.
21 Brendon and Whitehead, The Windsors, p. 259.
22 Correspondence between Randy Bryan Bigham and Ian Leslie, 21st Earl of Rothes.
23 Douglas Sutherland, The Yellow Earl: The Life of Hugh Lowther, 5th Earl of Lonsdale, K.G., G.C.V.O., 1857–1944 (London: Cassell, 1965), pp. 165–7.
24 Rose, George V, pp. 100–1.
25 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, p. 65.
26 David Cannadine, Aspects: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 171.
27 Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy, pp. 171, 182–3; G. Elliot Smith, Tutankhamen and the Discovery of his Tomb by the Late Earl of Carnarvon and Mr Howard Carter (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1923), pp. 28–9.
28 United States District Court, Southern District of New York, In the Matter of the Petition of the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, Limited, for Limitation of its Liability as Owner of the Steamship ‘TITANIC’ – the Claim of The Rt. Hon. Lucy-Noel Dyer Martha, Countess of Rothes, 13 January 1913.
29 New York Times, 6 June 1911.
30 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 61.
31 Zebley Taylor, Jigsaw Picture Puzzle, p. 174.
32 Gracie, Titanic, p. 7; Roberta Maioni, Daily Express writing competition (1926); an article in the Boston Globe, dated 5 July 1911 and discussing Virginia Vanderbilt’s crossing to France on the Olympic, refers to the Reception Room as the ship’s ballroom. (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection)
33 Gracie, Titanic, p. 7.
34 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 87–9.
35 Lady Duff Gordon also later designed part of the trousseau for Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon when she married into the British Royal Family in 1923. In 1996, Duff Gordon’s biographer, Randy Bryan Bigham, contacted the bride, by then Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who wrote back that she could remember Duff Gordon’s beautiful designs in her trousseau but, unfortunately, at the distance of seven decades could not recall with precision what the pieces had been. My thanks to Randy Bryan Bigham for sharing with me details of his correspondence with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother via her lady-in-waiting, Lady Angela Oswald, 6 January 1996.
36 Vogue, 15 April 1910; Vogue, 15 April 1912; Randy Bryan Bigham, Lucile: Her Life by Design (London: Lulu Press, 2014), pp. 82–3. The April 1912 Vogue article on Lady Duff Gordon hit the newsstands on the day the Titanic sank.
37 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 93, 107.
38 Zebley Taylor, Jigsaw Picture Puzzle, p. 173; Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 148.
39 Senan Molony, ‘Sun Yat Sen Will Eat Again’, Encyclopedia Titanica (2004); ‘Woman’s Cult of The Dog – No. 1 – The Pekingese’, Illustrated London News, 19 April 1913. In various instances, the latter article confused the Pekingese with the Chow-Chow.
40 Sergio Martínez Costos-Alvarín, ‘Victor Peñasco, a Spanish tragedy’ online, Titanic Passengers and Crew Research (6 July 2012). Peñasco was a maternal nephew of José Canalejos y Méndez, who served as Prime Minister of Spain from February 1910 until his assassination in November 1912.
41 Het Laatste Nieuws, cit. in John Baxter, Alan Hustak and Herman DeWulf, ‘Mlle Berthe Antonine Mayné’, Encyclopedia Titanica, 23 November 2018.
42 Titanic ticket number 17482.
43 Titanic ticket numbers 17593 and 17477. Guggenheim was in B-82 and Aubart in B-35.
44 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 148.
45 Jessop, Titanic Survivor, pp. 114, 135.
46 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 147.
47 A particularly beautiful cover of Candee’s 1912 The Tapestry Book is currently part of the private collection of historian Randy Bryan Bigham.
48 Brewster, Gilded Lives, pp. 110–12. For a defence of Hugh Woolner, see Senan Molony, ‘The Fleecing of Hugh Woolner’, Encyclopedia Titanica (February 2007).
49 Ibid., pp. 92–7.
50 Correspondence between the author and Gavin Cameron Bell, 5 July 2018.
51 Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection.
52 Elizabeth Wharton Drexel Lehr, ‘King Lehr’ and the Gilded Age (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1935), p. 164.
53 Wilson, Astors, pp. 206–7; Brewster, Gilded Lives, p. 75; Fitch, Taylor and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 113.
54 Jessop, Titanic Survivor, p. 133.
55 The Unsinkable Molly Brown (MGM, 1964), directed by Charles Walters and starring Debbie Reynolds (Margaret Brown), Harve Presnell (James Joseph Brown) and Martita Hunt (the Grand Duchess Elise).
56 Passenger Margaret Brown in the Newport Herald, 28 May 1912.
57 Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, Discretions and Indiscretions (London: Frederick A. Stokes, 1932), p. 147.
1 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 116.
2 John Martin Robinson, The Dukes of Norfolk: A Quincentennial History (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 143, 213–17. During the Popish Plot crisis (1678–81), the 7th Duke of Norfolk publicly conformed to the Church of England and attended Anglican services. He opposed James II’s alleged promotion of Catholicism between 1685 and 1688 and served as a Privy Councillor to William III and Mary II. However, privately he remained a Roman Catholic and received the Last Rites from a Catholic priest on his deathbed in 1701.
3 Robinson, The Dukes of Norfolk, pp. 218–19; Gareth Russell, The Emperors: How Europe’s Rulers were Destroyed by the First World War (Stroud: Amberley, 2014), pp. 162, 208–9.
4 Bigham, Finding Dorothy, p. 5.
5 Gracie, Titanic, p. 6.
6 William Whiting, ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save’ (1860).
7 Hasia R. Diner, A New Promised Land: A History of the Jews in America (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 32.
8 McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 174–5; correspondence between the author and Joan Adler, Executive Director of the Straus Historical Society, concerning the Strauses’ summer cottage in Canada, 12 November 2018.
9 Letter from Frank H. Tabor to Isidor Straus, 17 November 1909 (SHS).
10 Letter from Jacob H. Schiff to C. S. Mellon, 15 April 1912 (SHS); Nathan Straus thought his sister-in-law had looked ‘less [well], as she had had a recent attack of her ailment’, when he saw her at Cap Martin that February: see McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 173.
11 Letter from Jesse Straus to Herbert Straus, 28 March 1912 (SHS) mentions his recent exhaustion and a desire to introduce Beatrice to European languages as reasons for the trip.
12 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 175.
13 Letter from Isidor Straus to Oscar Straus, 12 March 1912 (SHS).
14 Gracie, Titanic, p. 7; McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 192.
15 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 192.
16 Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 241–2.
17 Gracie, Titanic, p. 3.
18 Ibid., pp. 3–4.
19 Ibid., p. 4.
20 Letter from Ambrose Bierce to Colonel Archibald Gracie IV, dated 9 March 1911, cit. in Ambrose Bierce, Phantoms of a Blood-Stained Period: The Complete Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), p. 202.
21 Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided (London: Penguin, 2011), pp. 540–3; Gracie, Titanic, p. 7.
22 Gracie, Titanic, p. 7.
23 Isidor Straus, The Autobiography of Isidor Straus (New York: The Straus Historical Society, 2011), p. 1.
24 Ibid. The manuscript was archived and then first published by the Straus Historical Society in 1955.
25 Michael Davie, The Titanic: The Full Story of a Tragedy (London: Guild Publishing, 1986), p. 48.
26 Straus, Autobiography, p. 3; McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 25.
27 Hans Joachim Hahn, The 1848 Revolutions in German-Speaking Europe (London: Pearson, 2001), pp. 186–7; Thomas Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866, trans. Daniel Nolan (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1996), p. 528.
28 McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 24–6.
29 Karolina Straus was the only sibling who chose to stay in Germany rather than join Sara when she brought the rest of the children to the United States in 1854.
30 Diner, Promised Land, pp. 23–4.
31 Straus, Autobiography, pp. 4–5.
32 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 33.
33 Straus, Autobiography, p. 5.
34 Robert N. Rosen, ‘Jewish Confederates’, in Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn (eds), Jews and the Civil War: A Reader (New York and London: New York University Press, 2010), pp. 230–2.
35 Ibid., p. 229; McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 38–9.
36 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 14.
37 Bertram W. Korn, ‘Jews and Negro Slavery in the Old South, 1789–1865’, in Sarna and Mendelsohn (eds), Jews and the Civil War, p. 117.
38 Ibid., p. 116.
39 Ibid., p. 113.
40 James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 107; Korn, ‘Jews and Negro Slavery’, p. 113.
41 Korn, ‘Jews and Negro Slavery’, p. 113.
42 Straus, Autobiography, p. 3.
43 Korn, ‘Jews and Negro Slavery’, p. 95.
44 Oscar S. Straus, Under Four Administrations: From Cleveland to Taft (Smithtown, NY: The Straus Historical Society, 2017), p. 13.
45 Straus, Under Four Administrations, p. 12.
46 The attendance of both boys is discussed in McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 41, who received her information from one of the Strauses’ descendants. I am grateful to Joan Adler at the Straus Historical Society for the suggestion that the most likely author of the final decision to buy the pregnant woman was Nathan.
47 Ibid., p. 41.
48 Straus, Under Four Administrations, pp. 12–13.
49 I am grateful to Joan Adler at the Straus Historical Society for information on the argument that the number of slaves owned by the family was less than thirteen.
50 Rosen, ‘Jewish Confederates’, p. 233.
51 McPherson, Cause and Comrades, p. 77.
52 Mrs Abraham Levy, ‘To the Israelites of the South’, circular from the Hebrew Ladies’ Memorial Association, published at Richmond, VA, 5 June 1866, a copy of which is currently kept at the Beth Ahabah Museum and Archives in Richmond, VA.
53 Diner, Promised Land, p. 35.
54 Rosen, ‘Jewish Confederates’, p. 228.
55 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 50.
56 Straus, Autobiography, pp. 19–20.
57 For the draft’s impact on New York in the immediate aftermath of Gettysburg, see James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 609.
58 McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 52–7; New York Times, 14 July 1863.
59 Letter from Isidor Straus to Lazarus Straus, 14 November 1863 (SHS).
60 McPherson, Cause and Comrades, p. 107.
61 That Grant, rather than a deputy, was personally responsible for the ‘sweeping order’ is the contention of his current biographer, see Ronald C. White, American Ulysses: The Life of Ulysses S. Grant (New York: Random House, 2016), pp. 251–2.
62 Diner, Promised Land, p. 37.
63 Straus, Autobiography, p. 16; Robert N. Rosen, The Jewish Confederates (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), p. 270.
64 Adam Mendelsohn, ‘Before Korn: A Century of Jewish Historical Writing about the American Civil War’, in Sarna and Mendelsohn (eds), Jews and the Civil War, p. 3.
65 Thomas D. Clark, ‘The Post-Civil War Economy in the South’, in Sarna and Mendelsohn (eds), Jews and the Civil War, p. 387.
66 Letter from Isidor Straus to Ida Straus, 18 July 1904 (SHS); McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 79–81; Straus, Autobiography, p. 41.
67 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 168.
68 Ibid., p. 84.
69 Letter from Ida Straus to Isidor Straus, 29 July 1891 (SHS).
70 McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 171–2.
71 Ibid., p. 92.
72 Ibid., p. 15.
73 Letter from Isidor Straus to Ida Straus, 18 July 1904 (SHS).
74 Straus, Autobiography, pp. 145–7.
75 New York Times, 15 October 1912; Atlanta Constitution, 10 August 1913.
76 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 6.
77 Edvard Radzinsky, Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar, trans. Antonina W. Bouis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), p. 449.
78 Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia, Once a Grand Duke (New York: Farrar & Reinhart, 1932), p. 59.
79 Radzinsky, Alexander II, p. 419; Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Romanovs, 1613–1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016), p. 450.
80 Sebag Montefiore, Romanovs, p. 452.
81 Hermann von Samson-Himmelstjerna, Russia under Alexander III: and in the Preceding Period, trans. J. Morrison (London: T. F. Unwin, 1893), p. 12.
82 Ibid., p. 60.
83 Diner, Promised Land, pp. 43–4.
84 Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra (London: Victor Gollancz, 1968), p. 15.
85 Serhii Plokhy, Lost Kingdom: A History of Russian Nationalism from Ivan the Great to Vladimir Putin (London: Allen Lane, 2017), p. 152.
86 Diner, Promised Land, pp. 31–2.
87 New York Times, 11 September 1910; Jewish Chronicle, 7 June 1912. My thanks to Joan Adler, Executive Director of the Straus Historical Society, for access to this latter piece. The poem continues:
| How long wilt thou, O Russia! thy cruel burdens bear! | |
| How long wilt thou meekly succumb to dull despair! | |
| Rise up, throw off thy shackles, strike for the right to live! | |
| For freedom, justice, tolerance, thy people’s wrongs retrieve! | |
| And thou wilt surely triumph, for tyrants cowards are, | |
| They shrink beneath the radiance of Liberty’s bright star. | |
| For thee will dawn an era of brighter, happier days, | |
| And all thy lamentations will change to songs of praise; | |
| Thy present chaos, misrule, which now so hopeless seem, | |
| Will then be but a memory, a nightmare in a dream, | |
| Once more among the nations thou wilt take thy place, | |
| And with their march towards progress and culture keep apace. | |
| Thy people will be blessed o’er all thy broad domain, | |
| When Law and Order shall prevail, and peace supreme shall reign! … | |
88 Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), p. 422.
89 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 173.
90 Letter from Isidor Straus to Oscar Straus, 8 October 1907 (SHS).
91 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 13.
92 Letter from President Grover Cleveland to Isidor Straus, 11 January 1896 (SHS). The letter mentions that the President had uttered the phrase ‘a thousand times’ to Straus.
93 Testament from Isidor Straus to his children, 6 February 1892 (SHS).
94 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 15.
95 Gracie, Titanic, p. 12.
96 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 118.
1 Testimony of Joseph B. Ismay to the British inquiry, 4 June 1912.
2 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 116.
3 Beesley, Titanic, p. 10.
4 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 112.
5 Senan Molony, quoted in Rachael Pells, ‘Titanic sank due to an enormous uncontrollable fire, not iceberg, claim experts’, Independent, 1 January 2017.
6 Documentary, Titanic: The New Evidence, first broadcast on the Smithsonian Channel, 21 January 2017; R. H. Essenhigh, ‘What Sank the Titanic?: The Possible Contribution of the Bunker Fire’, paper delivered to Geological Society of America, Denver annual meeting, 7 November 2004; Ian Griggs and Paul Bignell, ‘Titanic doomed by fire below decks, says new theory’, Independent, 13 April 2008.
7 Tim Foecke, Metallurgy of the RMS Titanic (Gaithersburg, MD: US Department of Commerce and National Institute of Statistics and Technology, 1998), p. 16.
8 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 142.
9 Ibid., p. 113.
10 Ibid., p. 151.
11 Brinnin, Sway of the Grand Saloon, pp. 347–51.
12 Edmonton Daily Chronicle, 22 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
13 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 169.
14 Beesley, Titanic, p. 14.
15 Thayer, Titanic, p. 334; Testimony at the Limitation of Liability Hearings, as reported in the New York Times, 25 June 1915.
16 Thayer, Titanic, pp. 333–4.
17 Ibid., p. 334.
18 Ibid., pp. 332, 334.
19 Albert J. Churella, The Pennsylvania Railroad, vol. I: Building an Empire, 1846–1917 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), pp. 647, 684.
20 Ibid., p. 719.
21 Letter from Ida Straus to Lilian Burbidge, 10 April 1912 (LMQ/7/2/30); Gracie, Titanic, p. 3.
22 Genesis 11:1–9.
23 Morgan Robertson, The Wreck of the Titan, or Futility (Springfield, IL: Monroe St Press, 2015), pp. 1–2.
24 Bowen, Century of Atlantic Travel, pp. 188–9.
25 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 24.
26 Bowen, Century of Atlantic Travel, p. 241; Miller, Famous Ocean Liners, p. 13.
27 Aylmer, Mauretania, pp. 40–2; Duncan Haws, Merchant Fleets: White Star Line (Oceanic Steam Navigation Company) (Newport: Starling Press, 1990), p. 14.
28 Bowen, Century of Atlantic Travel, p. 294; Beesley, Titanic, p. 13; George Behe, On Board RMS Titanic: Memories of the Maiden Voyage (Stroud: The History Press, 2017), p. 29.
29 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 239.
30 Henry Martyn Hart, Recollections and Reflections (New York: Gibb Bros. & Moran, 1916), p. 107.
31 New York Times, 17 April 1912.
32 Passenger Margaret Brown in the Newport Herald, 28 May 1912.
33 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 120.
34 Yale Daily News, 12 April 1912.
35 Years later, Florence confirmed this herself in a conversation with her granddaughter, Pauline Matarasso, see Matarasso, A Voyage Closed and Done, pp. 24–5.
36 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 120–1; affidavit of Emily Ryerson to the US Senate inquiry into the loss of the Titanic, 16 May 1912; passenger Mahala Douglas, interviewed in the Los Angeles Times, 21 April 1912.
1 Wilson, Ismay, p. 199.
2 Thayer, Titanic, p. 334.
3 Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, pp. 252–3.
4 Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 282–7.
5 Stefan Zweig, Marie Antoinette: Portrait of an Average Woman (New York: The Viking Press, 1933), p. 106.
6 Ernest Townsley, Daily Express, 16 April 1912.
7 J. Bruce Ismay’s testimony to the US Senate inquiry, 30 April 1912.
8 Passenger May Futrelle, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 29 April 1912.
9 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 113.
10 Passenger May Futrelle, Atlanta Constitution, 26 May 1912.
11 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 128–9.
12 Duff Gordon, Discretions and Indiscretions, pp. 150–1.
13 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 193.
14 William Thornton Carter II was twelve years old at the time.
15 Palestine Daily Herald, 23 July 1904; Times Despatch, 29 April 1912.
16 Debs received 5.99 per cent of the popular vote in November 1912. At the time of writing, this remains the highest percentage achieved by a socialist candidate in an American presidential election.
17 Emmerson, 1913, p. 146.
18 Ibid., pp. 142–3.
19 Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (New York: Grove Press, 2010), pp. 146–7.
20 Morris, Tycoons, pp. 235, 278–9.
21 The Constitution of the United States of America, Amendment XVI.
22 Morris, Tycoons, p. 278.
23 Brewster, Gilded Lives, p. 80; George Behe, A Death on the ‘Titanic’: The Loss of Major Archibald Butt (Morrisville, NC: Lulu, 2011), pp. 141–2.
24 Letter from Marian Thayer to President William Howard Taft, 21 April 1912 (B251).
25 Argus, 16 March 1912.
26 For Butt’s immediate response to the attempted assassination, see Behe, A Death on the ‘Titanic’, pp. 194–6. The Italian royal children in 1912 were Princess Yolanda (1900–86); Princess Mafalda, who died as an inmate at Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944; the future King Umberto II (1904–83); and Princess Giovanna (1907–99). The fifth and last child, Princess Maria-Francesca, was not born until 1914.
27 Argus, 16 March 1912.
28 Behe, A Death on the ‘Titanic’, pp. 194–6.
29 The Mass was to mark the anniversary of the late King’s birth on 14 March. King Umberto I of Italy (1844–1900) had been assassinated by anarchist Gaetano Bresci during a visit to Monza on 29 July.
30 Andreas Kopasis, Prince of Samos, was appointed Governor by Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1908 and served until he was murdered in Vathy on 22 March 1912.
31 Daily Telegraph, 7 January 1899; Marguerite Cunliffe-Owen, The Martyrdom of an Empress (New York: Harper, 1899), pp. 274–82; New York Times, 10 November 1898.
32 The assassinations referenced are of Marie François Sadi Carnot (1837–94), President of France, murdered in Lyon by an anarchist; Antonio Cánovas del Castillo (1828–97), Prime Minister of Spain, assassinated by an anarchist in Mondragón; Elisabeth of Bavaria (1837–98), Empress Consort of Austria and Queen Consort of Hungary, stabbed by an anarchist during her visit to Geneva; Dmitri Sipyagin (1853–1902), Minister of the Interior, killed by a revolutionary socialist in St Petersburg; King Alexander I of Serbia (1876–1903) and his wife, Queen Draga (1864–1903), who were both lynched during a nationalist coup in Belgrade; Vyacheslav von Plehve (1846–1904), Minister of the Interior, killed by a revolutionary socialist in St Petersburg; Nicholas Bobrikov (1839–1904), Governor-General of Finland, assassinated in Helsinki by a revolutionary socialist; Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia (1857–1905), killed in a bomb attack by a socialist revolutionary five weeks after resigning as Governor-General of Moscow; Theodoros Deligiannis (1820–1905), Greek Prime Minister, murdered by a political opponent in Athens in 1905; Prime Minister Dimikar Petkov of Bulgaria (1858–1907), shot by an anarchist in Sofia; King Carlos I of Portugal (1863–1908), shot by a republican in Lisbon, dying twenty minutes before his son and heir, who thus achieved the sad distinction of the shortest reign in European history as King Luís-Filipe (1887–1908). Finally, the Russian Prime Minister, Pyotr Stolypin (1862–1911), was murdered by a revolutionary socialist while attending a performance of the opera in Kiev.
33 This was the wedding of King Alfonso XIII to Princess Victoria-Eugenia of Battenberg in Madrid on 31 May 1906.
34 Behe, Death on the ‘Titanic’, p. 177.
35 Ibid., pp. 203–6.
36 Ibid., p. 207; New York Times, 3 June 1935; letter from Marian Thayer to President William Howard Taft, 21 April 1912.
37 Letter from Marian Thayer to President William Howard Taft, 21 April 1912.
38 Behe, Butt, p. 578.
39 Behe, Death on the ‘Titanic’, pp. 21–2, 164–6.
40 Brewster, Gilded Lives, pp. 37–43.
41 Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 355.
42 Brewster, Gilded Lives, pp. 6–7.
43 Carl Sferrazza Anthony, Nellie Taft: The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era (New York: William Morrow, 2005), pp. 309–10, 483n–484n; James Gifford, ‘Archie Butt and Edwardian Homosexuality’, Out (April 2012). The First Lady was also friends with Millet.
44 Letter from Francis Millet to Alfred Parsons, 11 April 1912 (B72).
45 Titanic ticket number 13509.
46 Titanic ticket number 113050.
47 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 130.
48 Letter from Daisy Minahan to Senator William Alden Smith (R-MI), 11 May 1912.
49 Washington Herald, 21 April 1912.
50 Letter from Mary Sloan to her sister, 27 April 1912.
51 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 109.
52 Letter from Eleanor Cassebeer to Walter Lord, 9 November 1955 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
53 Passenger Eleanor Cassebeer in the Binghamton Press, 7 May 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
54 Interview with passenger Vera Dick, printed in Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 42.
55 They were Hudson Allison and his wife Bessie (née Daniels), travelling in a suite of rooms, C-22, C-24, C-26, on ticket number 113781. They and their daughter, Loraine, lost their lives in the sinking of the Titanic.
56 The pigeon was referred to as Roast Squab. This description is based on the Saloon menu for Sunday 14 April that was sold at auction in Dallas, TX, by Heritage Auctions for $188,000 on Saturday 7 November 2015.
57 Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, 17 April 1912 (B113).
58 Ibid.; letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
59 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 64. It is the current author’s belief that the special bread would have been an Ulster speciality.
60 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 134; interview with passengers Albert and Vera Dick, published in the Calgary Herald, 30 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection). Contemporary confusion over the Reception Room’s proper name may explain why the Calgary Herald reported that Andrews and the Dicks initially planned to take coffee in ‘what was called the Parisian cafe [sic], or the palm room’.
61 Bigham, Finding Dorothy, p. 189.
62 Behe, On Board, p. 376.
63 New York World, 20 April 1912; interview with Dorothy Gibson for the New York Telegraph, 21 April 1912.
64 Letter from John Badenoch to Percy Straus, 24 April 1912 (SHS).
65 Milton Clyde Long’s United States passport application, 1910. Retrieved from Encyclopedia Titanica, 14 November 2017.
66 Long was berthed in stateroom D-6, ticket number 113501; see also Thayer, Titanic, p. 334.
67 Thayer, Titanic, p. 334.
68 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 141.
69 Thayer, Titanic, p. 334.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid., p. 335; Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice-president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, 20 April 1912 (B250).
72 Thayer, Titanic, p. 335.