1 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 141–3.
2 Behe, On Board, pp. 84–5; passenger Frederick Hoyt in the Springfield Union, 20 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
3 These were the recollections of Lady Lucy Duff Gordon in A-20, Nelle Snyder in B-45 and Elmer Taylor in C-126.
4 Beesley, Titanic, p. 22.
5 Second-class passenger Elizabeth Watt, Portland Oregonian, 24 April 1912; testimony by passenger Major Arthur Peuchen to the US Senate inquiry, 23 April 1912.
6 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
7 Thayer, Titanic, pp. 335–6.
8 Davie, Titanic, p. 101.
9 Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, 17 April 1912; letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
10 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
11 Thayer, Titanic, p. 336.
12 Ibid., p. 336 only mentions John Thayer as an accompanying parent. However, the account of the sinking dictated by Jack Thayer on 20 April 1912 to the Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh Board references both parents on deck. See also Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 165.
13 New York Morning Telegraph, 21 April 1912.
14 Andrew Wilson, Shadow of the Titanic: The Extraordinary Stories of Those Who Survived (London: Simon & Schuster, 2011), pp. 28–9.
15 Passenger William Sloper’s account, written on 18 April 1912 and published in the Hartford Times, 19 April 1912.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Passenger A. A. Dick in the Calgary Herald, 30 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
19 Wilson, Shadow, p. 33.
20 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 153.
21 Ibid., p. 151.
22 Behe, On Board, p. 148.
23 Passenger William Sloper’s account, written on 18 April 1912 and published in the Hartford Times, 19 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
24 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 151 n.226, 160, 397.
25 Ibid., Appendix F, ‘The Iceberg Damage’, pp. 295–7.
26 Testimony of Stewardess Annie Robinson to the British inquiry, 20 May 1912.
27 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 186.
28 Testimony of Joseph Boxhall to the British inquiry, 22 May 1912.
29 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
30 This seems to disprove Lady Rothes’ recollection in an otherwise generally accurate account, which she imparted to Walter Lord in 1955, that they received this warning from the ship’s Purser, Hugh McElroy, who also told them to hurry. Gladys Cherry’s version of the same events, which she wrote down while on the Carpathia two days after the sinking of the Titanic, seems the more probable of the two.
31 Passenger William Sloper’s account, written on 18 April 1912 and published in the Hartford Times, 19 April 1912.
32 Letter from John Badenoch to Percy Straus, 24 April 1912.
33 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 194.
34 Letter from John Badenoch to Percy Straus, 24 April 1912.
35 Ibid.
36 Gracie, Titanic, p. 16. Later, Gracie could not remember if it was at this point or some time later that ‘I had heard them discussing that if they were going to die they would die together.’ If such a conversation did take place, it would likely have been later that night.
1 Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, 17 April 1912.
2 Letters from Gladys Cherry, one to her mother and the other to an unknown recipient, respectively dated 17 and 18 April 1912.
3 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
4 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 184.
5 Nick Barratt, Lost Voices from the Titanic: The Definitive Oral History (London: Preface, 2009), p. 161.
6 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 187.
7 Passenger Henry Harper in Harper’s Weekly, 27 April 1912.
8 Helen Churchill Candee, Sealed Orders, 4 May 1912.
9 This account of the Thayer party was reached through compiling recollections of Martha Stephenson and Elizabeth Eustis (B247); account of the sinking dictated by Jack Thayer on 20 April 1912 to the Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh Board, and Thayer, Titanic, pp. 337–9.
10 Thayer, Titanic, p. 338.
11 Ibid., p. 339.
12 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 184.
13 Thayer, Titanic, p. 339.
14 Passenger Gilbert Tucker in Times Union, 19 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
15 Passenger William Sloper’s account, written on 18 April 1912 and published in the Hartford Times, 19 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
16 Wilson, Shadow, p. 35.
17 Passenger William Sloper’s account, written on 18 April 1912 and published in the Hartford Times, 19 April 1912.
18 Ibid.
19 Wilson, Shadow, p. 244.
20 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 194.
21 Passenger William Sloper’s account, written on 18 April 1912 and published in the Hartford Times, 19 April 1912.
22 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 165.
23 Passenger Margaret Brown to the New York Times, 22 April 1912.
24 Passenger Eleanor Cassebeer to the Binghamton Press, 29 April 1912.
25 Testimony of Officer Herbert Pitman to the US Senate inquiry, 23 April 1912.
26 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 199.
27 Passenger Eleanor Cassebeer to the Binghamton Press, 29 April 1912.
1 Lady Rothes later told the writer Walter Lord that she did not hear the band at any point during the evacuation, which means she must have bypassed the Lounge, where the band were still playing throughout the time it took for her to leave the Titanic.
2 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955; Charles Herbert Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships (Oxford: Oxford City Press, 2010), p. 85.
3 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
4 The roar from the funnels stopped at about 12.50 a.m.
5 The Countess of Rothes in the New York Daily Herald, 22 April 1912.
6 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 There seems to me no reason whatsoever to believe that it was a mystery trawler or an unidentified ship, when the Californian was within range and behaved precisely as several eyewitnesses described. For a thorough discussion of the debate see Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, Appendix R, ‘The Californian Affair’, pp. 365–7.
10 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
11 New York World, 20 April 1912.
12 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
13 Gracie, Titanic, p. 16.
14 McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 196.
15 Davie, Titanic, p. 48.
16 Passenger May Futrelle in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 29 April 1912.
17 Duff Gordon, Discretions and Indiscretions, p. 154.
18 Ibid.
19 This was a lugubriously recurring trope in stories of shipwrecks, with similar misleading anecdotes reported around the loss of the Cunard Line’s Lusitania (1915), the White Star–Royal Navy’s Britannic (1916), the American cruise ship Morro Castle (1934) and the Northern Irish ferry Princess Victoria (1953). The latter of which was told to the author by his grandmother by whom, it must be said, no amount of contrary evidence has as yet been accepted as a convincing rebuttal.
20 My thanks to Mrs Laura Woodward for this anecdote.
21 Letter from third-class passenger Daniel Buckley to his mother, written c. 18 April 1912 (B110).
22 George Bernard Shaw, letter to the Daily News, 4 May 1912.
23 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, letter to the Daily News, 8 May 1912.
24 Passenger Ellen Bird in the New York World, 20 April 1912.
25 My thanks to Joan Adler, Executive Director of the Straus Historical Society, for confirming this anecdote.
26 New York World, 20 April 1912.
27 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955, and letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, 17 April 1912.
28 Ibid.
29 The best modern recreations of the sinking broadly concur with survivors’ accounts that the water had reached the ship’s nameplate by about 1.15 a.m.
30 Passenger May Futrelle in the Seattle Daily Times, 22 April 1912.
31 Passenger Hugh Woolner in the New York Sun, 19 April 1912.
32 Testimony of second-class passenger Imanita Shelley to the US Senate inquiry, 25 May 1912.
33 Ibid.
34 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 211.
35 Letter from Imanita Shelley to Edith Harper, undated, in the summer of 1912 (B238).
36 Ibid.
37 Testimony of Colonel Archibald Gracie IV to the US Senate inquiry, 30 April 1912.
38 Letter from Imanita Shelley to Edith Harper, undated, in the summer of 1912.
39 Testimony by crew member August Weikman to the US Senate inquiry, 24 April 1912.
40 Letter from crew member Mary Sloan to her sister, 27 April 1912 (B241).
41 Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 292–4, 336–40, 370, figs 7-45, 9-32, 9-33, 9-34; The Shipbuilder, pp. 47–53, describes the second-class Smoke Room’s decoration as ‘a variation of [the] Louis XVI. period’. Apart from a few pieces of decoration on the doors, however, it is hard to see any decorating touches in common with the Louis Seize style.
42 Daniel Buckley (1890–1918) was born in Manchester, but moved as a child to Kingwilliamstown, Ireland (renamed Ballydesmond after Irish independence). He was killed on active service with the US Army during the First World War.
43 Testimony of third-class passenger Daniel Buckley to the US Senate inquiry, 3 May 1912.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid; another third-class passenger, Victor Sunderland, mentioned the crew’s help – interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 26 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
48 Letter from third-class passenger Olaus Abelseth to his father, 19 April 1912 (B137).
49 Testimony of third-class passenger Daniel Buckley to the US Senate inquiry into the loss of the Titanic, day 13.
50 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, Appendix Q, ‘J. “Brute” Ismay’, pp. 364–5; Chuck Anesi, ‘The Titanic Casualty Figures and What They Mean’ (http://www.anesi.com/titanic.htm, 2018); British Parliamentary Papers, Shipping Casualties (Loss of the Steamship ‘Titanic’): Report of a formal investigation into the circumstances attending the foundering on the 15th April, 1912, of the British Steamship ‘Titanic,’ of Liverpool, after striking ice in or near Latitude 41º 46’ N., Longitude 50º 14’ W., North Atlantic Ocean, whereby loss of life ensued, cmd 6352 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1912), p. 42.
51 This is based on compiling the respective nationalities of the passengers – First Class had 89 per cent of passengers from English-speaking nations (212 Americans, 48 British subjects, 27 Canadians); Second Class had 79 per cent (51 Americans, 1 Australian, 168 British subjects, 2 Canadians and 4 South Africans); Third Class had 39 per cent (43 Americans, 1 Australian, 231 from the United Kingdom, 5 Canadians and 1 South African).
52 The source for this particular rumour is apparently a comment Jack Thayer made at a 1915 insurance hearing and reported in the New York Press, 23 June 1915 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection). Jack allegedly said, ‘My father and I went along to about eight different boats and inquired of the men in charge which boat would take first-class passengers, but each officer would send us to another boat, so finally we gave up.’ This seems to suggest uncertainty in lifeboat allocation, rather than an assumption that they would be boarded ahead of others because they were in First Class.
53 Thayer, Titanic, p. 339 misidentifies this man, Steward Charles Dodd, as the Chief Dining Saloon Steward.
54 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 221.
55 Thayer, Titanic, p. 339.
56 Gavin Cameron Bell, Philip Gowan, Bob Smith, Hermann Snölder, Brian J. Ticehurst, ‘Miss Kate Buss’, Encyclopedia Titanica, 23 November 2018.
57 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 178–9.
58 These were lifeboats 6, 16, 14, 12 and 2 from the port side, and 9, 11, 13 and 15 from starboard.
59 Account of second-class passenger Charlotte Collyer, 1912 (B162).
60 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 211.
61 Testimony of Officer Harold Lowe to the US Senate inquiry, 24 April 1912.
62 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 221.
63 For the lowering of Lifeboat 4, see Gracie, Titanic, pp. 19–20; Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 222–3; passenger Kornelia Andrews’ interview with the Hudson Evening Register, 20 April 1912; affidavit of Emily Ryerson to the US Senate inquiry, 16 May 1912; Behe, Death on the ‘Titanic’, pp. 247–51, and the recollections of Martha Stephenson which she sent to Colonel Gracie and can be found in Gracie, Titanic, pp. 126-8.
64 Gracie, Titanic, p. 27; for the original quote and its translation, see Virgil, Aeneid, ii.774, and John O’Brien, ‘Vox Faucibus Haesit’ in Symposium (1996), 49, pp. 297–306.
65 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
1 It was not, as is frequently stated, The Approach to the New World, another Wilkinson, which was on display in the Olympic’s Smoking Room.
2 Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, II, pp. 244–8.
3 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 216.
4 Most memorably in the movies A Night to Remember (1958) and Titanic (1997), where Andrews was played by Michael Goodliffe and Victor Garber, and the television series S.O.S. Titanic (1979), in which he was played by Geoffrey Whitehead. The latter scene, with the Steward replaced by Stewardess Mary Sloan, played by Helen Mirren, was omitted from some of the later television broadcasts of S.O.S. Titanic.
5 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, Appendix L, ‘Thomas Andrews’ Fate’, p. 322.
6 Sir Horace Plunkett (1854–1932), former MP for South Dublin, penned the foreword to the resultant biography of Thomas Andrews by Shan Bullock, Thomas Andrews: Shipbuilder, published in Dublin in December 1912.
7 Letter from crew member Mary Sloan to her sister, 27 April 1912.
8 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 229.
9 Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 93.
10 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 74 records the ‘final and grandest sight of him, throwing deck chairs overboard to the unfortunates in the water below’.
11 Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 4.
12 Bowen, Century of Atlantic, pp. 282–3.
13 Preston, Wilful Murder, pp. 471–3.
14 Richard Howells, The Myth of the Titanic (London: Macmillan Press, 1999), p. 101.
15 Passenger Frederick Hoyt in the Springfield Union, 20 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
16 Howells, Myth of the Titanic, p. 111.
17 Ibid., p. 100.
18 Ibid., p. 101.
19 Daily Graphic, 20 April 1912 (‘Titanic In Memoriam Number’), p. 9.
20 Howells, Myth, p. 101.
21 Ibid. The memorial is in Lichfield. The full text reads,
‘COMMANDEREDWARD
JOHN SMITH R.D. R.N.R.
BORN JANUARY 27 1850 DIED APRIL 15 1912
BEQUEATHING TO HIS COUNTRYMEN
THE MEMORY & EXAMPLE OF A GREAT HEART
A BRAVE LIFE AND A HEROIC DEATH
“BE BRITISH”’
22 Ibid., p. 112.
23 Ibid., pp. 117–19.
24 George Bernard Shaw, Daily News and Leader, 14 May 1912, p. 9; Howells, Myth, p. 114.
25 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
26 Marian Thayer’s affidavit, cit. Gracie, Titanic, pp. 125–6.
27 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 197.
28 Howells, Myth, pp. 106, 114.
29 Third-class passenger Victor Sunderland in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 26 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
30 Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice-president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, 20 April 1912.
31 Interview with passenger Charles E. Stengel in the New York Evening Globe, 19 April 1912; interview with third-class passenger Victor Sunderland in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 26 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
32 Interview with Wallace Hartley, reprinted in the Manchester Guardian, 22 April 1912.
33 Joey Butler, ‘Did Faith Drive the Titanic’s Musicians?’ (Queen’s University Belfast circular, 2011).
34 Behe in Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, Appendix J, ‘The Music of the Titanic’s Band’, p. 304.
35 Account of third-class passengers Ellen Mocklare and Bertha Moran in the Evening World, 22 May 1912.
36 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 229; third-class passenger Victor Sunderland in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 26 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
37 Father Graham Smith, ‘Devotion to a heroic priest who died on the Titanic is growing’, Catholic Herald, 7 April 2016; Hampshire Telegraph, 3 May 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection); account of third-class passengers Ellen Mocklare and Bertha Moran in the Evening World, 22 May 1912.
38 Letter from third-class passenger August Wennerström to his brother, 1 May 1912, cit. Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 229. Wennerström’s article in the left-wing newspaper Gula Faran was not the first time that periodical had carried a piece in favour of a republic; however, his attracted widespread attention, and criticism, for the intensity of its attack on the personality of the late King, Oscar II (1829–1907).
39 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 229.
1 Captain Lawrence V. Wade, ‘Lookouts: The Human Perspective’, Encyclopedia Titanica, 28 August 2003.
2 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 198.
3 Wilson, Shadow, p. 256.
4 Ibid., p. 255.
5 Ibid., p. 244.
6 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 229.
7 Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice-president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, 20 April 1912.
8 Ibid.
9 Crew member Cecil Fitzpatrick’s testimony to the Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 30 April 1912.
10 Ibid.; Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, Appendix L, ‘Thomas Andrews’ Fate’, pp. 321–3.
11 Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 188.
12 Statement by Colonel Archibald Gracie IV to the New York Evening Globe, 19 April 1912.
13 Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice-president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, 20 April 1912.
14 Deck plans of A-Deck, drawn by Bruce Beveridge, printed in Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 442–3.
15 Passenger Elizabeth Nye in the Folkestone Herald, 4 May 1912.
16 Thayer, Titanic, p. 343.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice-president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, 20 April 1912; Thayer, Titanic, pp. 344–5. There are various recollections, although none with significant deviations from one another, of what Milton and Jack said to each other at that moment.
20 Thayer, Titanic, p. 344.
21 Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice-president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, 20 April 1912.
22 Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 191; Thayer, Titanic, p. 345
23 Thayer, Titanic, p. 346.
24 Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice-president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, 20 April 1912.
25 Thayer, Titanic, pp. 347–8.
1 Interview given by Eleanor Danforth to the New York Evening World, 19 April 1912; Colonel Gracie saw Thayer move aft with George Widener and mentioned this to passenger May Futrelle, who repeated it in the Seattle Times on 23 April 1912.
2 Letter from third-class passenger Daniel Buckley to his mother, 18 April 1912.
3 Gracie, Titanic, p. 36.
4 Washington Post Semi-Monthly Magazine, 26 May 1912.
5 Passenger May Futrelle, Seattle Times, 23 April 1912; Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 238.
6 Testimony of Charles Lightoller to the British inquiry, 21 May 1912.
7 Gracie, Titanic, p. 38.
8 Titanic (20th Century Fox, 1953), directed by Jean Negulesco and starring Barbara Stanwyck, Clifton Webb, Richard Wagner, Brian Aherne and Thelma Ritter; A Night to Remember (The Rank Organisation and Paramount Studios, 1958), directed by Roy Baker, based on the novel by Walter Lord and starring Kenneth More, Honor Blackman, Tucker McGuire and Michael Goodliffe.
9 Titanic (20th Century Fox and Paramount, 1997), directed by James Cameron and starring Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gloria Stuart, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Victor Garber, Rochelle Rose and Frances Fisher.
10 Letter from third-class passenger Bertha Mulvihill to her sister, written on 17 or 18 April 1912 (B114).
11 Second-class passenger Nellie Becker to the Madras Mail, 22 May 1912.
12 Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, 17 April 1912; letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
13 Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice-president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, 20 April 1912.
14 Ibid.
15 Letter from passenger Hedwig Margaritha Frölicher to her brother, 18 April 1912 (B126).
16 Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice-president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, 20 April 1912.
17 Wilson, Shadow, p. 244.
18 Bigham, Finding Dorothy, p. 63.
19 Dorothy Gibson’s interview in the Morning Telegraph, 21 April 1912.
20 Testimony of Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon to the British inquiry, 17 May 1912.
1 Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, 17 April 1912.
2 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
3 Letter from Gladys Cherry to Thomas Jones, 19 April 1912.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 British inquiry, question 11109.
7 Testimony of second-class passenger Imanita Shelley to the US Senate inquiry, 25 May 1912.
8 Brinnin, Sway of the Grand Saloon, p. 339.
9 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 238.
10 Wilson, Shadow, pp. 253–4.
11 Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, 17 April 1912.
12 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
13 Davie, Titanic, p. 285.
14 The Countess of Rothes in the New York Daily Herald, 22 April 1912.
15 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
16 Ibid.
17 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 240.
18 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
19 Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, 18 April 1912.
20 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
21 Ibid.
22 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 247.
23 Third-class passenger Victor Sunderland in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 26 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
24 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
25 Passenger Juliette Taylor in the Newburgh Daily News, 19 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection); passenger Elizabeth Nye in the Folkestone Herald, 4 May 1912.
26 Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, 17 April 1912.
1 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 254–5.
2 Thayer, Titanic, pp. 345, 354.
3 Gavin Bell, Michael A. Findlay and Philip Gowan, ‘Mrs Marian Longstreth Thayer’, Encyclopedia Titanica (accessed 22 March 2017).
4 Thayer, Titanic, pp. 354–5.
5 Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 194.
6 Thayer, Titanic, p. 355.
7 Hampshire Telegraph, 3 May 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
8 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 242.
9 Ibid., p. 245.
10 Debate remains over whether Jack Phillips ever made it to Collapsible B, although he and Bride did jump from the Titanic at the same time.
11 Testimony of Assistant Cook John Collins to the Senate inquiry, 25 April 1912.
12 Gracie, Titanic, p. 61.
13 Thayer, Titanic, p. 352.
14 Gracie, Titanic, p. 69.
15 Ibid., pp. 61–2.
16 Ibid., p. 63; Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 247–8. In his 1940 account of the sinking, Jack Thayer does not mention the lifeboat transfer, one of several omissions.
17 Gracie, Titanic, pp. 72–3.
18 Ibid., p. 66.
19 Logan Marshall, The Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters (London: L. T. Meyer, 1912), p. 74. My thanks to the staff at the Linen Hall Library, Belfast, for allowing me to view this book while it was part of a display on the loss of the Titanic.
20 Thayer, Titanic, p. 351.
21 Ibid., p. 355.
22 Testimony of Captain Arthur Rostron to the US Senate inquiry, 21 June 1912.
23 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 255–6.
24 Ibid., p. 255.
25 Letter from second-class passenger Bertha Watt to Walter Lord, 10 April 1963 (LMQ/7/2/37).
26 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 256.
27 Ibid., Appendix P, ‘Buried at Sea’, p. 362.
28 Ibid., pp. 244–5.
29 Ibid., pp. 241–2.
30 The Book of Common Prayer (1662), ‘Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea’.
31 Jessop, Titanic Survivor, p. 161.
32 Wilson, Shadow, p. 59.
33 Karl Behr, ‘Titanic Disaster’, reprinted in The Titanic Commutator, no. 176 (Indian Orchard, MA: Titanic Historical Society, 2006).
34 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 252.
35 Ibid., p. 254. This was Bertha Mulvihill (1886–1959).
36 Ibid.
37 The two identified suicide risks were Mathilde Weisz (1874–1953) and Jane Laver Herman (1861–1937); letter from second-class passenger Dagmar Bryhl to her uncle, April 1912 (B150).
38 Wilson, Shadow, p. 57.
39 Ibid., p. 55.
40 Tribute from second-class passenger Sylvia Caldwell (B158).
41 Wilson, Shadow, p. 52.
42 Letter from John A. Badenoch to Percy Straus, 24 April 1912 (the Straus Historical Society).
43 Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’; passenger Frederick Hoyt in the Springfield Union, 20 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
44 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
45 Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, 17 April 1912.
46 Letter from first-class passenger Gladys Cherry, 18 April 1912 (B123).
47 Letters from first-class passenger Dr Alice Leader to Mrs Sarah Babcock, 16 April 1912, and third-class passenger Olaus Abelseth to various family members, 19 April 1912.
48 Christened Margaretta Spedden (1872–1950), but nearly always known as Daisy Spedden.
49 Letter from first-class passenger Margaretta Spedden, 18 April 1912.
50 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 255.
51 Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 195.
52 Eugene Abbott’s age is sometimes given as thirteen, but in an interview given by his mother to the Pawtucket Times on 22 May 1912, she gives his age as eleven (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
53 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 252.
54 In her subsequent interviews, it was unclear whether Rossmore’s rejection prompted Rhoda to delay fleeing with Eugene or if she had intended to try to get her youngest into a boat, only to be hampered by the chaos on deck during the Titanic’s final moments.
55 Rhoda Abbott, Pawtucket Times, 22 May 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
56 Correspondence between Randy Bryan Bigham and the late Ian Leslie, 21st Earl of Rothes.
57 Letter from second-class passenger Amelia Brown to her mother, 17 April 1912.
58 Letter from Gladys Cherry, 17 April 1912; first-class passenger Dr Harry Frauenthal, American Medicine, May 1912 (B179).
59 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 255.
60 Letter from second-class passenger Olga Lundin, 16 April 1912 (B102).
61 Letter from Gladys Cherry, 17 April 1912.
62 Letter from second-class passenger Elizabeth Nye, 16 April 1912; letter from first-class passenger Kornelia Andrews, written 16–18 April 1912, during her time on board the Carpathia.
63 Letter from second-class passenger Ethel Beane to her father, written during her time on board the Carpathia; Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 257.
64 From the extended letter from second-class passenger Kate Buss to her parents, entry for 16 April 1912.
65 Ibid., entry for 17 April 1912.
66 Passenger Margaret Brown, Newport Herald, 28–29 May 1912.
67 This was published in the Toronto World, 20 April 1912.
68 Wilson, Shadow, p. 61.
69 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 252.
70 Passenger Margaret Brown, Newport Herald, 28–29 May 1912.
71 Ibid..
72 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 251.
73 Thayer, Titanic, p. 356.
74 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955.
75 Bigham, Finding Dorothy, p. 64.
76 Ibid., pp. 63–4.
77 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 256–7.
78 Bigham, Finding Dorothy, p. 64.
79 Second-class passenger Sylvia Caldwell, Women of the ‘Titanic’ Disaster (B153).
80 Behe, On Board, p. 137.
81 Article by second-class passenger Ruth Becker, published in the St. Nicholas Magazine, 1913.
82 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 262.
83 Ibid., p. 263.
84 Bigham, Finding Dorothy, p. 66.
85 Wilson, Shadow, p. 60.
86 Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’.
87 Ibid. Gladys’s letters to her mother and Tom Jones are addressed from the Great Northern, while the Countess either went straight away to the Ritz or had moved there to celebrate her anniversary at that hotel by the following day.
88 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 263.
89 Wilson, Shadow, p. 61.
1 Thayer, Titanic, p. 352. In the same section of his memoir, Jack was unsure of Lightoller’s rank on the Oceanic, ‘either Chief Officer or First’; he was First.
2 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 269–70. This was the Norddeutscher Lloyd’s Bremen, which they operated from 1897 to 1914. She was seized as war reparations by the British government, who gifted her to P&O, who later sold her for work on the route from New York to Greece where she was eventually renamed the King Alexander and retired in 1929.
3 St Louis Post Dispatch, 1 May 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
4 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 270–2.
5 Ibid., p. 272.
6 Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 195.
7 New York Times, 29 May 1912, for a précis of British criticism of Senator Smith.
8 Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 195.
9 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 275.
10 Wilson, Ismay, p. 23.
11 Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 256.
12 Wilson, Ismay, pp. 5–6.
13 Hampshire Telegraph, 3 May 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
14 For J. Bruce Ismay’s later life, see William E. Carter, The Times, 22 April 1912; TRNISM 1/1; Lord Mersey’s statements at the British Board of Trade inquiry into the loss of the Titanic; Matarasso, A Voyage Closed and Done, pp. 23–6; Wilson, Ismay, pp. 6, 19–20, 30, 202–4, 207, 209–10, 216–17, 219, 225–7, 249, and Wilson, Shadow, pp. 191, 213–14, 217–18.
15 Thayer, Titanic, p. 352.
16 Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’.
17 Ibid.
18 Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955. The Washington Post, 4 May 1913, names the Countess as the guest at a party given by Lady Jane Williams-Taylor, wife of the General Manager of the Bank of Montreal. Some doubt has existed for years over where the Countess was when she experienced this horrible flashback to the Titanic. I am grateful to Randy Bryan Bigham for his time in allowing me to discuss my theories about it having been at the Ritz, rather than the Savoy, and for bringing the Washington Post piece to my attention.
19 Gosling, Debutantes and the London Season, pp. 15–18, 39.
20 Jasper Ridley, Napoleon III and Eugénie (London: Constable, 1979), p. 639.
21 Anne de Courcy, Circe: The Life of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992), pp. 96–8 – the Lady Londonderry in question in 1914 was Edith’s mother-in-law, Theresa; ‘Obituary of Lady Mairi Bury’, Daily Telegraph, 13 January 2010; Adrian Tinniswood, The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House between the Wars (London: Jonathan Cape, 2016), p. 56.
22 Mark Bence-Jones, Twilight of the Ascendancy (London: Constable, 1987), pp. 156, 159, 162–3.
23 Newtownards Chronicle, 6 February 1915; Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 93.
24 Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 93.
25 Sir Horace Plunkett’s foreword in Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. xx, quotes the letter but for decency’s sake considered the rest of the document ‘too intimate to publish’.
26 Plunkett in ibid., pp. xiii, xviii–xix
27 The current author’s great-grandfather remembered and sang the first song; ibid., p. 47.
28 Coryne Hall, Little Mother of Russia: A Biography of Empress Marie Feodorovna (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1999), p. 247; Rappaport, Four Sisters, pp. 208–9.
29 Morton, Thunder at Twilight, pp. 1–2.
30 King and Woolmans, Assassination of the Archduke, p. 188.
31 Russell, The Emperors, p. 67.
32 Interview with the Earl and Countess of Rothes, published in the Washington Post, 22 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
33 Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’.
34 Ibid.
35 Correspondence between the late Ian Leslie, 21st Earl of Rothes, and the historian Randy Bryan Bigham.
36 Buildings at Risk: Register for Scotland - Leslie House with Conservatory, Garden and Walls, Building Number 9693.
37 Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’.
38 This is based on the estimate of just over 19,000 men being killed in service on the Somme’s first day. Popular legend sometimes identifies the first sinking to exceed the Titanic’s casualty figures as that of the Austrian liner, Linz, which struck a mine in the Adriatic during the spring of 1918. The official death toll from the loss of the Linz was 697 and while it is possible that she was carrying several non-registered passengers, most likely Austro-Hungarian soldiers, it is impossible that it was enough to bring the figure of lives lost to 2,700 as has subsequently been stated on very little evidence.
39 Interview with Vera Morrison, daughter of Helen Harland (née Barbour, prev. Andrews), BBC Newsline Northern Ireland, 12 April 2012.
40 ‘Elizabeth Andrews’ in CQD magazine, no. 56 (December 2017).
41 Ulster’s New Prime Minister, Pathé, 28 November 1940.
42 Correspondence between the author and Joan Adler, Executive Director of the Straus Historical Society, 12 November 2018.
43 Letters from Isidor Straus to the Rev. H. H. Redgrave, 9 April 1912, and from the Rev. H. H. Redgrave to Jesse Straus, 13 September 1934 (SHS).
44 II Samuel 1:23.
45 Song of Solomon 8:7.
1 Dr J. C. H. Beaumont, Ships – and People (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1930), p. 282.
2 Dorothy Gibson interviewed in the New York Dramatic Mirror, 1 May 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
3 The movie’s title anglicised the name of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia (1857–1905).
4 It was the last piece she filmed; a movie she had shot before her trip to France and Italy in 1912, The Revenge of the Silk Masks, was the last to be released.
5 For the later years of Dorothy Gibson’s life, see Philip Gowan and Brian Meister, ‘The Saga of the Gibson Women’, Encyclopedia Titanica (2002); Bigham, Finding Dorothy, pp. 67–112; Wilson, Shadow, pp. 257–363.
6 Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 14 April 1932.
7 Thayer, Titanic, p. 337.
8 Ibid., p. 333.
9 Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 169.
10 Wilson, Shadow, p. 237.
11 The Times, 12 July 1913.
12 Boston Daily Globe, 11 October 1914.
13 For the Countess of Rothes’ life after 1912, the letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, 7 August 1955; Bigham, ‘A Matter of Course’; Gavin Cameron Bell et al., ‘Thomas William Jones’, Encyclopedia Titanica (2 November 2018).
14 Interview between James Cameron and Dr Robert Ballard, ‘Why you won’t find bodies on the Titanic’, National Geographic (26 November 2017).
15 Davie, Titanic, p. 48.
16 Third-class passenger Victor Sunderland in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 26 April 1912.
17 Wilson, Ismay, p. 49.
18 Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, 17 April 1912.
19 Brian Fagan, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300–1850 (New York: Perseus Books, 2000), p. 4.
20 Thayer, Titanic, pp. 328–30.
21 Miller, Famous Ocean Liners, p. 29.
22 The British Seafarers’ Union was founded on 6 October 1911 and was dissolved in 1922 following its merger with the Amalgamated Marine Workers’ Union.