NOTES

Abbreviations

B—A document number for primary sources reproduced in George Behe, On Board RMS Titanic: Memories of the Maiden Voyage (Stroud: 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.

The Inquiries

Both inquiries into the Titanic disaster have been digitized 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).

Author’s Note

  1. 1. Tad Fitch, J. Kent Layton, and Bill Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass: The Life and Loss of the RMS Titanic, 3rd ed. (Stroud: Amberley, 2015), p. 269.
  2. 2. John Roach, “Titanic Was Found During Secret Cold War Navy Mission,” National Geographic, November 21, 2017.
  3. 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. 4. Second-class passenger Imanita Shelley in the Anaconda Standard, May 6, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  5. 5. Mark Chirnside, RMS Olympic: Titanic’s Sister, 2nd ed. (Stroud: History Press, 2015), pp. 65–68.
  6. 6. John Malcolm Brinnin, The Sway of the Grand Saloon: A Social History of the North Atlantic, 2nd ed. (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2000), pp. 398–99.
  7. 7. Diana Preston, Wilful Murder: The Sinking of the Lusitania (London: Corgi Books, 2003), pp. 381–82.
  8. 8. Jeffrey Richards, A Night to Remember: The Definitive Titanic Film (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003), pp. 11–12.
  9. 9The Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin, July 16, 1938; Professor Charles Barr, “Hitchcock’s Titanic Project,” filmed lecture for the British Film Institute, April 11, 2012; Mark Glancy, “The Titanic: Three Films,” History Extra, April 12, 2012. Atlantic was shot with an English- and then German-speaking cast, by the same director, a standard moviemaking procedure until the advent of dubbing.
  10. 10. David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 325.
  11. 11. Brian Hawkins, “Titanic’s Last Victim,” National Post, April 14, 2012.
  12. 12. Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, p. 270; CQD Titanic magazine, no. 54 (Glengormley: Belfast Titanic Society, 2016).
  13. 13. Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, p. 279.
  14. 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 1, “Why Did the Nazis Load Prisoners on the Ship?,” pp. 239–44.
  15. 15. Violet Jessop, Titanic Survivor: The Memoirs of Violet Jessop, Stewardess, ed. John Maxtone-Graham (Stroud: History Press, 2010), pp. xxix–xxx.
  16. 16. Logan Marshall, The Sinking of the Titanic and Great Disasters (New York: L. T. Meyer, 1912), pp. 221–22.
  17. 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.

Chapter 1: The Lords Act

  1. 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. 2. Randy Bryan Bigham, “A Matter of Course,” Encyclopedia Titanica (April 2006).
  3. 3Sketch, April 25, 1900; the British census of 1911 gives the future countess’s date of birth as December 25, 1878.
  4. 4. Bigham, “A Matter of Course.”
  5. 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. 6The Sketch cited in Bigham, “A Matter of Course.”
  7. 7. Bigham, “A Matter of Course.”
  8. 8. Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 420.
  9. 9Washington Post, May 16, 1900.
  10. 10Bystander, November 27, 1907.
  11. 11Scotsman, March 31, 1927.
  12. 12. Lucinda Gosling, Debutantes and the London Season (Oxford: Shire Publications, 2013), pp. 49–50.
  13. 13. Bigham, “A Matter of Course”; The Times, April 10, 1919.
  14. 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. 15. George Plumptre, Edward VII (London: Pavilion Books, 1995), p. 257.
  16. 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. 17. Rose, George V, p. 76.
  18. 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. 1, 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. 19. Rose, George V, pp. 76–77.
  20. 20. PRONI D/4091/A/6/1, Sir Schomberg McDonnell’s journal, “Edward VII,” May 1910, pp. 42–43.
  21. 21. Ridley, Bertie, p. 469.
  22. 22. Ibid., p. 463.
  23. 23. Ibid.
  24. 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. 25. Rose, George V, p. 77.
  26. 26. Ibid., p. 139.
  27. 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. 28. David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, 2nd ed. (London: Picador, 1992), p. 524.
  29. 29. Ibid.
  30. 30. Rose, George V, pp. 121–31.
  31. 31. Mary of Teck was born at Kensington Palace on May 26, 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. 32. Rose, George V, p. 103.
  33. 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. 34. Richard Clarke, The Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast: A History, 1797–1997 (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1997), pp. 71–72. 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. 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. 36. Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 45.
  37. 37. Michael Ross and John R. Hume, Shipbuilders to the World: 125 Years of Harland and Wolff, Belfast, 1861–1986 (Dundonald: Blackstaff Press, 1986), p. 144.
  38. 38. Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 24; permanent exhibition at Titanic Belfast, author’s visit, June 9, 2018.
  39. 39Belfast News-Letter, June 1, 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. 88–89; Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The “Titanic’s” First-Class Passengers and Their World (New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2012), p. 12.
  40. 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. 41. The Olympic’s maiden voyage began in Southampton on June 14, 1911, and ended in New York on the 21st.
  42. 42Belfast News-Letter, June 1, 1911.
  43. 43. Ibid.
  44. 44. Ibid.
  45. 45. Ibid.
  46. 46. Chirnside, RMS Olympic, p. 41.
  47. 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. 48. Ibid., pp. 78–79.
  49. 49. Douglas-Home, Glimpse of Empire, p. 50.
  50. 50. Sir Robert Sanders, diary entry for Thursday March 23, 1911, in John Ramsden, ed., Real Old Tory Politics: The Political Diaries of Sir Robert Sanders, Lord Bayford, 1910–35 (London: Historians’ Press, 1984), pp. 25–26.
  51. 51. Helen Rappaport, Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses (London: Macmillan, 2014), pp. 157–58.
  52. 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, October 23, 1911.
  53. 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. 35–36.
  54. 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, the Duchess of Parma and Piacenza (1819–1844), daughter of the Duke of Berry (who was assassinated in 1820), the 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 (1870–1899), 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 (1802–1866), 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), and mother of Elisabeth of Bavaria, Queen of the Belgians (1876–1965).
  55. 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. 56. Hugo Vickers, Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979), pp. 129–30.
  57. 57. Bigham, “A Matter of Course.”
  58. 58. Simon Thurley, Hampton Court: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 166, 182–84.
  59. 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. 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 regarding the legends of Bartholomew’s early career in Scotland noted “nothing of all this is authenticated.” See Paul, Scots Peerage, pp. 264–66.
  61. 61. It is possible, although perhaps unlikely, that the portrait was of Queen Mary’s mother, Laura Martinozzi, Duchess of Modena (1639–1687).
  62. 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 ed. (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, 40–41, 51, 95, 123, 135; and Jenny Uglow, A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration, 1660–1670 (London: Faber & Faber, 2009), pp. 193, 482–84.

Chapter 2: The Sash My Father Wore

  1. 1. Norman Weatherall and George E. Templeton, South Belfast (Dublin: Nonsuch Publishing, 2008), pp. 41–43; Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 23.
  2. 2. As of 2018, the older name of Stockman’s Lane survives in the former top half of the road.
  3. 3. The peer in question was Thomas Bateson, 1st Baron Deramore of Belvoir (1819–1890), who briefly served as Lord of the Treasury in the cabinet of the Earl of Derby. The embankment-honored 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. 4. Wellington College was created after the merging of the Annadale and Carolan grammar schools.
  5. 5. Weatherall and Templeton, South Belfast, pp. 9–11.
  6. 6. In 1912, Dunallon House was 12 Windsor Avenue; it is now 20 Windsor Avenue.
  7. 7. Shan F. Bullock, Thomas Andrews: Shipbuilder (Dublin and London: Maunsel, 1912), p. 63.
  8. 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. 9. Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 92.
  10. 10. Ronald Marshall, Methodist College Belfast: The First Hundred Years (Belfast: Methodist College Belfast, 1968), p. 49.
  11. 11Belfast News-Letter, March 19, 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. 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. 13. Victoria College, Belfast, is now spread over two campuses, both of them in Malone, only a few streets over from Thomas Andrews’s 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. 14. Keith Haines, Campbell College (Stroud: Tempus, 2004), pp. 8–20; 1 Peter 2:17.
  15. 15. Information courtesy of North Down Cricket Club.
  16. 16. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 3.
  17. 17. Ibid., pp. 1–2.
  18. 18. Ibid., p. 1.
  19. 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. 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. 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 ed. (Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1985), p. 64.
  22. 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. 23. Brett, “The Edwardian City,” pp. 120–21.
  24. 24. Lyn Gallagher, The Grand Opera House Belfast (Dundonald: Blackstaff Press, 1995), p. 5; Brett, Buildings of Belfast, p. 58.
  25. 25. Brett, “The Edwardian City,” p. 130; Pictorial World, February 14, 1889.
  26. 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. 27. Brett, “The Edwardian City,” p. 126.
  28. 28. Ibid., pp. 125–26. 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. 29. Brett, “The Edwardian City,” p. 126.
  30. 30. The Britannic’s keel was laid on November 30, 1911.
  31. 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. 32. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, pp. 51–52.
  33. 33. Connolly, “Belfast: The Rise and Fall of a Civic Culture,” p. 44.
  34. 34. Ibid., pp. 46–47; Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster (Dundonald: Blackstaff Press, 1992), p. 387.
  35. 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. 36. Connolly, “Belfast: The Rise and Fall of a Civic Culture,” p. 48.
  37. 37. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, pp. 52–53.
  38. 38. Ibid., p. 51.
  39. 39. John Gray, City in Revolt: James Larkin and the Belfast Dock Strike of 1907 (Dundonald: Blackstaff Press, 1985), p. 205.
  40. 40. Ibid., pp. 206–9.
  41. 41. Ibid., p. 212.
  42. 42. Ibid.
  43. 43. Gillian McIntosh, Belfast City Hall: One Hundred Years (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2006), pp. 10–11.
  44. 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. 45. Andrew R. Holmes and Eugenio F. Biagini, “Protestants,” in Biagini and Daly (eds.), The Cambridge Social History of Ireland, p. 95.
  46. 46. Bardon, History of Ulster, pp. 419–22.
  47. 47. Eugenio F. Biagini, “Minorities,” in Biagini and Daly (eds.), The Cambridge Social History of Ireland, p. 439.
  48. 48. Bardon, History of Ulster, pp. 400–402.
  49. 49. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 50.
  50. 50. Article 44.1.2 of the Bunreacht na hÉireann, enacted on December 27, 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 percent in favor of repeal, on December 7, 1972.
  51. 51Morning News from Belfast, June 2, 1886.
  52. 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. 53. Marianne Elliott, When God Took Sides: Religion and Identity in Ireland: Unfinished History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 138–39.
  54. 54. Lee, “Intermarriage, Conflict and Social Control in Ireland,” p. 17.
  55. 55. Ibid., p. 19.
  56. 56. For the technical logistics of the Titanic’s sea trials, see Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 50–52.
  57. 57. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, pp. 54–55.
  58. 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. 59. David Fitzpatrick, Descendancy: Irish Protestant Histories Since 1795 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 83–84.
  60. 60. Andrew R. Holmes and Eugenio F. Biagini, “Protestants,” in Biagini and Daly (eds.), The Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland, p. 94.
  61. 61. Feargal Cochrane, Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism Since the Anglo-Irish Agreement (Cork: Cork University Press, 1997), p. 76.
  62. 62. Thomas Andrews’s eldest brother, John, later served as grand master of the Orange Institution of Ireland from 1948 to 1954.
  63. 63. Letter from Matthew Banks Hogg of Keady, Co. Armagh, to the Belfast News-Letter, April 2, 1912.
  64. 64. John Frederick MacNeice, Carrickfergus and Its Contacts: Some Chapters in the History of Ulster (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1928), p. 76.
  65. 65. Denis Gwynn, The Life of John Redmond (London: George G. Harrap, 1932), p. 201.
  66. 66. Fitzpatrick, Descendancy, p. 110.
  67. 67. Andrews’s 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’s mother, Eliza.
  68. 68. Geoffrey Lewis, Carson: The Man Who Divided Ireland (London and New York: Hambledon & London, 2005), p. 143.
  69. 69. Joseph Valente, The Myth of Manliness in Irish National Culture, 1880–1922 (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011), p. 103.
  70. 70. Lewis, Carson, p. 113.
  71. 71. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 53.

Chapter 3: Southampton

  1. 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. 2. Bruce Beveridge et al., Titanic: The Ship Magnificent, 2 vols., 5th ed. (Stroud: The History Press, 2016), vol. 2: Interior Design & Fitting Out, p. 15; Grace Evans, Titanic Style: Dress and Fashions on the Voyage (Ludlow: Moonrise Press, 2011), pp. 15–48.
  3. 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 April 10, 1912, to have been approximately 5:23 a.m.
  4. 4. Chirnside, Olympic, pp. 91–97.
  5. 5. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 58; Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 60.
  6. 6. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 59; Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 56.
  7. 7. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, pp. 58–59.
  8. 8. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 90.
  9. 9. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, pp. 59–60.
  10. 10. Ibid., p. 60.
  11. 11. The 1912 British miners’ strike began on February 29, 1912, with industrial action initially beginning over the issue of a standardized 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 April 2 and 4 nearly forty thousand miners went back to work, and a union vote by the Miners’ Federation to end the strike passed by 440 to 125 on April 6. In the five weeks of the strike, an estimated twenty-eight million tons of coal had been lost to British industry.
  12. 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. 122–24.
  13. 13. Laurence Dunn, Famous Liners of the Past: Belfast Built (London: Adlard Coles, 1964), p. 196.
  14. 14. Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, p. 23.
  15. 15. Ibid., p. 9.
  16. 16. R. A. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces: Luxury in Passenger Steamships (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1913), pp. 275–76.
  17. 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 April 11, 1912 (B71); Ernest Townley, Daily Express, April 16, 1912; letter from third-class passenger Daniel Buckley to his mother, April 18, 1912; Whitehaven News, May 2, 1912.
  18. 18. Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, p. 15.
  19. 19. Bowen, Century of Atlantic Travel, p. 197.
  20. 20. “The Cholera of 1892 in Hamburg,” British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 1677 (1893), pp. 373–75; Paul S. B. Jackson, “Fearing Future Epidemics: The Cholera Crisis of 1892,” Cultural Geographies, vol. 20, no. 1 (2013), 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. 35–36.
  21. 21. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, pp. 164–65.
  22. 22. Ibid., p. 140.
  23. 23. Bigham, “A Matter of Course.”
  24. 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, January 13, 1913 (National Archives at New York).
  25. 25. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 65.
  26. 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 a quarter to ten. The train carrying the second- and third-class passengers left at eight o’clock, while first-class passengers set off an hour and forty-five minutes later, something that would fit with the policy of trying to embark third-class travelers before those in First, although it remains difficult to find any other firsthand 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 traveling clergyman, this time an ordained Baptist pastor whose vocation was taking him to Missouri via Titanic’s second-class quarters. In an interview on April 23, 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 scheduled, 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 eleven thirty. It also helps explain the relatively short embarkation window eventually experienced by first-class passengers taking the train, who arrived in Southampton at 11:30 in time for the ship’s noon departure.
  27. 27. Ibid., p. 67.
  28. 28. For the design of the White Star shed, see fig. 1-1 in Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, p. 10.
  29. 29. Brewster, Gilded Lives, p. 29.
  30. 30. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 144.
  31. 31Titanic ticket number 110152.
  32. 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. 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. 34Paris Herald, April 11, 1912, which was then reprinted in the New York Herald; Bigham, “A Matter of Course.”
  35. 35. For the deck plans consulted, please see figs 8-1 and 8-9 in Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, pp. 306–13.
  36. 36. Captain E. G. Diggle, The Romance of a Modern Liner (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1930), p. 172.
  37. 37. Fig. 8-1 in Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, pp. 306–7.
  38. 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. 39. For Edward VIII’s rejection of the suite, see Chirnside, Olympic, p. 201.
  40. 40. June Hall McCash, A Titanic Love Story: Ida and Isidor Straus (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2012), pp. 159, 181.
  41. 41. Ibid., p. 179.
  42. 42. Jessop, Titanic Survivor, p. 134.
  43. 43. Shelby Foote, The Civil War, a Narrative: Red River to Appomattox (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), p. 640.
  44. 44. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 156.
  45. 45. Colonel Archibald Gracie, Titanic: A Survivor’s Story (Stroud: History Press, 2011), p. 6; McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 9.
  46. 46. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 170.
  47. 47. Ibid., pp. 167–69.
  48. 48. Ibid.
  49. 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, August 30–31, 2017.
  50. 50. John P. Eaton and Charles A. Haas, Titanic: A Journey through Time (Yeovil: Patrick Stephens, 1999), pp. 46–48; Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 75.
  51. 51. Gracie, Titanic, p. 6.
  52. 52. Interview with passenger May Futrelle, given to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, April 29, 1912.
  53. 53. For an excellent analysis of the logistics of the New YorkTitanic incident, see Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 80–82.
  54. 54. Letter from second-class passenger Amelia Brown to her mother, April 17, 1912 (B109); Roberta Maioni, “My Maiden Voyage,” Daily Express (1926), accessible on Encylopedia Titanica, October 2, 2008.
  55. 55. Letter from Ida Straus to Lilian Burbidge, April 10, 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.

Chapter 4: A Contest of Sea Giants

  1. 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. 2. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 91–95.
  3. 3. Passenger Margaret Brown in the Newport Herald, May 28, 1912 (B149).
  4. 4. Passenger R. Norris Williams II, in Brewster, Gilded Lives, p. 18.
  5. 5. Morris, Tycoons, p. 272.
  6. 6. Charles Emmerson, 1913: The World before the Great War (London: Bodley Head, 2013), pp. 145–46.
  7. 7New York Herald Tribune, October 7, 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. 24–26.
  8. 8. Zahra, Great Departure, p. 3; Morris, Tycoons, p. 277.
  9. 9. A notorious article actually naming the Four Hundred was published in the New York Times on February 16, 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. 10. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 94.
  11. 11. John B. Thayer III, The Sinking of the S.S. Titanic: April 14–15, 1912 (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2010), p. 329.
  12. 12. Chirnside, Olympic, p. 43.
  13. 13. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 61.
  14. 14. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 92.
  15. 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. 283–85.
  16. 16The Shipbuilder, p. 71.
  17. 17. Don Lynch and Ken Marschall, Titanic: An Illustrated History (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992), p. 20.
  18. 18. Emmerson, 1913, p. 68.
  19. 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 rumors 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. 20New York Times, October 25, 1913; New York Times, March 28, 1924, John Leishman’s obituary.
  21. 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. 22. Brinnin, The Sway of the Grand Saloon, p. 306.
  23. 23. Ibid., p. 316.
  24. 24. Ibid., pp. 316–17.
  25. 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. 26Our 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, March 6, 2018. The piece was on loan at that time from the Mariners’ Museum and Park, Newport News, VA.
  27. 27. See 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. 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. 29. Gerald Aylmer, R.M.S. Mauretania: The Ship and Her Record (London: Percival Mansion, 1935), pp. 14–15.
  30. 30. Bowen, A Century of Atlantic Travel, 1830–1930, pp. 232–33.
  31. 31. Brinnin, Sway of the Grand Saloon, p. 330.
  32. 32. Ibid., pp. 330–35.
  33. 33. Aylmer, Mauretania, p. 15; Bowen, Century of Atlantic Travel, p. 244.
  34. 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. 35. The Kronprinzessin Cecilie weighed in at approximately 19,400 tons; the Mauretania was 32,000 tons.
  36. 36. Her record was broken by the maiden voyage of a German liner, the Bremen, in 1929.
  37. 37Southampton Times, May 18, 1912.
  38. 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. 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 May 19 and 26, 1911, referred to the third ship as the Britannic, as did a Harland and Wolff order book entry for October 17 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 publicize a year later after being pressured to by rumors 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 Right Honorable Alexander Carlisle, former chairman of the Harland and Wolff board of directors. We know from those questions 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 August 24, 1912, and the Weekly Irish Times on December 14, 1912. Construction work on the Imperator began in the spring of 1910.
  40. 40. Interview with Paul Louden-Brown, “Five Titanic Myths Spread by Films,” BBC News, April 2, 2012.
  41. 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. 42Yale Daily News, April 11, 12, and 18, 1912; Judith Schiff, “When the Titanic Went Down,” Yale Alumni Magazine (March–April 2012).
  43. 43. Brewster, Gilded Lives, p. 30.
  44. 44. Death notices in the New York Times, May 20, 1897, and May 4, 1912.
  45. 45. Preston Remington, “Two Gobelin Tapestries,” Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1955), pp. 155–58. The original was kept by the Mobilier National, but an exact replica had been produced for the Titanic.
  46. 46. This description of the Reception Room is based on deck plans and specifications given in Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, pp. 354–61, and figs 9-7, 9-13, 90-16.
  47. 47. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955 (LMQ7/7/20).
  48. 48. Elmer Zebley Taylor, Jigsaw Picture Puzzle of People I Have Known and Sundry Experiences from 1864 to 1949 (privately reprinted, 2017), p. 173.
  49. 49. Relatively accurate re-creations of the Saloon formed prominent set pieces in A Night to Remember (1958) and Titanic (1997).
  50. 50. John Malcolm Brinnin, Beau Voyage: Life Aboard the Last Great Ships (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981), p. 56.
  51. 51. Letter from Ewart Burr to Ethel Burr, April 10, 1912 (B25).
  52. 52The Shipbuilder, p. 32.
  53. 53. This description of the Titanic’s Dining Saloon is based on a compilation from ibid., pp. 32–33; Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, pp. 361–65, figs. 9-17 and 9-20; Chirnside, Olympic, Appendix 3, “Cunard’s Spy,” pp. 304–8.
  54. 54. Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, pp. 166–69.
  55. 55. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 95.

Chapter 5: A Safe Harbor for Ships

  1. 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. 2. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 96.
  3. 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. 4. Zebley Taylor, Jigsaw Picture Puzzle, p. 173.
  5. 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, April 27, 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, August 27 and November 12, 2018.
  6. 6. Letter from Ida Straus to Rose Abraham, March 30, 1912 (SHS).
  7. 7. Ibid.; McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 181–82.
  8. 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. 9. Purser Charles Spedding, Reminiscences of Transatlantic Travellers (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1926), p. 61.
  10. 10. Moss and Hume, Shipbuilders to the World, pp. 146–47.
  11. 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 April 11, 1912, by first-class passengers Ramon Artagaveytia (B46), Elizabeth Bonnell (which she misdated to April 9) (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. 12. Beesley, Titanic, p. 10; letter from passenger Ramon Artagaveytia to Adolfo Artagaveytia, April 11, 1912; passenger Margaret Brown in the Newport Herald, May 28, 1912.
  13. 13Evening Standard, April 24, 1912; Belfast Evening Telegraph, April 15, 1912.
  14. 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. 15. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 30.
  16. 16. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 262.
  17. 17. White Star’s information for first-class passengers, “Breakfast from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.”
  18. 18. Beesley, Titanic, p. 10.
  19. 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. 20. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 236.
  21. 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. 22. Beesley, Titanic, p. 11.
  23. 23. William Garner, Cobh: Architectural Heritage (Dublin: An Foras Forbartha, 1979), pp. 5–6.
  24. 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 et al. (eds.), 1798: A Bicentenary Perspective (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003), p. 489.
  25. 25. “That Jesuit on the Titanic,” L’Osservatore Romano, April 24, 2012.
  26. 26. Jennifer Roche, “How Holy Obedience Saved a Priest’s Life on Titanic,” National Catholic Register, August 13, 2017.
  27. 27. The best modern publication of Francis Browne’s photographs of April 11, 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. 28. A letter from one of the Titanic’s assistant engineers, Albert Ervine, April 11, 1912 (B58), confirms that Andrews’s inspection took place in the morning, before the stop at Queenstown.
  29. 29. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 106.
  30. 30. David Blair’s letter was auctioned by Henry Aldridge in 2007 and bought by an unnamed bidder.
  31. 31. Testimony of Frederick Fleet to the US Senate inquiry, April 23, 1912.
  32. 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 May 8, 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. 33. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 262; Beesley, Titanic, p. 12.
  34. 34. Tea was also served in the Lounge, Café Parisian, and Reception Room.
  35. 35. The musician was Eugene Patrick Daly (1883–1965), who was traveling 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 favored 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 (1814–1845), one of the movement’s early founders.
  36. 36The Shipbuilder, p. 41; Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, pp. 248–56, fig. 6-42.

CHAPTER 6: The Lucky Holdup

  1. 1. Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, p. 44n.
  2. 2Titanic ticket numbers 24160 and 17760, respectively. Allen was traveling 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. 123–24, 147.
  3. 3. In First Class, cabins E-1 through 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. 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. 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 traveling with his children in First Class. It was also central to the story of the less well-known television miniseries 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. 5. Lynch and Marschall, Titanic, p. 33.
  6. 6. Chirnside, Olympic, p. 78.
  7. 7. Hays did not survive the sinking of the Titanic and, because of this, the Laurier’s proposed opening on April 26 was rescheduled and scaled down for June 12.
  8. 8Titanic ticket number 111320. Gee was one of those who lost their lives four days later.
  9. 9. Helen Churchill Candee, “Sealed Orders,” Collier’s Weekly, May 4, 1912.
  10. 10. Randy Bryan Bigham, Finding Dorothy: A Biography of Dorothy Gibson (Raleigh, NC: Lulu Press, 2012), p. 9.
  11. 11. The two stars’ salaries are sometimes incorrectly presented as comparable at this stage in their careers. Pickford had been paid $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. 58–59.
  12. 12. John A. Brown’s death certificate, B1195959, New Jersey State Archives.
  13. 13. Pauline Gibson’s passport application (number 27124) to the State of New York in 1921 gives her date of birth as June 30, 1866.
  14. 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, January 22, 1911; a profile of Jules Brulatour published in New York Dramatic Mirror, January 31, 1911; a profile of Harry Raver in the Moving Picture World, October 1, 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, 33–35, 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. 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. 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. ed. (New York: New Press, 2004), pp. 49–71.
  17. 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. 18. Andrew Britton, SS Nieuw Amsterdam (Stroud: History Press, 2015), p. 14.
  19. 19. Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, pp. 137–39, 142–43.
  20. 20. The description of Dorothy and Pauline Gibson’s cabin is based on ibid., pp. 395–97, and the relevant deck plans in figs 10-7 and 10-8. For the calmer weather on April 11, see Beesley, Titanic, p. 10.
  21. 21. Dorothy and Pauline Gibson were traveling on ticket number 112378.

Chapter 7: A Decent Wee Man

  1. 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. 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. 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. 4. Thayer, Titanic, p. 333.
  5. 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, vol. 2, pp. 237–41.
  6. 6The Shipbuilder, p. 40.
  7. 7. Ibid., p. 43.
  8. 8. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 255.
  9. 9. Brinnin, Sway of the Grand Saloon, pp. 464–65.
  10. 10. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 255.
  11. 11. Moss and Hume, Shipbuilders to the World, p. 157.
  12. 12. Jessop, Titanic Survivor, pp. 139–40.
  13. 13. Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, p. 408.
  14. 14. Jessop, Titanic Survivor, p. 132.
  15. 15. Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, pp. 392, 408.
  16. 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. 17. This was Lutie Parrish (1852–1930), who was traveling in Second Class with her daughter, Imanita Shelley (1887–1954).
  18. 18Titanic ticket number 17595. Ann Elizabeth Isham (1862–1912) lost her life in the sinking of the Titanic.
  19. 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, vol. 2, pp. 155n, 157–66, 184n, 388–95, and fig. 10-4.
  20. 20. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 107n.
  21. 21. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 59.
  22. 22. Jessop, Titanic Survivor, pp. 113–14, 131–32.
  23. 23. Robin Gardiner and Dan van der Vat, The Riddle of the Titanic (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995), p. 99.
  24. 24. Ibid., p. 94.
  25. 25. Robin Gardiner, Titanic: The Ship That Never Sank? (Shepperton: Ian Allan, 1998), pp. 266–67.
  26. 26Conspiracies: The Ship That Never Sank?, first broadcast on Sky One on September 16, 2004.
  27. 27. Gardiner, The Ship That Never Sank?, p. 265.
  28. 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: History Press, 2012), Appendix 1, “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. 123–28.
  29. 29. Gardiner and van der Vat, Riddle of the Titanic, p. 261.
  30. 30. Ibid., pp. 98–99.
  31. 31. Bowen, Century of Atlantic Travel, pp. 235–36, 241.
  32. 32. Hall, Beveridge and Braunschweiger, Titanic or Olympic, p. 156.
  33. 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, 141–48, 257–64; Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 7, 39; Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, pp. 216, 219, 222, 225, 286–87, 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. 34. Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 92.
  35. 35. Fitzpatrick, Descendancy, p. 275.
  36. 36. Letter from Mary Sloan to her mother, written from the SS Lapland, April 27, 1912, in Bullock, Thomas Andrews, pp. 63–64.
  37. 37. The description of this meeting in the Reception Room on Friday, April 12, is based on ibid.

Chapter 8: A Kind of Hieroglyphic World

  1. 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 April 15, 2012, the centenary of the sinking, for $35,250 (approximately £23,800).
  2. 2. Letter from Gladys Cherry, April 18, 1912 (B123).
  3. 3. Beesley, Titanic, p. 12.
  4. 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 April 13 (B93) mentions a few cases of seasickness in Third Class, and in Second Class Esther Hart’s letter of April 14 (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 April 18, 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. 5. Cynthia Asquith, Remember and Be Glad (London: Barrie, 1952), p. 165.
  6. 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, January 30, 2018.
  7. 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. 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, January 13, 1913.
  9. 9. Robert Farquharson, The House of Commons from Within, and Other Memories (London: Williams and Norgate, 1912), pp. 211–12.
  10. 10. Eaton and Haas, Titanic, pp. 56–57.
  11. 11. Peter Engberg and Andrew Williams, “Mr. Percy William Fletcher,” Encyclopedia Titanica (August 2017).
  12. 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 First Empire.
  13. 13. These descriptions of the Countess of Rothes’s stateroom are based on Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, p. 326 and figs 7-28 and 8-16, and Tom McCluskie, Anatomy of the Titanic (London: PRC Publishing, 1998), pp. 146–48.
  14. 14. This is made from compiling accounts in 1870 and 1911 editions of ladies’ maid guides.
  15. 15. Ibid., pp. 61–62.
  16. 16. Tessa Boase, The Housekeeper’s Tale: The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House (London: Aurum Press, 2015), p. 110.
  17. 17. Letter from Gladys Cherry, April 18, 1912.
  18. 18. Roberta Maioni, Daily Express (1926).
  19. 19. Bigham, “A Matter of Course.”
  20. 20The 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. 21. Brendon and Whitehead, The Windsors, p. 259.
  22. 22. Correspondence between Randy Bryan Bigham and Ian Leslie, 21st Earl of Rothes.
  23. 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. 165–67.
  24. 24. Rose, George V, pp. 100–101.
  25. 25. Cannadine, Decline and Fall, p. 65.
  26. 26. David Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 171.
  27. 27. Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy, pp. 171, 182–83; 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. 28–29.
  28. 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, January 13, 1913.
  29. 29New York Times, June 6, 1911.
  30. 30. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 61.
  31. 31. Zebley Taylor, Jigsaw Picture Puzzle, p. 174.
  32. 32. Gracie, Titanic, p. 7; Roberta Maioni, Daily Express writing competition (1926); an article in the Boston Globe, dated July 5, 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. 33. Gracie, Titanic, p. 7.
  34. 34. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 87–89.
  35. 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, January 6, 1996.
  36. 36Vogue, April 15, 1910, and April 15, 1912; Randy Bryan Bigham, Lucile: Her Life by Design (London: Lulu Press, 2014), pp. 82–83. The April 1912 Vogue article on Lady Duff Gordon hit the newsstands on the day the Titanic sank.
  37. 37. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 93, 107.
  38. 38. Zebley Taylor, Jigsaw Picture Puzzle, p. 173; Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 148.
  39. 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, April 19, 1913. In various instances, the latter article confused the Pekingese with the Chow-Chow.
  40. 40. Sergio Martínez Costos-Alvarín, “Victor Peñasco, a Spanish Tragedy,” online, Titanic Passengers and Crew Research (July 6, 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. 41Het Laatste Nieuws, in John Baxter, Alan Hustak, and Herman DeWulf, “Mlle Berthe Antonine Mayné,” Encyclopedia Titanica, November 23, 2018.
  42. 42Titanic ticket number 17482.
  43. 43Titanic ticket numbers 17593 and 17477. Guggenheim was in B-82 and Aubart in B-35.
  44. 44. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 148.
  45. 45. Jessop, Titanic Survivor, pp. 114, 135.
  46. 46. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 147.
  47. 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. 48. Brewster, Gilded Lives, pp. 110–12. For a defense of Hugh Woolner, see Senan Molony, “The Fleecing of Hugh Woolner,” Encyclopedia Titanica (February 2007).
  49. 49. Ibid., pp. 92–97.
  50. 50. Correspondence between the author and Gavin Cameron Bell, July 5, 2018.
  51. 51. Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection.
  52. 52. Elizabeth Wharton Drexel Lehr, “King Lehr” and the Gilded Age (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1935), p. 164.
  53. 53. Wilson, Astors, pp. 206–7; Brewster, Gilded Lives, p. 75; Fitch, Taylor, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 113.
  54. 54. Jessop, Titanic Survivor, p. 133.
  55. 55The 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. 56. Passenger Margaret Brown in the Newport Herald, May 28, 1912.
  57. 57. Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, Discretions and Indiscretions (London: Frederick A. Stokes, 1932), p. 147.

Chapter 9: Its Own Appointed Limits Keep

  1. 1. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 116.
  2. 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. 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. 4. Bigham, Finding Dorothy, p. 5.
  5. 5. Gracie, Titanic, p. 6.
  6. 6. William Whiting, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” (1860).
  7. 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. 8. McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 174–75; correspondence between the author and Joan Adler, executive director of the Straus Historical Society, concerning the Strauses’ summer cottage in Canada, November 12, 2018.
  9. 9. Letter from Frank H. Tabor to Isidor Straus, November 17, 1909 (SHS).
  10. 10. Letter from Jacob H. Schiff to C. S. Mellon, April 15, 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. 11. Letter from Jesse Straus to Herbert Straus, March 28, 1912 (SHS), mentions his recent exhaustion and a desire to introduce Beatrice to European languages as reasons for the trip.
  12. 12. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 175.
  13. 13. Letter from Isidor Straus to Oscar Straus, March 12, 1912 (SHS).
  14. 14. Gracie, Titanic, p. 7; McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 192.
  15. 15. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 192.
  16. 16. Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, pp. 241–42.
  17. 17. Gracie, Titanic, p. 3.
  18. 18. Ibid., pp. 3–4.
  19. 19. Ibid., p. 4.
  20. 20. Letter from Ambrose Bierce to Colonel Archibald Gracie IV, dated March 9, 1911, 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. 21. Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided (London: Penguin, 2011), pp. 540–43; Gracie, Titanic, p. 7.
  22. 22. Gracie, Titanic, p. 7.
  23. 23. Isidor Straus, The Autobiography of Isidor Straus (New York: Straus Historical Society, 2011), p. 1.
  24. 24. Ibid. The manuscript was archived and then first published by the Straus Historical Society in 1955.
  25. 25. Michael Davie, The Titanic: The Full Story of a Tragedy (London: Guild Publishing, 1986), p. 48.
  26. 26. Straus, Autobiography, p. 3; McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 25.
  27. 27. Hans Joachim Hahn, The 1848 Revolutions in German-Speaking Europe (London: Pearson, 2001), pp. 186–87; Thomas Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866, trans. Daniel Nolan (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1996), p. 528.
  28. 28. McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 24–26.
  29. 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. 30. Diner, Promised Land, pp. 23–24.
  31. 31. Straus, Autobiography, pp. 4–5.
  32. 32. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 33.
  33. 33. Straus, Autobiography, p. 5.
  34. 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. 230–32.
  35. 35. Ibid., p. 229; McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 38–39.
  36. 36. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 14.
  37. 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. 38. Ibid., p. 116.
  39. 39. Ibid., p. 113.
  40. 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. 41. Korn, “Jews and Negro Slavery,” p. 113.
  42. 42. Straus, Autobiography, p. 3.
  43. 43. Korn, “Jews and Negro Slavery,” p. 95.
  44. 44. Oscar S. Straus, Under Four Administrations: From Cleveland to Taft (Smithtown, NY: Straus Historical Society, 2017), p. 13.
  45. 45. Straus, Under Four Administrations, p. 12.
  46. 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. 47. Ibid., p. 41.
  48. 48. Straus, Under Four Administrations, pp. 12–13.
  49. 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. 50. Rosen, “Jewish Confederates,” p. 233.
  51. 51. McPherson, Cause and Comrades, p. 77.
  52. 52. Mrs. Abraham Levy, “To the Israelites of the South,” circular from the Hebrew Ladies’ Memorial Association, published at Richmond, VA, June 5, 1866, a copy of which is currently kept at the Beth Ahabah Museum and Archives in Richmond, VA.
  53. 53. Diner, Promised Land, p. 35.
  54. 54. Rosen, “Jewish Confederates,” p. 228.
  55. 55. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 50.
  56. 56. Straus, Autobiography, pp. 19–20.
  57. 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. 58. McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 52–57; New York Times, July 14, 1863.
  59. 59. Letter from Isidor Straus to Lazarus Straus, November 14, 1863 (SHS).
  60. 60. McPherson, Cause and Comrades, p. 107.
  61. 61. That Grant, rather than a deputy, was personally responsible for the “sweeping order” is the contention of a current biographer; see Ronald C. White, American Ulysses: The Life of Ulysses S. Grant (New York: Random House, 2016), pp. 251–52.
  62. 62. Diner, Promised Land, p. 37.
  63. 63. Straus, Autobiography, p. 16; Robert N. Rosen, The Jewish Confederates (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), p. 270.
  64. 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. 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. 66. Letter from Isidor Straus to Ida Straus, July 18, 1904 (SHS); McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 79–81; Straus, Autobiography, p. 41.
  67. 67. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 168.
  68. 68. Ibid., p. 84.
  69. 69. Letter from Ida Straus to Isidor Straus, July 29, 1891 (SHS).
  70. 70. McCash, Titanic Love Story, pp. 171–72.
  71. 71. Ibid., p. 92.
  72. 72. Ibid., p. 15.
  73. 73. Letter from Isidor Straus to Ida Straus, July 18, 1904 (SHS).
  74. 74. Straus, Autobiography, pp. 145–47.
  75. 75New York Times, October 15, 1912; Atlanta Constitution, August 10, 1913.
  76. 76. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 6.
  77. 77. Edvard Radzinsky, Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar, trans. Antonina W. Bouis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), p. 449.
  78. 78. Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia, Once a Grand Duke (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1932), p. 59.
  79. 79. Radzinsky, Alexander II, p. 419; Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Romanovs, 1613–1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016), p. 450.
  80. 80. Sebag Montefiore, Romanovs, p. 452.
  81. 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. 82. Ibid., p. 60.
  83. 83. Diner, Promised Land, pp. 43–44.
  84. 84. Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra (London: Victor Gollancz, 1968), p. 15.
  85. 85. Serhii Plokhy, Lost Kingdom: A History of Russian Nationalism from Ivan the Great to Vladimir Putin (London: Allen Lane, 2017), p. 152.
  86. 86. Diner, Promised Land, pp. 31–32.
  87. 87New York Times, September 11, 1910; Jewish Chronicle, June 7, 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. 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. 89. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 173.
  90. 90. Letter from Isidor Straus to Oscar Straus, October 8, 1907 (SHS).
  91. 91. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 13.
  92. 92. Letter from President Grover Cleveland to Isidor Straus, January 11, 1896 (SHS). The letter mentions that the President had uttered the phrase “a thousand times” to Straus.
  93. 93. Testament from Isidor Straus to his children, February 6, 1892 (SHS).
  94. 94. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 15.
  95. 95. Gracie, Titanic, p. 12.
  96. 96. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 118.

Chapter 10: Two More Boilers

  1. 1. Testimony of Joseph B. Ismay to the British inquiry, June 4, 1912.
  2. 2. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 116.
  3. 3. Beesley, Titanic, p. 10.
  4. 4. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 112.
  5. 5. Senan Molony, quoted in Rachael Pells, “Titanic Sank Due to an Enormous Uncontrollable Fire, Not Iceberg, Claim Experts,” Independent, January 1, 2017.
  6. 6. Documentary, Titanic: The New Evidence, first broadcast on the Smithsonian Channel, January 21, 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, November 7, 2004; Ian Griggs and Paul Bignell, “Titanic Doomed by Fire Below Decks, Says New Theory,” Independent, April 13, 2008.
  7. 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. 8. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 142.
  9. 9. Ibid., p. 113.
  10. 10. Ibid., p. 151.
  11. 11. Brinnin, Sway of the Grand Saloon, pp. 347–51.
  12. 12Edmonton Daily Chronicle, April 22, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  13. 13. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 169.
  14. 14. Beesley, Titanic, p. 14.
  15. 15. Thayer, Titanic, p. 334; Testimony at the Limitation of Liability Hearings, as reported in the New York Times, June 25, 1915.
  16. 16. Thayer, Titanic, pp. 333–34.
  17. 17. Ibid., p. 334.
  18. 18. Ibid., pp. 332, 334.
  19. 19. Albert J. Churella, The Pennsylvania Railroad, vol. 1: Building an Empire, 1846–1917 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), pp. 647, 684.
  20. 20. Ibid., p. 719.
  21. 21. Letter from Ida Straus to Lilian Burbidge, April 10, 1912 (LMQ/7/2/30); Gracie, Titanic, p. 3.
  22. 22. Genesis 11:1–9.
  23. 23. Morgan Robertson, The Wreck of the Titan; or, Futility (Springfield, IL: Monroe St. Press, 2015), pp. 1–2.
  24. 24. Bowen, Century of Atlantic Travel, pp. 188–89.
  25. 25. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 24.
  26. 26. Bowen, Century of Atlantic Travel, p. 241; Miller, Famous Ocean Liners, p. 13.
  27. 27. Aylmer, Mauretania, pp. 40–42; Duncan Haws, Merchant Fleets: White Star Line (Oceanic Steam Navigation Company) (Newport: Starling Press, 1990), p. 14.
  28. 28. Bowen, Century of Atlantic Travel, p. 294; Beesley, Titanic, p. 13; George Behe, On Board RMS Titanic: Memories of the Maiden Voyage (Stroud: History Press, 2017), p. 29.
  29. 29. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, p. 239.
  30. 30. Henry Martyn Hart, Recollections and Reflections (New York: Gibb Bros. & Moran, 1916), p. 107.
  31. 31New York Times, April 17, 1912.
  32. 32. Passenger Margaret Brown in the Newport Herald, May 28, 1912.
  33. 33. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 120.
  34. 34Yale Daily News, April 12, 1912.
  35. 35. Years later, Florence confirmed this herself in a conversation with her granddaughter, Pauline Matarasso; see Matarasso, A Voyage Closed and Done, pp. 24–25.
  36. 36. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 120–21; affidavit of Emily Ryerson to the US Senate inquiry into the loss of the Titanic, May 16, 1912; passenger Mahala Douglas, interviewed in the Los Angeles Times, April 21, 1912.

CHAPTER 11: A Thousand Uneasy Sparks of Light

  1. 1. Wilson, Ismay, p. 199.
  2. 2. Thayer, Titanic, p. 334.
  3. 3. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces, pp. 252–53.
  4. 4. Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, pp. 282–87.
  5. 5. Stefan Zweig, Marie Antoinette: Portrait of an Average Woman (New York: Viking Press, 1933), p. 106.
  6. 6. Ernest Townsley, Daily Express, April 16, 1912.
  7. 7. J. Bruce Ismay’s testimony to the US Senate inquiry, April 30, 1912.
  8. 8. Passenger May Futrelle, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, April 29, 1912; correspondence between Irene Harris and author Gregg Jasper, December 6, 1967, confirms that she fell on Sunday the 14th, not Saturday the 13th, as has been previously stated.
  9. 9. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 113.
  10. 10. Passenger May Futrelle, Atlanta Constitution, May 26, 1912.
  11. 11. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 128–29.
  12. 12. Duff Gordon, Discretions and Indiscretions, pp. 150–51.
  13. 13. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 193.
  14. 14. William Thornton Carter II was twelve years old at the time.
  15. 15Palestine Daily Herald, July 23, 1904; Richmond, VA, Times Dispatch, April 29, 1912.
  16. 16. Debs received 5.99 percent 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. 17. Emmerson, 1913, p. 146.
  18. 18. Ibid., pp. 142–43.
  19. 19. Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (New York: Grove Press, 2010), pp. 146–47.
  20. 20. Morris, Tycoons, pp. 235, 278–79.
  21. 21. The Constitution of the United States of America, Amendment XVI.
  22. 22. Morris, Tycoons, p. 278.
  23. 23. Brewster, Gilded Lives, p. 80; George Behe, A Death on the “Titanic”: The Loss of Major Archibald Butt (Morrisville, NC: Lulu, 2011), pp. 141–42.
  24. 24. Letter from Marian Thayer to President William Howard Taft, April 21, 1912 (B251).
  25. 25Argus, March 16, 1912.
  26. 26. For Butt’s immediate response to the attempted assassination, see Behe, Death on the “Titanic,” pp. 194–96. The Italian royal children in 1912 were Princess Yolanda (1900–1986); Princess Mafalda, who died as an inmate at Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944; the future King Umberto II (1904–1983); and Princess Giovanna (1907–1999). The fifth and last child, Princess Maria-Francesca, was not born until 1914.
  27. 27Argus, March 16, 1912.
  28. 28. Behe, Death on the “Titanic,” pp. 194–96.
  29. 29. The Mass was to mark the anniversary of the late King’s birth on March 14. King Umberto I of Italy (1844–1900) had been assassinated by anarchist Gaetano Bresci during a visit to Monza on July 29.
  30. 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 March 22, 1912.
  31. 31Daily Telegraph, January 7, 1899; Marguerite Cunliffe-Owen, The Martyrdom of an Empress (New York: Harper, 1899), pp. 274–82; New York Times, November 10, 1898.
  32. 32. The assassinations referenced are of Marie François Sadi Carnot (1837–1894), President of France, murdered in Lyon by an anarchist; Antonio Cánovas del Castillo (1828–1897), Prime Minister of Spain, assassinated by an anarchist in Mondragón; Elisabeth of Bavaria (1837–1898), 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. 33. This was the wedding of King Alfonso XIII to Princess Victoria-Eugenia of Battenberg in Madrid on May 31, 1906.
  34. 34. Behe, Death on the “Titanic,” p. 177.
  35. 35. Ibid., pp. 203–6.
  36. 36. Ibid., p. 207; New York Times, June 3, 1935; letter from Marian Thayer to President William Howard Taft, April 21, 1912.
  37. 37. Behe, Death on the “Titanic,” 232.
  38. 38. Ibid.
  39. 39. Ibid., pp. 21–22, 164–66.
  40. 40. Brewster, Gilded Lives, pp. 37–43.
  41. 41. Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 355.
  42. 42. Brewster, Gilded Lives, pp. 6–7.
  43. 43. Carl Sferrazza Anthony, Nellie Taft: The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era (New York: William Morrow, 2005), pp. 309–10, 483n–84n; James Gifford, “Archie Butt and Edwardian Homosexuality,” Out, April 2012. The First Lady was also friends with Millet.
  44. 44. Letter from Francis Millet to Alfred Parsons, April 11, 1912 (B72).
  45. 45Titanic ticket number 13509.
  46. 46Titanic ticket number 113050.
  47. 47. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 130.
  48. 48. Letter from Daisy Minahan to Senator William Alden Smith (R-MI), May 11, 1912.
  49. 49Washington Herald, April 21, 1912.
  50. 50. Letter from Mary Sloan to her sister, April 27, 1912.
  51. 51. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 109.
  52. 52. Letter from Eleanor Cassebeer to Walter Lord, November 9, 1955 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  53. 53. Passenger Eleanor Cassebeer in the Binghamton Press, May 7, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  54. 54. Interview with passenger Vera Dick, printed in Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 42.
  55. 55. They were Hudson Allison and his wife, Bessie (née Daniels), traveling 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. 56. The pigeon was referred to as Roast Squab. This description is based on the Saloon menu for Sunday, April 14, that was sold at auction in Dallas, Texas, by Heritage Auctions for $188,000 on Saturday, November 7, 2015.
  57. 57. Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, April 17, 1912 (B113).
  58. 58. Ibid.; letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  59. 59. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 64. It is the current author’s belief that the special bread would have been an Ulster speciality.
  60. 60. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 134; interview with passengers Albert and Vera Dick, published in the Calgary Herald, April 30, 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. 61. Bigham, Finding Dorothy, p. 189.
  62. 62. Behe, On Board, p. 376.
  63. 63New York World, April 20, 1912; interview with Dorothy Gibson for the New York Telegraph, April 21, 1912.
  64. 64. Letter from John Badenoch to Percy Straus, April 24, 1912 (SHS).
  65. 65. Milton Clyde Long’s United States passport application, 1910. Retrieved from Encyclopedia Titanica, November 14, 2017.
  66. 66. Long was berthed in stateroom D-6, ticket number 113501; see also Thayer, Titanic, p. 334.
  67. 67. Thayer, Titanic, p. 334.
  68. 68. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 141.
  69. 69. Thayer, Titanic, p. 334.
  70. 70. Ibid.
  71. 71. Ibid., p. 335; statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, April 20, 1912 (B250).
  72. 72. Thayer, Titanic, p. 335.

Chapter 12: Going Up to See the Fun

  1. 1. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 141–43.
  2. 2. Behe, On Board, pp. 84–85; passenger Frederick Hoyt in the Springfield Union, April 20, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  3. 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. 4. Beesley, Titanic, p. 22.
  5. 5. Second-class passenger Elizabeth Watt, Portland Oregonian, April 24, 1912; testimony by passenger Major Arthur Peuchen to the US Senate inquiry, April 23, 1912.
  6. 6. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  7. 7. Thayer, Titanic, pp. 335–36.
  8. 8. Davie, Titanic, p. 101.
  9. 9. Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, April 17, 1912; letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  10. 10. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  11. 11. Thayer, Titanic, p. 336.
  12. 12. Ibid., p. 336, only mentions John Thayer as an accompanying parent. However, the account of the sinking dictated by Jack Thayer on April 20, 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. 13New York Morning Telegraph, April 21, 1912.
  14. 14. Andrew Wilson, Shadow of the Titanic: The Extraordinary Stories of Those Who Survived (London: Simon & Schuster, 2011), pp. 28–29.
  15. 15. Passenger William Sloper’s account, written on April 18, 1912, and published in the Hartford Times, April 19, 1912.
  16. 16. Ibid.
  17. 17. Ibid.
  18. 18. Passenger A. A. Dick in the Calgary Herald, April 30, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  19. 19. Wilson, Shadow, p. 33.
  20. 20. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 153.
  21. 21. Ibid., p. 151.
  22. 22. Behe, On Board, p. 148.
  23. 23. Passenger William Sloper’s account, written on April 18, 1912 and published in the Hartford Times, April 19, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  24. 24. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 151 n.226, 160, 397.
  25. 25. Ibid., Appendix F, “The Iceberg Damage,” pp. 295–97.
  26. 26. Testimony of stewardess Annie Robinson to the British inquiry, May 20, 1912.
  27. 27. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 186.
  28. 28. Testimony of Joseph Boxhall to the British inquiry, May 22, 1912.
  29. 29. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  30. 30. This seems to disprove Lady Rothes’s 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. 31. Passenger William Sloper’s account, written on April 18, 1912, and published in the Hartford Times, April 19, 1912.
  32. 32. Letter from John Badenoch to Percy Straus, April 24, 1912.
  33. 33. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 194.
  34. 34. Letter from John Badenoch to Percy Straus, April 24, 1912.
  35. 35. Ibid.
  36. 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.

Chapter 13: Music in the First-Class Lounge

  1. 1. Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, April 17, 1912.
  2. 2. Letters from Gladys Cherry, one to her mother and the other to an unknown recipient, respectively dated April 17 and 18, 1912.
  3. 3. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  4. 4. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 184.
  5. 5. Nick Barratt, Lost Voices from the Titanic: The Definitive Oral History (London: Preface, 2009), p. 161.
  6. 6. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 187.
  7. 7. Passenger Henry Harper in Harper’s Weekly, April 27, 1912.
  8. 8. Helen Churchill Candee, Sealed Orders, May 4, 1912.
  9. 9. This account of the Thayer party was reached through compiling recollections of Martha Stephenson and Elizabeth Eustis (B247); the account of the sinking dictated by Jack Thayer on April 20, 1912, to the Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh Board; and Thayer, Titanic, pp. 337–39.
  10. 10. Thayer, Titanic, p. 338.
  11. 11. Ibid., p. 339.
  12. 12. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 184.
  13. 13. Thayer, Titanic, p. 339.
  14. 14. Passenger Gilbert Tucker in Times Union, April 19, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  15. 15. Passenger William Sloper’s account, written on April 18, 1912, and published in the Hartford Times, April 19, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  16. 16. Wilson, Shadow, p. 35.
  17. 17. Passenger William Sloper’s account, written on April 18, 1912, and published in the Hartford Times, April 19, 1912.
  18. 18. Ibid.
  19. 19. Wilson, Shadow, p. 244.
  20. 20. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 194.
  21. 21. Passenger William Sloper’s account, written on April 18, 1912, and published in the Hartford Times, April 19, 1912.
  22. 22. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 165.
  23. 23. Passenger Margaret Brown to the New York Times, April 22, 1912.
  24. 24. Passenger Eleanor Cassebeer to the Binghamton Press, April 29, 1912.
  25. 25. Testimony of Third Officer Herbert Pitman to the US Senate inquiry, April 23, 1912.
  26. 26. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 199.
  27. 27. Passenger Eleanor Cassebeer to the Binghamton Press, April 29, 1912.

Chapter 14: Vox faucibus haesit

  1. 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 was still playing throughout the time it took for her to leave the Titanic.
  2. 2. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955; Charles Herbert Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships (Oxford: Oxford City Press, 2010), p. 85.
  3. 3. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  4. 4. The roar from the funnels stopped at about 12:50 a.m.
  5. 5. The Countess of Rothes in the New York Daily Herald, April 22, 1912.
  6. 6. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  7. 7. Ibid.
  8. 8. Ibid.
  9. 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. 365–67.
  10. 10. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  11. 11New York World, April 20, 1912.
  12. 12. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  13. 13. Gracie, Titanic, p. 16.
  14. 14. McCash, Titanic Love Story, p. 196.
  15. 15. Davie, Titanic, p. 48.
  16. 16. Passenger May Futrelle in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, April 29, 1912.
  17. 17. Duff Gordon, Discretions and Indiscretions, p. 154.
  18. 18. Ibid.
  19. 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. 20. My thanks to Mrs. Laura Hunniwood for this anecdote.
  21. 21. Letter from third-class passenger Daniel Buckley to his mother, written c. April 18, 1912 (B110).
  22. 22. George Bernard Shaw, letter to the Daily News, May 4, 1912.
  23. 23. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, letter to the Daily News, May 8, 1912.
  24. 24. Passenger Ellen Bird in the New York World, April 20, 1912.
  25. 25. My thanks to Joan Adler, executive director of the Straus Historical Society, for confirming this anecdote.
  26. 26New York World, April 20, 1912.
  27. 27. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955, and letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, April 17, 1912.
  28. 28. Ibid.
  29. 29. The best modern re-creations of the sinking broadly concur with survivors’ accounts that the water had reached the ship’s nameplate by about 1:15 a.m.
  30. 30. Passenger May Futrelle in the Seattle Daily Times, April 22, 1912.
  31. 31. Passenger Hugh Woolner in the New York Sun, April 19, 1912.
  32. 32. Testimony of second-class passenger Imanita Shelley to the US Senate inquiry, May 25, 1912.
  33. 33. Ibid.
  34. 34. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 211.
  35. 35. Letter from Imanita Shelley to Edith Harper, undated, in the summer of 1912 (B238).
  36. 36. Ibid.
  37. 37. Testimony of Colonel Archibald Gracie IV to the US Senate inquiry, April 30, 1912.
  38. 38. Letter from Imanita Shelley to Edith Harper, undated, in the summer of 1912.
  39. 39. Testimony by crew member August Weikman to the US Senate inquiry, April 24, 1912.
  40. 40. Letter from crew member Mary Sloan to her sister, April 27, 1912 (B241).
  41. 41. Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, pp. 292–94, 336–40, 370, figs 7-45, 9-32, 9-33, 9-34; The Shipbuilder, pp. 47–53, describes the second-class Smoking 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. 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. 43. Testimony of third-class passenger Daniel Buckley to the US Senate inquiry, May 3, 1912.
  44. 44. Ibid.
  45. 45. Ibid.
  46. 46. Ibid.
  47. 47. Ibid.; another third-class passenger, Victor Sunderland, mentioned the crew’s help. Interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 26, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  48. 48. Letter from third-class passenger Olaus Abelseth to his father, April 19, 1912 (B137).
  49. 49. Testimony of third-class passenger Daniel Buckley to the US Senate inquiry into the loss of the Titanic, day 13.
  50. 50. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, Appendix Q, “J. ‘Brute’ Ismay,” pp. 364–65; 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 46º N., Longitude 50º 14º W., North Atlantic Ocean, Whereby Loss of Life Ensued, cmd 6352 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1912), p. 42.
  51. 51. This is based on compiling the respective nationalities of the passengers—First Class had 89 percent of passengers from English-speaking nations (212 Americans, 48 British subjects, 27 Canadians); Second Class had 79 percent (51 Americans, 1 Australian, 168 British subjects, 2 Canadians, and 4 South Africans); Third Class had 39 percent (43 Americans, 1 Australian, 231 from the United Kingdom, 5 Canadians, and 1 South African).
  52. 52. The source for this particular rumor is apparently a comment Jack Thayer made at a 1915 insurance hearing, reported in the New York Press, June 23, 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. 53. Thayer, Titanic, p. 339, misidentifies this man, steward Charles Dodd, as the chief Dining Saloon steward.
  54. 54. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 221.
  55. 55. Thayer, Titanic, p. 339.
  56. 56. Gavin Cameron Bell et al., “Miss Kate Buss,” Encyclopedia Titanica, November 23, 2018.
  57. 57. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 178–79.
  58. 58. These were lifeboats 6, 16, 14, 12, and 2 from the port side, and 9, 11, 13, and 15 from starboard.
  59. 59. Account of second-class passenger Charlotte Collyer, 1912 (B162).
  60. 60. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 211.
  61. 61. Testimony of Officer Harold Lowe to the US Senate inquiry, April 24, 1912.
  62. 62. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 221.
  63. 63. For the lowering of Lifeboat 4, see Gracie, Titanic, pp. 19–20; Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 222–23; passenger Kornelia Andrews’s interview with the Hudson Evening Register, April 20, 1912; affidavit of Emily Ryerson to the US Senate inquiry, May 16, 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. 126–28.
  64. 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 49 (1996), pp. 297–306.
  65. 65. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.

Chapter 15: Be British

  1. 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. 2. Beveridge et al., Ship Magnificent, vol. 2, pp. 244–48.
  3. 3. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 216.
  4. 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 TV movie 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. 5. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, Appendix L, “Thomas Andrews’ Fate,” p. 322.
  6. 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. 7. Letter from crew member Mary Sloan to her sister, April 27, 1912.
  8. 8. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 229.
  9. 9. Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 93.
  10. 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. 11. Bullock, Thomas Andrews, p. 4.
  12. 12. Bowen, Century of Atlantic, pp. 282–83.
  13. 13. Preston, Wilful Murder, pp. 471–73.
  14. 14. Richard Howells, The Myth of the Titanic (London: Macmillan Press, 1999), p. 101.
  15. 15. Passenger Frederick Hoyt in the Springfield Union, April 20, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  16. 16. Howells, Myth of the Titanic, p. 111.
  17. 17. Ibid., p. 100.
  18. 18. Ibid., p. 101.
  19. 19Daily Graphic, April 20, 1912 (“Titanic In Memoriam Number”), p. 9.
  20. 20. Howells, Myth of the Titanic, p. 101.
  21. 21. Ibid. The memorial is in Lichfield. The full text reads,

    COMMANDER

    EDWARD 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. 22. Ibid., p. 112.
  23. 23. Ibid., pp. 117–19.
  24. 24. George Bernard Shaw, Daily News and Leader, May 14, 1912, p. 9; Howells, Myth of the Titanic, p. 114.
  25. 25. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  26. 26. Marian Thayer’s affidavit, in Gracie, Titanic, pp. 125–26.
  27. 27. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 197.
  28. 28. Howells, Myth, pp. 106, 114.
  29. 29. Third-class passenger Victor Sunderland in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 26, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  30. 30. Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, April 20, 1912.
  31. 31. Interview with passenger Charles E. Stengel in the New York Evening Globe, April 19, 1912; interview with third-class passenger Victor Sunderland in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 26, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  32. 32. Interview with Wallace Hartley, reprinted in the Manchester Guardian, April 22, 1912.
  33. 33. Joey Butler, “Did Faith Drive the Titanic’s Musicians?” (Queen’s University Belfast circular, 2011).
  34. 34. Behe in Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, Appendix J, “The Music of the Titanic’s Band,” p. 304.
  35. 35. Account of third-class passengers Ellen Mocklare and Bertha Moran in the Evening World, May 22, 1912.
  36. 36. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 229; third-class passenger Victor Sunderland in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 26, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  37. 37. Father Graham Smith, “Devotion to a Heroic Priest Who Died on the Titanic Is Growing,” Catholic Herald, April 7, 2016; Hampshire Telegraph, May 3, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection); account of third-class passengers Ellen Mocklare and Bertha Moran in the Evening World, May 22, 1912.
  38. 38. Letter from third-class passenger August Wennerström to his brother, May 1, 1912, in 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 favor 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. 39. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 229.

Chapter 16: Over the Top Together

  1. 1. Captain Lawrence V. Wade, “Lookouts: The Human Perspective,” Encyclopedia Titanica, August 28, 2003.
  2. 2. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 198.
  3. 3. Wilson, Shadow, p. 256.
  4. 4. Ibid., p. 255.
  5. 5. Ibid., p. 244.
  6. 6. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 229.
  7. 7. Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, April 20, 1912.
  8. 8. Ibid.
  9. 9. Crew member Cecil Fitzpatrick’s testimony to the Liverpool Journal of Commerce, April 30, 1912.
  10. 10. Ibid.; Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, Appendix L, “Thomas Andrews’ Fate,” pp. 321–23.
  11. 11. Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 188.
  12. 12. Statement by Colonel Archibald Gracie IV to the New York Evening Globe, April 19, 1912.
  13. 13. Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, April 20, 1912.
  14. 14. Deck plans of A-Deck, drawn by Bruce Beveridge, in Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 442–43.
  15. 15. Passenger Elizabeth Nye in the Folkestone Herald, May 4, 1912.
  16. 16. Thayer, Titanic, p. 343.
  17. 17. Ibid.
  18. 18. Ibid.
  19. 19. Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, April 20, 1912; Thayer, Titanic, pp. 344–45. 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. 20. Thayer, Titanic, p. 344.
  21. 21. Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, April 20, 1912.
  22. 22. Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 191; Thayer, Titanic, p. 345.
  23. 23. Thayer, Titanic, p. 346.
  24. 24. Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, April 20, 1912.
  25. 25. Thayer, Titanic, pp. 347–48.

Chapter 17: The Awful Spectacle

  1. 1. Interview given by Eleanor Danforth to the New York Evening World, April 19, 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 April 23, 1912.
  2. 2. Letter from third-class passenger Daniel Buckley to his mother, April 18, 1912.
  3. 3. Gracie, Titanic, p. 36.
  4. 4Washington Post Semi-Monthly Magazine, May 26, 1912.
  5. 5. Passenger May Futrelle, Seattle Times, April 23, 1912; Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 238.
  6. 6. Testimony of Charles Lightoller to the British inquiry, May 21, 1912.
  7. 7. Gracie, Titanic, p. 38.
  8. 8Titanic (20th Century Fox, 1953), directed by Jean Negulesco and starring Barbara Stanwyck, Clifton Webb, Robert Wagner, Brian Aherne, and Thelma Ritter; A Night to Remember (Rank Organisation and Paramount Studios, 1958), directed by Roy Baker, based on the book by Walter Lord, and starring Kenneth More, Honor Blackman, Tucker McGuire, and Michael Goodliffe.
  9. 9Titanic (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. 10. Letter from third-class passenger Bertha Mulvihill to her sister, written on April 17 or 18, 1912 (B114).
  11. 11. Second-class passenger Nellie Becker to the Madras Mail, May 22, 1912.
  12. 12. Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, April 17, 1912; letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  13. 13. Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, April 20, 1912.
  14. 14. Ibid.
  15. 15. Letter from passenger Hedwig Margaritha Frölicher to her brother, April 18, 1912 (B126).
  16. 16. Statement made by Jack Thayer to the first vice president of Pennsylvania Lines West of Pittsburgh, April 20, 1912.
  17. 17. Wilson, Shadow, p. 244.
  18. 18. Bigham, Finding Dorothy, p. 63.
  19. 19. Dorothy Gibson’s interview in the Morning Telegraph, April 21, 1912.
  20. 20. Testimony of Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon to the British inquiry, May 17, 1912.

Chapter 18: Grip Fast

  1. 1. Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, April 17, 1912.
  2. 2. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  3. 3. Letter from Gladys Cherry to Thomas Jones, April 19, 1912.
  4. 4. Ibid.
  5. 5. Ibid.
  6. 6. British inquiry, question 11109.
  7. 7. Testimony of second-class passenger Imanita Shelley to the US Senate inquiry, May 25, 1912.
  8. 8. Brinnin, Sway of the Grand Saloon, p. 339.
  9. 9. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 238.
  10. 10. Wilson, Shadow, pp. 253–54.
  11. 11. Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, April 17, 1912.
  12. 12. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  13. 13. Davie, Titanic, p. 285.
  14. 14. The Countess of Rothes in the New York Daily Herald, April 22, 1912.
  15. 15. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  16. 16. Ibid.
  17. 17. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 240.
  18. 18. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  19. 19. Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, April 18, 1912.
  20. 20. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  21. 21. Ibid.
  22. 22. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 247.
  23. 23. Third-class passenger Victor Sunderland in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 26 April 1912 (Courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  24. 24. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  25. 25. Passenger Juliette Taylor in the Newburgh Daily News, April 19, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection); passenger Elizabeth Nye in the Folkestone Herald, May 4, 1912.
  26. 26. Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, April 17, 1912.

Chapter 19: Where’s Daddy?

  1. 1. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 254–55.
  2. 2. Thayer, Titanic, pp. 345, 354.
  3. 3. Gavin Bell, Michael A. Findlay, and Philip Gowan, “Mrs. Marian Longstreth Thayer,” Encyclopedia Titanica (accessed March 22, 2017).
  4. 4. Thayer, Titanic, pp. 354–55.
  5. 5. Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 194.
  6. 6. Thayer, Titanic, p. 355.
  7. 7Hampshire Telegraph, May 3, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  8. 8. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 242.
  9. 9. Ibid., p. 245.
  10. 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. 11. Testimony of assistant cook John Collins to the Senate inquiry, April 25, 1912.
  12. 12. Gracie, Titanic, p. 61.
  13. 13. Thayer, Titanic, p. 352.
  14. 14. Gracie, Titanic, p. 69.
  15. 15. Ibid., pp. 61–62.
  16. 16. Ibid., p. 63; Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 247–48. In his 1940 account of the sinking, Jack Thayer does not mention the lifeboat transfer, one of several omissions.
  17. 17. Gracie, Titanic, pp. 72–73.
  18. 18. Ibid., p. 66.
  19. 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. 20. Thayer, Titanic, p. 351.
  21. 21. Ibid., p. 355.
  22. 22. Testimony of Captain Arthur Rostron to the US Senate inquiry, June 21, 1912.
  23. 23. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 255–56.
  24. 24. Ibid., p. 255.
  25. 25. Letter from second-class passenger Bertha Watt to Walter Lord, April 10, 1963 (LMQ/7/2/37).
  26. 26. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 256.
  27. 27. Ibid., Appendix P, “Buried at Sea,” p. 362.
  28. 28. Ibid., pp. 244–45.
  29. 29. Ibid., pp. 241–42.
  30. 30The Book of Common Prayer (1662), “Forms of Prayer to Be Used at Sea.”
  31. 31. Jessop, Titanic Survivor, p. 161.
  32. 32. Wilson, Shadow, p. 59.
  33. 33. Karl Behr, “Titanic Disaster,” reprinted in Titanic Commutator, no. 176 (Indian Orchard, MA: Titanic Historical Society, 2006).
  34. 34. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 252.
  35. 35. Ibid., p. 254. This was Bertha Mulvihill (1886–1959).
  36. 36. Ibid.
  37. 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. 38. Wilson, Shadow, p. 57.
  39. 39. Ibid., p. 55.
  40. 40. Tribute from second-class passenger Sylvia Caldwell (B158).
  41. 41. Wilson, Shadow, p. 52.
  42. 42. Letter from John A. Badenoch to Percy Straus, April 24, 1912 (SHS).
  43. 43. Bigham, “A Matter of Course”; passenger Frederick Hoyt in the Springfield Union, April 20, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  44. 44. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  45. 45. Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, April 17, 1912.
  46. 46. Letter from first-class passenger Gladys Cherry, April 18, 1912 (B123).
  47. 47. Letters from first-class passenger Dr. Alice Leader to Mrs. Sarah Babcock, April 16, 1912, and third-class passenger Olaus Abelseth to various family members, April 19, 1912.
  48. 48. Christened Margaretta Spedden (1872–1950), but nearly always known as Daisy Spedden.
  49. 49. Letter from first-class passenger Margaretta Spedden, April 18, 1912.
  50. 50. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 255.
  51. 51. Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 195.
  52. 52. Eugene Abbott’s age is sometimes given as thirteen, but in an interview given by his mother to the Pawtucket Times on May 22, 1912, she gives his age as eleven (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  53. 53. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 252.
  54. 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. 55. Rhoda Abbott, Pawtucket Times, May 22, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  56. 56. Correspondence between Randy Bryan Bigham and the late Ian Leslie, 21st Earl of Rothes.
  57. 57. Letter from second-class passenger Amelia Brown to her mother, April 17, 1912.
  58. 58. Letter from Gladys Cherry, April 17, 1912; first-class passenger Dr. Harry Frauenthal, American Medicine, May 1912 (B179).
  59. 59. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 255.
  60. 60. Letter from second-class passenger Olga Lundin, April 16, 1912 (B102).
  61. 61. Letter from Gladys Cherry, 17 April 1912.
  62. 62. Letter from second-class passenger Elizabeth Nye, April 16, 1912; letter from first-class passenger Kornelia Andrews, written April 16–18, 1912, during her time on board the Carpathia.
  63. 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. 64. From the extended letter from second-class passenger Kate Buss to her parents, entry for April 16, 1912.
  65. 65. Ibid., entry for April 17, 1912.
  66. 66. Passenger Margaret Brown, Newport Herald, May 28–29, 1912.
  67. 67. This was published in the Toronto World, April 20, 1912.
  68. 68. Wilson, Shadow, p. 61.
  69. 69. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 252.
  70. 70. Passenger Margaret Brown, Newport Herald, May 28–29, 1912.
  71. 71. Ibid.
  72. 72. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 251.
  73. 73. Thayer, Titanic, p. 356.
  74. 74. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955.
  75. 75. Bigham, Finding Dorothy, p. 64.
  76. 76. Ibid., pp. 63–64.
  77. 77. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 256–67.
  78. 78. Bigham, Finding Dorothy, p. 64.
  79. 79. Second-class passenger Sylvia Caldwell, Women of the “Titanic” Disaster (B153).
  80. 80. Behe, On Board, p. 137.
  81. 81. Article by second-class passenger Ruth Becker, published in the St. Nicholas Magazine, 1913.
  82. 82. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 262.
  83. 83. Ibid., p. 263.
  84. 84. Bigham, Finding Dorothy, p. 66.
  85. 85. Wilson, Shadow, p. 60.
  86. 86. Bigham, “A Matter of Course.”
  87. 87. Ibid. Gladys’s letters to her mother and Tom Jones are addressed from the Great Northern, while the Countess either went straightaway to the Ritz or had moved there to celebrate her anniversary at that hotel by the following day.
  88. 88. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 263.
  89. 89. Wilson, Shadow, p. 61.

Chapter 20: Extend Heartfelt Sympathy to All

  1. 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 Officer.
  2. 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. 3St. Louis Post Dispatch, May 1, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  4. 4. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, pp. 270–72.
  5. 5. Ibid., p. 272.
  6. 6. Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 195.
  7. 7New York Times, May 29, 1912, for a précis of British criticism of Senator Smith.
  8. 8. Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 195.
  9. 9. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 275.
  10. 10. Wilson, Ismay, p. 23.
  11. 11. Fitch, Layton, and Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass, p. 256.
  12. 12. Wilson, Ismay, pp. 5–6.
  13. 13Hampshire Telegraph, May 3, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  14. 14. For J. Bruce Ismay’s later life, see William E. Carter, The Times, April 22, 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. 23–26; Wilson, Ismay, pp. 6, 19–20, 30, 202–4, 207, 209–10, 216–17, 219, 225–27, 249; and Wilson, Shadow, pp. 191, 213–14, 217–18.
  15. 15. Thayer, Titanic, p. 352.
  16. 16. Bigham, “A Matter of Course.”
  17. 17. Ibid.
  18. 18. Letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955. The Washington Post, May 4, 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. 19. Gosling, Debutantes and the London Season, pp. 15–18, 39.
  20. 20. Jasper Ridley, Napoleon III and Eugénie (London: Constable, 1979), p. 639.
  21. 21. Anne de Courcy, Circe: The Life of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992), pp. 96–98 (the Lady Londonderry in question in 1914 was Edith’s mother-in-law, Theresa); “Obituary of Lady Mairi Bury,” Daily Telegraph, January 13, 2010; Adrian Tinniswood, The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars (London: Jonathan Cape, 2016), p. 56.
  22. 22. Mark Bence-Jones, Twilight of the Ascendancy (London: Constable, 1987), pp. 156, 159, 162–63.
  23. 23Newtownards Chronicle, February 6, 1915; Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 93.
  24. 24. Cameron, Belfast’s Own, p. 93.
  25. 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. 26. Plunkett in ibid., pp. xiii, xviii–xix.
  27. 27. The current author’s great-grandfather remembered and sang the first song; ibid., p. 47.
  28. 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. 29. Morton, Thunder at Twilight, pp. 1–2.
  30. 30. King and Woolmans, Assassination of the Archduke, p. 188.
  31. 31. Russell, The Emperors, p. 67.
  32. 32. Interview with the Earl and Countess of Rothes, published in the Washington Post, April 22, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  33. 33. Bigham, “A Matter of Course.”
  34. 34. Ibid.
  35. 35. Correspondence between the late Ian Leslie, 21st Earl of Rothes, and the historian Randy Bryan Bigham.
  36. 36Buildings at Risk: Register for Scotland—Leslie House with Conservatory, Garden and Walls, Building Number 9693.
  37. 37. Bigham, “A Matter of Course.”
  38. 38. This is based on the estimate of just over nineteen thousand 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 nonregistered 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. 39. Interview with Vera Morrison, daughter of Helen Harland (née Barbour, prev. Andrews), BBC Newsline Northern Ireland, April 12, 2012.
  40. 40. “Elizabeth Andrews,” in CQD magazine, no. 56 (December 2017).
  41. 41Ulster’s New Prime Minister, Pathé, November 28, 1940.
  42. 42. Correspondence between the author and Joan Adler, executive director of the Straus Historical Society, November 12, 2018.
  43. 43. Letters from Isidor Straus to the Reverend H. H. Redgrave, April 9, 1912, and from the Reverend H. H. Redgrave to Jesse Straus, September 13, 1934 (SHS).
  44. 44. II Samuel 1:23.
  45. 45. Song of Solomon 8:7.

Chapter 21: The Spinner of the Years

  1. 1. Dr. J. C. H. Beaumont, Ships—and People (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1930), p. 282.
  2. 2. Dorothy Gibson interviewed in the New York Dramatic Mirror, May 1, 1912 (courtesy of the Mike Poirier Collection).
  3. 3. The movie’s title anglicized the name of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia (1857–1905).
  4. 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. 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. 6Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, April 14, 1932.
  7. 7. Thayer, Titanic, p. 337.
  8. 8. Ibid., p. 333.
  9. 9. Lightoller, Titanic and Other Ships, p. 169.
  10. 10. Wilson, Shadow, p. 237.
  11. 11The Times, July 12, 1913.
  12. 12Boston Daily Globe, October 11, 1914.
  13. 13. For the Countess of Rothes’s life after 1912, see the letter from the Dowager Countess of Rothes to Walter Lord, August 7, 1955; Bigham, “A Matter of Course”; Gavin Cameron Bell et al., “Thomas William Jones,” Encyclopedia Titanica (November 2, 2018).
  14. 14. Interview between James Cameron and Dr. Robert Ballard, “Why You Won’t Find Bodies on the Titanic,” National Geographic (November 26, 2017).
  15. 15. Davie, Titanic, p. 48.
  16. 16. Third-class passenger Victor Sunderland in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 26, 1912.
  17. 17. Wilson, Ismay, p. 49.
  18. 18. Letter from Gladys Cherry to her mother, April 17, 1912.
  19. 19. Brian Fagan, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300–1850 (New York: Perseus Books, 2000), p. 4.
  20. 20. Thayer, Titanic, pp. 328–30.
  21. 21. Miller, Famous Ocean Liners, p. 29.
  22. 22. The British Seafarers’ Union was founded on October 6, 1911, and was dissolved in 1922 following its merger with the Amalgamated Marine Workers’ Union.