Tag Archives: Chinese Titanic survivors

Monday Titanic News

Titan (submersible)
Becky Kagan Schott, OceanGate

Nicholas McEntyre, “OceanGate CEO’s Wife’s Reaction to Fatal Titan Sub Implosion Revealed in New Audio,” New York Post, May 23, 2025, https://nypost.com/2025/05/23/us-news/oceangate-ceo-stockton-rush-wife-wendy-rush-reaction-to-fatal-titan-sub-implosion/.

The wife of OceanGate’s doomed CEO unknowingly heard and reacted to the moment her husband’s Titan submersible fatally imploded while monitoring the private Titanic exploration on a separate ship, newly released audio reveals. Stockton Rush’s wife, OceanGate director Wendy Rush, was listening to audio from the submersible’s support ship along with other crew members when a “distinguishable” popping noise played over their sound system.

=

Toi Trending Desk, “Titanic Reimagined: Stunning Digital Model Reveals Secrets of Its Final Hours,” The Times of India, May 24, 2025, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/titanic-reimagined-stunning-digital-model-reveals-secrets-of-its-final-hours/articleshow/121375932.cms.

Over a century after the Titanic sank into the icy waters of the North Atlantic, we’re still uncovering pieces of its story. And now, thanks to some jaw-dropping tech, we’re closer than ever to understanding what really happened during those final, chaotic hours. A new digital reconstruction built using over 700,000 underwater images has created the most detailed 3D model of the Titanic wreck to date. And trust us, it’s changing everything we thought we knew.

=

Keith Doucette, The Canadian Press, “Video Released by U.S. Coast Guard Captures Moment of Titan Submersible Implosion,” New West Record, May 24, 2025, https://www.newwestrecord.ca/atlantic-news/video-released-by-us-coast-guard-captures-moment-of-titan-submersible-implosion-10706789.

Newly released video contains a sound investigators believe is the moment the Titan submersible imploded as it dove on the wreck of the Titanic nearly two years ago. The June 18, 2023 implosion claimed the lives of five people, including OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush, who was pilot of the submersible. In the video submitted to the United States Coast Guard by OceanGate , Rush’s wife, Wendy Rush, and Gary Foss — both members of the submersible’s tracking team — are shown in front of computer screens in the pilothouse of Titan’s support vessel Polar Prince.Shortly into the video a noise can be heard, prompting Wendy Rush to turn to Foss and say: “What was that bang?”

=

Collapsible lifeboat D photographed by passenger on Carpathia on the morning of 15 April 1912.
Public Domain(Wikipedia)

Brandon Reid, “Wisconsin Maritime Museum Program to Highlight Lost Story of Chinese Survivors of Titanic,” Herald Times Reporter, May 26, 2025, https://www.htrnews.com/story/life/events/2025/05/26/titanic-true-story-chinese-survivors-of-shipwreck-at-wisconsin-maritime-museum-book-event-manitowoc/83790787007/.

Among those survivors were six Chinese seamen: Ah Lam, Chang Chip, Cheong Foo, Fang Lang (also known as Fong Wing Sun), Lee Bing and Ling Hee. Their survival defied overwhelming odds, but their stories were quickly buried beneath prejudice and xenophobia, according to the Wisconsin Maritime Museum. Within 24 hours of reaching New York, the men were expelled from the United States under the Chinese Exclusion Act. For decades, their lives and experiences went unrecognized. That is until author and historian Steven Schwankert’s years of investigation — including interviews with descendants and global archival research — led to the rediscovery of their forgotten legacy.

=

Joe Tarr, “Titanic Survivor From China Beat the Odds and Faced Racism to Land in Wisconsin,” WPR, last modified May 27, 2025, https://www.wpr.org/news/titanic-survivor-china-racism-wisconsin-milwaukee.

It came as a shock to Tom in 2003, almost two decades after his father had passed, when a relative told him his father had survived the most famous shipwreck ever: the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912. Wing Sun was one of eight Chinese men onboard the ship. He did not make it on to any of the ship’s lifeboats while they were launching, and instead he ended up in the frigid waters. He miraculously survived when he came across a piece of wood — perhaps a table or a door — that he was able to hoist himself up onto and tie himself to with his belt. A lifeboat later rescued him. The Chinese Exclusion Act was in effect at the time and none of the Chinese survivors were allowed into the United States when they arrived in New York — they went on to other ships to work. Wing Sun worked for another eight years on ships before settling in Chicago and Milwaukee. He passed away in 1986.

=

Diana of Versailles bronze statue. It was on the fireplace mantel in the First Class Lounge. It was last seen in 1986 but subsequent expeditions could not find it until now.
Image: RMS Titanic, Inc ®

Hilary Mitchell, “Which Treasures Were Lost When Titanic Sank, and What Did Some Survivors Smuggle Onto Lifeboats?,” HistoryExtra, last modified June 3, 2025, https://www.historyextra.com/period/edwardian/treasures-lost-titanic-disaster-sinking-car/.

When Titanic sank in April 1912, undoubtedly the highest cost was the more than 1,500 people who perished in the disaster on the Atlantic Ocean. But with the prestige of its maiden voyage attracting wealthy clientele, there was also a huge number of treasures on board. Hilary Mitchell reveals the historical riches lost to the sea – from ancient trinkets to Victorian art valued as the most valuable of its day.

 

Suggested Titanic Reading

Titanic News Channel is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Chinese Titanic Survivors; Little Known Ferry Disaster

 

Collapsible lifeboat D photographed by passenger on Carpathia on the morning of 15 April 1912.
Public Domain(Wikipedia)

6 Titanic Survivors Who Were Refused Entrance Into the US
History of Yesterday, 30 Sept 2022

Once they had reached the shore of New York on the 18th of April, the six Chinese men were pulled apart from the other survivors and detained based on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This act was implemented back in the late 19th century due to the United States wanting to maintain white “racial purity” despite Chinese people within America making up only 0.002% of the whole American population at the time.

=

 

MV Le Joola at Ziguinchor in 1991
Photo: Yamboo via Wikimedia Commons

It Was Worse Than the Titanic. You Likely Haven’t Heard of It
Newser, 2 Oct

As far as maritime disasters go, the Titanic stands alone—at least in our minds, but not in the history books, at least as far as victims go. In a piece for the New York Times, Elian Peltier revisits the Joola, the passenger ferry that departed on a 17-hour journey along Senegal’s coast toward the capital of Dakar on Sept. 26, 2002. It wouldn’t make it. Passengers streamed below deck as rain started that evening. Then the ferry listed toward the left and capsized. There were just 64 survivors among the 1,900 aboard; every baby and toddler perished. (Roughly 1,500 people died on the Titanic.)

Joola Disaster Books

Sunday Titanic News

 

Photo:Daemonic Kangaroo(Wikipedia)

Haunting video of Titanic 100 years on exposes the cabins and hallways where 1,500 died (Daily Star, 27 April 2018)
The clip shows the cabins and hallways where passengers slept, ate and partied on their journey from Southampton to New York. It also reveals cooking utensils, bottles and cutlery, in a room where it is likely chef’s prepared meals for their wealthy passengers. Another angle displays the sheer size of the vessel – which remains a shipwreck near the Canadian island of Newfoundland.

Autistic boy overcomes obstacles to build largest Lego replica of the Titanic (WIVB.com,26 April 2018)
The world’s largest Lego Titanic replica is 24 feet long and five feet tall — and it was built by a very special boy. Fifteen-year-old Brynjar Karl Birgisson is on the autism spectrum, and he developed a passion for learning about the Titanic at a young age. When he turned 10, Brynjar decided to combine his passion for the Titanic with his other love: Legos. The painstaking task took 700 hours over 11 months and 56,000 Lego bricks to complete, but when he was finished, Brynjar had built the world’s largest Titanic replica made out of Legos.

Menu for first ever meal onboard the Titanic makes auction record (Antiques Trade Gazette,25 April 2018)
Henry Aldridge & Son offered the lots at its Titanic & Liner Auction on April 21, which made an overall auction total of around £330,000.
The menu for the first meal served on the ill-fated ship had been owned by Titanic second officer Charles Lightoller, the most senior member of the crew to survive the Titanic disaster. It sold for a hammer price of £80,000, a record for a menu from the ship. The menu was previously auctioned in 2003 when it sold for £28,000 at Sotheby’s, and a similar menu, with a strip missing at the bottom and owned by fifth officer Harold Lowe, sold at £51,000 at Aldridge’s in 2004.

His blood ran cold’: The act that sealed the Titanic’s fate (New Zealand Herald, 23 April 2018)
The nearest boat to the great cruise liner, the Californian, was less than 20 kilometres away, within eyeshot — and a crew member informed Captain Stanley Lord the Titanic was sending up distress rockets. Yet, surrounded by icebergs, he decided not to act. He didn’t wake his wireless operator, he didn’t try to contact the ship and he didn’t head towards it. “The hazard to himself and his command was too great to risk responding,” Titanic researcher Daniel Allen Butler told news.com.au. “The Californian did nothing.”

The rarely told story of Jack Phillips, the Titanic hero from Surrey (Get Surrey, 21 April 2018)
The story of Jack Phillips, the Titanic hero from Surrey, is a well-known one. The 25-year-old Godalming-born telegraphist was aboard the Titanic when it hit an iceberg on April 14, 1912. He stayed at his post until the ship sank, frantically contacting nearby ships and saving hundreds of lives. More than 1,500 people drowned but the Carpathia, a ship alerted to the Titanic’s plight by the signals, picked up 705 survivors. Jack sadly died during the disaster but his co-worker Harold Bride survived to tell the story. Following the 106th anniversary of the catastrophic sinking, Titanic enthusiast from Guildford, Mia Fernandez, 30, claims there is a part of the story that is rarely remembered.

The Titanic’s Irish Legacy (Irish America, 20 April 2018)
It was White Star Line who paid for the headstones that went up during the autumn of 1912. The Titanic bodies, those not claimed by relatives, were divided between three different graveyards, the biggest share going to the Fairview Lawn Cemetery. Here, 121 bodies are buried with 42 remaining unidentified. A gentle sloping of the ground made it necessary to lay the headstones out in three curved lines, reminiscent of the curve of a ship’s bow. One of the Titanic occupants is Jack Dawson whose grave, thanks to Leonardo di Caprio’s fictional namesake in the 1997 film Titanic, perhaps rivals Jim Morrison’s grave in Père Lachaise with hundreds of visitors leaving flowers and trinkets around it. The second graveyard, the Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery’s Titanic plot contains 19 victims, including Mrs Margaret Rice from Athlone, Ireland, who was travelling with her five young sons, none of whom were ever found. Four victims were never identified.

Why you’ve never heard of the six Chinese men who survived the Titanic (Washington Post, 19 April 2018)
That man would be one of six Chinese passengers who survived the Titanic, a little-known fact about the historic disaster that has largely remained untold or distorted, owing to a racially hostile environment toward Chinese people in the West at the turn of the 20th century. Now, the lives of these men — who they were, how they survived that fateful night and why they were barred from entering the United States — are being examined in a new documentary, “The Six,” by Arthur Jones and Steven Schwankert.

Michigan Organizers To Unveil Titanic Memorial In May (WKAR.org, 14 April 2018)
The Great Lakes Titanic Connection will reveal the Michigan Titanic Memorial in Marine City on May 12, the Times Herald reported . The memorial will list the 69 names of the passengers headed to Michigan who were among the 1,500 who died while sailing from Southampton, England, for the United States in 1912.The group raised $6,500 to pay for the memorial. The idea began when Margaret Micoff started collecting Titanic memorabilia for her boutique clothing store. She studied the Titanic’s history and stumbled across a community of people who were also fascinated with the story. “When you have that many people, and nobody has done a memorial like other states have done, I thought we should,” Micoff said.

106 years after sinking, Nova Scotians commemorate Titanic victims (CTV News,15 April 2018)
Deanna Ryan-Meister, president of the Titanic Society of Atlantic Canada, says she’s not surprised the disaster is still holding peoples’ attention after more than a century. She says it’s important to continue to honour those who started their voyage with hope and ended it with tragedy.