The first time I met Marshall Drew, he pulled out a well-worn book. “This,” he said with a chuckle, “is an announcement of my death.” Of course, the published account of his demise was wrong. In fact, Marshall lived almost three quarters of a century longer. But many of the passengers he was traveling with on that long-ago trip were not so fortunate. Marshall was one of the survivors of the sinking of the Titanic. I had interviewed him years ago in Massachusetts. Now I was seeing his name listed on the passenger memorial for the Titanic Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
The exhibition charts the history and legacy of the White Star Line and the Titanic through an astonishing array of rare items original to the ship, props from the 1997 James Cameron film, and real stories of people from Worcestershire who were aboard the ship on what should have been her triumphant maiden voyage to New York.
But over the years, treasures telling the story of those passengers, both those who survived and those who sadly lost their lives, have been recovered. Click or scroll through to discover some of the most spectacular, and valuable, pieces from the tragic ship.
For over 10 years, Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition at Luxor Hotel and Casino has provided visitors with an in-depth look at RMS Titanic’s ill-fated journey across the Atlantic Ocean. This year, Titanic enthusiasts can honor National Maritime Day on May 22 at Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition, home to more than 400 artifacts including dramatic recreations of first and third-class cabins, a replica of the Grand Staircase and a 15-ton section of the Titanic’s starboard hull.
From the History files:
3 May 1906: Sayaji Rao, the Maharaja Gaekwar of Baroda, arrives in New York on Celtic II (Capt. Ranson) for a two-month visit to the United States, during which he will visit a number of large universities, the White House, Yellowstone Park and the Grand Canyon. Onlookers at the pier are reported to be disappointed by the fact that the Gaekwar, supposedly the second wealthiest prince in India, disembarks dressed in a frock coat and top hat, rather than his $30,000 bejeweled robe. Continued 27 July. (Sources: The New
York Times, 14 May and 28 July 1906; Ellis Island ship manifest.)
The Titanic is being brought back from the deep, more than a century after its ill-fated maiden voyage, at a landlocked Chinese theme park where tourists can soon splash out for a night on a full scale replica. It has taken six years — longer than the construction of the original Titanic — plus 23,000 tons of steel, more than a hundred workers and a hefty one billion yuan ($153.5 million) price tag. Everything from the dining room to the luxury cabins and even the door handles are styled on the original Titanic. It forms the centrepiece of a Sichuan province theme park more than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the sea.
A new TV documentary about the famous Belfast-built ocean liner warns it may eventually disappear unless action is taken to preserve what is left of the tragic vessel. Experts have discovered that the ship’s remains are being destroyed by voracious metal-eating bacteria on the sea floor.
March 6, 1912: Titanic (right) had to be moved out of the drydock so her sister Olympic (left), which had lost a propeller, could have it replaced. Robert John Welch (1859-1936), official photographer for Harland & Wolff Public domain
Mathilde, three of her siblings and their mother, Marie, were never seen again, but 105 years later a note apparently signed by Mathilde was found on a Canadian beach. “The bottle could be the first Titanic artifact found on the American coast,” said historian Maxime Gohier. Now scientists are probing the mysterious document, in a bid to prove whether it’s the real thing, or an elaborate hoax.
“In recruiting our expedition medical team, we prioritized identifying medical professionals accustomed to working in austere and unpredictable situations like those faced in expeditionary environments. This veteran team of emergency physicians brings a wealth of experience and expertise to our Mission Specialists and crewmembers,” says Stockton Rush, President, OceanGate Expeditions. “We will continue to follow strict COVID-19 protocols that we used throughout two Fall 2020 expeditions with zero resulting COVID-19 cases. In addition, the expedition vessel, Horizon Arctic, has a medical center for onboard care,” says Rush.
Here was an opportunity to bring attention to a story that had not yet been told. Here was a chance to show others the far-reaching effects of the Chinese Exclusion Act, an act that from 1882-1943, prohibited Chinese from coming to the United States. For that is the reason you have likely never heard about these men. Every Titanic survivor—705 in all—was allowed entry into the United States without question and given aid and medical relief. After all, all papers and money had been lost in the catastrophe. But not the Chinese. They were sent away within 24 hours of arriving in New York, simply on the basis of race.
But in the 1980s the United States was deep into a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and President Ronald Reagan enjoyed waging psychological warfare on the enemy. Ballard knew little would screw with the Russkies’ heads more than the American ability to find the lost passenger liner that sank in the Atlantic in 1912. Because he’d once been a Navy officer and then frequently worked with the Navy using his advanced under-water cameras, Ballard managed to get word of his Titanic idea all the way up the chain of command, where the White House heard and agreed. “Absolutely,” the Gipper said to Navy Secretary John Lehman during his first term. “Let’s do it!”
A team of researchers at the Université du Québec à Rimouski are working to determine if a letter that washed up on shore in Canada was actually written by Lefebvre more than a century ago. “I am throwing this bottle into the sea, in the middle of the Atlantic. We are due to arrive in New York in a few days,” the letter reads. “If someone finds it, contact the Lefebvre family in Liévin.” The message, which is signed “Mathilde Lefebvre,” was found by a New Brunswick family in the sands near the Bay of Fundy in 2017. “So far, we have not caught a smoking gun of a forgery,” said Nicolas Beaudry, a history and archeology professor at the Université du Québec à Rimouski, who is studying the letter.
(Note-this article was written by a law firm that specializes in maritime law.)
When a vessel owner seeks protection under the Limitation of Liability Act, they file a civil lawsuit in Federal District Court. All potential claimants (including anyone injured and surviving family members) are notified. They each receive certified letters informing them that the vessel owner is suing them. As a part of a Petition for Limitation of Liability, the vessel owner also claims that the craft was worth a certain amount of money. If the ship sank, the value could be zero. For the Titanic, the value was estimated at less than $100,000: $300 for the 14 remaining lifeboats and $92,000 for the ship’s earnings. Under the Limitation of Liability Act, the owners of the “unsinkable” ship sought to limit claims for damages to this value. For the families of the 1,517 people who were killed and the 711 survivors, this would have equaled just about $41 each.
Horton Cemetery, Epsom, Surrey, England Source: Tony B, Find A Grave
Hidden secrets within a ‘lost’ cemetery tell the stories behind thousands of graves. Among the dead include war heroes, patients from five mental asylums, and a Titanic survivor. A dancer who later became the muse of Picasso and a Victorian actor also lie in plots from past decades. However, their extraordinary tales are at risk of being lost forever as a charity fights to stop the land from being developed on, writes The Mirror. It wants to ensure their stories remain so they can take their spot in history. The land was a burial ground between 1899 and 1955 but has been stood derelict long ago.
Neither the Lusitania nor the Titanic was the largest maritime disaster, not by a long shot. Yet somehow, their fateful journeys remain a source of intrigue for both researchers and curiosity seekers. The largest loss of lives occurred during World War II in the frigid Baltic Sea. On Jan. 30, 1945, a Soviet submarine sunk Germany’s Wilhelm Gustloff. On board the transport ship were thousands of German civilians. It is estimated that 6,000 to 9,000 people perished.
Funds are needed to ensure the lifesaving service is able to keep everyone safe and the RNLI is asking people to come down to the Maritime Mile and take part in the wonderful experience and complete their very own mile and donate to help raise those vital funds. RNLI lifeboats in Northern Ireland launched 234 times last year and their volunteer lifeboat crews brought 253 people to safety. Eighty-nine of those launches were carried out in the hours of darkness. The charity’s lifeguards responded to 225 incidents last summer on beaches, helping 285 people and saving the lives of six people.
Members of the British Titanic Society think the wooden carriages, found in a yard in South Wales, formed part of a train that carried passengers from London to Southampton on 10 April 1912. Five days later the Southampton-based liner sank in the North Atlantic Ocean. It is hoped the carriages, which are due to be scrapped, can be restored.
J. Bruce Ismay, president of the White Star Line, in 1912 Public Domain(Wikipedia)
Ismay fully co-operated with the congressional inquiry, but nothing could stop the jeering on the streets in both the US and the UK. London society would have nothing more to do with him and he resigned from all his company positions, hoping to disappear, as the media continued to label him as the biggest coward in history.
With his wife Julia, Ismay was to find comfort in Costello Lodge, however, and among the local people who looked upon the pair as a solid source of employment, although the locals referred to Ismay in Irish as “Brú síos mé” (‘lower me down’ i.e. into a lifeboat ). He was said by the locals to be a kind, warm-hearted man, even inquiring of the fisherman he’d fish with on a Sunday if they had had time to go to Mass. Casla Lodge was burned down by the IRA in 1922, but the home was rebuilt on an even grander scale. Ismay remained a Connemara resident for 25 years before moving back to England after he was diagnosed with diabetes. He died in London in 1937, aged 74.
One of the last great mysteries of the Titanic was solved in 2013 thanks to a DNA test which proved a woman who claimed she was a child survivor of the tragic Titanic sinking was a fraud. Two-year-old Loraine Allison is believed to have been the only child from first or second class who died during the sinking of the Titanic. However, in 1940, Helen Loraine Kramer, now styling herself Loraine Kramer, claimed to be the missing child. She told a radio show that she had been saved at the last moment when her father placed her in a lifeboat with a man whom she had always thought was her father.Kramer launched a legal bid to be considered part of the wealthy Allison family and entitled to part of their fortune. Before her death in 1992, she contended that she was entitled to the vast majority of the Allison family’s wealth in Canada. The dispute led to the founding of The Loraine Allison Identification Project by Tracy Oost, a forensic scientist at Laurentian University, Ontario, and Titanic expert. While Woods declined to participate, Oost obtained DNA samples from Deanne Jennings, Woods’ half-sister, and Sally Kirkelie, the great-niece of Bess Allison, Loraine Allison’s mother. No genetic link was found between descendants from both sides of the dispute. The results proved that Helen Loraine Kramer was not the little girl who was lost on the Titanic.
Titanic Memorial Lighthouse,South Street Seaport Museum, New York (2008) Image: Andy C (Wikipedia)
The campaign to landmark and restore the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse, a monument in New York City built in 1913 to honor those who died aboard the Titanic, continues. Designed by Warren and Wetmore, the architecture firm behind Grand Central Terminal, the 60-foot-tall lighthouse originally sat atop the roof of the Seamen’s Church Institute and featured a working time ball that dropped down the pole each day, along with a green light. Preservationists are now raising funds that would help restore the lighthouse, currently located at the entrance to the South Street Seaport, to its original condition.
RMS Olympic Arrives In New York on Maiden Voyage, 21 June 1911 Source: U.S. Library of Commerce/Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
In the wake of the Titanic sinking, all passenger ships were equipped with lifeboats for everyone aboard. Olympic, like her sister ship, did not have enough lifeboats but they were quickly added for her upcoming departure from Southampton on 24 April 1912. 40 collapsible lifeboats (all second-hand) had come from troopships. However, there was concern amongst the crew that these lifeboats were not seaworthy. A request sent by crewman that they should be replaced by wooden lifeboats was declined by White Star which said that it was impossible to do that and they had passed as seaworthy by the Board of Trade inspector.
Not convinced of this, 284 firemen went on strike delaying the departure. Non-union crew were hired from Southampton and from Liverpool to make up the difference. On 25 April 1912, representatives of the strikers witnessed a test of four of the collapsible boats. One was found unseaworthy. The representatives said they would recommend the strikers return to work as a result. A separate objection about the non-union workers who were hired came up as an issue. White Star refused to fire them. This resulted in 54 crewmembers leaving the ship in protest causing the cancellation of the sailing. Later they would be charged and convicted of mutiny, but no punishment was awarded due to the circumstances. White Star Line hired them back in end fearing a public backlash in support of the strikers. Olympic would sail for New York on 15 May 1912.
Men made up 75% of the 2,240 passengers and crew onboard the Titanic’s ill-fated maiden voyage but only made up a tiny fraction of the 705 who survived the disaster. Hundreds of men – both rich and poor – bravely standing aside to give women and children a place on the ship’s lifeboats. The 175 men traveling in first-class had a survival rate of just 32%, while more than 97% of their 144 female counterparts survived the disaster. Second-class male passengers fared even worse with just 14 of 168 male passengers making their way to safety. Women in second-class, on the other hand, had a survival rate of about 74%. That is not to mention the hundreds of third-class male passengers – many of them Irish – who met their deaths on the Titanic.
A 2019 Channel 5 documentary investigates the series of mistakes that led to the sinking of the Belfast-built Titanic during its maiden voyage in April 1912. No one mistake was to blame for the disaster, according to the Channel 5 documentary “10 Mistakes That Sank the Titanic.” Instead, it was a number of factors that led to the tragedy. The Daily Mail reports on some of the fatal flaws that are featured in the “10 Mistakes That Sank the Titanic” documentary which debuted in 2019, more than 100 years after the disaster
And on February 6, 1898, he was aboard the USS St Louis as an able seaman when that ship mounted a rescue of passengers and crew from SS Veendam when she collided with a sunken wreck and foundered. He also saw service in the Spanish-American war of 1898, and in the Boer War, 1899-1902. In 1907 he married Eliza Kate Abbott, and he joined the White Star Line. One day the men were assembled, and he was chosen to proceed to Belfast, where he found he was posted to Titanic as quartermaster.
With Titanic’s sinking, U.S. Senator William Alden Smith saw this as an opportunity to investigate marine safety issues. Smith, a Republican Senator from Michigan, had experience in investigating railroad safety issues. Smith believed due to the sensational nature of this disaster that rapid action was needed. Another concern was that many of the witnesses-surviving passengers and crew-would disperse and return home. On 17 April 1912, Smith proposed that a hearing be done to investigate the sinking. President Taft, who lost his friend and military advisor Archibald Butt in the sinking, concurred. A U.S. naval escort was set up for Carpathia to make sure no one left before it docked.
Senator William Alden Smith of Michigan Unknown date (between 1905 and 1945) Public Domain
Smith, accompanied by Francis G. Newlands and other officials traveled to New York and were there when Carpathia docked in New York. They boarded the ship and served subpoenas on J.Bruce Ismay and on surviving officers and crew. The hearings began on 19 April 1912 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York and later moved to Washington D.C. The hearings, with many recesses in-between, would run for 18 days till May 25, 1912.
Sources:
Books
Behe, George TITANIC: SAFETY, SPEED AND SACRIFICE, Transportation Trails, Polo, IL 1997
Eaton John P. & Haas Charles, TITANIC TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY, SECOND EDITION, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, New York, 1995 First American Edition
Lord, Walter, A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York, New York, 1955. Multiple revisions and reprints, notably Illustrated editions (1976,1977,1978 etc)
Lord, Walter, THE NIGHT LIVES ON, Willian Morrow and Company, New York, New York, 1986 (First Edition)
Lynch, Don & Marshall Ken, TITANIC AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY, Madison Press Books, Toronto, Ontario Canada, 1992
Straus Memorial Park, New York City, 1915. This memorial and park was dedicated on 15 April 1915. Photo:Public Domain (U.S. Library of Congress, Bain Collection,call number LC-B2- 3446-4)
In the days following the North Atlantic Ocean sinking of the so-called “unsinkable” Titanic, word was received in Hamilton that a young local doctor was among its more than 1,500 victims. Dr. Alfred Pain, 24, was a second-class passenger returning after a year at King’s College Hospital in London. He originally tried to sign on as ship’s doctor on a freighter in exchange for a free trip home. When that didn’t work out, he bought a ticket on a tramp steamer. But then he switched his ticket for passage on the maiden voyage of the luxury ship Titanic.
What followed was a daring escape from the depths of the ship using access ladders and passages used by crew members as some of the regular passages for third-class passengers were tightly locked, sealing the fate of those trapped below. Elin was admitted to a lifeboat, dressed only in her nightgown and life vest and by the grace of God survived the sinking. To me the most heart-wrenching part of her story is the fact that Pekka never did return to their cabin, and after the ship went down, from her lifeboat she called out to him in the darkness letting him know she was near.
“That’s a weird name for a bridge, you know, definitely is,” said Terry Dent of Snellville, Georgia. The Butt Bridge got a makeover a couple of years ago and with its lions holding shields and eagles landing on pillars, it’s impressive to see, but admittedly Butt Bridge is funny name. “Of course everyone remembers ‘save our Butt’. I think it’s something unique about Augusta keeps us funky,” said David Peltier. The funky bridge is named for Augustan Archibald Butt, aide to presidents who died on the Titanic.
An annual wreath drop serves as a way to remember and honor those who died on the Titanic. The Ice Patrol was formed after the passenger liner hit an iceberg and sank in the early morning of April 15, 1912. The wreaths from the ceremony will be dropped near where the ship sank during an iceberg reconnaissance flight in the next few weeks, Cmdr. Marcus Hirschberg said.
Eight Chinese men were on board and six survived, landing in New York three days later aboard the Carpathia, the first ship to arrive at the scene of the disaster. Under the United States’ Chinese Exclusion Act, the men were transferred 24 hours later to a British steamship and sent to Cuba. What happened after that has been unclear – until now.
Panagiotis Lymberopoulos, Vassilios Katavelos, Apostolos Chronopoulos and Demetrios Chronopoulos all came from the same village, Agios Sostis in the Messinia region of the Peloponnese. The last two men were brothers. Like many of the passengers, the four friends were young – the oldest one was only 33 years old – and they wanted to go to America in search of a better life. Tragically, their dreams, like those of so many others who perished on that starry night, never came true.They all died in the most famous shipwreck in maritime history, and the bodies of the two brothers never been found.
Many local history buffs and Titanic fans know that Anderson’s Maplewood Cemetery is the final resting place of Charles Hallace Romaine. He was a first-class passenger aboard the Titanic on its maiden voyage in April 1912. Romaine survived the disastrous sinking when he was allowed to take a seat in Lifeboat No. 9 after the women and children had been given a place.
