Southampton Docks Station where passengers traveling to Titanic would disembark. The station still stands today but is a casino. Circa 1900’s Image: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
The Daily Mail is reporting that train carriages that likely carried passengers to Titanic in 1912 have been found in yard for over a hundred years. The dining saloon cars were part of the Boat Train Express run by London and South Western Railway to carry first class passengers from the London Waterloo Station to Southampton.
The British Titanic Society has decided to raise the necessary £550,000 to restore the cars. During World War I and II the cars were used by the military. By the 1970’s they were in poor condition and acquired for use in a possible heritage railway that never happened. They were bought in 2000 by a train enthusiast in the hopes of finding someone who would restore them. No one can say for certain these saloon cars actually carried passengers to Titanic, but certainly operated in that time frame.
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.
A bus similar to this will be named in Millvina Dean’s honor
There are many ways to remember people. Some are with statues, memorial plaques in parks or historical sites, music and books. Naming public transportation after people though is different but not unheard of. For instance, Caltrain (the regional commuter rail on San Francisco peninsula) names its engines after cities and politicians. Millvina Dean, the last Titanic survivor who passed away in 2009, will have a Uni-Link double decker bus run by Bluestar (no connection to Clive Palmer’s company building Titanic II) named for her.
According to Daily Echo, a ceremony will take place this Sunday with her nephew, Ron Dean, and sixty members of the British Titanic Society. A commemorative plaque will be unveiled at the ceremony. Then they will take the bus to a memorial garden named in her memory in Southampton to lay a wreath. Randi Newman, secretary of the British Titanic Society says it was a nice gesture on the part of Bluestar. Apparently she had been invited to unveil a bus in her honor but sadly passed away before that could happen.
