THOMAS ANDREWS
Thomas Andrews Jr., 39. at the age of 16 he entered Harland & Wolff shipbuilders as a premium apprentice, gradually working his way up through various departments. He eventually became the managing director of H & W in charge of designing, and was familiar with every detail of the construction of the firm's ships.
Thomas Andrews made a point of sailing with a team of mechanics on the maiden voyages of the Adriatic , Oceanic and Olympic in order to observe their operation and recommend improvements to future vessels slated to be built by his firm. It was for this very reason that Andrews planned to sail on Titanic 's maiden voyage to America:
At sea, Andrews had spent most of the journey making notes and assisting the crew with minor difficulties as they got to know the new ship. Always a popular man on these trips Chief Baker Charles Joughin had even baked Andrews a special loaf of bread.
On the evening of April 14th, as usual, Bedroom Steward Henry Samuel Etches arrived at 6:45 to help Andrews dress for dinner which he usually took with Dr O'Loughlin the ship's surgeon. After dinner Andrews returned to his cabin (A-36 ) to pore over blueprints and collate his notes. Andrews barely noticed the collision and was unaware of any problem until Captain Smith sent a message requesting his immediate presence on the bridge.
Later, Saloon Steward James Johnson described how he saw Andrews and Captain Smith touring the forward part of the ship, they visited the flooding mail room and the squash court which was also quickly filling with water. Back on the bridge Andrews broke the news to Captain Smith that in view of the damage the ship had suffered he did not expect her to stay afloat more than two hours.
During the liner's final hours Andrews wandered the decks encouraging passengers to wear their lifebelts and to make their way to the boats. He was last seen staring into space by the painting in the first class smoking room, his lifebelt discarded.
John Collins
Mr. John Collins, 17, was born in Belfast on 24 October 1894. Before joining the Titanic he had previously been employed by the Ulster Reform Club, Belfast and resided at 65 Ballycarry Street, Belfast. He signed on the Titanic on 4 April, 1912 and indicated that the Titanic was his first ship. As a Scullion he received £3 10s per month. This scullion / assistant cook was among the youngestof theTitanic's crew and the only survivor of all seventeen teenagers employed on the grand ship.
On the evening of the 14 April, Collins stopped work at 9 o'clock and walked up and down the alleyway for a bit, before going to his bunk where he fell asleep, around 10 o'clock. He was jarred awake by the collision and put on his trousers. He got out of bed and heard them letting off steam in the stoke hole. He proceeded on to the forewell deck "and saw the deck almost packed with ice on the starboard side." Following his journey, he returned below where word was passed that it was not serious. He went back into his bunk, but remained dressed. Soon after he came out again and saw stewards in their white jackets in the passageway directing passengers. Soon word came to get life belts on and get up to the upper deck. He proceeded to the deck, where he met with a steward he had befriended and asked his lifeboat assignment. He was told No. 16, so he went up to that boat and saw firemen and stewards "with their bags ready for No. 16." Sensing there was no hope for him with that boat he proceeded to along the port side saloon deck where he found a steward helping a woman and her two children. The steward had one of the children in his arms and the woman was crying. Collins took the child off of the woman and the group made for one of the boats. They saw the collapsible boat taken off of the saloon deck, and then the men forward began shouting to go aft. Just as they were turning around and making for the stern end a wave washed them off the deck. The child that Collins was carried was washed from his arms. He was held under the surface for a bit by some wreckage and the people around him, but he finally managed to break the surface. He saw the boat that had been taken off, collapsible B, with a man on it. He swam over to it and pulled himself aboard.
The boat drifted about a mile and a half from the Titanic, from where she sank. Collins described an explosion followed by the stern popping back in the water. It then turned over and went down. They were drifting about for a few hours, when they saw the lights of the Carpathia, her topmast lights first. With daylight, they saw their own lifeboats and shouted to them. Those standing on the overturned collapsible were taken aboard lifeboats 4 and 12.
Collins later testified before the U. S. Senate inquiry into the disaster.
He died in a psychiatric hospital in Belfast, Northern Ireland on 6 February 1941.
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John Collins was born on October 24th 1894 in Belfast, Ireland. At 17, this scullion / assistant cook was among the youngestof theTitanic's crew and the only survivor of all seventeen teenagers employed on the grand ship. One can assume the young man wasequally proud and excited to be serving the wealthy and renownedaboard the world-famous unsinkable ship on his first voyage. However,he is one of thoseunfortunatepassengers whose stories have fallen into the cloudy waters of obscurity; thus, we know very little about him. I have tried to piece together a re-telling of his experience of that night to remember, thanks mainly to the news articles of Encyclopedia Titanica.
John Collins stared in awe at the towering steel hull of theTitanic sparkling in the ocean sunlight as the chatter of enthralled onlookers drowned out the carrying cries of seagulls. Dwarfing the rickety buildings of Southampton harbor into insignifigance, the massive new ship was truly a wonder, and John was extremely proud that this maritime marvel was to take him on his first ocean voyage ever. Little did the young man know it would nearly be his last.
On the night of the sinking, Collins stopped work at 9:00 and strolled absentmindedly up and down the corridor outside the crew's quarters for a while before settling down for the night.Almost three hours later, thebunks shuddered with the violent impact of a sudden collision, jarring him awake. The deafening hiss of steam rushing from the boiler room attracted Collins' attention and he hurried outside to investigate, only to stop dead in his tracks upon finding the deck covered in smashed ice. Assured by others that there was no danger, he returned obediently to the crew's cabins but instinctively remained dressed, still harboring a sickening dread that trouble would come to pass. Sure enough, the corridor soon filled with the calm, ringing commands of officers and the monotonous thumping of many footsteps - the crew guiding first-class passengers to safety. The order came around for all men and women to don lifejackets and proceed at once to the upper decks. As Collins mentioned in a testimony to the U.S. Senate Inquiry that he had a lifebelt on when he was washed overboard, it is presumable that he put one on at this time.
On deck, Collins met up with a steward he'd befriended during the voyage and, although being merely a lowly scullion, gallantly volunteered to help load the lifeboats with women and children. He was ordered to help fill up Lifeboat #16, but upon arriving, witnessed it already being lowered by a hoard of sailors. With the last lifeboat having left the rapidly sinking bow,Collins joined a throng of doomed passengers and crew in climbing to the stern, where a few lifeboats remained. As the situation grew increasingly desperate, theboy scullionwent to the saloon deck to accept his fate, where he came to the aid of a young, sobbing woman struggling along the swiftly flooding decks with two toddlers wailing in her arms. Eager to be of assistance, Collins and his steward companion each took a child and led the distraught lady towards the rising stern which the ocean had not yet swallowed. As the tilt of the deck grew more perilous, an officer hollered at the desperate party to aft where several more collapsible boats waited to be lowered. At the last moment, a bone-crushing wave surged over the plummeting decks and swept them all screaming into the glassy black ocean.
John thrashed about underwater, fighting vigorously to escape the deadly suction dragging his companions to a watery grave. The boy's hands were empty as he shot towards the surface due to his lifejacket - the child had been wrenched from his firm grasp by the sheer force of the waves. As Collins ascended, he became entangled in the treacherous snare of some wreckage, trapping him beneath the icy waves. After struggling desperately for life for what seemed like several breathless, terrifying minutes, the young man finally broke the surface, gasping for precious air amidst the mass of nearly 1,500 other shrieking, drowning human beings.
Buoyed up by his lifejacket, Collins somehow made it to Collapsible B, which has been swept overboard and now floated upside-down with several men scrambling onto its sleek, overturned hull. Striking out determinedly, he swam up to the"upset boat" and, as he later described, was not helped up by those on board, but merely sprang up to safety. Collins would observe that the steely death-black ocean was "as calm as a board," despite the massive explosions which rent the dying titan in half as it slid gracefully into the watery clench of the sea. It was a scene which would haunt the young man's mind for the rest of his life, one which he described with painstaking accuracy during a testimony several months later.
Collapsible B, now loaded with over fifteen shivering, barely conscious men, drifted slowly away from the wreck site, its sleek bow cutting smoothly through the satiny black, rustling waves. Now began a haunting struggle for life among the survivors groped on board the rickety collapsible's hull and the desperate drowning clawing for life amongst the mass of wreckage. As Collins recalled, "if a gentleman had got on we would all have been turned over ... one was running from one side to the other to keep her steady. If one man had caught hold of her he would have tumbled the whole lot of us off. We were all telling him not to get on. He said, "That's all right, boys, keep cool. God bless you," and he bid us good-by and swam along for about two minutes." This man, who appears frequently in the stories of those saved on Collapsible B, was believed by many to be Captain Edward Smith himself.
Collins continued to describe the perilous, wearing ordeal: "There were others that tried to get on, but we could not let them. A big foreigner came up; I think he was a Dutchman. He came up to the stern and he hung on to me all the time. He was saved ... we drifted, I am sure, a mile and a half from the Titanic, from where she sank, and there was some lifeboat (Lifeboat 2) that had a green light on it, and we thought it was some boat, and we commenced to shout. But all we saw was the green light. We were drifting about for two hours, and then we saw the lights of the Carpathia ...We saw her masthead lights first and saw her starboard and port side lights ... We rowed for the Carpathia, and whenever we got in amongst a log of wreckage we rowed on ahead. The wind rose, and the waves were coming up, and we were rowing for all we were worth."
Such relentless determination, especially from a half-drowned, soaking wet teenager who had spent hours hunched on an icy lifeboat with mere inches of wood separating him from certain death, is truly a feat to be admired. Emma Bliss, a stewardess in the lifeboat which took on the survivors from Collapsible B, would later recall him with fondness and appreciation. According to her, although exhausted and frigid, he had done his best to help steer the lifeboat closer to the rescue ship, including rigging up a sail to catch the wind. In addition, when Ms. Bliss suggested to a rich lady enrobed in a lavish fur coat that she should let Collins, wearing only a pair of overalls and a thin cotton vest, borrow the jacket, he refused, saying it should go instead to a woman draped in nothing but a nightgown. If Ms. Bliss' words of admiration were indeed true, young Collins was nothing short of a hero that fateful night, displaying generosity, strength and determination far beyond his inexperienced years. Collins' first voyage had been one of self-discovery for the young man, and undoubtedly one far different from what he had imagined.
FREDERICK FLEET
Frederick Fleet was as a lookout on the Titanic.
On April 14, 1912, along with Reginald Lee, Fleet took watch at 10pm. Jewel from the previous watch. Just after seven bells, Fleet saw a black mass ahead, immediately struck three bells and telephoned the bridge. He reported "Iceberg right ahead," receiving the reply "Thank you." While still on the telephone, the ship started swinging to port. The lookouts saw the starboard side of the ship scrape alongside the iceberg, and saw ice falling on the decks. They had thought that it had been either a close shave or a near miss. The lookouts remained in the crows nest until relieved about 20 minutes later.
Fleet then made his way to the Boat Deck where Second Officer Charles Lightoller put him to help Quarter-Master Robert Hitchins load and launch lifeboat 6, the first boat to be launched from the port side.
Joseph Bruce Ismay
J. Bruce Ismay’s father, Thomas Ismay, was senior partner in the firm of Ismay, Imrie and company and founder of the White Star Line. Thomas Ismay died in 1899. Bruce became head of the White Star Line when his father died. Bruce Ismay led a thriving firm and displayed considerable business acumen, but in 1901 his firm was approached by American interests towards forming an international conglomerate of shipping companies. After lengthy negotiations Ismay agreed terms with John Pierpont Morgan under which the White Star Line would form part of the International Mercantile Marine Company.