The Crew of Titanic

Other Crew & Staff of Titanic

Back Row: Herbert McElroy, Charles Lightoller, Herbert Pitman, Joseph Boxhall, Harold Lowe
Seated: James Moody, Henry Wilde, Capt. Edward Smith, William Murdoch

Fredrick Fleet
Twenty-Four year old Fredrick Fleet was the lookout who first sighted the iceberg that sank the Titanic. He left the sea in 1936. He worked for Harland and Wolff's Southampton shipyard during World War II, after which he became a night watchman for the Union Castle Line.
As he moved into old age, he sold newspapers on a street corner in Southampton.
On January 10, 1965, despondant over his finances and the recent loss of his wife, Fleet took his own life. He was buried at Hollybrook Cemetery, Lordshill, Southampton.

Joseph Boxhall
Joseph Boxhall was 4th Officer on the Titanic and attained a command with the Royal Navy but was never made captain while in the merchant service. He later served as a naval officer in World War I.
He left the sea in 1940.
In 1958 acted as technical advisor to the film "A Night To Remember."
He died on 25th April 1967, the last surviving deck officer of Titanic, and his ashes were scattered at location 41°46N, 50°14W, the position Titanic was when it sunk.

Commander Joseph G. Boxhall

Harold Bride
Junior wireless officer Harold Sidney Bride was one of the two Titanic's Radio Operators.
He kept a very low profile in the years following the disaster.
World War I found him as a wireless operator on the tiny steamer, the 'Mona's Isle'.
He later embarked on a career as a salesman before retiring to Scotland where he passed away from lung cancer in 1956.

Marconi (left) & Harold Bride (right) at the US Enquiry

Harold Bride (in wheelchair) & Harold Cottham (Carpathia) at the US enquiry

John (Jack) George Phillips
Titanic's Senior Wireless Officer was John (Jack) Phillips.
On the evening of April 14, in the wireless room on the boat deck, Phillips was sending messages to Cape Race, Newfoundland, working to clear a backlog of passengers' personal messages that had accumulated when the wireless had broken down the day before. Bride was asleep in an adjoining cabin.
After 11:00 pm, Phillips received warnings from the SS Californian's only wireless operator, Cyril Evans, reporting that they were stopped and surrounded by ice. Phillips quickly sent back, "Shut Up! Shut Up! I am working Cape Race," and continued communicating with Cape Race while Evans listened a while longer before going to bed for the night.
The Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 pm that night and began sinking. Bride had woken up and began getting ready to relieve Phillips when Captain Edward Smith came into the wireless room and told Phillips to prepare to send out a distress signal.
As the Titanic was sinking, Phillips worked tirelessly to send wireless messages to other ships to enlist their assistance with the rescue of the Titanic's passengers and crew.
He was lost in the sinking and the body never recovered. He was 25 years and 1 day old. His last birthday was on the Titanic.
After the disaster and Harold Bride's description of what happened that night was published, Phillips was considered a hero for his efforts in contacting other ships to come to Titanic's assistance, largely forgetting his negligence and hostile behavior toward the wireless operators of other ships, that were trying to help Titanic out of the iceberg fields.
Phillips was remembered in his home town of Godalming, Surrey, by the construction of the biggest memorial to a single Titanic victim, the Phillips Memorial Cloister.

The Titanic Band
The band played the song was Nearer My God to Thee at 2:13 a.m. It was a prayer to everyone. It is thought by some that the band leader, Wallace Hartley, started playing by himself at first and then the rest of the band joined in.
The band knew 352 different songs by heart. They had to be ready for any requests the passengers might make on the trip.
The Band played in first class and second class locations on the ship. They played in these spots: The palm court (which was like a bar) and on the verandah which had fancy restaurants. Also in the lounges, and in dining saloons. They each got paid four pounds a month. They were also charged for expenses. Without passengers' tips the musicians would have to work on privilege (free).
When the ship was sinking captain J. Edward Smith requested songs to keep passengers' spirits up, like Berlin Alexander's, Rag Time Band and Herman Finck's In The Shadows. Also, Nathaniel Davis Ayers and Seymour Brown's, Oh You Beautiful Doll and Songe dAautomme. For inspiration Sir Edward's Elger's, Land of Hope and Glory.
Survivors said that after they played their last song, the water was up to their knees.
During the sinking the band played just outside the first class entranceway. In the newspapers the band was called, "Brave as Birkenhead," which means brave as a bald eagle. The band musicians were heroes.
The band went down with the ship. The three violinists were Jock Hume, Georges Krins and Wallace Hartley. The three cellist were John Woodward, Roger Bricoux and Percy Taylor, who also played the piano. The other pianist was Theodore Brailey. The bass violinist was Frederick Clarke. All together there were eight people in the band. In pictures of the band there is always one person missing. He is Roger Marie Bricoux, a cellist who made his last voyage on the Titanic.
One of the musician's family got billed after the disaster for the clothes he wore that horrible day. The total cost came to 14 shillings, 7 pence. That's $3.50 in American money, approximately $58.75 today.

Memorial to Bandmaster Wallace William Hartley

Henry Tingle Wilde
Henry Tingle Wilde was born in Liverpool on 21st September, 1872. He had begun his career at sea in his teens aboard traditional old-fashioned sailing vessels. But once Wilde had gained his all-important masters certificate, he had joined the White Star Line, and left the old square-rigged ships far behind.
Henry Wilde was due to leave Southampton aboard Olympic the previous week to Titanic's maiden voyage, however, he received word from the White Star Line to remain in Southampton and await further orders, and Olympic sailed without him. There must have been an element of doubt regarding Wilde's next posting, because he didn't actually join Titanic until the day before she sailed.
Because Wilde was off-duty at the time of the collision, and also because he didn't survive to tell the tale, his whereabouts are largely unknown, although he did talk to Albert Haines and Samuel Hemmings shortly after the collision. They told him that they could hear air could be heard eminating from the forepeak tank, and Wilde decided to report his findings to Captain Smith on the bridge.
Not long after Captain Smith and Thomas Andrews had returned to the bridge after their tour of Titanic's lower decks, the order was given to uncover the lifeboats, and Chief Officer Wilde was given the task of overseeing the loading and lowering of the even-numbered boats on the port side of the ship.
By 1.40 a.m., most of the port-side lifeboats had been lowered, and Wilde moved to the starboard side to assist with the remaining boats located there. Collapsible C was now fitted into the davits vacated by the starboard Emergency Cutter. A request from Henry Wilde for any more women and children to step forward into the lifeboat went un-answered, so he ordered the lifeboat away. Just as it was being lowered, J. Bruce Ismay, who had been helping to load the lifeboats on the starboard side, stepped forward and got into the lifeboat. Of course, Ismay would be branded a coward, and worse, for the rest of his days and beyond.
In 1912, Henry Tingle Wilde was living at 25 Grey Road, walton, Liverpool. His wife, Mary Catherine, passed away from complications in childbirth on December 24, 1910, and their twin sons, Archie and Richard, died in infancy, also in December 1910, from Scarlet Fever. Wilde had four surviving children (Jane, Harry, Arnold and Nancy, ranging in ages from 3 to 12) and a Sister (a Mrs. Williams). The Titanic Relief Fund provided a stipend for Wilde's children. Mrs. Smith, Captain Smith's wife, later requested these payments be increased.
In a letter to his sister, posted at Queenstown, Ireland, Wilde gave some indication that he had misgivings about the new ship: "I still don't like this ship. I have a queer feeling about it."
Wilde was 39 years old at the time of the disaster.

Left to Right: Murdoch, Bartlett, Wilde, Capt. Smith

Charles Lightoller
Commander Charles Herbert Lightoller was the second officer on board the Titanic, and the most senior officer to survive the disaster. He was born in Chorley, Lancashire, England, on March 30, 1874, and thirteen years later, he had already gone to sea.
Commander Charles Herbert Lightoller DSC & Bar RD RNR (30 March 1874 – December 8, 1952) was the second officer on board the Titanic, and the most senior officer to survive the disaster.
On the night of 14 April 1912, Lightoller commanded the last bridge watch prior to the ship's collision with an iceberg before being relieved by Murdoch. Lightoller had retired to his cabin and was preparing for bed when he felt the collision occur. Once the fate of the ship became clear, Lightoller immediately went to work assisting in the evacuation of the passengers into the lifeboats. Lightoller was notably stricter than some of the other officers in observing the rule of "women and children first", almost to the point of the rule being "women and children only."
Lightoller lowered the lifeboats on the port side of the Titanic. Among those he assisted were Margaret "Molly" Brown (Lifeboat 6) and Madeleine Astor (Lifeboat 4). As the ship sank, sea water washed over the entire bow of the Titanic; producing a large wave that rolled aft along the boat deck. Seeing crowds of people run away from the rising water and the collapsible boat wash away upside down, Lightoller decided not to prolong it and dove into the water. Once surfaced from his dive, he spotted the ship's crow's nest now level with the water and temporarily swam towards it as a place of safety before realizing that is was safer to clear away from the foundering vessel. Then Lightoller was sucked under as water flooded down one of the forward ventilators. He was pinned there against the grating for a few seconds. Luckily, a blast of hot air from the depths of the ship erupted out of the ventilator and blew him to the surface. Following this, the officer saw Collapsible B, which the crew had unsuccessfully tried to launch earlier, floating upside down with several swimmers clawing to it. He stroked to it and held on by a rope at the front. Then one of the Titanic's massive funnels broke free and hit the water, washing the collapsible further away from the sinking ship. Later on, Second Officer Lightoller took charge and was able to calm and organize the survivors (numbering around thirty) who were on the overturned lifeboat. During the night the sea began to rise and Lightoller led the men in shifting their weight with the swells so that their craft would not be swamped. Had they not done this, they would have been thrown into the frigid water again. The men kept this up at his direction for hours in the freezing weather until they were finally rescued by another lifeboat. Second Officer Lightoller was the last survivor to come aboard the rescue ship Carpathia.
All surviving crewmembers would find that being associated with the Titanic was a black mark from which they could not hope to escape. A disillusioned Lightoller resigned shortly thereafter, taking such odd jobs as an innkeeper and a chicken farmer and later property speculation, at which he and his wife had some success. During the early thirties he commenced writing his autobiography, "Titanic and Other Ships" which he dedicated to his "persistent wife, who made me do it".
On an Australian run onboard the Suevic in 1903, Lightoller met Sylvia Hawley-Wilson on her way home to Sydney after a stay in England. On the return voyage, she accompanied Lightoller as his bride. They later had five children; Roger T., Richard Trevor, Mavis, Clare, and Brian. Their youngest son Brian, an RAF pilot, was killed in action in a bombing raid over Wilhelmshaven, Germany the very first night of Britain's entry into the war. His eldest son, Roger, serving in the RN, died in France in the final month of the war.
Lightoller died on 8 December 1952 aged 78, of heart disease. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered at Mortlake Crematorium Richmond, London, England

Lightoller (right) with Third Officer Herbert Pitman

Standing: 2nd Officer Charles Lightoller, 3rd Officer Herbert Pitman, 4th Officer Joseph Boxhall
Seated: 5th Officer Harold Lowe

Harold Godfrey Lowe
Harold Godfrey Lowe was born in Conwy, North Wales on November 21, 1882. He went to sea at the age of fourteen, which may seem rather early to us now, but it was still acceptable in the late 1890s, and not at all unusual for even younger children to go to sea. However, Lowe had never crossed the North Atlantic, so the Titanic was to be his first transatlantic posting.
Harold Lowe was not actually on duty at the time of the collision, but was asleep in his cabin. He was awakened by the sound of people moving on the deck. When he looked out, he saw they were wearing life jackets, and made his way to the boat deck. He began over-seeing the lowering of lifeboats.
At just before 1.30 a.m., Harold Lowe, together with Sixth Officer James Moody made their way over to Titanic's port side lifeboats Nos. 14 & 16. The two officers had just seen-off lifeboat No. 13 on the starboard side, and now, with time mercilessly ticking away, speed was of the essence. Lowe explained to Moody that the last five lifeboats had been lowered without a single officer between them, and that it would be wise to place an officer in one of the next two boats away. "You go," the Sixth Officer told Lowe. "I'll find another boat." It was a simple few words, but it was the difference between life and death. Moody did not survive.

Sixth Officer James Moody
As many life boats floated nearby, the men in command of them, both Officers and Ratings, their passengers, listened to the screams of the dieing men, women and children in the freezing water.
One Officer however, who was in command of lifeboat 14, couldn't just listen to the screams of the dieing, he couldn't. He tethered 5 life boats together and transferred his passengers to them, he then took his own lifeboat, along with the men under his command, into the area of the sinking:
"Looking towards the spot from which the voice came I saw a young man about six foot, very slender and sinewy. His face was clear cut and of the fine British red. He had keen, deep set, merry black eyes."
That fateful night, he organised the rescue of four people from the freezing water, and many others on a nearby collapsible life boat.
This man, was Fifth Officer Harold Lowe.
After the disaster, Harold Lowe returned to the sea, but like all of Titanic's other surviving officers, he never made command of his own vessel.
He was married in 1913 to Ellen Marion Whitehouse, and they had two children, Florence and Harold.
Harold Godfrey Lowe served in the Royal Navy during World War I, and during this time was promoted to Commander of the Royal Naval Reserve (Com. R.N.R.).
He eventually retired to Wales, where he died on May 12, 1944, from hypertension. He was the first of the surviving officers to pass on. He is buried in Llandrillo Wales in the Parish Churchyard. His headstone reads:

In loving memory
of my Devoted Husband
Harold Godfrey Lowe
Com. R.D.R.N.R.
Who Passed away May 12th 1944
Aged 61 years
"I thank God upon
every remembrance of you."
Phil. 1.3
In 2004, a menu of the first meal ever served aboard the Titanic which Lowe had sent to his fiancee when the ship was docked in Ireland on its way to America sold for £51,000, smashing the record for memorabilia from the doomed liner at an auction at that time.

Gaspare Antonino Pietro (Luigi) Gatti
Gaspare Antonino Pietro (Luigi) Gatti, 36, was born in Montalto Pavese, Italy at 3 a.m. on January 3, 1875. He was one of eleven children of Paolo Gatti and Maria Nascimbene.
Gatti left Italy for England when he was still young. He married a British subject and together they he had a son, Vittorio. Luigi was the only member of his family to move away from Italy, and when he found success he sent money back the family in Montalto Pavese.
When Luigi Gatti signed on to the Titanic in April 1912, he gave his home address as "Montalto", Harborough Road, Southampton.
Luigi Gatti joined the Restaurant business at an early age. In London, he ran two Ritz restaurants, the 'Gatti's' Adelphi' and the 'Gatti's Strand'. On the Olympic and later the Titanic, he would run the à la carte restaurants with staff drawn from his two London restaurants.
Elegant was the word for the First-Class "A la Carte Restaurant" aboard the Titanic. First-Class passengers could arrange private diner parties and the tables had pink roses and white daisies throughout. It was paneled in French walnut with gilded detail.
Just prior to the disaster Mr. and Mrs. Widener were entertaining Captain Smith in this restaurant.
It was situated aft of the second of the first two First-Class companionways on B - Deck. The "A la Carte Restaurant" was an innovation of the White Star Line for the Titanic and 'Olympic'.

Luigi Gatti was last seen on the night of the sinking standing alone on the boat deck, wearing a top hat and carrying a small case and with a travelling rug over an arm.
Gatti died in the sinking, his body was recovered by the Minia (#313) and buried in Fairview Cemetery, Halifax, Nova Scotia. one of the means by which his body was identified was a small golden mohair teddy bear found in his coat pocket. It was a 1907 bear, manufactured by Bing of Germany. The bear had been given to him for luck by his young son, Vittorio. The bear was returned to Gatti's widow (Edith Kate Gatti of ‘Montalto,’ Harborough Road, Southampton), who kept it for many years.
Edith died in 1962. On her death the teddy bear was inherited by Vittorio, the original donor, who died in 1974. Vittorio’s widow, Margery, later placed the bear with the Museum of Childhood in Ribchester, Lancashire, where it remained on display for some nine years in all.
In 1992, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the sinking, the museum commissioned the English teddy bear manufacturers, Merrythought, to make a limited edition of 5,000 replica 'Gatti' bears.
The Ribchester museum closed in 1995 and the owners David and Ankie Wild sold the entire inventory of exhibits at auction in 1996. Gatti’s bear was sold for £9,000 to an undisclosed private buyer.

Thomas Andrews Builder of the Ship of Dreams

"Mr. Andrews met his fate like a true hero,
realizing the great danger, and gave up his life
to save the women and children of the Titanic."
--Mary Sloan, Titanic Stewardess
Letter to her sister, 27 April 1912
Thomas Andrews Jr. was born 7 February 1873 in Belfast, Ireland. His parents were the Right Honourable Thomas Andrews, a local politician, and Eliza Pirrie, who were married in 1870. Thomas was their second son. The Andrews family home is Ardara, located in Comber, County Down, Ireland. Thomas's elder brother John continued in the family's political tradition ultimately becoming Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
Young Thomas, who had shown an early interest in ships, attended the Royal Belfast Academical Institution from 1884 to 1889, when he left at age sixteen to begin his apprenticeship at Harland & Wolff.
On 24 June 1908, Thomas was married to Helen Reilly Barbour, daughter of John D. Barbour, a company director. The couple made their home at "Dunallon," Winslow Avenue in Belfast. It is known that he took her to view Titanic one night in 1910, shortly before their daughter Elizabeth was born, while the ship was still in its cradle and Halley's Comet was at its greatest brilliance.
The Titanic had been completed and delivered to the White Star Line on April 2, 1912. By April 10, activity on the ship grew more and more frenetic as it was prepared for its first Atlantic crossing. She was not only loaded with commercial cargo being shipped to America, but last minute touches including carpeting, furnishing, and decorating, had to be finished. Supervising all of the activity was Thomas Andrews. He knew every detail of his ship and none escaped him. The first class stateroom in which Andrews stayed during the voyage, A36, was one of the last minute additions to the ship.
Andrews's work was not finished once he and the ship set out from Southampton. After the voyage began, he continued to help the crew adjust to the new ship. He carried a notebook with him and was constantly making notes for improvements.
At the time of the collision, Andrews had retired to his stateroom and was working on his notes. He was so engrossed in his work that he had not noticed the jar of the iceberg scraping the ship.
Unlike Andrews, Captain Smith did notice the impact and immediately rushed from the chart room to the bridge to inquire of First Officer Murdoch, who had been on duty, what had happened. Murdoch replied that the ship had struck an iceberg. Smith then requested that Andrews be summoned to the bridge.
Smith and Andrews began their own inspection of the ship so that the builder could assess the damage. The pair kept to the crew passageways as much as possible, in order to avoid attention, and kept their expressions unreadable. Back in his stateroom, Andrews reviewed the damage with the captain: all of the first six watertight compartments were open to the sea. Though Titanic could float with combinations of up to four of these compartments breached, it could not do so with all six. As the weight of the water in the forward compartments pulled the ship down, it would spill over the tops of the bulkheads and continue until the ship sank. How long did they have? "An hour and a half," Andrews judged, after scribbling out some figures, "possibly two. Not much longer." He did not need to point out to Smith that the ship was carrying lifeboats enough for only half of the passengers.
Knowing as he did that there was no time to lose, Andrews set out to do whatever he could to save as many lives as possible. At first he spent time searching staterooms for passengers to evacuate.
At this point, there was not much left to be done. Most of those who would be saved were now on the lifeboats. For the rest, all that was left was to await the inevitable. Perhaps they would be killed as the ship broke in two; perhaps perish in the icy water of the north Atlantic. There was little hope.
Having done all the he could, Thomas Andrews retired to the first class smoking room shortly before the sinking. He was last seen before the fireplace, gazing at the painting that graced the mantle, Approach to the New World. It was a new world he would never see.
Mr. Andrews' body was never found. The smoking room was near the spot where Titanic was broken in two and it is likely that he was pulled with her to a grave at the bottom of the ocean.
On April 19, his father received a telegram from his mother's cousin, James Montgomery, who had spoken with survivors in New York, searching for news of Thomas. The telegram was read aloud by Mr. Andrews Sr. to the staff of the home in Comber:

INTERVIEW TITANIC'S OFFICERS.
ALL UNANIMOUS THAT ANDREWS HEROIC UNTO DEATH,
THINKING ONLY SAFETY OTHERS.
EXTEND HEARTFELT SYMPATHY TO ALL.
In his will, Thomas left his wife £10615 in addition to 11 shillings and 3d - a good amount for the time. One of her relatives, a John Milne Barbour, was an executor of the will. After Thomas's death, Helen was married a second time to Henry Pierson Harland. They had no children and Helen herself died in England in 1966.
Little is known about Elizabeth Andrews after the death of her father. She was such a young age that she would have been unlikely to have any memories of him. It is believed that she lived in Kenya for awhile, working on no-kill safaris, and died in a car accident.

Ardara House, Ballygowan Road, Comber, County Down, where Thomas Andrews was born

J. Bruce Ismay
Managing Director of the White Star Line
Although not part of the crew, Joseph Bruce Ismay played a significant role in the Titanic disaster. It is believed that Ismay may have influenced Captain Smith to ignore the ice warnings and steam ahead at full speed. Many are convinced that if Ismay had not been aboard, Captain Smith would have been more cautious and taken the ice warnings more seriously.
Ismay was born December 12, 1862, in Liverpool, the eldest son of Thomas Henry Ismay, the owner of the White Star steamship company. In 1888, he married Julia Florence Schieffelin of New York, the heiress to a pharmaceutical fortune.

The Marriage of J. Bruce Ismay & Julia Florence Schieffelin - December 4, 1888 - New York City
Upon the death of his father in 1899, Bruce gained control of the White Star Line but, within three years, was forced to sell to J.P. Morgan, although he remained as Chairman. He was, therefore, the owner of R.M.S Titanic and was on board during "the Night to Remember."

Lord Pirrie (left), Chairman of Harland & Wolff and Bruce Ismay (right), Chairman and Managing Director of the White Star Line, were photographed making a final inspection of Titanic on the slipway on May 31, 1911.
Ismay left the Titanic on collapsible boat C and has been extensively criticized for this. The general feeling was that he should have gone down with the ship. He stated that he only boarded the lifeboat because there were no other passengers waiting to get on board. However, witnesses have reported seeing Ismay push and shove others out of the way to get on that lifeboat. The truth will never be known.
The commissions of inquiry in both Washington and London concluded that Ismay had helped to load women and children into the lifeboats until he could find no more women and children and that, if he had gone down with his ship, he would have done nothing more than to add one further name to the toll of death. However, the press needed a scapegoat, and any male passenger in the first class was assumed to be little better than a murderer. Due in no small part to William Randolph Hearst's papers, which dubbed him "J. Brute Ismay", Ismay resigned his position in 1912 shortly after the Titanic incident, but remained an executive with IMM (International Mercantile Marine Co -- the owners of the White Star Line) until 1916.
His entry in "Who's Who" made no mention of the White Star Line or of the Titanic, although he described himself as a shipowner. Instead, he mentioned that he was a director of London, Midland and Scottish railways and the Birmingham Canal Navigation, and Chairman of the London and Liverpool War Risks Association.
Ismay spent most of his remaining years in retirement in Costelloe in County Galway, on the West Coast of Ireland, but died from a stroke at his house in London on October 17, 1937. He was 74 years old. His wife, with whom he had two sons and two daughters, survived him by twenty-six years. She had not been on the voyage and would never allow her husband to talk about the disaster.
J. Bruce Ismay was buried in Putney Vale Cemetery, London, England.

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