Julie Cook - The Titanic and the City of Widows It Left Behind: The Forgotten Victims of the Fatal Voyage

THE TITANIC AND THE CITY OF WIDOWS IT LEFT BEHIND

THE FORGOTTEN VICTIMS OF THE FATAL VOYAGE

THE FORGOTTEN VICTIMS OF THE FATAL VOYAGE

Julie Cook

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by

PEN AND SWORD HISTORY

an imprint of

Pen and Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Julie Cook, 2020

ISBN 978 1 52675 716 6

eISBN 978 1 52675 717 3

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52675 718 0

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So many kind, knowledgeable and passionate people have assisted me during the researching and writing of this book. I wish to thank Kate Bohdanowicz for initially seeing something in this idea and securing me a publisher, Pen and Sword History; commissioning editor Jonathan Wright as well as Laura Hirst and Alice Wright at Pen and Sword; copy editor Carol Trow; archivists Joanne Smith and Joe Baldwin at the City Archives in Southampton; Vicky Green at the Maritime and Local History section in Southampton Central Library for her infinite knowledge of all things Titanic (and patience when I often couldnt get the newspaper microfilm spools to work); Richard Arthur at Southampton Central Library; Maria Newbery curator at the SeaCity Museum, Southampton; Gordon Sutter, Editor of the Daily Echo for kindly allowing me to reprint Titanic memorial notices; Tim Stanton at the West Sussex Library Service; David Scott-Beddard at the British Titanic Society, and to Brian Ticehurst, who died during the time I was writing this book. Brians research and painstaking work in ensuring the crews names, backgrounds and memorials were recorded helped me immensely and I wish I could have met him. To a distant cousin, Sarah Gregson, who shares the same great-grandparents Emily and William and who I met while searching for my great-grandparents history online, for her help and historical expertise. Importantly, huge thanks to the many modern-day descendants of Titanic crew who were kind enough to share their memories, photographs and documents with me; Dave Fredericks, Darren Yearsley, Mike Knowlton, Tony Cove, Lyn Aylett, Elaine Estall, Rhona Mintram, Quentin Hurst, Linda Bentley, Linda Paskins, Kerry Wolf, Lorraine Keys and Cheryl Jensen. Thanks to John McAndrew and the Southampton Heritage Photos page on Facebook, without whom I would not have traced so many descendants of Titanic crew. Thank you to my aunt Doreen Duncan, William and Emilys granddaughter, for her help in sourcing family photos and for her memories, my cousin Robert Duncan and my sister Natalie Cook, another Titanic descendant, for her early proof reads and advice. Finally, I thank my father Derek Cook who isnt around to see this book but who always wanted it written and my husband Cornel and our two children Alexander and Adriana who, during the writing of this book, put up with me living, breathing, eating and sleeping all things Titanic .

When I remember my childhood, one of my earliest memories is of my father watching the film A Night to Remember . I can still see his expression as a great and beautiful ship sank beneath the waves while clipped-accented actors filmed in black and white donned their life jackets. My father would then turn to look at me and say, Your great-grandfather died on that ship. Id gaze at the now half-submerged vessel on the television, its previously twinkling lights suddenly extinguished, the besuited aristocrats and jewel-bedecked women now crammed into lifeboats, and think with horror how awful it must have been not to make it into one, how cold that icy North Atlantic water must have been and how terrifying it would have been to drown in the dark.

My father told me that my great-grandfather had been called William Edward Bessant and he was just 40 when hed perished on the Titanic in 1912. He had worked as a fireman on the great ship. As a young child growing up in the 1980s, Id thought this meant his role was to put out fires, but my father had explained for the hundredth time that fireman meant something entirely different on a steam ship in 1912. Williams job hadnt been to put out fires, but to keep them going; to stoke them and shovel coal into the great furnaces that fuelled the ship. It was backbreaking, exhausting, sweltering work. Titanic had six boiler rooms, 29 boilers, each with three furnaces. These boilers and the men who worked like slaves to fuel them quite literally kept the ship sailing. The men working in the boiler rooms had job titles of fireman, who shovelled coal into the furnaces; coal-trimmers, who moved coal around the bunker in wheelbarrows shovelling coal down chutes to the fireman below; and greasers, who supplied lubricating oil for the equipment. The firemen worked four-hour shifts, eight hours off, in their flannel shirts and trousers. Theyd stand in front of searing furnaces where the hot, burning coal would spit out lumps of flying, molten debris. The heat in the boiler room was intense around 50 degrees centigrade. The bunkers would have been dark with only the glow of the furnaces for light and dust would have been everywhere. These descriptions alone conjure up a sort of hell. But these men were stoical and hard. They had to be. They were called the Black Gang because they were always covered in soot and coal and were part of the lowliest crew members onboard. Often, the job was done by those from the slums or very poor areas of Southampton or indeed from other cities. You had to be strong, tough. But it wasnt just exhausting work, either. It required precision. The firemen needed to feed the exact amount of coal into the furnaces to keep the ship at the required speed.

William, my ancestor from the Black Gang, hadnt had a hope of surviving that night, my father had told me. The Black Gang was invisible, my father said. The rich up in first class must have imagined that ship sailed on its own. It was working-class muscle that kept Titanic sailing. Because William was part of the Black Gang, the rich in first class would never have noticed him. It seems he didnt don a life jacket like those elegant, glamorous characters in A Night to Remember . It seems he was not ushered to the safety of a lifeboat. His life, so my father explained, was not worth as much as an aristocrats. No one knows what happened to his body. His wife Emily was simply told he was lost at sea, his body never found. She was left a widow aged just 38 with five children three of them six years old and under to rear alone with no breadwinner. Simply, my great-grandfather vanished in the Atlantic Ocean, leaving my great-grandmother a widow and penniless. In Southamptons Titanic exhibition at the SeaCity Museum, there is a wall remembering all the crew on Titanic . There are pictures to go with some names. But Williams face is blank where his name is listed. There is not even a photograph to put to my great-grandfathers name, just a ghostly silhouette.