Sindarin, p.25
The Death Ship, page 25
Please be aware that some parts of this book may prove upsetting. Chapters Two and Three go into detail on certain aspects of death, as those on the ship may have experienced it, and body decomposition.
First published 2025
The History Press
97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,
Gloucestershire, gl50 3qb
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
© Victoria Brown, 2025
The right of Victoria Brown to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 80399 804 6
Typesetting and origination by The History Press
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall
Contents
Foreword by Steve Hall
Introduction
PART ONE: DEATH AND DECOMPOSITION
1 Titanic’s Lifeboats
2 Death
3 Decomposition
PART TWO: THE BODY RECOVERY EFFORT
4 The First Recovery Ship: Mackay-Bennett
5 Remaining Recovery Ships: Minia, Montmagny and Algerine
6 Return to Halifax: Caring for the Dead
7 Burial Services
8 Memorials and Monuments Around the World
PART THREE: THE AFTERMATH: TITANIC’S LEGACY
9 The Inquiries: Proposed Legislative Changes
10 Renewed Interest in Titanic: Cinematic Adaptations, Salvage Proposals and the Discovery of the Wreck (1912–85)
11 Contemporary Controversy: Titanic as a Shipwreck Versus Titanic as a Graveyard
Titanic’s Lost and Recovered Souls
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Foreword
With most tragedies throughout history, it’s the loss of human life that we remember most. The loss of the Titanic in 1912 remains one of the worst maritime disasters outside times of armed conflict. In this book, Victoria Brown looks into how and why so many of those aboard Titanic lost their lives.
The principal reason so many were lost that night was the insufficient provision of lifeboats carried, but as the reader will find, there are other factors that need to be considered. Not all boats were lowered away full, and there was no other ship in close proximity to render timely assistance. The bitterly cold conditions that prevailed at the time were also critical.
Titanic carried sixteen lifeboats under davits, with the additional provision of four ‘collapsible’ Engelhardt lifeboats. The total indicated capacity for all boats was 1,178 persons. When Titanic left Queenstown, there were 2,208 on board. Making up the number of souls the ship carried were 1,317 passengers and 891 crew members. This meant, in a worst-case situation, whereupon every person on board needed to be evacuated, 1,030 would have to be left behind.
On the night of 14 April, Titanic, as we know, collided with an iceberg. An assessment of the damage sustained was made by Harland & Wolff’s Thomas Andrews. His inspection revealed that the ship had been mortally wounded. For Captain Smith and his officers, their ship’s insufficient lifeboat capacity was soon to be realised. Although the Titanic carried 3,560 lifebelts, they would prove to be of limited value for those who hadn’t found a seat in a lifeboat. With a sea temperature of little more than 28°F, their immersion in water that cold would result in death from cardiac arrest, a phenomenon known as hydrocution. In the aftermath of the sinking, all these lifebelts ultimately achieved was to keep their deceased bodies afloat.
For those fortunate enough to have found room in a lifeboat, their salvation would be met by the arrival of the Cunard ship Carpathia. CS (Cable Ship) Mackay-Bennett was contracted by the White Star Line to search the wreck vicinity for bodies, departing from Halifax on 17 April. The crew recovered 306 bodies. Of that number, 116 were buried at sea and 190 returned to port.
Days later, CS Minia was likewise engaged to further search the area. Unfortunately, due to the stress of weather, her crew only recovered seventeen more bodies from the icy sea. In the following weeks, the ships CGS Montmagny and SS Algerine would further search the area, recovering an additional five bodies between them.
In all, 209 bodies were brought back to Halifax and 128 were buried at sea. Sadly, all those other souls lost would remain unaccounted for, lost to the North Atlantic. When looking at the complete number lost in connection with Titanic, a further eight need to be added: those of the Harland and Wolff workers killed during the ship’s construction. The total now amounts to 1,504.
In The Death Ship, Victoria Brown examines in detail the fates of the 1,496 people who perished on that cold and moonless night, examining how those lost died, how their bodies were recovered and where their remains were interred. Did the initial lack of urgency contribute to earlier lifeboats being lowered not fully loaded? And could the provision of additional lifeboats have saved more? Was there anyone to blame? These questions and hundreds more were subsequently asked at post-disaster inquiries, and have fascinated the public ever since.
As for the Titanic, that marvel of the Edwardian era, today she rests over 12,000ft below those icy waters of the North Atlantic – nothing more than a rapidly collapsing and disintegrating hulk on the seafloor, and to many maritime historians, a victim herself.
Steve Hall
Titanic historian and author January 2025
Introduction
When I was a little girl, my mum and dad took me and my sisters to the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra, Northern Ireland. Certain exhibitions always stand out in my mind whenever I think of the museum – the enormous steam trains; the recreation of a rural Victorian primary school, complete with chalkboards and wooden hula hoops for playtime; the preserved heritage buildings that line the streets, including an old-fashioned sweetshop with Lime Fruit, Twisted Barley Sugar, Strawberry Drops and Lemon Drops, all weighed and placed into delicate brown paper bags – but the one I remember in the most vivid detail is its Titanic exhibition.
Before Titanic Belfast opened in 2012, the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum was the place to go in Northern Ireland for information about RMS Titanic. While the Titanic museum does a wonderful job of putting the Titanic into context, looking especially at Belfast’s history and legacy as a centre for ship works in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it features few artefacts salvaged from the ship itself. The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, however, is home to several items, including a porthole, part of the ship’s hull, and part of the engine telegraph. They also have garments worn by survivors on the night of the sinking on display.
The most emotional part of the exhibition, for me as a child, lies in the centre of the room. A huge glass case houses a replica of the Titanic mid-sinking, its hull disappearing beneath the black seawater. Around the outskirts of the water, labelled and arranged by class at three of the four corners of the case, are the survivors. These mini figurines are clad in Edwardian garb, coloured in reds, yellows, greens, blues. Beneath them are those who were lost. They are not colourful – they are a ghostly grey. There were many first- and second-class survivors, as to be expected, but the discrepancy between them and the loss of third-class passengers and the ship’s crew was astounding and heartbreaking to me, even as a young child. I remember looking up at my mum, with big sad eyes, and asking her, ‘Why didn’t they save them?’
I couldn’t get over how many little grey figures stood there, lost.
Even at a young age, I was familiar with the Titanic. It’s difficult not to be when you’re from Northern Ireland. My mum adored, and still adores, James Cameron’s 1997 adaptation of the story, so she watched it a lot when we were growing up. Mum never hid the tragedy of the sinking from us, or the horrors that were part of it: she didn’t see the point in trying to shield us from it. Her efforts would have been in vain anyway, for I was a very curious and conscientious child, so I would’ve found out for myself one way or another. My mum always knew how best to answer questions we posed to her, depending on how old we were at the time, and she always did her best to give us as succinct an answer as she could to satisfy our curiosity. She did not forbid us from watching the film, but she would warn us if a potentially scary or upsetting scene was coming up so we could brace ourselves. For me, this was always the scene when the glass dome over the famous Grand Staircase explodes from the sheer force of the water, sending ice-cold waves rushing into the ship and pinning passengers to the stairs, as sparks from the electric lights fly in every direction. Even as an adult, it is a scene that pulls at my heartstrings.
To this day, I remember how scared and sad I used to be while watching Titanic. I love the horror genre but I find it easy to separate myself from it, even from some of the most brutal true crime, but watching Titanic as a kid felt like I was trespassing on something I wasn’t old enough to see yet. I felt mature watching it, but Titanic scared me – not because it was especially scary in the way horror films are, but because I couldn’t help but feel how utterly terrified those people must have been. The opening shot of the film is filled with such hope, and it makes me so sad, even now, because all those smiling, waving people standing aboard the ship’s decks are sailing towards their deaths. Some would die alone, freezing, terrified and confused. Some would die with family, watching their loved ones fight for breath while they were unable to help, as they themselves struggled to stay afloat. Crew members helped passengers before themselves, many going down with their friends inside and alongside the ship. Titanic made me sad, more than anything I had ever come across, more than any other tragedy in history I had known about up to that point. I remember vividly watching television late one night from behind the sofa – my dad had no idea I was there – and he was watching a documentary about the firefighters’ experiences during 9/11. That footage spooked me and upset me a little, but it felt somehow removed from my experience: I had never flown on a plane or been in a high-rise building.
I had, however, been on a boat and set foot in the ocean. I had never felt blistering smoke fill my lungs or flames scorch my skin, but I had felt the roll of a boat deck and ice-cold waves pull the legs out from under me, leaving me powerless and terrified. I could put myself in the position of those who died on the Titanic, and because I could understand (as best as an 8-year-old could, anyway) how they must have felt, that terrified me and upset me to my very core. I used to imagine what it would be like to be on the ship, and the idea of having to leave my dad behind made me cry. Even Jack and Rose, who we know were James Cameron’s fictional creations, broke my heart because they represented so many real people. Rose, trapped in a wealthy but monotonous, depressing life of meaningless and superficial pageantry, betrothed to someone she hated and given no agency just because she was a woman, and Jack, a man whose optimism and genuine love for life brought him as far as the ship’s decks, on his way home, though he never got there. Rose’s lament of ‘he saved me in every way a person can be saved’ is one of the most beautiful and heart-wrenching lines in cinema because it is true, and it is one of the best examples of just how much a single person can alter your entire sense of humanity and experience of life. One person can save another in more ways than one, and Jack did that for Rose. The romantic in me treasures their story. I know some people roll their eyes at the love story at the centre of James Cameron’s version, but for me it makes it. Jack and Rose are two of my favourite fictional characters on screen, not just because of who they are as individuals, but because of what they come to represent for me: real people with real hopes and dreams shattered by that fateful, arguably easily avoided, collision with one block of ice in the middle of the ocean.
I can imagine myself on board the Titanic: I can feel the iron and steel of the steps through my shoes, feel the sharp wind on my cheeks, the rough texture of the ropes against the palm of my hand, the roll of the waves beneath the ship, the polite yet awkward clinking and clattering of cutlery. I can feel the pain in my back from having to sit straight in first class while wearing beautiful but uncomfortable clothing. I can taste Guinness and cigarettes, smell sweat, and hear the boisterous and uninhibited laughter in third class. The moon and stars the passengers and crew watched and died beneath are the same ones above us now. For me, Titanic represents just one of a million ways in which human beings are connected. And it breaks my heart.
There have been many worse tragedies, but the Titanic always sticks with me. The people on the ship thought they were sailing towards New York, the place where anyone could make it no matter how poor they were, where they came from or how educated they were. America represented hope to hundreds of people aboard the Titanic: people who walked the same paths as me through Belfast Harbour, past Harland & Wolff, along the River Lagan. Some may have even sat in the same spot at City Hall, where I go to drink my coffee, or maybe they sat on the very spot where the Titanic memorial to those who were lost now stands. Their determination to make their dreams come true in the Land of Opportunity was rewarded with an ice-cold watery grave.
I loved history as a child. I wanted to be the Indiana Jones of Egyptology (I know my family are laughing reading this). I was fascinated by the Egyptians’ art, their culture and their gods, but mostly I was obsessed with mummies and the preservation process. I used to go around telling everyone about how the ancient Egyptians pulled the deceased’s brain out by their nose with a long hook and separated their organs into jars. I also loved graveyards, especially a small, overgrown one in Carnmoney, Belfast, where I have family buried. My dad used to play a game with my sisters and me, where we had to find the oldest grave we could. No one ever got an actual prize – it was more a matter of pride – but it was the best part of visiting the graveyard for me. I was a bit of a macabre child, obsessed with the more tragic and sad parts of history – captivated by death as a philosophical concept and an aesthetic, as well as a concrete reality – so, in hindsight, it’s not surprising that a story such as the Titanic’s would stick with me well into adulthood.
I think a big part of my fascination with the Titanic also comes from it being connected to the country where I was born. Northern Ireland has a troubled and turbulent history, and to be honest it’s not one I’m particularly drawn to, but the Titanic always pulled me towards it. Perhaps part of it was growing up by the sea, in a small village called Groomsport, where the vast ocean was literally on my doorstep. Having the ocean at my fingertips was a great inspiration for imagination for me as a child. In primary school, one of my favourite craft activities was making a replica of the Titanic using an empty cereal box and old toilet rolls for the funnels (young Victoria usually only gave her little ship three funnels, but I think we can forgive her). Groomsport’s play park is right on the seafront and its biggest climbing frame looks straight out on to the ocean. My sisters and I, along with my childhood best friend Nicola, used to pretend that we were sailors adventuring on the high seas (though, if memory serves me, we more often pretended to be pirates because I think we considered that more exciting).
Perhaps it’s the knowledge that anyone with family from Belfast likely knew and/or is directly related to someone who worked on the ship in Harland & Wolff ’s world-famous shipyard. In my case, I know for certain that my great-great-grandfather Thompson worked on it and my great-great granny McVeigh watched it travel down Belfast Lough when it left Belfast for the last time. She also watched the sea trials from the top of Belfast’s Cavehill. Whenever my great-granny Bash spoke about Titanic, she always prefaced it with ‘she was doomed from the start’, based on what her father, my great-great-grandfather Thompson, told her. He also spoke of a woman in black, who was supposedly seen in the ship’s interior during the fit-out. He said that the ship never had any rats inside or outside when it was being fitted out – a bad omen, for rats are known to flee sinking ships. Maybe it’s just some good ol’ Belfast superstition, but it’s compelling, isn’t it?
The story of the Titanic stayed with me as I grew up. The first short story I ever had published in my university newspaper, The Piano, was a Titanic-inspired ghost story about a young girl who helps reunite the lost spirit of a third-class passenger with his fiancée, who survived the sinking. Looking back, it was not very good – and was maybe a little more sentimental that I’d like to admit – but I like knowing that my first ever published piece of fiction is directly connected to Northern Ireland and to something I loved as a child. The Titanic has a wealth of possibilities for storytellers for numerous reasons, but Sam Willis, author of Shipwreck: A History of Disaster at Sea, puts it best: ‘tales of shipwreck are attractive as straightforward descriptions of human tragedy, in which heroism, sacrifice, and villainy all bubble to the surface in conditions of extreme physical and emotional suffering.’1 He also reflected on the attractiveness of the Titanic’s story. It has endured so long in our popular imagination, he said, because it has ‘such socially and politically charged undercurrents’. Few stories within history so ‘magically captured the essence of their age as did the Titanic’.2 My story was certainly tragic, but it also had a cathartic element: my ghostly passenger got to reunite with his lost love. But the families of many of those who died never got that chance. I think my story was a way for me to explore the part of me that was always heartbroken by that fact.
