The Titanic crew were overlooked in life, death and beyond. Now, I’m making sure we never forget them

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The Titanic means something different to everyone. Some might think of extravagant luxury, the VIP first-class passengers or that Hollywood film.

I don’t.

I think of coal-stained stokers, weary stewards, and exhausted bedchamber maids. I think of the 906 crew members on board because my great-grandfather William Bessant was one of them. He lost his life when the Titanic sank into the bitterly cold North Atlantic on the 15th April 1915.

William, 40, wasn’t a first-class guest, or even a steerage passenger. William was regarded as the lowest of the low because he worked as crew – a stoker in the boiler rooms, shovelling coal into Titanic’s furnaces to make her sail.

Family history

Growing up, my father told me stories of how his grandfather William had worked in 50C heat in four-hour, non-stop shifts. In a world of steamships, William – and his shattered crewmates – were the Titanic’s engine.

I heard how my great-grandmother, Emily, had proudly taken her five children to Southampton docks to wave the Titanic off, only to be consumed with grief days later as her husband was lost to sea - his body never found.

Plunged into poverty without William’s paltry £6 a month earnings, Emily was forced to clean her neighbours’ dirty laundry to keep their rented Southampton home and put food on the table.

On hard times

Emily’s tale of hardship broke my heart every time I heard it. When I later watched films about the Titanic, they always made me angry. Time and again we were told about the first-class passengers, their heroism in death, or their survival.

Of the 1500 people who perished on Titanic, 696 were crew members like William.

Yet in every documentary I watched, the crew remained invisible. Just as William’s body had vanished somewhere in the North Atlantic, so had the crew’s stories.

But, as I recalled the tales of my great-grandmother and her impossible task of trying to survive without William’s earnings, I began to think more of her story, and the women like her.

How did a Titanic widow keep a roof over her head after her crewmember husband died? How did she survive?

Feeling a need to connect with and understand my family’s history, I began trawling through archives. There, silently waiting in pages of records, I found hundreds of other Emilys.

Women so malnourished after their husbands died on the ill-fated ocean liner that they needed charity hand-outs of ‘nourishing food.’ Women so devastated they turned to drink. Women so ill with grief that they died giving birth to the babies they’d conceived before the tragic voyage made them into widows.

A shocking divide

The sinking of the Titanic didn’t just wipe out hundreds of hard-working men. It also destroyed the lives of their wives and children. I also learned that the same class system that had prevailed on board to the last minute, giving priority lifeboat access to the first class, persisted long after the ship sank.

When the Titanic Relief Fund collected donations from philanthropists the world over to help the dependents of those who perished at sea, the size of its handouts to widows was still allocated by class. 

The families of first-class passengers were given the biggest pay-outs, whilst the widows of crew members at the bottom of the rung in G class were given mere shillings, despite the monumental amount of money raised - over £410,000 - the equivalent of £20million now.

Emily was one of those women whose husband’s life was deemed less worthy. The money she received from the TRF just about kept the wolf from her door, but she spent the rest of her life in intense poverty and never remarried.

A personal journey

As my research continued, I found many Titanic books all focusing in on the opulence of the ship, the famous names on board, the ‘good’ and the ‘great’.

But the crew’s stories – and those of their families – which had remained silent for so long moved me to tears.

I learnt of one woman, Susan Woodford, whose husband – a stoker like William – died on the Titanic. Her daughter died soon after and then Susan succumbed to the Spanish ‘flu. Only her youngest daughter remained.

I learnt of Mrs Earley, who was pregnant when her crewmember husband died. A few months later she died giving birth to his child.

So I wrote my book The Titanic and the City of Widows it Left Behind. I hope that it finally brings the once nameless, faceless crew into people’s minds at last. But I also hope we can give some thought to their stoic wives who lived hand to mouth, ignored their grief, and fought so hard for survival after the ship sank. 

I wrote my book for my great-grandmother Emily and all the widows like her. Their stories should never be forgotten again.

*The Titanic and the City of Widows it Left Behind, by Julie Cook, published by Pen and Sword Books is available to buy now for £19.99

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