Articles with the Tag Titanic Collapsible A

Liverpool Seamen’s Pension Fund

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The Ismay Family: Pension Funds for Seamen, Widows and Widows ‘of those whose lives are lost while they are engaged upon active duty’

 

Above: Thomas Henry Ismay (1837-99). (The Marine Engineer, 1899/Author’s collection)

The driving force and founder of the modern White Star Line (Oceanic Steam Navigation Company), Thomas Henry Ismay, oversaw the growth of a company which made a significant economic contribution to Britain (and Liverpool, in particular). However, the Ismay family also arranged for significant social provision for retired seafarers, their widows, and the widows of those lost at sea. 

Thomas Henry Ismay, J. Bruce Ismay’s father, founded the Liverpool Seamen’s Pension Fund in 1887 to provide pensions ‘for deserving seamen of whatever rank sailing from the port of Liverpool, who are past work’.  It was intended to provide pensions of £20 a year. (Later, the Margaret Ismay Widows Fund was established to provide for their widows as well.)  The Mercantile Marine Service Association administered the fund as the trustees and by c. 1912 it had grown to about £69,000 (£52,000 of which came from contributions either by the Ismay family or the White Star Line). (Its assets were amalgamated into the Nautilus Welfare Fund in 2009.)

By that time, the number of pensioners receiving pension payments was 126.  They ranged from 54 to 94 years old and included 38 former commanders, 48 ship’s officers and 40 seamen.  During the quarter of a century since the fund had been established, 423 pensioners had received pension payments from the fund, equating to a total of £37,876.  (The number of widows receiving a pension from the newer Margaret Ismay Widows Fund was 74.)

Following the Titanic disaster, J. Bruce Ismay returned to the United Kingdom.  He arrived in Liverpool onboard the White Star liner Adriatic on Saturday 11 May 1912.  He lost no time in writing to the Lord Mayor of Liverpool later the very same day, proposing a new fund providing ‘for widows of those whose lives are lost while they are engaged upon active duty…upon the mercantile vessels of this country’.  The ‘terrible disaster to the Titanic’ highlighted the ‘necessity of such a fund’ and he proposed to contribute £10,000 with a further £1,000 from his wife.  It would ‘continue for all time’.  News of Ismay’s letter apparently reached the press and the Earl of Derby, Lord Mayor of Liverpool sent a telegram to Ismay asking if he could publish it ‘saying I have gratefully accepted your offer?’  Ismay responded: ‘Please act in whatever manner you think best, leave myself entirely in your hands’.

See Chirnside, Mark.  The ‘Olympic’ Class Ships: Olympic Titanic & Britannic. History Press; revised and expanded edition 2011.

 

 

Titanic’s Collapsible A: Oceanic, May 1912

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Titanic‘s Collapsible A: Oceanic‘s First Officer Sights the Lifeboat Adrift, May 1912

This and many other incidents from Oceanic‘s interesting career are chronicled in Oceanic: White Star’s ‘Ship of the Century’ (signed copies are available for purchase through this website).

Oceanic book cover

On 8 May 1912, every one of Oceanic’s lifeboats was ‘lowered into the water and tested’ before she left Southampton for Cherbourg, Queenstown and New York.  At Cherbourg, ‘Madam Navratil, mother of the two French waifs from the Titanic now being looked after in New York’ boarded.  She was one of 736 passengers, including only 61 in first class.

Five days later, Oceanic was well on her way to New York and steaming through a moderate swell with light southerly winds.  First Officer Frank sighted a boat to starboard in latitude 38˚ 56’ North longitude 47˚ 01’ West around 12.45 p.m.  Captain Smith ordered the ship stopped and she came to rest about 800 yards away.  Then the emergency boat was lowered in charge of the fourth officer, John Withers.  As word spread throughout the ship that the boat contained bodies, ‘passengers of all classes lined the rail’ to watch what was happening.  One month after Titanic’s sinking, the boat turned out to be her collapsible A lifeboat: one of two collapsible boats that floated off the boat deck in the ship’s final moments as her frantic crew ran out of time to launch them.

Withers returned and reported that the bodies were ‘not in a fit condition to be taken on board, and recommended that they be buried from the boat they were in’.  Dr. French was called to identify them and then Bo’sun Jones ‘volunteered to go and sew them up in canvas, as he had been a sail maker and had had experience in burying men in the Red Sea and other places in the East’.  Oceanic’s flag was lowered to half mast as Dr. French read out the service and Captain Smith, his officers and crew ‘stood to attention bareheaded on the upper deck with the passengers, who followed their example’:

As the doctor uttered the words ‘We commit these bodies to the deep’, the sailors let the three canvas covered bodies sink beneath the waves, and the boat pulled back to the Oceanic towing the Titanic’s boat astern.

By the position the boat was found in she must have drifted seven and three-quarter miles a day…

Smith recorded what happened in the ship’s log:

Three bodies were found in the boat but being decomposed and unfit for removal these same were committed to the deep from the boat, service being read by Doctor French.  One presumably was the body of Thomson Beattie, identified by name on pocket lining of coat, the others, a sailor and firemen respectively.  A fur lined overcoat was found in the boat and letters in pocket addressed to Richard Williams, also two rings welded together as one inscription on inside of one ‘Edward & Gerta’ on the other ‘Edward’.  Ship proceeded at 2.27 p.m. having taken on board collapsible boat which is marked No 1. Deck lifeboat certified by Board of Trade to carry 47 persons.

American newspaper reports (below) suggested subsequently that ‘the three men had lived for several days and died of starvation after devouring the cork in the lifejackets’.  White Star officials and Dr. French were quick to deny the suggestion ‘emphatically’.

Above: One of a number of sensationalised newspaper reports which falsely claimed that people who had initially survived the Titanic disaster subsequently ‘starved’ to death.  In reality, they were already dead when Collapsible A was set adrift.  (New York Evening World, May 1912)