Zimmermann The forgotten passengers of the Titanic

Forever Third Class
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-8192-8565-3
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 144 Seiten

When the RMS Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, she took the lives of 1,496 people. Particularly tragic: a quarter of the victims were from the third class - men, women and children whose stories were hardly ever told. While the world mainly remembered the fates of the rich and famous, those who had little chance of being rescued were forgotten. This book gives a voice to the passengers of third class. It tells of their hopes, dreams and the desperate fight for survival - and sheds light on the shocking reasons why so many of them did not survive the disaster.

Author Norbert Zimmermann, born in 1970, has been researching the history of TITANIC for almost four decades and is considered one of Germany's leading TITANIC experts. He has been a welcome guest speaker at TITANIC conventions abroad. He is also the historical advisor for the TITANIC musical at Theater Osnabrück and the European coordinator of the British Titanic Society (BTS).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Zimmermann, Norbert

Leseproben

BARRIER IN THE MIND

When the terrible sinking of the TITANIC was made public, the world was absolutely shocked. After all, the TITANIC had been considered the safest ship in the world and was "unsinkable". And then it sank on its maiden voyage with 2208 people on board.

The first reports of the disaster were very unclear. The “New York Times “was the first newspaper that announced that the TITANIC had sunk. And that was before this announcement was officially confirmed by the White Star Line. Based on the facts available to them, the editors of the “New York Times” were absolutely correct in concluding that the abrupt interruption of radio communication with the TITANIC at 2:17 a.m. shipboard time allowed only one conclusion to be reached: The TITANIC had sunk!

When the report was confirmed, the newspapers went into overdrive, outbidding each other with speculation about what might have happened. They only had the radio communications between the sinking TITANIC and other ships and the most fantastic stories were created from this information. Basically, nothing was known, but the newspaper readers wanted to hear stories. And the prominent passengers on board were important. What about the Astors? Or Benjamin Guggenheim? Or the many other VIPs on board the ship?

The captain of the CARPATHIA, Arthur Henry Rostron, had only released the most necessary information to the public - that the TITANIC had sunk and that the CARPATHIA would come to New York with the survivors. Even a request from the American President William Howard Taft, who inquired about his friend and military advisor Major Archibald Butt, remained unanswered.

The captain of the CARPATHIA, Arthur Henry Rostron, became a hero by saving the TITANIC survivors © Library of Congress

Due to a lack of information, many newspapers began to invent their own stories about the tragic sinking of the luxury liner.

True heroic deeds by the prominent passengers of the luxury liner. Many of these stories have survived until today.

When the CARPATHIA finally arrived in New York in the evening hours of April 18, 1912 with only 712 survivors of the TITANIC, the press was very creative. Some newspapers had chartered boats that sailed up to the CARPATHIA as the "American Press Boat" and called over financial offers to the TITANIC survivors so that they would be available for interviews.

You can see from this front page of the New York Times from Wednesday, April 17, 1912, that only the prominent passengers on board the TITANIC were actually of interest to readers. © public domain

But hardly anyone was interested in one group of passengers: the third-class passengers!

It is undisputed and can be proven by the bare figures that the third-class passengers of the TITANIC from the so-called „steerage" suffered by far the most deaths after the crew.

But what was the reason for this? Why were there so many victims in third class? There are many reasons.

The scenes from James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster "TITANIC", in which third-class passengers are explicitly shown standing in front of locked and heavily guarded gates in narrow staircases and are not allowed to go upstairs, while the crew members ask them to please remain calm, are deeply engraved in our collective memory.

There is only one catch to these scenes: the TITANIC's construction plans do not show such barriers, which could have blocked the third-class passengers' escape route up to the boat deck.

The construction plans only show barriers in the bow area near the mail rooms and in the stern area near the crew and storage rooms.

However, according to survivors from third class, there were indeed some barriers where passengers from steerage were held back by the crew.

An example of this is the story of the young, 17-year-old Irish girl Kate Gilnagh (see also chapter: "The Longford Girls"). On her way to the boat deck, she and her three friends stood in front of a locked iron gate and tried to persuade a sailor to open it. But the sailor stubbornly refused, until Kate Gilnagh's compatriot Jim Farrell got fed up and shouted at the sailor in a powerful voice:

"For heaven's sake! Open the gate and let these girls through."

The resolute and harsh tone broke the seaman's resistance, so that he finally opened the gate and let the four girls through.

Daniel Buckley also reported to the American committee of inquiry that the third-class passengers were held back by barriers and parts of the crew:

Daniel Buckley:

“Yes; they did. There was one steerage passenger there, and he was getting up the steps, and just as he was going in a little gate a fellow came along and chucked him down; threw him down into the steerage place. This fellow got excited, and he ran after him, and he could not find him. He got up over the little gate. He did not find him.”

Senator Smith:

„What gate do you mean?"

Daniel Buckley:

“A little gate just at the top of the stairs going up into the first-class deck.”

Senator Smith:

“There was a gate between the steerage and the first-class deck?”

Daniel Buckley:

“Yes. The first-class deck was higher up than the steerage deck, and there were some steps leading up to it; 9 or 10 steps, and a gate just at the top of the steps.”

Senator Smith:

"Was the gate locked?"

Daniel Buckley:

“It was not locked at the time we made the attempt to get up there, but the sailor, or whoever he was, locked it. So that this fellow that went up after him broke the lock on it, and he went after the fellow that threw him down. He said if he could get hold of him he would throw him into the ocean.”1

If you read through this statement, Buckley does not seem to be describing a grille inside the ship, but rather a small gate on the forward well deck of the ship from which you could access the first-class deck.

However, there were a number of barriers or gates in third class, but not to confine passengers.

There was a gate at the front of third class where the stairs led up to the open third-class room on the starboard side, but this would not have locked anyone in as there was a corridor aft from this room and this gate was only used on the port side.

Another door was located far aft beyond Scotland Road at the entrance to third class.

There may also have been two on Scotland Road in third class, but these only closed where the stairs descended into the third-class dining room and may only have been used when the dining room was not in use and was being prepared for the next session to prevent passengers walking in.

When all the facts are put together, it cannot be completely ruled out that third-class passengers were restrained by crew members or at gate bars. Even if there were no explicit gates holding back third-class passengers in the TITANIC's construction plans.

Another, much more serious problem that led to the exorbitantly high number of victims is undoubtedly the construction of the ship and also the language problem of a large number of the passengers in steerage.

A fairly large number of people on steerage, often with their children or even babies in tow, came from all over the world and very few spoke English. As a result, the crew's instructions and the signs in English were often not understood.

The strict separation of classes on board the ship, due to American immigration laws, also made it almost impossible for third-class passengers to get to the boat deck quickly.

Some of the families were located in different areas of the ship and it simply took far too long for them to be reunited and make their way to the potentially rescuing boat deck together. By the time they got there, most of the boats had already been launched and the chance of rescue was gone.

Some of the surviving officers later reported how horrified and stunned they were when, shortly before the TITANIC sank, a huge crowd of third-class passengers suddenly came out of the stairwells and onto the boat deck. They had actually assumed that they had gotten most of the passengers into the boats. But that had not been the case.

And probably the biggest problem was the barrier in people's minds, who simply didn't dare to take the initiative and try to save themselves because of their status in society. They waited for instructions, as they were used to doing, and simply did not dare to break out of this habitual pattern.

Some third-class survivors later reported how large groups of passengers prayed the rosary together and waited for help from above instead of trying to save themselves.

Some of the third-class passengers, when the hopelessness of their situation became obvious to them, went back to their cabins to wait for the end and go down with the ship.

It also seems to be the case that, as the late German author Wolf Schneider once put it in a TITANIC documentary: "Nobody was interested in the third-class passengers!"

There is only talk of a steward who was sent to third class by Captain Smith to take them upstairs. One group seemed to have made it, but when this steward went down again to bring another group up, he didn't seem to have made it in time, because he was never seen again!

So, it is not surprising...