James Gordon Partridge Bisset

Sir James Gordon Partridge Bisset, CBE, RD (15 July 1883 – 28 March 1967) was a British merchant sea captain who served as Commodore of the Cunard White Star Line (1944–47).

In 1897 at fourteen years of age, he was apprenticed as an office clerk in the Liverpool branch of the London and Provincial Marine Insurance Company.

After listening to the sea stories of one of his "uncles" (a close friend of the Bisset family), James decided to stow away on a windjammer in 1897 but was discovered and returned home.

Unsatisfied by office work, in the summer of 1898 Bisset became indentured as an ordinary seaman through William Thomas & Co., Ltd. of Liverpool for a four-year apprenticeship.

Bisset gained additional practical experience in navigation and seamanship during a subsequent voyage of two years and seven weeks aboard the County of Pembroke.

In late 1902, a third voyage aboard the County of Pembroke, completed Bisset's four-year apprenticeship and he earned a posting as able bodied seaman and eventually third mate.

In early spring of 1903, Bisset enrolled in the Navigation School of the Mercantile Marine Service Association in Liverpool to prepare for the second mate's examination which he passed in May.

From January 1909 to May 1911, Bisset served as third officer on a Cunard cargo vessel Brescia under Captains Arthur Rostron, George Melsom, and Charles Morrison between Liverpool and the Mediterranean.

[1] After a short period of naval training in the spring of 1912, Bisset was posted as second officer to Cunard's RMS Carpathia, again serving under Captain Arthur Rostron.

In this position, Bisset would be on duty in the North Atlantic on the evening of 14 April 1912 when Carpathia responded to wireless distress calls from the White Star Liner RMS Titanic.

Bisset details the Carpathia's rescue efforts and records his reminiscences of that night in the second book of his autobiographical trilogy, "Tramps and Ladies – My Early Years in Steamers" (1959).

Bisset and his wife retired in 1948 to overlook Little Manly, Sydney Harbour, Australia where he was well received by the local community and by his own recollection through personal journals gave more than 1,800 talks about his sea career and war service to more than 200,000 Australians.

Commodore Bisset was recently recognised with a suite named in his honor aboard Cunard Line's new MS Queen Elizabeth which entered service in October 2010.