Passengers of the Titanic
A total of 2,240 people sailed on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic, the second of the White Star Line's Olympic-class ocean liners, from Southampton, England, to New York City.
[1] Partway through the voyage, the ship struck an iceberg and sank in the early morning of 15 April 1912, resulting in the deaths of 1,510 passengers and crew.
Lord Pirrie, chairman of Harland and Wolff, intended to travel aboard the Titanic, but illness prevented him from joining the ill-fated voyage; however, White Star Line's managing director J. Bruce Ismay and the ship's Harland and Wolff designer, Thomas Andrews, were both on board to oversee the ship's progress on her maiden voyage.
[9] Some of the most prominent members of the American social elite made the trip: 47-year-old real estate builder, businessman, and multimillionaire Colonel John Jacob Astor IV and his 18-year-old pregnant wife Madeleine were returning to the United States for their child's birth.
Among others were industrialist magnate and millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim; Macy's department store owner, and former member of the United States House of Representatives Isidor Straus, and his wife Ida; George Dennick Wick, founder and president of Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company; millionaire streetcar magnate George Dunton Widener; John B. Thayer, vice president of Pennsylvania Railroad, and his wife, Marian; Charles Hays, president of Canada's Grand Trunk Railway; William Ernest Carter and his wife, American socialite Lucile Carter; millionaire, philanthropist and women's rights activist Margaret Brown; tennis star and banker Karl Behr; famous American silent film actress Dorothy Gibson; prominent Buffalo architect Edward Austin Kent; and President William Howard Taft's military aide, Major Archibald Butt, who was returning to resume his duties after a six-week trip to Europe.
Swedish first class passenger and businessman Mauritz Håkan Björnström-Steffansson owned the most highly valued single object on board: a masterpiece of French neoclassical painting entitled La Circassienne au Bain, for which he would later claim US$100,000 in compensation (equivalent to US$3.2 million in 2024).
The ship's musicians travelled in second-class accommodations; they were not counted as members of the crew, but were employed by an agency under contract to the White Star Line.
[7] Twelve-year-old Ruth Becker passed the time by pushing her two-year-old brother Richard around the enclosed promenade in a stroller provided by the White Star Line.
John Harper, a well-known Baptist pastor from Scotland, was travelling to the United States with his daughter and sister to preach at the Moody Church in Chicago.
[20] Schoolteacher Lawrence Beesley, a science master at Dulwich College, spent much of his time aboard the ship in the library.
Joseph hoped that a move from their former home in Paris back to Haiti, where his uncle Cincinnatus Leconte was president, would take his family away from racial discrimination.
Michel Sr. died in the sinking and photographs of the boys were circulated throughout the world in the hopes that their mother or another relative could identify the French toddlers, who became known as the "Titanic Orphans".
[24] After arriving in New York, the children were cared for by Titanic survivor Margaret Hays until their mother, Marcelle Navratil travelled from Nice, France, to claim them.
In addition to large numbers of British, Irish, and Scandinavian immigrants, other passengers were from Central and Eastern Europe, the Levant (Greater Syria), and Hong Kong.
In 2007, scientists using DNA analysis identified the body of a small, fair-haired toddler, one of the first victims to be recovered by the CS Mackay Bennett, as Frederick and Augusta's youngest child, 19-month-old Sidney.
Nine-year-old Frank Goldsmith recalled peering into the engine room and climbing up the baggage cranes on the poop deck.
The Titanic was fitted with grilles to prevent the classes from mingling and these gates were normally kept closed, although the stewards could open them in the event of an emergency.
[36] Near the town of Troyan in Bulgaria, there is a cenotaph monument to the 8 inhabitants of the village of Gumoshtnik who died, whose names were probably not on the list of the insurance company.
In memory of the Bulgarians who died on the Titanic from the village of Terziysko – Minko Angelov and Hristo Danchev – a folk song was created.
[39] Fang settled in US, and fellow survivor Lee Bing moved to Canada living in Galt, Ontario, working at White Rose Cafe, then Toronto, and disappeared, having left for China.
They are, Mara Osman Banski from Vagovina near Čazma, Ivan Jalševac from Topolovac near Sisak, and Nikola Lulić from Konjsko Brdo near Perušić, all in Croatia-Slavonia, part of the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen of the Hungary, Austria-Hungary.
At least two crew members were also Jewish: barber Herbert Klein and "Hebrew cook" Charles Kennel; neither survived the sinking.
[44] Jewish passengers were in every class and represented a variety of nationalities, including Poland, England, the United States and the Russian Empire.
[52][8] In 1997, Ray Hanania, a Palestinian American journalist, watched the Titanic (1997) film and noticed some background characters saying yalla, meaning "hurry" in Arabic.
[53] Four Portuguese passengers traveled and all died aboard the Titanic: José Joaquim de Brito, a second-class passenger who boarded in Southampton with the ticket 244360 bought for 13£ from São Clemente, Loulé, Portugal, who lived and worked at the London agency of the banking firm Pinto Leite & Nephews, with offices in Manchester, Liverpool and London, and married to Mariana Teresa do Carmo (who died in the day before his 41st birthday), and three Madeiran farmers, Domingos Fernandes Coelho, from Funchal (aged 20), José Neto Jardim, from Calheta (aged 21), and Manuel Gonçalves Estanislau, from Calheta (aged 37), who were in third-class.
[54][55][56] On the night of 14 April 1912, around 11:40 pm, while the Titanic was sailing about 400 mi (640 km) south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the ship struck an iceberg and began to sink.
The closest ship to respond was Cunard Line's Carpathia 58 mi (93 km) away, which would arrive in an estimated 4 hours—too late to rescue all of Titanic's passengers.
The physical appearance of each body—height, weight, age, hair and eye colour, visible birthmarks, scars or tattoos, was catalogued and any personal effects on the bodies were gathered and placed in small canvas bags corresponding to their number.
[65] Captain Larnder of the Mackay-Bennett and the undertakers aboard decided to preserve all bodies of first-class passengers because of the need to visually identify wealthy men to resolve any disputes over large estates.
[citation needed] 190 bodies recovered were preserved and taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia, the closest city to the sinking with direct rail and steamship connections.
