Thomas Richard Pearce
He served his apprenticeship on sailing ships with Aitken & Lilburn's Loch Line, and then rose through the ranks on steamships with the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSP).
When Loch Ard was wrecked he saved a passenger from drowning, for which the Victorian Humane Society awarded him its first ever Gold Medal.
Thomas Richard Millett was born on 31 October 1859 at Millbrook, near Cappawhite, County Tipperary, Ireland.
Then he was a member of the crew of the sailing barque Eliza Ramsden, when she was wrecked just inside Port Phillip Heads on 24 July 1875.
By early 1877 Pearce was with Messrs Aitken and Lilburn of Glasgow, and was serving on Loch Ard between the United Kingdom and Australia.
The passengers included a Dr and Mrs Carmichael from Dublin, a wealthy couple who were emigrating with their four daughters and two sons.
[6] Pearce was on duty in the small hours of 1 June when Loch Ard struck rocks on the Shipwreck Coast of Victoria.
[8] In the water three passengers, Reginald Jones, Arthur Mitchell, and the Carmichaels' second daughter, Eva, clung to a hen coop that was floating among the wreckage.
Ford rode for help to Glenample at Curdie's Inlet,[6] the station of Peter McArthur, JP,[10] and Hugh Gibson.
Pearce helped with the recovery of salvage and identification of bodies from the wreck,[12] while Mrs Gibson nursed Carmichael.
The bodies of Carmichael's mother and her elder sister Raby were found, as well of those of Jones and Mitchell, and on 5 June the four were buried on the clifftop.
[11] By 7 June a Captain Trouton of the Australasian Steam Navigation Company in Sydney had started a subscription fund to make a presentation to Pearce as a reward for saving Carmichael.
There were proposals that the money be spent on sending him to navigation college, or even that a ship be bought for him and named Eva Carmichael.
[15] On 20 June the Victorian Humane Society held its annual award ceremony in Melbourne Town Hall.
[16] On 21 June the Steam Navigation Board met at the Custom House in Melbourne to inquire into the loss of Loch Ard.
[17] On 18 July Loch Shiel left Hobson's Bay, bound for London,[18] presumably with Pearce aboard.
[20] On an unknown date in September 1905 Loch Vennachar was lost with all hands on the west coast of Kangaroo Island, South Australia.
[20] After his apprenticeship with Aitken and Lilburn, Pearce changed to steamships and rose through the ranks of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company.
[21] On 21 November 1906 in Cherbourg Harbour Orinoco collided in fog with the Norddeutscher Lloyd transatlantic ocean liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse.
The meeting not only approved the proposal to pay her £500, but also decided to establish a superannuation fund to provide for retirees and their dependants.
Eva Townshend, by then widowed and living in Bedford, England, traced him with the help of a London newspaper, and wrote asking to meet him and "talk over the old days".
She was unusually swift for a cargo ship, capable of up to 20 knots (37 km/h), so she was selected to take part in Operation Pedestal to relieve Malta.
[24] In February 1943 he was posthumously mentioned in dispatches "For gallantry, skill and resolution while an important Convoy was fought through to Malta in the face of relentless attacks by day and night from enemy aircraft, submarines and surface forces".
