Peacetime tragedies do not come more calamitous, devastating and eternally heartbreaking than the sinking (and consequent large loss of lives) of the Titanic ocean liner in 1912. All this time later (some 114 years), folk will still talk of that fateful incident. Many of us remember the James Cameron (director, writer, producer, editor) epic 1997 film of this timeless tale, named simply and aptly ‘Titanic’.
This superb film gave us a simultaneously fortunate and unfortunate insight into what life was really like on the majestic ship. It must be said, however, that a well-researched and devotedly written account of the Titanic’s journey, it’s passengers and crew, and the series of terribly catastrophic (in hindsight) decisions and errors that led up to a devastating outcome for so many innocent people is far superior, in my opinion, than a movie (as well executed as the movie, Titanic, was).
I have just finished reading an exemplary book on the Titanic and it’s myriad of characters onboard the ‘giant beast’. The book, The Titanic Story of Evelyn, by Australian journalist and author, Lisa Wilkinson, is an incredible accomplishment. Evelyn, in the title, refers to 28 year old Australian nurse/stewardess, Evelyn Marsden, who was working on the Titanic on it’s maiden (and only) voyage.
There were in fact six Australians on board the Titanic, however Evelyn was the only survivor of the sinking among the six, and hence the only Australian survivor of the Titanic.
Evelyn was an independent and formidable young lady at a time when the only noble role of a woman in society was seen to be that of a wife and mother. Born in Stockyard Creek in South Australia in 1883, Evelyn was the daughter of Walter and Anne Marsden who were also parents to four older children. Life was simple and basic for the Marsden clan, but extremely happy. Walter collected tickets for the steam trains that went through Hoyleton, South Australia, where the children were raised.
At fifteen years of age, Evelyn learns to capably row a boat on the river, by a “riverfront town” known as Murray Bridge, South Australia. Evelyn loves being on the water and is of course not to know then that her rowing skills would prove invaluable when she was called upon to row one of the only twenty lifeboats on the Titanic. In generations prior to the time that Evelyn lived it was simply ‘not done’ that a woman would row a boat alone or at all, however “Evelyn knows the world is changing, and at an ever-increasing pace…….She knows….that in America they have invented flying machines, capable of taking men…aloft for as long as ten minutes at a time…”.
The steely Evelyn trains as a nurse in her twenties at the Adelaide Hospital and it is here that favour seems to shine on Evelyn when she is offered a job to accompany a patient, an English woman, to go on a ship to England so that the lady can see England again for one last time before she dies.
Evelyn doesn’t need to be asked twice and soon finds herself farewelling her family from the Adelaide docks (Evelyn’s brother Thomas was farewelled from these same docks when he went to fight in the Boer War on the 26th of January in 1900). There is great sadness in the family as Tommy never came home from the war and as Evelyn leaves in 1907 the family are still grieving Tommy’s death.
After a six week voyage on the “SS Persic, owned by the White Star Line, across treacherous seas (seasickness was a common complaint amongst passengers) Evelyn is beside herself with joy as “in January 1908, she catches a tiny glimpse of green off the port bow, which finally gives way to a chalky kind of white – the white cliffs of Dover….England!”
Evelyn adores London in particular and writes home to her family to tell them about all of the wonderful experiences she is having. Of course, one needs money to survive and having fallen in love with life at sea, Evelyn applies for a positions as a nurse-stewardess on liners that travel the world.
Evelyn is soon employed on the Oceana, a P&O liner. Soon work on other P&O liners takes Evelyn to exotic locales such “as Cairo, Buenos Aires and Calais”.
Evelyn’s work is far from glamorous. On the Oceana, Evelyn “never mentions (in her letters home) how hard she is working onboard – making beds, clearing bedpans, serving meals, and doing all that needs to be done to keep the passengers in full comfort even at the expense of her own. At times she is exhausted. Often it is nearing midnight before she finally makes her way back to her little bunk in her shared cabin”.
In 1909 Belfast is abuzz. At the Harland and Wolff shipyards an enormous ship is being built. It “is promising to be one of the seven wonders of the modern world, and certainly the wonder of the Seven Seas. This is to be the largest man-made structure ever built to move, hence it’s wonderful name – the Titanic. It is to be the second ship in White Star’s Olympic class, and is due to set sail sometime in 1912”.
The luxury ship is said to be ‘unsinkable’. Certainly, the managing director of White Star Line, Mr J Bruce Ismay is going around telling everyone such boastful information.
Mr Thomas Andrews, who has designed the Titanic, is upset at Ismay’s defiant proclamations that nothing can sink the Titanic and further not happy that Ismay is of the opinion that a great number of lifeboats on the ship “would be unsightly when added to the ship’s stunning design”.
“White Star had in fact only agreed to any number of lifeboats at all as a gesture to those Nervous Nelly passengers who refused to believe that shipbuilding had reached an age where the menace of nature had been definitively beaten”.
Evelyn sees firsthand the great hum of activity in Belfast as the Titanic takes shape.
The Titanic is to be the epitome of unheralded luxury for the first-class passengers. Think the best linen sheets, a pool, smoking room, the best timber and carpet used, the finest food served (think lobster, caviar, the best champagne) and so on. The first class decks are to be like the best and classiest hotel ever conceived.
There are also to be second-class passengers (the middle class) and third-class passengers or steerage who will consist of families and folk from Britain, Ireland, Europe and Scandinavia amongst others who are emigrating to America and Canada for a better life.
“on the bottom decks are the third-class passengers and the stokers. They might be more comfortable than those lower classes had ever been on a ship, but they weren’t to be mingling with the upper crust”.
Evelyn, to her great delight, applies for a position as stewardess-nurse on the Titanic and gets the job. So well is she thought of that she is assigned the position of tending to twelve of the first-class passengers, who are used to being pampered and spoilt.
Of the 22 stewardesses on board the Titanic (there are 900 staff on the ship in total) “Evelyn is one of just fourteen who has been tasked with looking after the first-class passengers – meaning that White Star regards her as top-drawer”. Many of the first-class passengers travelled with their own maid and nannies in addition to the ship staff at their beck and call.
The Titanic sailed from Southampton, England, on Wednesday the 10th of April 1912 at 12 noon. There was a great fanfare on the docks, with many cameras flashing and journalists present. The public fascination with the ship and the famous people (such as American actress Dorothy Gibson and John Jacob Astor IV, a fabulously wealthy business magnate and real estate developer), who travelled on the Titanic was enormous.
As history documents, the Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic on Sunday night, the 14th of April 1912 at 11.40pm (ship’s time). The Titanic was to sink to the ocean floor at 2.20am the following morning, Monday the 15th of April 1912.
Who (approximately “1300 paying passengers” board the Titanic) boards the Titanic and who of those ever set foot on dry land again? With protocol at the time being that women and children are to board the lifeboats first, and there being only twenty lifeboats, which, if any, of the men are saved?
Passengers, not staff, are given priority when boarding the lifeboats. Are any of the other stewardesses that Evelyn has come to know (such as Violet Jessop, an Irish woman) going to be given a chance to live?
Do all the children and babies on the Titanic survive?
Was Evelyn’s fiancee, Dr William James, working on the Titanic? He applied for a job on the ship. Did he and Evelyn get a happily ever after or a brutal blow dealt to them?
Even though you know the outcome, that some survived and went on to live life to varying degrees of success, while others had their hopes and dreams forever thwarted and extinguished, you will definitely still need the tissues handy whilst reading this book.
We realise upon reading that those onboard the Titanic were so full of life, and in particular those immigrating on board, so eager to start their new lives in America and Canada.
Failures existed at every level of employees of the White Star Line. And, as you would expect, there were those who showed breathtaking courage in the hours leading up to the sinking, such as the nine member orchestra on the ship who played music as the ship was sinking, knowing they would soon be losing their lives. Cowardice was also in evidence, such as the man who dressed up as a woman so he could get a place in a lifeboat.
What was the ship that picked up survivors? Where did that ship take the survivors?
Lisa has researched the world-changing Titanic disaster with such meticulousness and insight. Lisa’s intelligence and wisdom shine throughout this great read.
I have a tenuous link to the Titanic. My great-grandparents, my grandmother (a one year old) and her sister (two years old) immigrated to Australia from England in 1912, but after the Titanic sank. They and their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and so on all went on to have wonderful, happy and productive lives in Australia. They lived lives so cruelly denied to those immigrating on the Titanic. I am sure my great-grandparents and their children sincerely thanked God that they had decided to move to Australia and not America or Canada (though all are awesome countries) or they would very likely have been on the Titanic.
I was educated, entertained and broken-hearted as I read this excellent book. As a proud Australian, I loved the Australian angle written into the Titanic story.
Bravo all the Titanic heroes, those who went down with the ship and those who bravely jumped into the icy Atlantic waters knowing death awaited them.(mericfully a swift death from hypothermia).
Bravo to you too Lisa for writing a magnificent book. I was staying by the sea as I read the final chapters of The Titanic Story of Evelyn and I gazed out at the ocean often and thought of those on the Titanic. They will never be forgotten.
