Incredible Stories From Real Passengers Of The Titanic

Captain Smith — pictured here on the Titanic with his signature white beard — had a history with impressive ships. In 1904 he successfully captained the Baltic, then the largest ship ever built. Seven years later, he became the captain of the RMS Olympic — the new largest ship ever built. Unfortunately, the Olympic crashed into a warship on its maiden voyage. But this didn't stop White Star Line from making Smith the captain of the Titanic.

A co-owner of Macy's and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Isidor Straus refused to board a lifeboat on the sinking Titanic until every woman and child was saved. Ida remained by his side, telling him, "We have lived together for many years. Where you go, I go." Isidor's body was later recovered, though Ida's was never found.

An investigative journalist and influential editor, William Thomas Stead was seen in his final hours helping women and children find their way onto the Titanic's lifeboats. Perhaps he felt content, having seemingly foreseen his death years prior. In 1886, you see, Stead published a story titled "How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid Atlantic, By a Survivor." The story recounted a fictional sinking eerily similar to that of the Titanic.

Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon was a British fashion designer and famous socialite who was one of the most prominent passengers on board the Titanic. She traveled with her husband, Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, and the pair survived the sinking of the ship. However, in the Board of Trade inquiry that followed the tragedy, the Duff-Gordons were accused of bribing crew members to not use their lifeboat to save other people from the wreck. The Duff-Gordons were cleared of any wrongdoing — but the suspicion tainted them for the rest of their lives.

The chief baker aboard the Titanic, Charles Joughin survived thanks to a little bit of alcohol and a lot of patience. When the ship started to sink, he helped women and children into the lifeboats before returning to his quarters for a "drop of liquor." According to his testimony, he later spent two hours in the water waiting to be rescued. "I felt colder... after I got in the lifeboat," he said. When he was pulled aboard a passing vessel the next day, only his feet were a little swollen.

After the ship struck the iceberg, Dorothy Gibson, a 22-year-old actress, boarded the first lifeboat off the Titanic with her mother. Gibson then went on to star in a now-lost short film about her experience on the Titanic called Saved From the Titanic. In the film, she wore the same clothes she'd had on as she escaped the disaster. Amazingly, Saved From the Titanic was released just 31 days after the ship sank.

A tennis star before and after the ship's sinking, Karl Behr was apparently only aboard the Titanic to pursue his future wife, Helen Newsome. As the two escaped on a lifeboat together, Behr reportedly asked for her hand in marriage right then and there! They married in March 1913, less than 12 months after the Titanic sank, and went on to have four kids together.

Dubbed "The Unsinkable Mrs. Brown," this wealthy socialite famously — and unsuccessfully — demanded that the lifeboat she was aboard return to the wreck of the Titanic to search for survivors. Brown also helped to row the lifeboat to safety. And after being rescued by the Carpathia, Brown helped to make sure that lower-class survivors were well catered for. Her courage was later commemorated by a 1960 Broadway musical and its 1964 film adaptation.

Charles Melville Hays, a railway magnate, reportedly told his companions while on the Titanic that he was wary of boats getting faster and faster. "The time will come soon when this trend will be checked by some appalling disaster," he supposedly said. While his wife and daughter managed to escape the ship on a lifeboat, Hays perished. His body was one of the few recovered, and he was buried in Montreal.

A single, 53-year-old feminist called Helen Churchill Candee became one of the ship's survivors. She later said she was amazed at the heroism of many of the ship’s workers in the face of utter disaster. "The action of the men on the Titanic was noble," she wrote in the Washington Herald just one week after the disaster. "They stood back in every instance that I noticed and gave the women and children the first chance to get away safely."

The architect of the Titanic, Andrews had been traveling aboard the ocean liner to observe any need for improvements. At the Board of Trade inquiry, a steward said he heard Andrews say that the Titanic would sink in about two hours after it started to flood. Another steward said Andrews was last seen in the Smoking Room without his lifejacket. He perished with the ship.

A British suffragette, Elsie Bowerman survived the Titanic by boarding the lifeboat that also held Molly Brown. The suffragette magazine Votes for Women said Bowerman and her mother were "very enthusiastic workers in the cause." Bowerman went on to become the first female lawyer in the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales and eventually helped establish the UN's Commission on the Status of Women.

Titanic survivor Rose Amelie Icard wrote about mining magnate Benjamin Guggenheim in a letter after the sinking. "The millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim after having helped the rescue of women and children, got dressed and put a rose at his buttonhole, to die," she wrote. Guggenheim apparently said, "We've dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen." His body was never recovered.

A prominent inventor, science-fiction novelist, and the richest passenger aboard the Titanic, Astor had been traveling Europe with his wife when she suddenly became pregnant. Wanting his child to be born in the U.S., Astor booked the pair a place on the ship's maiden voyage. While his wife survived, Astor was last seen clinging to the side of a life raft.

Noël Leslie, Countess of Rothes, was a high-society celebrity aboard the Titanic. Leslie advocated for her lifeboat to return to the wreck to search for survivors, but she was ultimately overruled. She went on to help care for other survivors aboard a rescue vessel, the Carpathia, and even became a nurse during World War I.

A former cricket player and executive of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, John Thayer's only focus once the Titanic began to sink was getting his wife, son, and their maid to safety. He managed to do just that, but Thayer himself sadly perished in the disaster. At one point, he was reportedly seen looking "pale and determined by the midship rail aft of lifeboat 7." His body was never recovered.

"Nobody had any fear or thought of danger," Russell wrote of her experience in a 1913 account called "I Survived the Titanic." She added, "The perfectly calm sea and the brilliantly starry sky completely reassured us. The only disagreeable feature was the intense cold, which I can only describe to you by saying that if you were to hold your hand over a solid block of ice you would get an idea of the temperature."

A famed steel magnate, George D. Wick had been traveling through Europe to improve his health before he stepped aboard the ill-fated Titanic. He was last seen on the deck of the ship, waving to his wife, daughter, cousin, and aunt as they escaped on a lifeboat. After his death was confirmed, his hometown of Youngstown held a five-minute silence.

An Alabama historian, Archibald Gracie IV was returning home from Europe when he was awoken by the Titanic crashing into the fateful iceberg. After escorting a number of women to safety, Gracie was plunged into the Atlantic Ocean and only survived by balancing on top of an overturned lifeboat. He was later rescued, but his health never recovered from the ordeal. He died in December 1912. But he went on to earn posthumous fame for his detailed account of the disaster published in 1913, The Truth About the Titanic.

Mystery writer Jacques Futrelle was best known for his story "The Problem of Cell 13" and other stories involving detective Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen. But there was no mystery about how Futrelle perished aboard the Titanic. Instead of getting in a lifeboat, he practically forced his wife to go without him. The writer was last seen speaking with another member of this list: John Jacob Astor.

After Michel Navratil, a young Frenchman, was separated from his wife, he bought himself and his two children second-class tickets on the Titanic. Even though things between Michael and his wife were strained, some of his last words apparently included a heartfelt message to her. Michel's son Michel Marcel Navratil later claimed that his father told him to tell his mother, “I loved her dearly and still do.” Michel Marcel was only four years old at the time.

Michel Marcel lived on to become the last male survivor of the Titanic disaster. He died at the age of 92 in 2001. "I don't recall being afraid," he once said. "I remember the pleasure really of going 'plop' into the lifeboat." He also once described how they left the boat. "[My father] dressed me very warmly and took me in his arms. A stranger did the same for my brother... When I think of it now, I am very moved. They knew they were going to die."

Many third-class passengers struggled to find their way out of their quarters as the Titanic took on water. One survivor was Elin Matilda Hakkarainen, who spoke to Lima News in 1953 about that horrific day. "The Titanic was painted plain white and was easily seen from my lifeboat, as it rose by the stern and slipped with a roar into the sea a little more than a half hour after colliding with the iceberg," she said.

"I could see those still on board lined up against the ship's rails on the decks," Hakkarainen added. "There was no panic at that time, and it is true, they were all singing 'Nearer My God to Thee' as they stood there watching the lifeboats move away from the doomed ship and waited for death to overtake them. I can never forget those horrible screams as the ship started to go under."

While many of the survivors of the Titanic went on to be haunted by the shipwreck for the rest of their lives, passengers such as Eva Hart, who was just 7 years old at the time, didn’t let the trauma drag her down. She never even gave in to a fear of travel. “Life has to be lived,” she once said. But there were details she would never forget.

"I saw that ship sink," she said in a 1993 interview. "I never closed my eyes. I didn't sleep at all. I saw it, I heard it, and nobody could possibly forget it." She added, "It seemed as if once everybody had gone, drowned, finished, the whole world was standing still. There was nothing, just this deathly, terrible silence in the dark night with the stars overhead." Director James Cameron included a small character based on Hart's experience in his 1997 flick. But the film didn't debunk many of the myths surrounding the Titanic.

“Women and children first” isn’t just an old saying. According to Annie McGowan, it was one of the rules the workers on the Titanic used to sort out which passengers would get priority on the lifeboats. Only a teenager at the time, McGowan remembered seeing men putting on dresses so they’d be allowed onto the lifeboats. One even threatened to tip a lifeboat over if he wasn’t allowed on.

But the danger wasn't gone once the survivors were inside lifeboats. "We wanted to stay far away, and the suction did take a couple of the lifeboats in," McGowan told the Daily Herald in 1984. "Then the ship just busted in half, and that's when all the screaming started," she added. "It was just so terrible; I guess a boiler had bust." McGowan's lifeboat was later rescued by the Carpathia.

When the Carpathia ultimately arrived to save the passengers from the icy ocean waters, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. A young British secretary, Laura Mabel Francatelli, remembered that she still had to make it up the side of the massive ship on rope swings. Francatelli said she barely hung onto the rope swings, and she wasn’t sure she’d make it all the way to the top. Ultimately, she had to close her eyes and wait for an arm to pull her aboard.

Francatelli gave a first-person account of her ordeal in an affidavit recorded in 1912. She was placed in a lifeboat with only 12 occupants. "We were a long way off when we saw the Titanic go right up at the back and plunge down," she said. "There was an awful rumbling when she went. Then came the screams and cries. I do not know how long they lasted."

Getting onto the lifeboats was a mission in itself, but once aboard, chaos ensued. A 40-year-old governess called Elizabeth Schutes recalled the sound of drowning passengers surrounding the boat as they rowed. Ordinary passengers were in charge of navigating the frigid water, so Schutes wasn’t sure they’d make it to their rescue ship. Before long, two of their oars were lost in the black waves. 

Shutes later recalled, "Sitting by me in the lifeboat were a mother and daughter. The mother had left a husband on the Titanic, and the daughter a father and husband, and while we were near the other boats those two stricken women would call out a name and ask, ‘Are you there?’ ‘No,’ would come back the awful answer, but these brave women never lost courage, forgot their own sorrow, telling me to sit close to them to keep warm…"

Even though the wreck of the Titanic was full of tragedy and horror, passengers such as Ruth Becker recalled a strange beauty as the ship slowly sank below the surface of the dark sea. Only 12 years old at the time, Becker never forgot the sight of the Titanic as the lights dipped into the ocean and illuminated the surface for just a brief moment before disappearing into the abyss. 

Ruth Becker lived a long life after the disaster. She refused to tell the story of her ordeal to even those closest to her for most of that time. She apparently only began opening up about the Titanic in the 1980s — before passing away in 1990 at the age of 90. She was the last remaining Indian-born survivor at the time of her death.

One of the most devastating parts of the sinking of the Titanic is how many people were separated from their loved ones in the tragedy. Newlywed Charlotte Collyer experienced that pain as she lost her husband during the shipwreck. Though Collyer was stricken with grief over the loss of her husband, she pointed out that there was hardly a soul on the ship who wasn’t separated from their spouses, friends, or children. 

"Oh mother how can I live without him?" Collyer wrote in a letter nine days after the disaster. "I wish I'd gone with him if they had not wrenched Madge from me, I should have stayed and gone with him. But they threw her into the boat and pulled me in too, but he was so calm and I know he would rather I lived for her little sake otherwise she would have been an orphan. The agony of that night can never be told."