by Tom Bradman
The rest of the ship’s crew named in the story are real people. Captain Smith and Officers Wilde, Murdoch and Moody all died, and their bodies were never recovered. The same is true of Chief Purser McElroy. You can find pictures on the internet of Titanic’s officers, and Mr McElroy is in the back row. We thought he had a friendly face, so in our story he became a friend to Billy and George.
Mr Andrews is known to have worked hard getting people into lifeboats or provided with lifejackets. He was last seen alone in one of the lounges, and went down with the ship he had designed. His body was never found either.
Mr Lightoller survived, and on BBC iPlayer you can even hear an interview with him about the sinking, recorded in the 1930s. (bbc.co.uk/archive/titanic/5047.shtml)
Jack Phillips and Harold Bride both stayed in the Marconi Room sending distress signals until the last minute, and both were there when the last collapsible lifeboats were swept into the sea. Jack Phillips managed to get on board one, but died of exposure while they were waiting to be rescued. Harold Bride was swept into the sea, but managed to get into the boat and lived.
Mr Ismay survived, and was heavily criticised for doing so. The accounts differ, and some people said in his defence that he helped many women – third-class passengers as well as first-class – into lifeboats, before finally taking a place in one of the collapsibles only when there was nobody else to give it to.
Anya and her family are fictional, but they’re typical of Titanic’s third-class passengers. If they had been real, they would have been among the luckiest people on the Titanic that night, because only a quarter of all the third-class passengers survived. All of the first- and second-class children on board were saved – but only one-third of the third-class children found a place in a lifeboat. And while almost all the women in first class survived, fewer than half of the women in third class did.
Men in all classes died in great numbers, because of the ‘women and children first’ policy. Only a third of first-class male passengers survived – but those with the worst chance by far were second- and third-class male passengers. Most of them died.
It’s not clear why the death rate was so heavily linked to how much you paid for your ticket. One factor was that the third-class cabins were at the bottom of the ship, and the first- and second-class passengers were nearer the lifeboats. Some reports say that third-class passengers were accidentally locked below decks. It’s not clear if third-class passengers were deliberately held back by sailors. However, many people at the time believed that first-class passengers were given priority unfairly and others were turned away. We’ve taken this line in the story. The full truth may never be known.
Plenty of first-class male passengers didn’t even try to get places in the lifeboats. The enormously wealthy Ben Guggenheim chose to go down with the ship. He sent a parting message to his wife saying, ‘No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim is a coward.’
Out of 2,223 people on board when it hit the iceberg, 1,517 died.
Of course there are many books and websites and films about the Titanic. We hope you enjoy our re-imagining of this terrible event. For, however many times it’s told, it was and always will be a titanic story.
Tom and Tony Bradman
First published 2012 by
A & C Black
Bloomsbury Publishing plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
www.acblack.com
This electronic edition published in March 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text copyright © 2012 Tom and Tony Bradman
The rights of Tom and Tony Bradman to be identified as the
authors of this work have been asserted by them in
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eISBN: 978 1 4081 6357 3
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The National Archives
You’ve read the story…
now here’s the evidence.
Titanic: Unclassified takes readers on a journey back in time to one of the most famous sea disasters in history. From the building of the ‘unsinkable’ ship to the investigation that followed the tragedy, readers are taken behind the scenes to see what really happened. Real life artifacts and historical documents reproduced in full-colour graphics and photographs allow readers to build an account of what happened and the causes of the disaster.
The National Archives