THE stories of those on board the Titanic have been preserved and told for more than a century.
But less has been known about the Islanders part of the 1912 disaster.
A new exhibition at the Maritime Museum tells the story of the ten Jerseymen and women on board – including crew who helped passengers into lifeboats and a woman who later went on to invent the catwalk.
Exhibitions curator at the museum, Lucy Layton said the stories retold “cover a lot of different themes.”
Islanders on board
Many people from Jersey moved to Southampton to work on ships, signing up for jobs in the city’s Union hiring halls in the days before a ship sailed.
Able seaman Philip Vigot, for example, came from a St Mary farming family and was 32 when he was hired to work on board the Titanic. He survived, in part because, as an able seaman, he was working above deck.
Quartermaster Alfred Olliver also survived and had “a fascinating story”, Mrs Layton said.
“He’s one of the few people who actually saw the iceberg. Part of his duties was to steer the ship under the guidance of one of the officers. He’d been at the wheel of the ship until a couple of hours before it hit the iceberg, and he was still on duty, but doing other roles when the collision actually happened.
“He came back to the bridge and actually saw the iceberg and he describes it at the American Board of Inquiry. He said ;it wasn’t white as I expected to see an iceberg. It was a kind of a dark blue’ which, again, is really fascinating.”
Three Jersey-born crew members died: assistant boots steward William Rattenbury, third-class steward Thomas Ryan and first-class steward Percy Ahier. Steward Walter Williams and able seaman John “Jack” Poingdestre, who helped passengers into two lifeboats, survived.
Surviving crew members were only paid wages for the week before the ship sank, Mrs Layton added, and some never spoke about their experiences. Mr Olliver suffered a nervous breakdown and never returned to work at sea.
Passengers
There is a “neat distinction” between the seven crew members and three passengers from Jersey, Mrs Layton said.
Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon, was a fashion designer famous enough for her and her husband Cosmo Duff-Gordon to be on board using fake names – travelling as Mr and Mrs Morgan.
“She was said to be the person who began the idea of the catwalk – so she was a really significant person in her own right,” Mrs Layton said.
Born in London, Lady Duff-Gordon had moved to Jersey as a child and grew up in the Island.
As first-class passengers, they survived – but they were heavily criticised at the Board of Inquiry after the disaster.
“They were rowed away in a lifeboat that wasn’t even half-full, so people felt they should have gone back to try and rescue other people. Cosmo gave £5 to each of the crew members – he said it was a gesture of goodwill, but it was interpreted later on as him having paid them a bribe to row them away to safety and not go back and rescue anyone else.
“They were all over the front of the papers – it really damaged their reputations. Their marriage broke down, so it had really long-lasting effects for them.”
Creating the exhibition, Mrs Layton said they had to look at the facts, adding that she “wanted to be fair to her, because it’s all very well in hindsight”.
“At the moment in time, it sounds awful – but when I was reading around it, it was in the middle of the night, the ship was meant to be unsinkable,” Mrs Layton said. “So I think the passengers and many of the crew didn’t realise in what jeopardy they were. It was freezing cold.”
With the crew struggling to convince passengers to be lowered 70ft in lifeboats, Mrs Layton said she could see how a wealthy passenger would want to thank the crew with £5.
“It’s very difficult to know exactly what the situation was.”
Also on board as a first-class passenger was Rosalie Bidoir, who came from a humble family and was working as a maid to Madeleine Astor, the wife of the wealthiest person on the ship, Colonel John Jacob Astor IV. Colonel Astor died, but Miss Bidoir and Mrs Astor both survived.
And 17-year-old Bertha Ilett was travelling on her own to visit her father when the famous ship sunk.
Her trip on the sister ship, the Olympic, was cancelled, so she was moved to the Titanic. She was initially due to travel in third class, though at some point upgraded her ticket – a decision that “may well have saved her life”.
“She was mistakenly reported as having drowned,” said Mrs Layton.
“The family thinks she’s lost her life, and then they get a message that she actually survived. Her father was there in New York to meet her when she arrived.
“But like everyone on board, she lost everything.”
Miss Ilett benefitted from the Women’s Relief Committee and funds from the Red Cross, part of a charitable drive across continents.
Miss Ilett settled in America and died there aged 82.
A ‘ghoulish fascination’
The exhibition also shows how news of the disaster slowly trickled back to Jersey – with initial reports optimistic about the outcome before the extent of the tragedy became known.
The level of attention reflects how high-profile disasters continue to fascinate.
“It’s interesting how even going back 100 years,” Mrs Layton said. “There was that same sort of almost ghoulish fascination with the details and the horror and the tragedy of it all, the personal stories.
“[People were] following it religiously, looking at updates, and particularly an absence of information as well – speculating about what might have happened.”
A few weeks after the disaster, footage of the Titanic and its captain was screened at the Opera House to a sell-out audience.
In the Morning News and the Evening Post, contemporaneous reports show a week of updates featuring the news of an “appalling loss of life” and how local newspapers identified crew members from Jersey.
In a note in the newspaper, Miss Ilett’s mother thanked those who came to support her after a reporter woke her up in the early hours of the morning to tell her her daughter had survived.
“It must have been awful waiting – they were trying to post lists of survivors’ names, but if a name isn’t there, I suppose you’re hoping that for some reason it hasn’t been reported yet,” Mrs Layton said.
In Jersey, as in many parts of the UK, fundraising campaigns were set up to support survivors and the families of those who’d lost their lives, often having lost their main breadwinners.
Jersey connections
The exhibition attempts to make local connections – and with few exhibits left from the ship, it uses postcards to illustrate the mood at the time.
One, sent to Jersey from Southampton the day the ship sailed, reports that the ship looked “magnificent”.
Mrs Layton added: “It becomes very poignant when you realise a few days later, the ship goes down and 1,500 lives are lost.”
