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The day after Titanic sank, news of the disaster covered the front page of the Duluth News Tribune and would dominate headlines for days to come.
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A deck chair from Titanic displayed at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
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Titanic in England in 1912 shortly before embarking on its maiden voyage 100 years ago this April.
When the White Star Line’s new ocean liner Titanic steamed for New York City on Sunday, April 14, 1912, it carried about 30 passengers heading for Lake Superior communities.
At least nine survived the disaster to unfold that night, including two women from Duluth – Constance Willard, 20 and single, and Alice Munger Silvey, traveling with her husband, William Baird Silvey, all in first class.
2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the tragic event.
Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. in a glancing blow that opened five watertight compartments. Constance described it as feeling like a crash. “When I reached the deck after the collision, the crew were getting the boats ready to lower, and many of the women were running about looking for their husbands and children,” she later told the Chicago Tribune. “The women were being placed in the boats, and two men took hold of me and almost pushed me into a boat. I did not appreciate the danger and I struggled until they released me.”
Constance ran to her cabin to look for friends, without success. “A little English girl about 15 years old ran up to me and threw her arms about me. ‘Oh, I am all alone. Won’t you let me go with you?’ I then began to realize the real danger and saw that all but two of the boats had been lowered. Some men called to us and we hurried to where they were loading a boat.”
At another lifeboat, Alice Silvey, 39, was lifted aboard by her husband. He told her, “I will follow in one of the other ones,” according to Cris Kohl’s book, Titanic, The Great Lakes Connections. William was among more than 1,500 who went down with the ship.
Cris’ compelling book provides details for this story. His focus is on the entire Great Lakes region, and he says that 346 of the ship’s 1,343 passengers were bound for locations on or within 100 miles of the Great Lakes. Some were returning home; many were emigrating from Europe to join relatives and start a new life. Of that group, 128 survived to be picked up by the rescue ship Carpathia. Much background about regional survivors and victims also comes from www.encyclopedia-titanica.org, the most comprehensive website you’ll find on the subject.
The Ship
Titanic was 883 feet long, 92 feet wide and 175 feet tall from the keel to the top of the four stacks – the world’s largest ship. It was considered the most modern ocean liner and an engineering marvel, with electric light and heat in the rooms and amenities such as a heated pool, squash court and a gym with a mechanical horse and a mechanical camel, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (a team from Woods Hole, led by Dr. Robert Ballard, found the shipwreck in 1985). First-class travelers enjoyed country-club facilities and all the comfort and elegance of the era’s top hotels. There were two libraries, four restaurants, four elevators (three in first class) and two barbershops. The three classes of passenger accommodations were segregated by barriers. For those in third class, conditions were marked by low ceilings and bare light bulbs; and most cabins were far down in the ship, above the engine and boiler level. Yet these steerage cabins offered more luxury than many first-class cabins on other steamships.
Lake Superior Ties
At 12:10 a.m. on April 15, Titanic sent its first distress signal. Carpathia, 58 miles away, was the closest ship to get the signal. Around 12:25 a.m., the order was given to put women and children into lifeboats.
As her lifeboat was about to be lowered, Constance Willard told the Chicago Tribune, “a foreigner rushed up to the side of the vessel and holding out a bundle in his arms cried with tears running down his face. ‘Oh, please, kind lady, won’t you please, please take the little one.’ Of course, I took the child. … In our boat there were seven men, about 20 women and several children. … Twenty minutes after leaving the Titanic, we heard an explosion and the vessel appeared to split in two and sank. Then a foreign woman in our boat began singing a hymn, and we all joined, although few knew the words. All around us we heard crying and sobbing for perhaps three minutes.”
Like many of the 20 lifeboats, hers was filled to only half its capacity. The sea was calm, the surface like glass. The sky was filled with stars. Titanic sank at 2:20 a.m. on April 15, two hours and 40 minutes after hitting the iceberg some 230 miles from Nova Scotia.
Those heading for Lake Superior destinations (based on Cris Kohl’s book and Encyclopedia Titanica) also included:
• Jenny Lovisa Henriksson, 28, who worked as a maid, and her cousin, Ellen Natalia Pettersson, 18, both of Stockholm, Sweden, dreamed of going to America. They were inspired to join their relatives, Wilhelm Skoog and his family. The Skoogs had lived for some time in Iron Mountain, Michigan, then moved back to Sweden and now decided to return to the Upper Peninsula. All of them – Jenny and Ellen, Wilhelm, his wife, Anna, and their children Harald, 5, Karl, 11, Mabel, 9, and Margit, 2, booked third-class passage on the Titanic. All eight died in the sinking. Jenny is buried in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with 149 others from Titanic.
• Karl Johan Johansson, 31, had emigrated from Sweden to Duluth and was a stucco worker. During a trip back to Sweden, he got engaged to childhood sweetheart Berta Elizabeth Olsson. He boarded Titanic with two friends, with plans for Berta to follow him in the fall on sister ship Olympic. Karl died on Titanic and was never recovered.
• Maude Sincock, 20, single, and Mrs. Agnes Davies, 48, a widow, shared a second-class cabin. Both were moving from St. Ives, Cornwall, England, to Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. Maude planned to join her miner father in Hancock, and Agnes would be joining her oldest son and his wife in Kearsarge, Michigan, near Calumet. Also in the cabin were Agnes’s 8-year-old son, John, and Alice Phillips, 21, of Devon, England, bound for Pennsylvania.
After Titanic hit the iceberg, a steward came by and told everyone to put their lifebelts on and to get on deck. Maude put a raincoat over her nightgown and, because nobody was operating the elevator serving second class, climbed five or six decks to find herself among crowds of passengers.
Once inside a lifeboat, she heard a band playing as the boat was lowered to the water. She looked back and could see the lights on Titanic disappearing as the bow sank lower. Flares were being fired.
Agnes and John were helped into a lifeboat by her 19-year-old son, Joseph Nicholls, who was staying in a different second-class cabin. When he asked permission to get on the lifeboat, officers told him to remain on the ship and threatened him with being shot if he tried to get into it. In her account, Agnes says about 50 were in the lifeboat and there was room for more (two men did slide down the ropes, avoiding the crew, and got in).
“By the time (Titanic) sank … it seemed as if we were miles away, although I could hear the screams, cries and moaning of the drowning passengers,” Agnes told a Calumet newspaper. After five hours on the ocean, the lifeboat was picked up by the Carpathia. Maude and Alice were on the rescue ship, too. Agnes’ son, Joseph, and Alice’s father, Robert, died on the Titanic. At home in Michigan, Agnes remarried, and recounted her Titanic experiences at the Calumet Opera House. Maude told her rescue story at theaters in Hancock, Ishpeming and Marquette. In 1956, she told a local audience that many of her fellow passengers on Titanic were so confident of the ship that they were unwilling to get into lifeboats.
After their rescue, Constance Willard and Alice Silvey returned to Duluth, where Alice later remarried. Constance would move to California in 1934 to live out the rest of her life.
Titanic Numbers
Titanic carried 891 crew and 1,343 passengers (passenger capacity was actually 2,433).
There were 16 lifeboats and four collapsible boats, with capacity ranging from 40 to 65. Total lifeboat capacity was 1,186, while passengers and crew totaled just over 2,200.
Rescue ship Carpathia delivered about 700 survivors to New York City.