Titanic Medals - 95th Anniversary - 15 April 2007
By Ian Uys
The fame of the
Titanic was initially that it was the largest and most luxurious moving object
in the world, then it became the most famous shipwreck of all time. The British
do not issue medals for defeats, or catastrophes, so for medals one needs to
look to the people aboard, or those affiliated to them.
The trouble with
being born curious is that it gets one into all sorts of scrapes. While researching
my wife’s ancestry, I found that she was related to EJ Smith, captain
of the Titanic - her great-grandmother’s uncle. His medals are about 2.5
miles (4 km) down in the Atlantic, far beyond my reach.
During his 40 years
at sea Captain Smith had earned the Transport Medal (clasp South Africa 1899-1902)
for conveying troops during the South African war. He thus became well acquainted
with Cape Town. The Royal Naval Reserve Decoration followed in 1908. Photos
of him in uniform usually show him wearing his two medals with pride.
Among the war veterans
aboard were Col John Astor, Col Archibald Gracie and Major Archie Butt. They
had all served in the Spanish American War and Butt had been one of Roosevelt’s
Rough Riders. Gracie’s father had been a Confederate general, killed at
the Siege of Petersburg in 1864. Of the three, Gracie alone survived the sinking
– but by a few months only.
As the ship sank
the second officer, Charles Lightoller, was sucked against a grating then released
by a hot air bubble. He spent the remainder of the night standing on the bottom
of an upside-down boat telling others how not to capsize it. During World War
I he earned the DSC for firing on a Zeppelin from a Torpedo Boat, and a Bar
for ramming and sinking a U-Boat (U110) with his destroyer. He is also entitled
to a Dunkirk Medal for rescuing 150 men from the beach in his little steamer.
He died in 1950.
While the Titanic
sank Third Officer Pitman was fortunate enough to command a lifeboat. His later
career was marred by his failing eyesight, yet he was created a Member of the
British Empire (MBE) in 1946 for meritorious war services.
Lookout George
Rowe wasn’t in the crow’s nest when the iceberg was sighted (Fleet
and Lee were) but he was stationed at the aft docking bridge. He was responsible
for sending up the rockets and later commanded a Collapsible Lifeboat. His work
on building ships during World War earned him a British Empire Medal (BEM).
Stephen Carr was
a trimmer, who wheeled coal to the furnaces and ensured that the remaining coal
was evenly distributed. He had served in the South African Light Horse during
the Anglo-Boer African War – but somehow incurred the army’s wrath,
a summary court-martial and the withholding of his Queen’s South Africa
Medal (QSA). Carr went down with the Titanic, as did most of the crew, which
made the War Office re-think - and they issued his QSA to his mother in 1913.
The only black
passenger aboard was Joseph Laroche, 25, from Haiti. His French wife and two
daughters were saved, while he was lost. Most of the bodies recovered were buried
in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Incongruously, the first Nova Scotian-born (and the
first black) man to win the Victoria Cross was Able Seaman William Hall (1829-1904),
who served at sea during the Mexican War of 1849 and fought in the Crimea and
in the Indian Mutiny. The son of a freed slave, he won his cross by serving
a lone gun which breached the walls of Lucknow on 16 November, 1857. His father
had worked for Abraham Cunard, father of the founder of the shipping line –
whose ship the Carpathia rescued the Titanic survivors.
The celebrated
‘unsinkable Molly Brown’ from Denver, Colorado, threatened to throw
Quartermaster Robert Hichens, an inveterate moaner, off the lifeboat if he didn’t
shut up. Perhaps she should have, for he was at the wheel when the Titanic struck.
Her son served as an American officer in France during World War I. Due to her
war work and promotion of the French cause she was awarded the Legion of Honour
in 1932, the year that she died.
Molly had served
on a committee of seven survivors on the Carpathia, their rescue ship, who presented
Captain Rostron with an engraved silver cup and a medal to each of his 320 crew.
Should you ever come across a ‘RMS Carpathia and SS Titanic Medal’
please contact me immediately! A collector in Brisbane told me that he had once
owned one which had been awarded to the assistant purser. Captain Rostron was
also awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor (America’s VC) by the United
States government. He later became commodore of the Cunard Line and died in
1940. .
Another member
of the committee, Richard Norris Williams, 21, had refused to allow the amputation
of his frozen legs after being rescued. He survived to serve in the US Army
in France during World War I and earned the Croix de Guerre and the Chevalier
de la Legion d’ Honneur.
Two survivors who
earned Olympic medals were Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon for fencing in 1908 (in London),
and Norris Williams for tennis in 1924 (Paris). Sir Cosmo was criticised for
assisting some of the crew to make up for their financial losses as their salaries
stopped when the ship sank. There were only a dozen in his lifeboat, which could
have held 65, and the money could have been construed as a bribe!
Campaign medals
for World War I and II were awarded to many of the survivors who later served.
The Countess of Rothes, 33, the most aristocratic survivor ‘manned’
the tiller and rowed during the night. She served as a nurse during World War
I. Her husband was badly wounded and lost an eye due to shrapnel in the face.
Stewardess Violet Jessop was rescued, then became a nurse during the war. She
later survived the sinking of the Britannic, the Titanic’s successor,
which hit a mine in Aegean waters.
As an aside, after
the Lusitania was torpedoed in 1915, Germany issued a medallion showing ‘death
selling tickets to unwary passengers’. It reminds one of the Titanic with
its one lifeboat seat for every three passengers. U-Boats then superseded icebergs
as the Atlantic’s number one hazard.
A well-deserved
medal would have been to Dorothy Gibson, who had been a 22-year-old movie star
on the Titanic. A month after the sinking she starred in a silent movie ‘Saved
from the Titanic’. During World War II she joined the Italian Resistance,
was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Milan. She escape in 1944 and,
made her way to the liberated Paris, where she died two years later, aged 54,
possibly as a result of her treatment at the hands of her captors.
A Commemorative
RMS Titanic medallion was issued by the Royal Mint in Mid Glamorgan in 1997.
It appears to be the only authentic Titanic ‘medal’. It was commissioned
by Harland and Wolff (the shipbuilders) as a collector piece for marine enthusiasts
who continue to research the super-liner’s enduring tragedy.
The obverse shows
the White Star Flag coupled with the shipbuilder’s logotype and words
‘White Star Line’ and ‘Harland and Wolff’, while the
reverse depicts the Titanic on her departure from Southampton on 10 April 1912,
with the words ‘RMS Titanic’.
The above is probably
only the tip of the iceberg (pardon the pun), but we will never know of all
awards to the passengers and crew. Suffice to say that the sinking of the Titanic
heralded the end of an era and has made many recollect the past – as is
done constantly by medal collectors who research the mystique of their medals.
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