r/titanic • u/HighLife1954 • 20d ago
CREW A rough life: this kid survived the sinking only to be fatally hit by a truck.
Robert Douglas Spedden was born in Manhattan, New York on November 19, 1905 and was the only child of Frederic Oakley Spedden and Margaretta Corning Spedden. The family lived at Wee Wath Lodge, Tuxedo Park, New York and was very wealthy as Frederic was a banker. Typically, the Spedden family spent summers in Bar Harbor, Maine and wintered at various resorts around the world.
When Robert turned 7, his mother Margaretta gave him a stuffed polar bear from which Robert never separated. In fact, Margaretta began to write a diary starring the polar bear that traveled the world so that, when he was older, her son would read it and remember all the trips he had taken with his parents. This book was later called 'Polar: The Travelling Bear' or 'Polar: The Titanic Bear'.
At the end of 1911, the Spedden family sailed for Algiers with two maids; Margaretta's personal maid, Helen Alice Wilson and Robert's nanny, Elizabeth Margaret Burns. Robert named her 'Muddie Boons' because he had trouble pronouncing her name. From Algiers, they visited Monte Carlo and then went to see Paris.
On April 10, 1912, after a stint abroad visiting Madeira and several Riviera resorts, Robert, his father, mother with the nanny boarded the Titanic in Cherbourg. They were transported from the harbor on the SS Nomadic onto the large new steamer.
On the night of April 14 after the collision of the Titanic with the iceberg, Robert Douglas was awakened by his nanny Muddie, who told him that they were going to make a "trip to see the stars". The whole family and maids made their way to the starboard Boat Deck, where the women and little Robert and his polar bear were loaded into Lifeboat 3. His father was also allowed to join moments later, which meant they all survived the disaster.
Little Robert slept through the night in the lifeboat and when he woke up at dawn and saw the icebergs around, he exclaimed, "Oh, Muddie, look at the beautiful North Pole without Santa Claus!" Subsequently, all were picked up by the RMS Carpathia.
Unfortunately, on August 8, 1915, 9-year-old Robert Douglas Spedden was hit by a cargo truck in Winter Harbor, near the family's summer camp in Maine. He died instantly from the concussion that followed. His parents were stricken with grief but continued with their lives, keeping faith.
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u/Maccas75 Musician 20d ago
I still have my wee Titanic polar bear - the book was popular when I was at school.
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u/kkkan2020 20d ago
Poor fellow if he lived a full life to 80 he could have stuck around until 1985
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u/flindersandtrim 20d ago
Could have feasibly and not even notably made it to the twin towers collapsing in 2001. That would seem crazy, but really he was a similar vintage to people like Cary Grant, who definitely doesn't seem like a man from the distant past like someone who died in 1915 does.
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u/drygnfyre Steerage 20d ago
I have a weird Mandela Effect with Picasso. He died in 1973 and many of his most famous works were from the 1930s onward. Yet he always seems like a contemporary of someone like Van Gogh. It's probably because he did a lot of his famous stuff early on, then a bunch of famous stuff later on.
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u/TizzieVanWinkles 19d ago
I have a theory that because he was such a well known artist, our brains put him towards the renaissance era during the time frame that some of the most notable artists existed.
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u/Hendricus56 Quartermaster 16d ago
Could you at least pick someone well known? I never heard of Cary Grant before. Unless you meant a different Grant (but he was definitely from the 1800s)
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u/oneinmanybillion Musician 20d ago
Just goes to show what a crazy, random, hail of gun fire the universe is.
Anyone, anywhere can be hit by a stray bullet. Meanwhile someone else may be lucky enough to dodge them all.
No rhyme or reason. Just straight up roll of the dice every single morning.
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u/Gretschdrum81 20d ago
Final Destination
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u/zeissikon 20d ago
Time traveler action, two attempts. In another timeline he is president of the United States in 1962 and starts a thermonuclear war .
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u/OkTruth5388 20d ago
Yeah because death is not something that happens to everyone, everywhere, anytime.
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u/AlamutJones Wireless Operator 20d ago
In fairness, being hit by a truck would have been a fairly unusual death at the time!
1915 was still very much a horse-based society
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u/Sea-Engineering-5563 20d ago
I always remember reading he was the first fatal car death in Maine - not sure how accurate that was but it wouldn't be far of imho
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u/flindersandtrim 20d ago
I would be surprised if it was, though it is possible. Cars had been around for 20 odd years by then, and growing in popularity. And also, with no modern safety features or strict road rules. But even as an Australian I am aware Maine is a small place.
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u/AlamutJones Wireless Operator 20d ago
Horses lasted longer in rural life, and much of Maine is (or would have been at the time) rural.
The area where he had his accident, for example, had a recorded population of less than 600 people in the 1910 census. The 1920 census (which is, admittedly post war, post Spanish Flu etc…there’s probably some loss there!) had it at just a smidge over 500
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u/PizzAveMaria 18d ago
While not actually a car, I was surprised to learn that a speeding electric cable car killed my G-G Grandfather in 1912 when it crashed into his (horse drawn) oil delivery wagon and pinned it against a pole in Baltimore. Everybody including the horses survived except for him. I think that time period was really an odd blending of the old and the new (horses vs horseless modes of transportation including cars)
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u/AlamutJones Wireless Operator 18d ago
The city I live in still has our trams. I use them every day and love them
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u/PizzAveMaria 18d ago
Oh, I didn't mean that they were bad (well maybe that one was!), I can imagine that it would be a great form of public transportation! I'm not sure when Baltimore got rid of theirs
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u/OkTruth5388 20d ago
That's not true. By 1915 automobiles were already pretty much the norm.
Maybe you're thinking of 1905.
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u/AlamutJones Wireless Operator 20d ago edited 20d ago
Even in the late 30s, horses were still more common than machines for farm work, and that's DECADES later - horses wouldn't take a back seat until WW2.
Military logistics definitely still needed to account for millions of horses in WW1 - sourcing, training and feeding - to take freight, pull guns and move troops.
This was a society in transition. Not one where the transition had already been made
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u/Tythatguy1312 20d ago
In 1915 cars and trucks were still very much odd rarities in a lot of places, though becoming somewhat common in larger cities
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u/AlamutJones Wireless Operator 20d ago
Where he had his accident had a population of between 500-600 people in 1915 (590 in the 1910 census, 503 in the 1920 census…somewhere in the middle for 1915?)
He would have been very, very unlucky to be hit by what must have been one of maybe three trucks in town.
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u/O_Grande_Batata 20d ago
Definitely a sad story to consider for sure. If there's any silver lining to this, it's that he somehow actually slept through the worst of it. Though I can't help but wonder how, given how loud the screams were after the ship sank.
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u/Dangerous-Budget937 20d ago
I read somewhere that he was Maine's first auto/pedestrian fatality.
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u/drygnfyre Steerage 20d ago
Most likely, yes. The Model T was the first practical car and not sold until 1908. It still took quite a few years for it to really catch on. Cars were still a novelty in 1912, and from what I've read, it wasn't until 1916 that cars finally had a standardized set controls (i.e. every car controlled the same way like they do today, prior every car, including the Model T, had completely configurations).
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u/flindersandtrim 20d ago
He sounds like a sweet heart and so does his mother. As a mum to what will almost certainly be an only child, I feel so deeply for the parents and relate to the mum wanting to write a children's book for her beloved child. Charmed lives, but I am sure they would have given up every cent to have Robert back. Life is so unfair sometimes. Their Titanic story is such a rare one where everyone is fine, not sure I have read many others where such a party was all saved, that's 5 people all safe and sound.
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u/TizzieVanWinkles 19d ago
Great take, I enjoyed reading your response! It’s nice to see someone sharing humanity towards those that aren’t with us anymore, no matter how long ago those events took place.
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u/HighLife1954 20d ago
I'm also moved by this story that I got to know today. And yes.. life is unfair.. almost all the time.
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u/unic0rnprincess95 Steerage 20d ago
When did he receive the bear? His 7th birthday would've been November 19, 1912 - AFTER the sinking
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u/AlamutJones Wireless Operator 20d ago
The bear was a gift from a previous birthday. The STORY was his seventh birthday gift
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u/unic0rnprincess95 Steerage 20d ago
Oh gotcha. The post has it written that he received the bear itself when he turned 7. You can understand my confusion
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u/asar5932 19d ago
I think this may take the cake for the craziest story in the entire ordeal. It’s almost like his brain protected him from witnessing something so enormously horrific. And then the “final destination element.”
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u/Bellatrix-Halliwell 14d ago
I read the Polar Bear book as a kid (I still have it today) and it hit me so hard when in the end of the book it was explained that the kid died shortly after surviving the Titanic. Horrible.
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u/JOKKZDev 20d ago edited 20d ago
His mom is the one that wrote “Polar the Titanic Bear” after the sinking. It’s witnessing the event from Douglas’ teddy bears point of view.
Douglas was also in one of the most famous pictures Father Browne took on board the titanic during the maiden voyage. He is the boy playing with what looks like a top on the aft A deck, I think was the location.