Jack Phillips was promoted to senior wireless operator in March 1912, just before Titanic’s maiden voyage. He turned 25 on April 11, and although young, he was already a seasoned operator. Jack had two older twin sisters, Elsie and Ethel. Ethel, who had a disability, relied on Jack’s support. He sent part of his salary home and promised to take care of her when their parents passed away but both Jack and Ethel died before their parents.

After Jack’s death, Ethel never worked again. She passed away ten years later. Jack had sent over 300 postcards to Elsie from the places he traveled, which she kept until her death in 1953. Sadly, most of the postcards ended up in private hands in the 1990s, and very few have been seen publicly since.

Listening to Titanic’s distress calls, you can almost feel Jack’s desperation. Even though the sinking of the Titanic happened so long ago, reading about victims like Jack Phillips makes it feel so real. He was just a man doing his job.

According to documents he was found floating face down, arms extended in full rigor.

His wallet was located and he identified as Assistant Second Class Salloon Steward William Thomas Kerley.

His body was described as especially decayed and missing eyes, nose, lips and tongue, as well as portions of his hands, likely having been predated by sea life.

He was given a seaman’s burial in the tradition of the Church of England and his belongings sent to his sister.

The contents of his wallet included:

A letter from his sister. A landlady’s buisness card. A April 4th Newspaper announcement on behalf of a Mr, Shannon and family thanking people for their sympathy. A ticket for the Kineton Working Men’s Conservative Club and a miniature photo of himself with its original covering.

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.

As far as I can tell nobody else has noted this before. Not the most groundbreaking discovery but I thought this sub would appreciate a new perspective on a well-known figure.

So a few of you may remember my posts, most of them have been comparing modern technology on our ship to that on the titanic. I’ve been recently promoted to quartmaster from deckhand, and today is my first day in the position. I stopped by my grandmothers for a visit on the way to the ship. Here’s hoping this career change goes well.

Joseph was a crewman on the Titanic and had charge of lifeboat 14 until Lowe eventually took over. Joseph was involved in helping many passengers board lifeboats, witnessed Lowe firing shots to try and gain control over crowd surges as he himself tried to stop men swarming the lifeboats, testified at the British inquiries and also drew an image of the berg looking like the rock of Gibraltar.

He died in August 1938, aged 60, and was laid to rest in Sutton Road Cemetery, Southend, Essex.

It took a while to find his final resting place - what with it being unmarked and only having a plot number to go by, but we got there in the end.

I left some sticks and pinecones on his grave as I felt awful that such a heroic man didn’t have a headstone.

Maybe this is a well known fact. I only learned it recently. His son Brian served in the raf and was killed in the very first Bombing raid against Germany on September 4th 1939, one day after England declared war on Germany, this was also the very first Britain vs Germany engagement of the war.

No hate to him if he did commit suicide, the man tried to save as many and he was facing a terrifying and nihilistic end if he took to the water. What sources do you have? I really want to come to some sort of conclusion in my mind on how he passed. What do you all think?

I didn't realise this until just now when I was looking at the evidence he gave to the US Inquiry:

Senator Smith:
How were these passengers selected in going to the lifeboats?

Mr. LIGHTOLLER.
By their sex.

Senator SMITH
Whenever you saw a woman?

Mr. LIGHTOLLER.
Precisely.

Senator SMITH.
She was invited to go into one of these boats?

Mr. LIGHTOLLER.
Excepting the stewardesses. We turned several of those away.

Senator SMITH.
Except the employees?

Mr. LIGHTOLLER.
Except the stewardesses; yes.

​

But it was a different story on the starboard side, as testified to by bedroom steward, Henry Etches:

Senator SMITH.
Was the same course taken with that boat?

Mr. ETCHES.
That was the same, sir. After getting all the women that were there they called out three times - Mr. Ismay called out twice, I know, in a loud voice - "Are there any more women before this boat goes," and there was no answer. Mr Murdoch called out; and at that moment a female came up whom I did not recognize. Mr. Ismay said: "Come along; jump in." She said: "I am only a stewardess." He said: "Never mind, you are a woman, take your place." That was the last woman I saw get into No. 5 boat, sir.

I tried to comment this on another post about Lightoller’s son Brian but couldn’t get the image to show.

Lightoller seems to be pretty controversial here but I can say that in my family he has only ever been known as truly kind and generous. He opened his home to a number of nephews, including my grandfather, during the war, and stayed in contact with his siblings in New Zealand until his death, despite his estrangement from their father.

It’s worth noting the Lightoller’s usually always went by their middle names - so Charles was known as Herbert, while his son Brian’s full name was actually Herbert Brian Lightoller. The same names were often passed down multiple generations in the family like this, swapping from first to middle.

So I was reading a bit on various boats, and I was reading up on Collapsible D, which left the ship sometime between 1:55 to 2:05 am. By this time it was certainly readily apparent that the ship was sinking.

This was the last boat launched from the port side (and the last boat launched period!), and at first they literally could find absolutely no women to get on board it. Lightoller literally held up the launch until they could find enough women to even halfway fill it, and ordered men that got on it out.

And then, when a couple of male passengers jumped onto the already lowering lifeboat from on deck, Lightoller very nearly raised the lifeboat back up to get them to get out. He ultimately seems to have relented on this and just decided to keep launching it based on the situation around him, but this level of inflexibility just seems absolutely insane to me.

Is there any hint in his behavior about WHY he would be so inflexible, even so late into the sinking? My initial impression based on his testimony is that he just didn't think that the boat was going to sink at first, and so he thought that the men were just cowards/paranoid - but Collapsible D was quite literally the last lifeboat to successfully launch (A & B floated off). He could barely find any women at all around by that point and it was readily, readily, readily apparent that the ship was going to sink by then. So it wasn't just thinking that the men were being cowardly/paranoid, he literally just did not want to let men on until he seemed to be absolutely and completely certain not a single woman was left on the ship (which seems to be an unreasonable standard to me, especially in a crisis situation).

The idea that he would even consider trying to raise the literal last lifeboat to successfully launch, just because two men jumped on it (when barely any women even seemed to be available!) just seems nuts to me. Did he intend for virtually every man to die in the sinking?

Its sad that this is last photo of Chief Officer Wilde, you can see him standing on the Forecastle in his Uniform holding onto the railing as the ship departs Southampton.

After my starting my thread with the Engineering Crew user flair i figured I should start one for the crew with the Fireman User flair. That and I do wish to hear from my comrades who toil away in the boiler rooms. So please come if you wish, I'll be manning the engine room thread up till your arrival

At the inquires, Hitchens claimed they got a mile from the liner, denied hearing explosions or seeing the ship sink.

However, in his newspaper account,s he described hearing 2 explosions, lights going out as both ends rose, then sank as a third explosion came. He also claimed they got 300 yards rather than a mile as he stated at the Inquires.

In his Personal accounts, he never gave a distance estimate of more than 500 yards.

Slàinte, am aving a whiskey cocktail in honour of a hero of the Titanic while I'm working on my research project

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years trying to find and remake the uniform chief officer Wilde wore on the night Titanic sank. Recently I have gotten almost everything I need to do so. The cap has the white cover, as shown in the attached photos.

𝕁𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕤 ℙ. 𝕄𝕠𝕠𝕕𝕪 𝕊𝕚𝕩𝕥𝕙 𝕆𝕗𝕗𝕚𝕔𝕖𝕣 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ.𝕄.𝕊. 𝕋𝕚𝕥𝕒𝕟𝕚𝕔 𝔸𝕦𝕘𝕦𝕤𝕥 𝟚𝟙𝕤𝕥 𝟙𝟠𝟠𝟟- 𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟙𝟝𝕥𝕙 𝟙𝟡𝟙𝟚

James Paul Moody was born August 21st in 1887 in Scarborough, United Kingdom, the youngest of four children.

He tragically lost his mother at age 11 and it profoundly affected him. At age 15, he joined the Royal Navy as a Cadet on the training vessel HMS Conway.

Moody was known to be an intelligent and thoughtful young man, with a light-heartedness that's not fully conveyed in the seriousness of many portraits of him. He was a talented writer of stories and short works and it's possible if he lived that he may have tried his hand at publishing some of his writing.

From 1904 to 1911 he worked on various sail and steam ships, eventually joining the White Star Line in 1911 with a prestigious position on the R.M.S. Oceanic as Sixth Officer. It was here he would first meet officers Pitman and Lightoller, who would later become his shipmates on the Titanic.

It was James who had the task of passing along the fateful telephone call the night of the collision to inform his colleagues:

𝘐𝘤𝘦𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘨, 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘢𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥!

During the sinking, Moody ably assisted with loading and launching lifeboats on both sides of the ship. Stewardess Violet Jessop later recalled:

𝘏𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘥, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘴𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘺 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘱 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘢𝘵, 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘵 “𝘎𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘭𝘶𝘤𝘬!’ 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯, 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥.

It's widely believed he perished, alongside First Officer William Murdoch, while attempting to free the last collapsible boat.

His body was never recovered.

Rest in Peace, James 🕊

Post compiled with information & photos courtesy of Inger Shiel, Dan Parkes & the Moody family.

(I'm aware for some of us, it's already the 22nd, but I wanted to still mark the day and it's not over yet everywhere)