Built by the White Star Line, it was the largest ship in the world at the time, because it was able to carry 1,317 passengers and 823 crew, from Europe to North America and back again.
But…On her maiden voyage across the Atlantic, she struck an iceberg and sank 600 kilometres southeast of Newfoundland.
In stories, films and documentaries, the ship is often portrayed as an American and British story, and they often fail to mention that among the passengers many Canadians.
In third class, there were dozens of people looking for a new life for themselves and their families.
In second class, there were people returning home, while others also looked for new opportunities in a new land.
In first class, there were some of the richest Canadians at the time. A sculptor, a railway magnate, the heir to a brewery fortune, and even the wife of a man who swindled money out of investors.
Some of them made it home, while many others went down in the most famous shipwreck in history.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today I’m sharing the story of… The Titanic!
Constructed by the Belfast shipbuilder Harland & Wolff, the Titanic was a truly awe-inspiring sight.
Those who stood on the dock on April 10, 1912, would’ve been dwarfed by the 269 metres long and 53 metres high ship they were about to board in Southampton that day.
Hundreds of Third-Class passengers boarded at 9:30 am and were the first to make the ship their home on the lower levels of the vessel.
Among them was the Andersson family.
Johan and his wife Alfrida were taking their children Ebba, Ellis, Ingeborg, Sigrid and Siyard to their new home in Winnipeg.
The family was originally from Sweden, and they were making their way to Canada after Alfrida’s brother-in-law, Ernest Danborn, convinced her to emigrate to North America where he had already settled.
Ernest was a migrant recruiter, and convincing such a large family to immigrate meant a healthy paycheque for himself.
Johan Andersson was doing well in Sweden, but the temptation of something new half a world away was too much for him to pass on.
Before they left, they attended a party at the house of Axel and Hilda Brogen where Alfrida told a friend that she felt off about traveling across the ocean.
On April 10, 1912, the family boarded the Titanic, and they were joined by Ernest Danborn and their friend Anna Nysten.
Boarding at the same time and in the same class was Neshan Krekorian.
He was a 25-year-old Armenian who was encouraged by his father to leave his country and start a better life halfway around the world.
At the time, the Ottoman Empire controlled Armenia, where citizens were subjected to violence and persecution which led to.
the Armenian Genocide only three years later. Between 1915 and 1916, 800,000 to 1.2 million Armenians were sent on death marches into the Syrian Desert.
Along with Neshan Krekorian Jakob Johanson was also boarding the Titanic that day.
Born in Finland, he had moved to America over a decade earlier and eventually made his way to the Klondike. Unfortunately, he arrived in 1902, well after the Klondike Gold Rush was over.
With few prospects, he returned to Finland and bought himself a farm but by 1912, he had sold it to his brother and was once again going to try his luck across the pond.
With a plan to move to Vancouver, he bought a ticket on the ship the Adriatic, but due to the 1912 general coal strike in England, which impacted many train and ship schedules he was transferred on to the Titanic.
Once the Third-Class boarded the ship, Second-Class passengers ventured into their cabins and Leonard Hickman was one of them.
Born in England he moved to Neepawa, Manitoba, in 1908 where he did quite well for himself and was on his way back after spending Christmas with family in England.
During the visit he convinced his entire family, which consisted of his parents and ten brothers and sisters, to move to Canada with him.
The family was set to leave in early April but were delayed because of that pesky coal strike.
While the majority of the family would have to wait, Leonard got tickets aboard the Titanic for himself, and his two brothers Lewis and Stanley.
The rest of the family planned to follow at a later date on a different ship.
As Leonard and his brothers boarded the Titanic, they would be joined in Second Class by Frank Mayberry from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
In December 1911, he left Canada with his wife and two children to winter in England. By February, he wrote to friends in Moose Jaw to say he would be returning but that his family would stay behind in England because of his wife’s poor health.
Joining him in second class was Alfred Pain who was a gifted athlete.
There wasn’t much he couldn’t do. He was an excellent swimmer, raced yachts and taught himself the piano and flute.
His favourite song was Nearer My God To Thee and it would become a historical irony since that’s the last song allegedly played by the Titanic’s band.
Pain earned a medical degree from the University of Toronto in 1910 at the age of only 21 and became Dr. Pain.
I don’t know if he thought about changing his name to practice medicine, but I would have.
Regardless, he had spent the previous six months in London learning surgical techniques, and on April 10, 1912, he boarded the Titanic on his way back to Canada, and he couldn’t have been happier.
He loved new technology, and the ship was cutting edge, in fact, he specifically bought a second-class ticket so he could see the ship up close.
His sister stated,
“It was really splendid. He was delighted.”
Not everyone boarding that day would be a passenger.
William Ryerson had taken a job as a steward in the second-class dining room.
He was born in Port Dover, Ontario in 1878 and served in the Boer War with the Royal Canadian Dragoons.
After saying goodbye to his wife of five years, Florence, he stepped onto the Titanic to begin work hoping to make extra money for his young family.
As he prepared for his duties as a steward, he was also aware that should the need arise, he would also oversee a lifeboat.
Little did he know… what would be in his doomed future.
Last aboard The Titanic were First-Class passengers and among them was sculptor Paul Chevre who was travelling alone to attend the opening of the Chateau Laurier in Quebec City.
His work was renowned and included the 1898 statue of Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec.
In 1909, he unveiled a statue of Honore Mercier, the former premier of Quebec.
Charles Hays, the president of the Grand Trunk Railway was a fan of his work and asked him to create a bust of Sir Wilfrid Laurier to be displayed in the lobby of Chateau Laurier.
Chevre had just spent six months in Europe and was returning for the opening of the grand hotel which had been designed by Bruce Price.
The man who commissioned the bust of Laurier also boarded the Titanic around the same time.
Charles Melville Hays was born May 16, 1856, and he was built for a life of iron and steel.
By 1863 he was 17 and he started work as a clerk for the railroad. He was quickly promoted and reached upper management in a few years.
At the age of 39, he became the head of the Grand Trunk Railway in Canada when the company was nearly bankrupt.
. He quickly reconstructed its administration and operations and clawed the company out of debt while supervising the construction of the Victoria Jubilee Bridge.
By 1912 when he boarded the Titanic the company was back in black.
He was personally invited on board by White Star Line Chairman J. Bruce Ismay who encouraged Hays to take the doomed ship home with his family after a European vacation.
As Hays walked up into the ship, he was joined by his wife Clara, daughter Orian, son-in-law Thornton Davidson, maid Mary Perreault, and personal secretary Vivian Payne.
Following Hays and his family onto the ship was Bess Allison, her husband Hudson and their two children Helen and Trevor.
The couple met on a train and married in 1907.
Hudson made a fortune through smart investments and then reinvested it into various companies. One of which was the British Canadian Lumber Corporation and because of it, each year, he travelled to England with his family to attend the annual meeting.
He had taken the past winter in England to purchase new furniture for the family’s home, along with horses for their ranch.
Joining the family as they stepped onto the Titanic was Mildren Brown, their cook, George Swane, their chauffer, Sarah Daniels, their maid and Alice Cleaver, a nursemaid. While Hudson, Bess, Sarah, Helen, Alice, and Trevor were in first class, George and Mildred went below to Second-Class.
Alice Cleaver would be misidentified as the convicted murderer Alice Mary Cleaver who had killed her child years earlier.
Various books have reprinted this mistake, as did the 1996 mini-series Titanic.
But the Alice Cleaver on the Titanic was not, however, a murderer. She was hired by the Allison family in 1911 and by all accounts was very good with the children.
While the Allisons and Hays were rich, they were nothing compared to the Baxters.
Quigg Baxter and his mother Helene boarded the ship and would be staying in the second-most expensive room on the Titanic.
I know you are asking, how much did that cost? $100,000 in 2023 funds.
The mother and son were on their way back to Montreal, where the family were William Van Horne’s neighbours.
He had ran the Canadian Pacific Railway for years and was instrumental in its construction.
Charles Hays lived just down the street from them. The Baxters, however, earned their fortune through a shady Ponzi scheme that defrauded many people out of money.
Baxter’s father James served five years in prison for it and passed away in 1905 just as he was being released.
Because of its Montreal’s elite shunned Helene Baxter and she spent winters in Europe and avoided the busy party and social scene in Montreal.
Her son who was boarding the Titanic was also a decent hockey player, until a stick to the eye ended his career in 1907.
After that, Quigg Baxter spent his time partying and living the high life alongside his mother.
He had joined his mother and sister in Europe for the winter of 1911. While in France, he met a Belgian dancer named Berthe De Villiers at a nightclub.
Ever the playboy, he told her he would marry her if she returned to Canada with him when she agreed the two became engaged.
However, he neglected to tell his mother.
As Baxter, his mother and sister walked onto the Titanic, only he knew that joining him in First Class, albeit in another room, was his secret fiancé Berthe.
Heading into First Class alongside the Baxters were several other men with plenty of money in their pockets.
The richest was Harry Molson. He was the great-grandson of John Molson, who founded the Molson Brewery,
Described as a wild child, by 1897 he had inherited much of the Molson fortune.
He loved the good life and took part in yacht racing and won Lord Strathcona’s Challenge Cup in 1901.
In February 1912 he travelled to England on business where he ran into his friend Arthur Peuchen.
Arthur was his opposite in many ways.
Where Harry was a wild child, Arthur was disciplined.
He had served with the Queen’s Own Rifles, reaching the rank of Major.
During the Coronation of King George V, he was a marshalling officer.
He owned his own yacht and had served as both the Vice-Commodore and Rear-Commodore of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.
Arthur happened to be in Europe to check on the status of the Standard Chemical Company of Canada.
Originally, Harry Molson was scheduled to travel on the SS Tunisian in March but Arthur convinced him to extend his stay so they could sail home together on the Titanic.
Joining Harry and Arthur was Hugo Ross, Arthur’s friend from Winnipeg, along with two other friends Thomson Beattie and Thomas McCraffy.
Ross was touring the Mediterranean with Beattie and McCraffy when he caught dysentery and they had to cut their trip short.
The last of the Canadian First-Class passengers were the Fortune Family.
Mark and Mary, their son Charles and daughters Alice, Ethel and Mabel, were returning from a three-month tour of Europe.
They happened to be friends with Hugo Ross, Thomas Beattie and Thomas McCraffy, and were delighted to see them on the ship as well.
With everyone on board, the Titanic weighed anchor for the last time at 1:30 pm and departed on her westward journey across the Atlantic.
For the next four days, the weather was in their favor. For the most part, it was very cold but with no wind and calm seas made the crossing easy.
There were various warnings of drifting ice near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, but these were mostly ignored, and the ship continued full steam ahead.
During the crossing, Dr. Alfred Pain took time to sing with an impromptu choir on the ship and play the organ.
He also became friends with Marion Wright, who was on her way to Oregon to marry her fiancé.
Meanwhile Neshan Krekorian had little chance to explore the majestic Titanic since he was stuck in third class, So he kept to himself, nervous about his new life in Canada.
He stayed in cramped quarters, but overall, he was comfortable.
On the night of April 14, most of the passengers went to bed, expecting another quiet day the following day but at 11:40 p.m., lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately in front of the ship and that everything changed.
We all know what happened next.
The crew attempted to avoid the iceberg, but in that effort, the ship scraped along the ice below the waterline perforating the hull below.
Five of the 16 watertight compartments were breached, and water began to flow into the ship.
At Café Parisien in the First-Class section, Paul Chevre was playing cards with other passengers.
He said,
“We were quietly playing auction bridge when we heard a violent noise similar to that produced by a screw racing.”
As Chevre and the others looked towards the portholes, they saw an iceberg moving past them.
In Third Class, Neshan Krekorian and a few other men also heard a shudder and dull thud in the bowels of the ship while playing cards.
They knew something had happened but didn’t know what.
Charles Hays was smoking a cigar in the lounge with Arthur Peuchen when the Titanic hit the iceberg. Both had experience with machines of land and water and knew something was wrong.
Bess and Hudson Allison were dining with Harry Molson in the first-class dining room when they felt the ship begin to shake.
Quigg Baxter was told that the iceberg was nothing to worry about and as he walked back to his cabin, he heard Bruce Ismay and Captain Smith talking and realized that the situation was far more serious.
Paul Chevre left the café and went to see what happened.
On the deck, a crewman said the ship had hit an iceberg and some lifeboats were being prepared but not many people were getting into them.
An officer asked Chevre if he would get into a lifeboat to set an example to the others.
He agreed and after he did, six others followed him.
While Chevre was one of the first to get into the lifeboat, the Fortune family didn’t seem to be too worried and stayed within their cabin.
William Hays was told that the ship was fine, and it was nothing to worry about.
He decided to be on the safe side and went to gather his wife, daughter, and maid and directed them to a lifeboat 3.
His wife did not want to leave him, but he assured her the ship would stay afloat for 10 hours.
The lifeboat was simply a precaution.
The lifeboat descended in fits and started at 12:55 a.m. with 32 people and one Pekinese dog named Sun Yat Sen before it safely reached the waterline.
Harry Molson didn’t seem to be too concerned about the iceberg he had already survived the sinking of the Scotsman in 1899, and the sinking of the Canada in 1904.
Molson’s friend Arthur Peuchen was looking for his friends when he came across Hugo Ross standing at the Grand Staircase.
He told him the ship had hit an iceberg and they needed to get off the ship.
Ross told him,
“It will take more than an iceberg to get me off this ship.”
In the quarters of the Allison family, Alice Cleaver grabbed Trevor Allison and went to a lifeboat without telling Bess or Hudson. She left the ship on Lifeboat 11 at 1:35 a.m., which was filled with 50 people.
As the lifeboat reached the water, it was nearly swamped by a jet of water being pumped out of the ship to stem the flooding.
Quigg Baxter grabbed his mother and sister, bundled them up and took them to Lifeboat 6.
After they were in the lifeboat, he ran back to get Berthe.
Berthe did not want to leave without Baxter, but a very famous woman in the boat convinced her to stay. Her name? Molly Brown.
Known as the Unsinkable Molly Brown, an American socialite and philanthropist, who made her fortune in mining. She helped in the evacuation before she evacuated and became a legendary figure in the Titanic story.
After Brown convinced his fiancé to stay in the lifeboat Quigg Baxter quickly introduced his mother and sister to her, then gave his mother a flask of brandy to keep them warm.
Quigg Baxter watched his mother, sister and fiancé be lowered into the water. The lifeboat only had 24 people and a Pomeranian dog on board, despite the fact it could hold 65.
In the lifeboat were crewmembers Robert Hichens and Frederick Fleet.
Several people in the boat pleaded for another crew member.
Titanic’s Second Officer Charles Lightoller asked if anyone had experience.
Arthur Peachen was nearby and said he had experience with yachts.
Lightoller told him to get into the lifeboat, and Peachen shimmied down the ropes into the lifeboat as a third unofficial crew member.
Meanwhile, Bess Allison was frantically looking for her son Trevor but had no idea he was already off the boat. Bess and her daughter Helen were able to get into lifeboat 6, but she refused to leave without Hudson or Trevor.
She was told by someone that Hudson was on the other side of the ship.
She grabbed her daughter, got out of the lifeboat and ran to find him.
Arthur Peuchen said.
“Mrs. Allison could have gotten away in perfect safety, but somebody told her Mr. Allison was in a boat being lowered on the opposite side of the deck, and with Loraine she rushed away from the boat. Apparently, she reached the other side to find that Mr. Allison was not there. Meanwhile our boat had put off.”
The Fortune family finally left their First-Class Cabin when Charlie Fortune knocked on the door and said he had been on deck and saw the growing panic.
The stewards told them there was nothing to worry about, but Charles wasn’t about to listen to them.
Dr. Alfred Pain hurried to the deck and struggled to make his way through the scared crowd trying to find lifeboats.
He was able to reach his friend Marion Wright and told her,
“I’ve been trying to find you for some time.”
He hurried her over to Lifeboat 9 and waved goodbye as the lifeboat was lowered down the side of the ship.
It was the last time she saw him alive.
The Andersson family, from Sweden were able to get to the top deck in the chaos.
Lifeboat 13 was available but only Anna Nysten, the Andersson’s family friend, got into the boat.
The rest of the family, for a reason lost to history, never joined her.
Lifeboat 13 was lowered at 1:40 a.m. with 55 people on board.
Once it hit the water, it was nearly swamped by a huge stream of water coming out of the condenser exhaust.
Over at the Grand Staircase, the Fortune family reached the deck but were told that only women and children were allowed to go further.
Mary, Alice, Ethel, and Mabel Fortune were ushered on deck without time to say goodbye.
The women left on lifeboat 10 at 1:50 a.m., only a half hour before the ship disappeared below the icy waters.
The lifeboat had 57 people onboard, including Elizabeth Dean, the youngest and last surviving passenger on the ship.
Beside her was Neshan Krekorian, who fought through the crowds in Third Class to get into the top deck and how he managed to escape is debated. Some say he had hid in the empty boat before it was lowered. Another report states he jumped into the boat as it was being lowered.
Either way, he safely got off the sinking ship.
The same could not be said for Leonard, Lewis, and Stanley Hickman. None were able to find a lifeboat.
Frank Mayberry, who left his wife and two children back in England, never got back to Moose Jaw.
He was one of the 90 percent of men in Second Class who went down with the ship.
Eight months after he died, his daughter, Nancy, was born.
William Ryerson, the steward in second class, was put in charge of Lifeboat 9, the same one that carried Marion Wright, Dr. Alfred Pain’s friend.
Thomson Beattie fell into the ocean but was able to swim towards a collapsible lifeboat. Unfortunately, his time in the water sealed his fate and he died from hypothermia before the lifeboat was rescued from the icy waters.
Molson was last seen taking his shoes off, ready to jump in the ocean.
Out at sea, Paul Chevre sat in his lifeboat and watched the great ship sink into the Atlantic Ocean.
He said,
“The Titanic sank without noise, and the suction was very feeble. In the final spasm, the stern of the leviathan stood in the air and then the vessel finally disappeared.”
Neshan Krekorian was with a crew member, and they had to row fast to escape the undertow.
Hours later, the crew member died from exposure in the cold, leaving only Neshan to pilot the lifeboat along with the women and children.
He rowed throughout the night.
At daybreak, the Carpathia saw the lifeboat and rescued them.
Alice Cleaver and Trevor Allison were rescued from Lifeboat 11 by 7 a.m.
In Lifeboat 3, where Clara and Orian Hays were, the survivors drifted for hours waiting to be rescued and argued over minor annoyances.
They were finally rescued at 7:30 a.m.
Through the night, the survivors in lifeboat 6 mostly argued.
Robert Hichens resented that Arthur Peuchen was in the because he was a major and he thought he would try to pull rank.
Peuchen and Molly Brown both argued with Hitchens to rescue people struggling in the water, but Hitchens refused and ordered everyone to stop rowing altogether.
At one point, Brown asked if the women could row to keep warm.
Hitchens said no, so Brown ignored him.
When he physically tried to stop her, she threatened to throw him overboard and Peuchen backed her up.
The boat was one of the last to be rescued, at 8 a.m.
Soon after, the Carpathia picked up lifeboat 10, which included the women of the Fortune family.
[BEAT]
The body of Charles Hayes was recovered from the North Atlantic on April 26, the same day his new hotel, the Chateau Laurier, was to open.
The bodies of his son-in-law Thornton Davis, nor his secretary Vivian Payre, were ever found.
Hays was brought back to Montreal aboard his private rail car, and his funeral was one of the largest in the city’s history to that point.
The bodies of Harry Molson and Hugo Ross were never found.
A month after the disaster, the body of Thomson Beattie was pulled from the water.
Bess and Hudson Allison both died.
Their daughter Lorraine was the only child from first or second class to die on the Titanic.
Quigg Baxter’s body was never found.
His fiancé Berthe stayed with his mother Helene for several months, before she left Canada and returned to Paris.
Leonard, Lewis and Stanley Hickman, only Lewis’s body was found.
The entire Andersson family never made it to Winnipeg and their bodies were never found.
The bodies of Ernest Danborn and Jakob Johanson, were recovered by the Mackay-Bennett.
Neshan Krekorian spent three weeks in hospital recovering from pneumonia after he was rescued from the lifeboat.
He eventually settled in St. Catherines in 1918, where he and his wife Persa raised a son and two daughters.
He never went in a boat again.
In 1953, he attended the premiere of the movie Titanic. After watching the movie, he said,
“I tried to forget for 41 years and now it is all back in my mind again.”
He spoke little of his experience, but his grandson stated he sometimes heard him talk of the screams he heard from the passengers in the water. The sound haunted him until he died at the age of 89.
Paul Chevre remained in Canada for six months before he returned to France.
On his voyage back to Europe, he rarely came out of his cabin and kept to himself.
He never travelled by sea again and died suddenly on Feb. 20, 1914.
[BEAT]
Alice Cleaver, the nursemaid for the Allisons, never spoke about her experience on the Titanic.
She died on Nov. 1, 1984, at the age of 95.
Trevor, the baby she took with her when she escaped, was raised by his great-uncle George and Great-Aunt Lillian.
In 1929, while visiting with his grandparents, he ate a spoiled beef tongue sandwich and died a week later Aug. 7, 1929.
William Ryerson went on to serve in the First World War, reaching the rank of sergeant. He returned to Canada in 1920 and worked at a Hamilton tire plant.
He eventually made his way to England again in 1937 and died in 1949.
That’s almost the end of the story of Canadians in the Titanic… but before I go, I want to share a little bit more about Arthur Peuchen.
[TRANSITION]
Arthur Peuchen never minced words when he spoke about the conduct of Captain Smith and Bruce Ismay.
He said,
“The loss of the Titanic was due to the criminal carelessness in running at full speed through ice with a new crew.”
He was the only Canadian called to testify to the US Senate on April 23, 1912.
At first, he was called a hero, but newspapers criticized him for not pulling rank to rescue more people out of the water. After all he was a military officer and could’ve done so.
Before long, it was claimed he dressed as a woman so he could get into a lifeboat. This was not true.
It didn’t matter, he was soon snubbed by Toronto high society.
As the 1920s went on, he lost much of his fortune before the 1929 Stock Market Crash put a nail in his financial coffin.
He died only two months after the Stock Market Crash, on Dec. 7, 1929.
But that is not the end of the story.
In 1987, a submersible at the wreck site picked up a wallet and brought it to the surface.
It was Arthur Peuchen’s wallet. It seems that as he climbed down the rope to the lifeboat, his wallet fell out of his pocket, floated on the surface for a while before it eventually joined the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Inside the wallet was his calling card, traveler’s cheques, and streetcar tickets.
[OUTRO]
