Today’s Calm Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
As the lifeboats of the doomed Titanic were being launched on April 14, 1912, some passengers resisted the urge to panic. Isidor and Ida Straus came near lifeboat 8 as it was being loaded. Mr. Straus declared he would not get in until all women and children had been safely taken off the boat. Mrs. Straus then refused to leave her husband’s side, stating, “We have been living together for many years, and where you go, I go.” After giving her fur coat to her maid, who descended in the boat, she and her husband sat down in steamer chairs and calmly watched as the lifeboats filled. Benjamin Guggenheim and his manservant, Victor Giglio, removed their life jackets and changed into elegant evening clothes before returning to the deck. He told a steward, “I think there is grave doubt that the men will get off. I am willing to remain and play the man’s game if there are not enough boats for more than the women and children. I won’t die here like a beast. Tell my wife… I played the game out straight and to the end. No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim is a coward.” Major Butt and Frank Millet chose to retire to the first-class smoking room, where they sat at a table and played a final hand of cards before going their own way. All would perish, along with more than 1,500 others.
Culled from: Titanic
Major Butt. Snicker.
It gets worse; His full name was Archibald Butt.
A few years ago my parents, brother and I went to an exhibit of Titanic artifacts in Pennsylvania. When you got in you got a tag with a name on it, a name of one of the passengers who was the same sex as you. You found out at the end of the exhibit if you had survived. Several times as we went through the place we saw that an adult male passenger, especially first-class, had the lowest chance of surviving the sinking.
When we got done we found out that my brother went down with the ship. He was a young first-class male traveller. My dad did survive, but he was only about two years old. Mom and I both made it home.
It was such a shame to have to leave Brother behind.
There were more 1st class men who survived the sinking than there were 3rd class children; lifeboats on one side were letting men board if there were no women at hand willing to get in. Unfortunately, many 3rd class passengers either never made it up to the decks, or were only able to get there after most or all of the lifeboats had left. (IIRC, there’s some debate as to whether or not they had deliberately been kept locked up below decks until it was too late; whether or not it was intentional, the end result was the same. There were a number of entire families who all died, including at least two which had 8 children each (the Goodwins were one; I’m sorry I don’t recall the others off the top of my head). The toddler whose body was recovered after the sinking and buried in Halifax was determined to be little Sidney Goodwin, the youngest member of his family, after DNA testing of the very few bones that remained. (The soil in which the bodies were buried was very damp and prone to flooding, and many bodies simply disappeared, bones and all.) As for Benjamin Guggenheim, he did make an appearance in the ’97 movie, but I thought Cameron painted him as far more effete and cavalier than I daresay he actually was; by the time he came back on deck in his evening wear, he knew he wasn’t going to survive (he’d already put his mistress in a lifeboat earlier), but was determined to face his fate as bravely as possible, and hey, if you’re going to die anyway, you may as well dress up and look your best, eh?
And yes, I know way too much about this topic…