On 10 April 1912, the Titanic embarked on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, stopping at Cherbourg, France and Cobh, Ireland before heading across the Atlantic to New York. She was the largest and most luxurious liner of her time, but just five days after launching, disaster struck: the ship collided with an iceberg southeast of Newfoundland and sank to the bottom of the sea. Around 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers perished, but some of the survivors went on to lead remarkable lives that stretched into the 21st century.
Click through the gallery to discover the heart-wrenching but inspiring tales of the people that survived the Titanic...
Junior wireless operator Harold Bride was responsible for sending SOS messages to other vessels – which ultimately alerted the RMS Carpathia rescue boat. Without him and the other wireless operators on the ship, it’s unlikely anyone would have survived the sinking. When the Titanic hit the iceberg, Bride and his colleague Jack Phillips relentlessly signalled other ships until they were informed that just two lifeboats remained. With the ship sinking fast, Bride scrambled onto a sinking collapsible boat. He stayed there until the Carpathia came to his rescue.
The Titanic’s chief baker Charles Joughin managed to survive the sinking of the ship in the most unlikely way possible: by getting drunk. When the Titanic started to sink, Joughin went around the ship dispatching bread and biscuits to staff, before disappearing into his cabin for a nightcap. According to an investigation into the disaster, the drink may have saved his life. The alcohol prevented him from feeling the chill and allowed him to paddle around until dawn, when he was rescued, while fellow crew and passengers suffered from cold shock and drowned.
Aged just two and four, Michel and Edmond Navratil survived the disaster when they were put on the last lifeboat by their father. Tragically, that was the last time they ever saw him. The young boys, who spoke only French and had been registered on the ship under false names, were looked after by a French-speaking passenger in New York until their mother back in France was eventually traced – by way of a newspaper article that included their photographs.
Dorothy Gibson was a silent film actress and singer who had booked a ticket aboard the Titanic with her mother. At the time of the ship’s fateful collision the pair were playing bridge in the lounge, before Gibson noticed "a long drawn, sickening crunch" and ran to investigate. She and her mother boarded lifeboat seven, the first to leave the ship, but the situation quickly worsened when a hole was found at the bottom of the boat. Luckily, the passengers were able to plug it with items of clothing. Just five days after the tragedy, Gibson was made to re-enact it in a silent film about the Titanic. She quit acting shortly afterwards.
An important campaigner for women's rights and the education of the poor, Margaret 'Molly' Brown was an American socialite, philanthropist and traveller. She had been journeying through Egypt when news of her sick grandchild led her to buy a ticket on the Titanic, as it was the quickest way back to the US. When the ship sank, she took charge on the lifeboats, searching for survivors and trying to get as many people to safety as possible. She handed out blankets and food to fellow passengers, and it is said that she took up an oar herself. She was later immortalised in the 1960 musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown.
Born on 2 February 1912, Eliza 'Millvina' Dean was just nine weeks old when she boarded the Titanic with her parents and older brother. The family had been planning to emigrate to the US, where Millvina’s father wanted to run a tobacco shop. When the Titanic collided with the iceberg, her father immediately knew something was wrong, urging the family to gather their belongings quickly. His quick action pushed them to the front of the queue and secured the family a lifeboat spot. Millvina was the last living survivor of the disaster, dying in 2009 aged 97.
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The only Japanese passenger on the Titanic, Masabumi Hosono was sleeping in his second class cabin when news of the disaster broke. Arriving at the lifeboats, he was initially turned away for being foreign, but was given a second chance when a boat unexpectedly announced it had space for two more people. Hosono, desperate to see his family again, jumped in, but met with a cold reception back in Japan, where the media smeared him for perceived selfishness. He was even falsely accused of pushing other passengers off the lifeboat to secure his spot.
Ocean liner stewardess Violet Jessop was unlucky enough to endure three collisions at sea – but she survived them all. In 1911, she was working aboard the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic, when it collided with a warship and suffered a hole in its side. Luckily the ship made it back to port despite the damage. In 1912, when the Titanic endured its fateful collision, Jessop helped load the lifeboats and eventually made it to safety on lifeboat 16. A couple of years later, she worked as a nurse on the Britannic, which sank after running into a mine. She endured a serious head injury but managed to get onto a lifeboat, and ultimately lived to the age of 84.
Just seven years old when she boarded the Titanic with her parents, Eva Hart was among the disaster’s youngest survivors. When the ship struck the iceberg her father ensured that she and her mother got a place in a lifeboat, but sadly he didn’t survive. Hart went on to become one of the Titanic's most vocal critics, particularly slating its low number of lifeboats. She also spoke out against attempts to recover the ship’s artefacts from the sea floor, calling the relevant salvage companies "fortune hunters, vultures, pirates and grave robbers".
Lawrence Beesley (pictured, right) was a science teacher working at Dulwich College in London when he booked a second class ticket aboard the Titanic. He was reading a book in his cabin when the ship hit the iceberg and didn't initially notice any change, but he quickly became aware of a sudden stillness and left his cabin to see the lifeboats already being filled. As a man, his odds of survival weren’t great, but he managed to find a final spot on a lifeboat when there were no women and children left. He was one of the first people to write a book about the tragedy, which was published just nine weeks later.
Lucile Carter was an American socialite who boarded the Titanic with her husband, William Ernest Carter, and their two children. Despite her wealthy background, Carter wasn’t afraid to get stuck into the rescue effort. Once she and her children had boarded a lifeboat, she noticed "there were no seamen in it. There was nothing else for me to do but to take an oar." She initially thought her husband had perished, but he managed to snag a spot on another boat and reappeared on the Carpathia the next day.
When the lifeboats were launched, Charles Lightoller was working as a second officer and took charge of lowering the vessels into the water. He strictly enforced the rule that only women and children should be allowed to board, and it’s even said he began threatening men with a revolver. Lightoller himself had expected to drown. When the Titanic went down, he launched himself into the ocean and swam to an overturned collapsible boat, to which 30 people were clinging. He instructed them to move their weight to help stop the boat capsizing, which ultimately helped all but three passengers survive until the rescue ship reached them at dawn.
Countess Noel Leslie, also known as Lady Rothes, was among the richest passengers aboard the Titanic. When the ship struck the iceberg, Leslie was placed in lifeboat eight – the first boat lowered into the sea on the port side. Once there, she took charge of the tiller for more than an hour to let the seaman rest, and looked after her fellow passengers, consoling a young Spanish woman who had lost her husband in the tragedy. She emerged from the disaster a hero, but shied away from any publicity that tried to paint her as such.
Charlotte Collyer had boarded the Titanic to emigrate to the US with her daughter, Marjorie, and husband, Harvey. At the moment of disaster Collyer had been lying down in her bunk as she was feeling nauseated from all the rich food served on board. She was eventually woken by news of the crash and went to deck, where she and her daughter were quickly loaded onto a lifeboat in line with the 'women and children first' rule. Tragically, her husband never made it onto a lifeboat, despite promising her he’d find a spot. "I let myself be saved, because I believed that he, too, would escape," Collyer later said.
A colonel in the US Army and amateur war historian, Archibald Gracie IV was from a wealthy background and booked a first class ticket on the Titanic. When the ship began to sink, he scrambled to help women and children onto the lifeboats, helping the aforementioned second officer Charles Lightoller until every last one was filled. He boarded a collapsible boat with the rest of the ship’s crew, but this quickly overturned and he spent most of the night clinging to its underside. Although Gracie ultimately survived, he caught severe hypothermia from the freezing waters and sadly passed away just eight months later.
Irish Jesuit priest Father Francis Browne was given a ticket for the Titanic by his uncle. A keen photographer, he began taking pictures the moment the ship left Southampton, and became friends with an American couple who urged him to stay for the second leg of the journey. He telegrammed his superior to ask for leave, but received a response reading: "GET OFF THAT SHIP". And so Browne disembarked at Cobh – two days before the Titanic met her end. The images he took weren't discovered until 1985, and are among the best collections of Titanic photos we have today.