Passenger Stories & News

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Survivors of the Titanic still alive today

Lillian Gertrude Asplund, Born 10/21/1906, age on Titanic 5 1/2 years old, Class 3rd, Lifeboat #4, age now 91, Residence:
Massachusetts, USA.
Eliza Gladys Milvina Dean, Born 2/2/1912, age on Titanic 10 weeks old, Class 3rd, Lifeboat #C, age now 86, Residence:
England.
Louise Laroche, Born 7/2/1910 , age on Titanic 3 years old, Class 2nd, Lifeboat #C?, age now 89, Residence: France.
Michel M. Navratil, born 6/12/1908, age on Titanic 3 1/2 years old, Class 2nd, Lifeboat #D, age now 89, Residence:
France.
Winnifred Vera Quick VanTongerloo, Born 1/23/1904 , age on Titanic 8 years old, Class 2nd, Lifeboat #11, age now 94,
Residence: Michigan, USA.
Barbara J. West, Born c. 1908, Age on Titanic 3 1/2 years old, Class 2nd, Lifeboat ?, age now 89, Residence: England.

Note: I am NOT providing addresses or phone numbers for living survivors. They deserve their privacy
and well earned retirements. Please stop asking.

ELGIN, Illinois - March 9, 1998 - Eleanor I. Shuman, one of the last survivors of the Titanic, died on Saturday from an
undisclosed illness, a spokesman at Sherman Hospital said. She was 87.

Shuman was less than 2 years old when the ship went down in 1912. She was traveling with her mother, brother and two Swedish
teens during the voyage home from Europe, following a visit to relatives. Shuman's mother, brother and one of the teens were
among the 705 survivors.

She said she remembered people screaming and crying on the ship and seeing hands reaching up to her. Shuman saw the premiere
of the movie "Titanic" last year and met director James Cameron. Schuman said that though she enjoyed the film, its realism
brought back haunting memories of drowning victims reaching out to her.

"I kept saying to myself, 'I was there', but it is hard to pin it to those things mum told me about," she said of the movie. "I've seen
it twice and I thought it was wonderful."

Her death leaves six survivors of the disaster.

SOUTHAMPTON, England - January 20, 1997 - Mrs. Edith Brown Haisman, the oldest survivor of the Titanic, died at the age of
100. She was 15 years old when placed in lifeboat No. 13 as the Titanic sank. Her father Thomas Brown, a glass of brandy in
hand, waved from the deck saying "I will see you in New York."

In 1993 she described her ordeal:

"I was in lifeboat No. 13. I always remembered that. My father was waving to us and talking to a clergyman, the Rev. Carter.

"The Titanic went in the ice and I heard three bangs. Before we hit, there had been terrific vibrations from the engines during the
night as the ship was really racing over the sea.

"As the lifeboat pulled away we heard cries from people left on the ship and in the water and explosions in the ship. There were
lots of bodies floating. We kept on rescuing people and trying to cover them up against the cold. We were in the lifeboat nine
hours.

"I kept looking in the water for my father and when we reached New York we went to the hosptials to see if he had been picked
up."

Edith married the late Frederick Haisman in South Africa. They had 10 children and more than 30 grandchildren.

Stories of the Survivors

Anna Turja as told by her grandson John Rudolph Updated 4/14/97

Anna Sophia Turja was one of 21 children, born of two mothers and one father, in Oulainen, in northern Finland. John Lundi,
the husband of her half-sister, Maria, invited her to come work for him at his store in Ashtabula, Ohio, and he got her a ticket on
the Titanic.

On Board
She was 18 years old when she boarded the Titanic in Southampton, England, as a steerage (third class) passenger on her
way to America. To her the ship was a floating city. The main deck, with all its shops and attractions, was indeed bigger
than the main street in her home town. The atmosphere in third class was quite lively: a lot of talking, singing, and
fellowship. She had two roommates on board who were also young Finnish women. One was married, traveling with two
small children; the other traveling with her brother. But in steerage, the men were kept in the front part of the ship, the
women in the rear. Late that Sunday night, she felt a shudder and a shake. Shortly thereafter, her roommate’s brother
knocked on the door and told them that “something was wrong,” that they should wear warm clothing and put on their life
jackets. Their little group started heading for the upper decks. A crew member tried to keep them down – ordered them
back – but they refused to obey, and he didn’t argue with them. She clearly remembers, however, that the doors were
closed and chained shut behind them to prevent others from coming up. The others of the group continued up to a higher
deck, “where it will be safer,” they said, but out of pure curiosity and chance she remained on what turned out to be the
boat deck. She thought it was too cold to go up further, and she was intrigued by the activity and by the music being played
by the band, though she didn’t know the names of the tunes. She remembers the band coming out of a room they had been
playing in and the doors being locked after everyone had gotten out. She also remembers seeing the lights of another ship
from the deck. It was on the deck that she met the Panula family, also from Finland. Mrs. Panula was traveling with her
five children to meet Mr. Panula who was waiting for them in Pennsylvania. Mrs. Panula posed the question, “Must we all
die by water?” She had already lost a teen-aged son by drowning back in Finland. Grandma believed the hype of the ship
being unsinkable, and she didn’t fully understand what was going on because she did not know the language. Eventually a
sailor physically threw her into a lifeboat.

In the Lifeboat
Her lifeboat was fully loaded when it was launched; it was not one of the ones that got caught up in the cables. They
immediately rowed away from the ship, fearing that they would get sucked down with it when it went under. The sailors
were so well trained, she was sure that they would have capsized had it not been for the expertise of the oarsmen. She
heard loud explosions as the lights went out. Her lifeboat was so full that as she held her hand on the edge of the boat her
fingers got wet up to the knuckles. For the first five or ten minutes in the water they had to beat people off who were
trying to get into the boat. They were in the lifeboats for eight hours. Though the night was a “brilliant, bright night,” they
had to burn any scraps of paper they could find -- money or anything else that wouldn’t cause a flash fire -- so that the
boats could see each other and stay together. Her most haunting memory was that of the screams and cries of dying people
in the water. Every time she would get to this part of the story she would start crying. “They were in the water, and we
couldn’t help them.”

Carpathia
The people were wonderful. They gave up their blankets and coats, anything that could help. She kept looking for her
roommates, but she never saw either of them again. The whole Panula family was also later confirmed lost.

New York and Aftermath
The survivors did not have to go through Ellis Island, as all other immigrants did in those days. Instead, they were taken
straight to New York Hospital, and then sent on their way. Because of the language problem, she was literally tagged and
put on a train to Ashtabula, Ohio. Years later, my uncle Butch was trying to get a security “crypto clearance” in the Army.
The FBI first had to investigate why there was no record of Grandma’s citizen registration from entering the country. (He
did get the clearance.) She was greeted by a crowd in Ashtabula, as she was somewhat of a celebrity by this time. She very
soon met my grandfather, Emil Lundi, John’s brother. They fell in love and got married. She never did go to work for
her brother-in-law. Her name turned up on the “lost passengers” list. Her family in Finland didn’t know that she was alive
until 5 or 6 weeks later when they received a letter from her. In May of 1953, she was a special guest when the movie
“Titanic” came to the new theater in Ashtabula. It was the first movie she had ever seen in her life. When reporters asked
her afterwards (through my uncle as translator) if she thought the movie was realistic, all she could say was, “If they were
close enough to film it, why didn’t they help?” The reporters took that as a “Yes” to their question. Family members tried
to explain to her that it was a re-creation. She just kept saying, “No, no.” Years later, on July 20, 1969, when they were
watching the first moon walk, she wouldn’t (and never did) believe that it was really happening. “No, no. If they could
re-create the Titanic, they could re-create this, too.” Over the years she was interviewed regularly by the local newspapers
when the anniversary of the sinking came around, but she turned down appearances on “I’ve Got a Secret” and “The Ed
Sullivan Show,” partly because of her age, her physical condition, and the language problem. (She never felt strongly
enough about it to learn English.) She also refused many times to join in any lawsuits over the loss. She and my
grandfather felt that they didn’t need to go after money: Grandma had her life, and that was compensation enough. Every
year on the April anniversary she would sit her seven children down to tell them the story again. The phrase she would
always close with, and repeated throughout her life was, “I can never understand why God would have spared a poor
Finnish girl when all those rich people drowned.”

Anna Sophia Turja Lundi died in Long Beach, California, in 1982 at the age of 89.

Margaret Devaney as written by her grandson Peter W. Mastrolia Updated 3/10/98

At the age of 19 my grandmother boarded that unsinkable ship, THE TITANIC, to take her to the Promised land. Instead, she
found Brooklyn and later the city of my birth, Jersey City. But as is often the case,extraordinary events make heroes out of Irish
peasant girls and unfortunately tragedy makes for good story telling. Just ask the producers of the new movie, "TITANIC".
Margaret Devaney O'Neill fled her small village in County Sligo in 1912 to escape famine, poverty, and the English, just as
thousands of others had done, to seek out a new life in the New World. She carried with her a suitcase, some odds and ends, and
the clothes she had on at the time.

Everybody knows the tale of the maiden voyage that would beat her sister ship RMS Olympic for crossing the Atlantic, how the
ship drifted north, it hit an iceberg that ripped a hole in the starboard side, one of the boilers blew, and the ship sank like a rock.
And although this happened almost 86 years ago people are still fascinated by the story.

She was below decks in third class [steerage] peeling potatoes on April 14 1912 when she decided that she needed some fresh air.
With coat in hand she headed up the many flights of stairs to the main deck. As she was nearing the top of the final flight she felt
a tiny bump that interrupted the constant motion she had grown accustomed to over the last four days. It was, of course, the
collision with the iceberg that would cause the TITANIC to sink. Unfortunately, 2230 passengers and crew tried to fit into 20
lifeboats. My grandmother was literally thrown into a boat when she was trying to go back to steerage to find her three traveling
companions who boarded with her. She didn't know they were already doomed: Sealed behind bulkheads that were closed to try
to prevent the ship from sinking.

On the lifeboat with about 50 other terrified souls it appeared that she would at least survive the sinking, but the officer in charge
could not detach the lifeboat from the quickly sinking Titanic. The story goes that Margaret gave him the little knife that she had
been using earlier to peel potatoes and with it he was able to cut the boat loose.

After her lifeboat was picked up by the Carpathia the officer returned the knife to my grandmother and gave her the ensign,
which is the plaque that is attached to the side of each lifeboat bearing the White Star Line symbol. He gave her the ensign to
thank her for the knife, but he also knew that people would begin tearing apart the lifeboats as souvenirs and he wanted to make
sure that she had something to tell her grandchildren about.

The knife, the ensign and her ticket stubs were on display at the Museum at the base of the Statue of Liberty. My grandmother's
name appears in many books and she had been interviewed many times regarding this incident. My grandmother died in 1975
but her story lives on. My daughter, Margaret has written an account of this same story and won a state prize for it.

Catherine & Margaret Murphy as written by their great-granddaughter Erin Garry Updated 4/19/98

My great-grandmother, Catherine (Kate) Murphy, and her older sister Margaret are survivors of the Titanic disaster. Here
is their own personal story of what happened from what they each told their daughters, who then in turn passed on what the
remembered to me:

Kate and Margaret grew up in a family of thirteen children in County Longford, Ireland. Their mother was often sick, and
their father had died when they were young, so their oldest brother was like the head of the family. He was very strict, and
rarely let the girls go to parties or just go out with their friends and have fun.

Since they had two sisters and a brother who were already in America, they really wanted to go, but their brother would
not permit them to. Their neighbors, the name of them is uncertain, (I have narrowed it down to three names, Kiernan, O’Brien,
and O’Conner), bought Third Class tickets for themselves on the Titanic, and then secretly bought tickets for Kate and Margaret
as well.

When the boys left for Cobh, (known as Queenstown by those who are un- educated), Kate and Margaret came with them,
pretending that they were planning just to see them off on their journey to America. They would then have their tickets and
would be off on their way to New York. On the way to Cobh, they joked around with each other saying that they were eloping.
And it was kind of like they were since they were about the same ages.

Once on the ship, the girls, who were then only sixteen and twenty, were amazed by how beautiful it was. Later they would
talk about how being on the Titanic was one of the greatest things that they had ever been able to do. In the evening after dinner
there was always parties in the Third Class Dining Room with singing and dancing. People who had their instruments with them
on the ship would break them out and play along with the rhythm of the dancing feet around them. Third Class may not have
been the most elegant, but it was definitely the most fun.

On the night of the sinking, Kate and Margaret were just going to bed when their neighbors came to their room to tell them
what had happened. Neither of them had had any idea prior to that that anything had happened, and still didn’t realize that the
ship was sinking.

Soon their room began to fill with sea water and the girls tried to get up to the upper decks, but were held back by a sea
barrier. Kate and Margaret, as well as Kathy Gilnagh and Kate Mullins were very happy when James Farrell, who was also an
Irish Third Class passenger ran up to the seaman standing there and yelled, ”Great God, man! Open the gate and let the girls
through!” Surprisingly enough, the seaman did as Farrell had told him to do, and opened the gate to let them pass through to the
upper decks.

Kate and Margaret eventually got up to the main deck and were lucky enough to make it into a lifeboat, lifeboat number
sixteen.

When the rescue ship Carpathia came, Kate said that she didn’t think that it was going to stop. People started waving their
arms and yelling “Help!! Help!! Please stop!!” But the Carpathia did stop, and the two sisters were cold, but still alive when
they got hoisted up out of the wooden boat onto the deck of the ship.

When the Carpathia got to New York, both of them had to go to St. Vincent’s Hospital. Their siblings, Patrick, of
Yonkers, Annie, of Liberty, and Bridget, (called Briggie), came to get them.

Kate and Margaret were very sad to find out that their neighbors had died on the ship, as well as James Farrell, the man
who had saved them. And to their surprise, back at home in Ireland, their mother was devastated because she thought they had
been killed too. She was very happy to find out that they were both all right.

Kate and Margaret both eventually got married and each had three children. Kate’s: Marie (my Nana), Rita, and Michael,
grew up with Margaret’s: Margaret, Anne (who supplied me with much of this information), and Matthew. Both lived out long
lives, but were forever changed by their journey on Titanic. They were terrified of water for the rest of their lives. Kate
rarely talked about the tragedy, but her sister, being older when it happened, did.

Ruth Becker

Ruth Becker was 12 years old in 1912 when she and her family travelled on the Titanic. After
the sinking, Ruth attended high school and college in Ohio, after which she taught high school in
Kansas. She married a classmate, Daniel Blanchard, and after her divorce twenty years later, she
resumed her teaching career. Like most survivors, she refused to talk about the sinking and her
own children, when young, did not know that she had been on the Titanic.It was only after her
retirement, when she was living in Santa Barbara, California, that she began speaking about it,
granting interviews and attending conventions of the Titanic Histrorical Society. In March of
1990, she made her first sea voyage since 1912, a cruise to Mexico. She passed away later that
year at the age of ninety.

Richard Becker
Richard Becker was Ruth's younger brother and was two years old at the time of the disaster. Richard became a singer and in
later life a social welfare worker. Widowed twice, he passed away in 1975.

Nellie Becker
Nellie Becker was the children's mother. She was married to a missionary stationed in India and her three children were sailing to
America for treatment of an illness Richard had contracted in India. Once in America, she and her three children settled in
Benton Harbour, Michigan, until her husband's arrival from India the following year. It was apparent to him and the children that
her personality had changed since the disaster. She was far more emotional and was given to emotional outbursts. Until her death
in 1961, she was never able to discuss the Titanic disaster without dissolving into tears.

Marion Becker
Marion contracted tuberculosis at a young age and died in Glendale, California in 1944.

Olaus Abelseth
Olaus tried vacationing in Canada to calm his nerves following his ordeal with the Titanic, but found that simply going back to
work was just what he needed. Returning to the South Dakota farm he had first homesteaded in 1908, he raised cattle and sheep
for the next 30 years before retiring in North Dakota where he died in 1980.

Madeline Astor
Madeline inherited from her husband the income from a five-million-dollar trust fund and the use of his home on Fifth Avenue
and in the Newport so long as she did not marry. In August 1912, she gave birth to a son with whom she was pregnant on the
Titanic, and she named him after her husband, John Jacob Astor. She relinquished the Astor income and mansions during World
War I to marry William K. Dick of New York, and by him she had two more sons. She divorced Dick in Reno, Nevada in 1933
to marry Italian prize fighter Enzo Firemonte. Five years later this marriage also ended in divorce. She died in Palm Beach,
Florida in 1940 at the age of 47.

Richard and Sally Beckwith
Ricahrd and Sally continued to travel and entertained frequently at their homes in New York City and Squam Lake, New
Hampshire. Richard died in New York in 1933 and his wife in that city in 1955.

Joseph Boxhall
Joseph was 4th officer on the Titanic and attained a command with the Royal Navy but was never made captain while in the
merchant service. He left the sea in 1940 and in 1958 acted as technical advisor to the film "A Night To Remember." Following
his death in 1967, his ashes were scattered over the ocean in the vicinity of the Titanic's sinking place.

Harold Bride
Harold Bride was the Titanic's wireless man. He kept a very low profile in the years following the disaster. World War I found
him as a wireless operator on the tiny steamer, the Mona's Isle. He later embarked on a career as a salesman before retiring to
Scotland where he passed away in 1956.

Molly Brown
Molly's life took a surprising turn after the sinking. Previously, her efforts to be accepted by the Denver society had been
unsuccessful, the selflessness and heroism she had shown on the Titanic prompted her neighbours, for a short time, to open their
doors to her. In 1914, she was named a potential candidate for Congress. As time passed on, however, she grew increasingly
eccentric. Her husband died intestate and she found herself at odds with her children over his money. In 1932, at the age of 65,
she died suddenly in New York City after a stroke. It was only after her death, when she became the subject of the hit Broadway
musical and film, "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" that she gained some of the fame she would have so enjoyed in life.

Fredrick Fleet
He was the lookout who first sighted the iceberg that sank the Titanic. He left the sea in 1936. He worked for Harland and Wolff's
Southampton shipyard during World War II, after which he became a night watchman for the Union Castle Line. As he moved
into old age, he sold newspapers on a street corner in Southampton. In 1965, despondant over his finances and the recent loss of
his wife, Fleet took his own life.

J. Bruce Ismay
Ismay retired as planned from the International Mercantile Marine in June 1913, but the position of managing director of the
White Star Line that he had hoped to retain was denied him. Survivng the Titanic disaster had made him far too unpopular with
the public. He spent his remaining years alternating between his homes in London and Ireland. Because Ismay had never had
many close friends, and subsequently had few business conatcts, it was mistakenly easy to assume that he had become a recluse. He
did enjoy being kept informed of shipping news but those around him were forbidden to speak of the Titanic. He died in 1937.

Masabumi Hosono
The Titanic was sinking fast. Horrified passengers rushed onto lifeboats being lowered into the dark, icy sea. Desperate men were
stopped at gunpoint so women and children could escape first.
Masabumi Hosono stood on the deck, torn between the fear of shame and the instinct for survival. Then the 42-year-old Japanese
bureaucrat found himself in the right place at the right moment. There were two spots open in a lifeboat. Hosono hesitated, but
when he saw a man next to him jump in, he swallowed his fear and followed.
Hosono's decision saved his life -- yet it brought him decades of shame in Japan. He was branded a coward, fired from his job and
spent the rest of his days embittered.

Sarah A. Stap as written by her grandnephew Gordon Stap Updated 3/13/98

My great-aunt, Miss Sarah Agnes Stap, served on many of the White Star liners as her father was a Captain with the White Star
Line. She was born on one of his ships and shared his love of the sea.

She was, in fact, not a stewardess as is commonly listed. She was on the maiden voyage of the "Baltic", and "Adriatic", and also
served on the "Celtic", and "Olympic" as a nurse. She was one of the first to be transferred from the Olympic to the Titanic on
which she served as matron.

She owed her survival to a young cabin boy beside her who, when she was told to get into a lifeboat by the crew member in
charge of that lifeboat, that there was room for her, she told the young cabin boy that as she was forty years old and had had the
best years of her life, he should take her spot. The cabin boy's answer was to simply pick her up, and put her in the lifeboat. She
died in 1938.

So many heroes unknown, "unheralded and unsung".

Extracts from "Titanic - An Illustrated History" as well as personal stories submitted by relatives.