Posted on 04/20/2016 9:06:52 PM PDT by beaversmom
WITH a groan of tortured metal and the screams of the remaining passengers still clinging to her hull, Titanic sank beneath the waves and the last unlaunched canvas lifeboat was washed from her deck into the foaming, whirlpool of freezing water.
Third class passenger Edvard Lindell, floundering in the maelstrom, struck out desperately in the direction of the half-submerged craft and managed to drag himself aboard but wife Gerda, already exhausted by the numbingly-cold water, did not have the strength to clamber into the swamped Collapsible Lifeboat A.
Like a scene from James Cameron’s Titanic movie, she held on for as long as she could but, as she finally lost her grip and sunk beneath the waves, all husband Edvard had left grasped in his hand was the wedding ring that had slipped from her finger.
Edvard did not last much longer himself and, having succumbed to the cold, his fellow survivors pushed his body overboard to lighten the load in the stricken vessel until the few that were still alive hours later were rescued and Collapsible Lifeboat A was abandoned to drift off into the Atlantic.
Now, 104 years later, photos and eye-witness testimony have emerged of the dramatic moment, a month later, when the ghost lifeboat was spotted by another White Star Line ship, RMS Oceanic, floating 200 miles away, still with three bodies in it.
Thomson Beattie
Whitened by the chill wind and salt spray, two dead Titanic firemen lay prone in the water-logged wreck. Beside them was the corpse of first class passenger Thomson Beattie, 37, still in his dinner suit and, in the bottom of the boat, a gold wedding ring inscribed ‘Edvard to Gerda’.
The long-hidden account of the recovery has come to light because the photos and gruesome testimony of the discovery, and of the reburial at sea of the decomposed bodies, are being put up for sale on Saturday, St George’s Day, by auctioneers Henry Aldridge and Son in Devizes, Wiltshire.
Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said: “These are three first generation photographs of the recovery of Titanic’s last lifeboat.
“Accompanying them is a very graphic handwritten description by a passenger of the condition of those on board and the recovery operation.
The first grainy black and white photo shows six Oceanic crew members being lowered on a tender while a second picture shows them rowing towards the abandoned lifeboat in the distance.
The third snap shows two Oceanic seamen stood on the wooden base of Titanic’s Collapsible lifeboat A, still with its canvas sides down and still partially submerged in the water.
Sadly it is not know who the Oceanic passenger was who wrote the ghoullish accompanying statement, but on May 13th, 1912, he wrote:”I crossed the Atlantic one month after the Titanic catastrophe. We picked up one of the lifeboats with two n****r-like unrecognisable corpses of a passenger in evening dress and two firemen, wedged below the seats.
“The arms came off in the hands of the Oceanic boarding officer.
“Women’s rings were found.”
“The bodies were buried and the prayer service read. The lifeboat then hauled on to our deck when I cut this piece out of the boat covering.”
Shoe-maker Edvard Lindell, 36, and wife Gerda, 30, from Helsingborg, Sweden, were emigrating to the USA, bound for Connecticut, when they boarded Titanic at Southampton as third class passengers.
As the ship sank, they struggled with fellow Swedes August Wennerstrom and Gunnar Tenglin to climb up the sloping deck towards the stern until it became too steep and they slid back down towards the officers’ quarters where the only two unlaunched lifeboats - Collapsible boats A and B - were situated.
As Lifeboat A was washed off the deck, so were they and Edvard and Wennerstrom climbed into it. It was Wennerstrom who tried to help Gerda into the boat but he did not have the strength to do it and she perished.
He said later: “Edvard’s hair turned all grey in lesser time than 30 minutes,” and he died soon after. Neither his nor Gerda’s bodies were ever found and Gerda’s father Nils Persson was eventually given his daughter’s wedding ring, but only after he had shown proof of his right to have it.
Around 30 people had desperately climbed aboard the lifeboat but many had perished and just 13 were eventually rescued alive.
Thomson Beattie was a Canadian land owner and successful businessman who had gone to Europe with two friends for a holiday but, exhausted, they had decided to return.
He wrote to his mother in Ontario three days before they boarded Titanic at Southampton: “We are changing ships and coming home in a new, unsinkable boat.”
He paid £75 4s 10d for first class cabin C-6 which he shared with his friend Thomas McCaffry, and when Titanic slipped beneath the water he had been on the roof near to the officers’ quarters and managed to climb into Collapsible Lifeboat A after he and it were washed overboard, but he died from exposure. A Canadian newspaper, four days after the grisly discovery of the drifting raft, ran the headline: ‘Tooth marks on cork and collapsible lifeboat tell grim tale - Liner found three.’
It went on to report: “Two of the bodies were secured to thwarts by pieces of chains. The body of a cabin passenger was identified by the clothing as that of Thomson Beattie. The other two were members of the crew.”
Sir Shane Leslie, who had been aboard the RMS Oceanic when the lifeboat was found, recalled: “The sea was calm at noon when the watch called out that something could be seen floating ahead. The ship slowed down and it was apparent that the object was an open ship’s lifeboat floating in mid-Atlantic.
“What was horrifying is that it contained three prostate figures. Orders from the bridge dispatched a lifeboat with an officer and a medical officer.
“What followed was ghastly. Two sailors could be seen, their hair bleached by exposure to sun and salt, and a third figure, wearing evening dress, flat on the benches.
“All three were dead and the bodies had been tossing on the Atlantic swell under the open sky ever since it had seen the greatest of ocean liners sink.
“The three bodies were sewn into canvas bags with a steel bar at the end of each. Then one after the other the bodies were draped in the Union Jack, the burial services was read, and they splashed into the sea.”
In a final, ironic twist, it turned out that Beattie’s body was buried at sea on his mother’s birthday, almost at the exact spot in the Atlantic where she had been born 82 years previously on a ship bound for Canada.
Many of the life boats were never lowered because the people didn’t believe the ship was sinking!
If anyone is interested in an excellent documentary (A & E) made a couple of years before Cameron’s 1997 movie, here are the links:
Part I
Titanic - The Complete Story; Part 1 - Death of a Dream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC_xDKMKl9w
Part II
Titanic - The Complete Story; Part 2 - The Legend Lives On
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANS0hunKMKU
That is pretty odd.
Bookmark
104 years later, a reminder to all of us how precious and fleeting life is. I was walking today and smelled the smell of grass - just waking up this spring from its winter dormancy. It just triggered memories of playing in the grass as a child, decades ago, and how the grass smelled then, and just how new the world was to me then. Never take a moment for granted.
Really nice memory. Wow. Thanks for sharing. It’s amazing what can cause “triggers” (not to use it like the left does). Sometimes very vague memories or feelings will be recalled by something someone says or a sight or a smell, and sometimes things more specific. Anyway, your post gave me a good feeling, and also a sad feeling. It’s all very fleeting.
Thompson Beattie looks like the Ancient Aliens Guy’s grandpa.
PING
Someone mentioned the cicadas(we called the locust) are going to be numerous this year....I remember being about 9 here in the deep south...it was deafening at night but completely memorable. A warm feeling.
“Someone mentioned the cicadas(we called the locust) are going to be numerous this year....I remember being about 9 here in the deep south...it was deafening at night but completely memorable. A warm feeling.”
It’s nice to get those memory induced tingles and warmth.
I posted on article on cicadas the other day:
Billions Of Cicadas Are About To Rise From The Earth, Have Sex And Die
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3422641/posts
Wow, I did not know that. What a horrible tragedy the sinking of the Titanic was. I guess the real-life story isn’t the same as the movie? Of course, it isn’t - but, I loved both the original and the remake.
*** Gerda’s father Nils Persson was eventually given his daughter’s wedding ring, but only after he had shown proof of his right to have it. ***
My Great Grandfather in Sweden was named Nils Persson. That name is probably like John Smith is here, or probably these days, like the name Achmed Mohammad is there.
Yeah, it was good to watch Leonard DiCaprio sleep with the fishes.
“Yeah, it was good to watch Leonard DiCaprio sleep with the fishes. “
Almost as good as that movie where Tom Cruise gets killed about 87 times.
Very neat...as you said, probably a John Smith type situation.
I might have to watch it again with a more critical eye.
I spent the first pass giggling every time Cruise bought it.
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