Surviving the Titanic

Luxury White Star Liner 'Titanic', which sank on its maiden voyage to America in 1912, seen here on trials in Belfast Lough, Jan. 12, 1912. Photo: Getty Images/ Topical Press Agency

He was a little boy who was witness to the extraordinary events of his time, a century ago. But like all small children his view of what occurred would resemble nothing an adult, haunted by an existential experience like none other would recall. At age six, he would have no idea that he was a child of privilege, of wealthy parents. To this singular child, and likely other children on board RMS Titanic on its first and only TransAtlantic voyage from the United Kingdom to the United States, there was nothing extraordinary about being on a huge ocean liner sailing across the Atlantic in the company of their parents, with a nanny responsible for their care.

When the great ship hit an iceberg and sank, 52 children in steerage lost their lives to the icy Atlantic. One child who had been on the top deck where first-class passage was located by comparison, perished. Six-year-old Douglas Spedden was hardly aware that something horrible was taking place when he found himself in a lifeboat of nine-metre-length alongside 37 other people, when his last memory was of falling peacefully asleep in his upper-deck stateroom. Among them was his father, his mother and his nanny, so all was well.

 

In this photo taken early in the Titanic's maiden voyage, passenger Douglas Spedden can be seen playing with his top on the ship's promenade deck. The photographer. Frank Brown, would disembark in Ireland and avoid the sinking.

 

It took an estimated half hour, or a little longer for about one thousand, five hundred people to freeze and drown, screaming their anguish, not among those in lifeboats as the ship slowly submerged on that moonless night. Their fear and misery expressed in loud cries for help, from those who had safely evacuated from the ship and floated around it, waiting for rescue, shivering in the dark and the cold. Not as cold as the -2C Atlantic, however.

Their Mayday had alerted all other ocean liners in the region, desperately speeding toward the Titanicm attempting to reach the scene to effect rescue. When recovery ships from Halifax steamed onto the ocean graveyard, they saw masses of human bodies, some of them clutching children to their frozen chests. Little Douglas had been promised, as he was bundled into a lifeboat, that he would soon see beautiful stars in the dark heavens above.

Special edition Polar bear  Steiff

Icebergs surrounded the lifeboats, creating another otherworldly experience for the child who turned to his nanny and remarked "Look at the beautiful North Pole with no Santa on it!". All was well with his world, after all, in the presence of his father, his mother and his nanny. Oh, and his comfort-companion, "Polar", the teddy-bear.

A photograph remains of Douglas playing on the top deck with a spinning top, his father looking on. The photograph was taken by an Irish Jesuit priest, who briefly boarded the Titanic on its first leg, and taking a number of photos over succeeding days, then disembarking as the ship reached its last European stop, to carry on across the Atlantic. Douglas was immortalized, that photograph now among the historical memorabilia of a dreadful maritime disaster.

If Douglas was still alive, he could be asked what he thought of the stars he saw that night. He might, or he might not recall seeing the ship's lights still blazing an hour after its collision with the iceberg. He might remember hearing the band playing on the top deck with its remaining sparse crowds. There were 30 empty seats on the lifeboat that carried Douglas and the other passengers from the sinking ship.

First class hospitality did not in and of itself guarantee rescue, though it certainly did no harm. What did ensure that those in first class would survive while those in steerage mostly did not, was the fact that first class cabins were located on upper levels close to the boat deck for easy access to the lifeboats. Private stewards were in the service of most upper-deck families to efficiently guide them personally to safety.

Douglas Spedden in 1913

While below in steerage passengers were pretty well on their own, trying to puzzle out their way through a maze of corridors, and finding dead ends, as time sped by and opportunities were lost. Douglas, that bright child of privilege, survived the disaster that was the RMS Titanic. Three years later, when he was nine years old, still a child, still vulnerable, his luck ran out.

The little boy chased after a ball he had been playing with at the family vacation home in Maine. There weren't many private cars around at that point of the emerging history of motor vehicles, and their speed was not anything what modern cars can achieve, but the motor vehicle that hit Douglas was said to have been speeding. And Douglas became the first automotive fatality in the state.