Archive for April 19th, 2014

  • The story of a relative of a Titanic survivor

    Alexander J Littlejohn before embarking on TitanicAlexander J Littlejohn - six months after the Titanic tragedy

    Philip Littlejohn with Millvina Dean

    At 11:40 p.m. on April 14th 1912, RMS Titanic, the largest ocean liner ever built by the hands of man, hit an iceberg which ripped holes in several of its water-tight compartments, dooming its destiny and that of all its passengers. A few hours later, at 2.20am, the survivors that managed to get on the few boats that were available, watched the horrifying spectacle of the Titanic with its lights shining brightly and with more than 1500 passengers still on board, being engulfed in the deep dark and icy abyss.

    It was a night where so many significant and difficult decisions had to be taken quickly since they determined who was to survive and who would be left behind. Certainly there were the shameful arrangements where the richest passengers were selected from the others in order to leave the ship first. However there were also the heroic instances wherein several men opted to stay behind in order to allow the survival of more women and children. So who knows what would have been the fate of Alexander James Littlejohn, a First Class Steward on the Titanic, had he not been ordered to get on board life-boat 13 in order to row about 35 women and children to safety?

    During his lifetime, Alexander J Littlejohn rarely talked about this tragic night, like most of the other survivors. Yet in 1912, he gave this graphic eye-witness account of the sinking of the Titanic to The Daily Telegraph:

    “I went to fill up Boat 13 and got about 35 women and children into it. We shouted for more women but there were none forthcoming. We had a few First Class male passengers in. An officer ordered two of us to get in and help row the boat and I happened to be one of the fortunate ones to be ordered in…. We could see the Titanic sinking by the head. Her forward ‘E’ deck ports were under the water and we could see the lights gradually go out on the ‘E’ deck as she settled down. All her other lights were burning brilliantly from stem to stern. We watched her like this for some time, and then suddenly she gave a plunge forward and all the lights went out. Her stern went right up in the air. There were two or three explosions and it seemed to me that the stern part came down again and righted itself. Immediately after there were terrible cries for help; they were awful and heartbreaking.”

    For several years, Alexander had run two pubs The Rising Sun in London, and the Crown in Hastings, Sussex. He only went to sea after his wife died in 1910, leaving him with three young children. His sister looked after them and he joined the White Star Line Company in 1911. Incidentally, his first appointment was on the RMS Olympic’s maiden voyage and the following year, he joined the RMS Titanic which was also going on its first crossing at sea. Nonetheless, the similarity between the two ended there as the latter journey marked both his life and his appearance.

    His grandson, Philip Littlejohn, has compelling proof which manifests clearly the shock that his grandfather had suffered during that particular night. Indeed, in a photo taken some time prior to his embarkation on Titanic, Alexander is portrayed as a man aged 40 with dark hair and a heavy moustache, and yet in another photo taken just six months after the disaster, he looks notably different, particularly with his white hair and eyebrows. Surprisingly, despite this traumatic experience of surviving the sinking of the Titanic, Alexander returned to sea in October 1912.

    Without knowing, in life-boat 13, Alexander had rowed to safety the youngest Titanic survivor, Millvina Dean, who was only nine weeks old at the time, which person would also be the last living link to the Titanic disaster since she outlived all the other survivors. Alas, the two never met each other again and Alexander died in 1949, aged 77. However Dean succeeded to meet his grandson Philip and he worked with her over a period of ten years on TV and radio. She died at the age of 97, in May 2009, and Philip was present for the ceremony when her ashes were scattered near the departure point of the fateful voyage.

    Ironically, Millvina Dean and the Titanic shared the same age, and she had planned to join Philip Littlejohn and the rest of the passengers on the Titanic memorial cruise ship, MS Balmoral, which was chosen to commemorate the 100th anniversary from this bitter tragedy. Dean’s father was one of those brave men who had fought his way through the massive desperate crowd in order to get his wife and his two children safely on a life-boat and then he had bade them goodbye and turned away to await his gruesome end. Although Dean did not make it to be a 100, Philip included her story too during a series of lectures that he presented on board the MS Balmoral wherein he narrated the events leading up to the liner’s fateful collision, including eye-witness accounts and the rescue by the liner Carpathia.

    The MS Balmoral set sail on the 10th April 2012 from Southampton in order to follow the exact route that the Titanic took 100 years before. It carried on it 1,309 paying passengers, the same number that were on board the Titanic. During its 12-night voyage, it offered meals from the Titanic’s original menu and a five-piece band recreated the atmosphere that the original team of artists had played on board the ill-fated ship. On the night of the 14th April, this memorial cruise stopped over the Titanic’s wreck site, and services were held in memory of those who lost their lives in 1912. Then, it continued its way to Halifax, Canada where many of those who lost their lives are buried. The voyage ended in New York, the place where Titanic was due to arrive a century before but never did.

    Some critics thought that this idea was macabre and in bad taste. Yet Philip commented, “For me, this was the voyage of a lifetime and a chance to revisit a place that means so much to my family.” He insisted that this memorial cruise was a special remembrance opportunity which made possible, particularly to those whose relatives had been on board the Titanic, to visit the spot where so many dear ones had lost their lives.

    In reality, Philip had already involved himself far more deeply in this Titanic story when on the 29th July 2001, he embarked on a dive of a life-time which led him right at the site of the Titanic’s wreck which lies at a depth of about 3,800m. Although quite a number of individuals have visited this area from the discovery of this wreck back in 1985, Philip is the first relative of a Titanic passenger or crew member to have made this experience.

    “We went out using the same Russian ship used by James Cameron’s film crew when he was making the documentary, Ghosts of the Abyss,” he says. “The ocean was like a millpond. Looking like Formula 1 racing drivers in our blue flame-proof overalls (protection from fire in the oxygen rich interior), we boarded Mir 1 and were lowered into the ocean. The interior of the submersible seemed airless, as we watched through a one-foot thick porthole as water filled our view. The water turned from blue to green to black as we descended. There was no movement to indicate our descent, just the figures on the depth indicator increasing as we sank to the bottom of the Atlantic.”

    “We were three on board including the Russian pilot. My companion had made an extensive study of the ship over a number of years and was excited at the thought of actually seeing the vessel. However my thoughts were with how my grandfather would have felt if he could have gone back to the vessel that he had left eighty-nine years before.”

    “It took two-and-a-half hours to reach the wreck. Suddenly with the submersible lights switched on, we got our first sign of the Titanic; the expansion joint on the bow section. We were going round some other areas of the ship when at one moment we saw the lights of Mir 2 approaching out of the darkness. The two submersibles used their robotic arms in order to lay two plaques near the wreck; one from the British Titanic Society and one in memory of the postal workers, all of whom were lost trying to recover the mail soon after Titanic hit the iceberg.”

    Certainly, one of the most memorable stages in this dive for Philip was when the submersible reached the area where the lifeboats had been filled with women and children, and where his grandfather had been ordered in by an officer to row life-boat 13. However, he was also very touched when they crossed the debris field which stretches for some 800 meters between the bow and stern sections of the Titanic. “It was this that I found the most moving part of the dive, as here were the Titanic’s passengers’ personal belongings which fell to the sea-bed as the ship broke in two and sank in the early hours of the 15th April 1912.”

    This dive took six hours in all since they spent another two-and-a-half hours to reach back the ocean’s surface. Asked whether he was ever afraid that history might repeat itself during these close encounters with the Titanic’s wreck site, Philip dismissed this idea completely.

    Critics of these remembrance events of the Titanic’s sinking have often asked the meaning of celebrating such a tragedy and they insist that this site must be regarded and respected as a grave-site and that the victims who lost their lives in such a horrible way should be allowed to rest in peace.

    Yet Philip Littlejohn’s viewpoint is quite contrasting to these opinions. In fact, in his book Waiting for Orders he narrates his grandfather’s story so that his experience will never be forgotten.

    “No one has celebrated the loss of Titanic,” he maintains, “but we should remember her and those who lost their lives and the related stories of heroism so that we will ensure that such a tragedy would never happen again.”

    (This article was published in the supplement ‘Man Matters’ of the Times of Malta dated 19th April 2014)

    2014.04.19 / no responses / Category: Times of Malta