TITANIC Remembered

June 27th, 2012 by JCB
Posted in Coastlines | No Comments »

 

The centenary of the Titanic disaster was marked by the inevitable plethora of books, TV programs, memorabilia and even smartphone “apps”! Many of these promised to provide new, previously unpublished facts and revelations but the only real facts are well known, the ship hit an iceberg and sank, the abandon ship procedure was chaotic and there were insufficient lifeboats to accommodate all on board I have therefore resisted the temptation to add my 10p’s worth to the debate!

What I have found is the above photo (from AP) which is of interest to pilots in that it shows the Titanic under tow, reportedly departing Southampton so I would be interested to have confirmation of that and, knowing how knowledgeable some of you are, I’m sure that someone will also be able to tell me the tug’s name!

Another fact of possible interest is that the pilot who brought the ship into Southampton was Wallace Martin CAWS who had joined the vessel in Belfast. Captain Caws, had a distinguished career as a Southampton pilot, serving for 43 years during which time he also served as the UKPA secretary. He was the last in the line of Caws family pilots who had conducted vessels in and out of Southampton for 200 years. Wallace Caws died in 1948.

The pilot who piloted the Titanic out to the Nab on that fateful voyage was George William Bowyer (1859 -1945). The Bowyer family were also well represented in the pilotage service with several family members continuing the tradition in the early part of the 20th Century.

LAST WORD

As the Titanic once again finds peace at the bottom of the Atlantic the following should perhaps give us all cause to reflect when giving presentations!

“When anyone asks me how I can best describe my nearly forty years experience at sea, I say merely uneventful.

Of course there have been winter gales and storms and fog and the like, but in all my experience, I have never seen an accident of any sort worth speaking about.

I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and have never been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.”

From a paper presented by Captain Smith in 1907.

JCB