The Original Fictional Officers - A Question of Orthography Various Newspapers (1912), books, films…

The Olympic stands in for the Titanic

The sinking of the Titanic on her maiden voyage was a disaster that gripped the imagination of large parts of the western world and created a storm of publicity that had hardly ever been reached before. The press went into overdrive and a mad scramble ensued to find out as much information about the ship, her passengers and crew as possible. In the race to publish the story of the disaster and pictures of the participants many mistakes were made. Even the Titanic herself was frequently a victim of misrepresentation. Due to her short career and the fact that her launch or maiden voyage was far from the media sensation one is often led to believe, few photographs of the ship were available. Therefore, pictures of her elder sister-ship, the Olympic, were often used as a stand in.

On several occasion the officers of the Olympic were also identified as those of the Titanic. It is only natural that in the first flurry of reports mistakes crept into the reports. A reminder that the reports closest to the event are not necessarily the best. What is less understandable is that some of them are still repeated without hesitation. The Olympic continues to stand in for her sister (see above), most pictures of the interior of the Titanic are likewise in fact photographs of the Olympic's interior.

The names of the officers of the Titanic were also often mangled in reporting. It is safe to say that all of them were misspelled or misnamed at one point or the other. A few of these may simply be the result of bad handwriting. A particularly interesting case is James Paul Moody, whose name was often given as 'Pelloody'. The origin of this seems to have been Moody's own handwriting. Looking at his signature on the signing on lists without knowing the name of the officer, 'James P Moody' can be read as James Pelloody, as the P for his middle name Paul runs into the M of his surname. [An example can be found here.] This explanation is quite intriguing since it seems that the person(s) who created the name Pelloody must have seen Moody signature somewhere, either the signing on list itself or another example of Moody's signature. White Star Line officers on occasion signed menus for passengers.1 But where did the journalists see either and how did it become so widespread? However, the misnomer Pelloody came into being it was used quite frequently.

Next to Pelloody a variety of other version have found their way into print. The most peculiar accumulation of variations of Moody's name has to be in the Yorkshire Evening Press where on the same page three different names appear: On the 17 April, p. 3, the article 'Scarborough Victims', mentions that James Melloody, a native of Scarborough, had been sixth mate of the Titanic, further down the page, the sixth mate's name is given as James Pelloody, and in a third article, still on the same page, a more careful journalist writes that 'No news is to hand of ... Mr J. P. Moody, the sixth officer (Not Pelloody as reported in the Press)'. The misinterpretation of James Paul Moody's signature is also the origin of the occurrence of a false middle name: 'Pell'. Mysteriously, Geoffrey Marcus also includes this erroneous name.2

Not only was the sixth officer's name the one that was most often mangled, repeatedly misspelled, or simply wrong, he was also reduced to the rank of quartermaster - and in this guise he even survived the disaster. Early newspaper articles printed a statement by "J. H. Moody, a quartermaster". As the quartermaster in question was at the wheel at the time of the collision with the iceberg, it is clear that the man referred to was in fact Quartermaster Hichens. In the rush to publish details of the events on the Titanic accuracy fell by the wayside. Not only did the man who was quoted given a completely wrong name, the name in itself is wrong as well. It should after all be J.P. Moody. (Hichens first name was Robert, so any confusion with his name can be ruled out.) Not surprisingly, the statement of "quartermaster Moody" reported in the paper is equally flawed: "It was close to midnight and I was on the bridge with the second officer, who was in command. Suddenly he shouted, 'Port your helm!' I did so but it was too late." The officer on watch was however First Officer William Murdoch. Since Murdoch had been Chief Officer on the trip from Belfast to Southampton, several people continued to refer to him as 'Chief Officer' (which in turn means that sometimes it is unclear whether people were talking of Murdoch or Wilde) but he would certainly not be mistaken for the Second Officer.

This little excerpt from one of the earlier newspaper articles proves that they have to be treated with great care and not be taken as true simply because they originated from the immediate aftermath of the disaster. (Unfortunately, the book in which the article has been reprinted does not mention where it was originally published.3 'Quartermaster Moody' even made it at least into the fictional world: in the guise of 'Quartiermeister Modey' he appears in the German novel Titanic. Die Tragödie eines Ozeanriesen by Josef Pelz von Felinau first published in 1939. This amazing oddity of a book is even in the edition of 1998 presented as a realistic description of the events of the night the Titanic sank. Next to Modey it sports a number of fictional crew members, most notably a fictional officer: Herr Petersen. The names of the remaining officers are almost all misspelled, Murdock, Lightolder and Loeve. Another misspelling with a surprisingly long life is only minor, first officer William M. Murdoch became William Murdock. This error can be easily explained as this is how name is generally pronounced. However, today everybody seems automatically to write Murdoch correctly, and I assume that this is due to the prominence of a certain media magnate of this name. In 1912 the spelling 'Murdock' appears to be preferred universally.

Whatever the reason for this particular misspelling, it occurs not only in almost all newspaper articles of the time, the official reports of both the American and the British Inquiry repeat it as well, even though they had access to official documentation with the name in the correct form. The misspelling also remained in use for many decades to come. For example, it is the spelling used by James Bisset (who had been 2nd Officer of the Carpathia) in the second volume of his memoirs,4 and in the cast list of the 1953 film.

In recent time, it seems that the correct spelling of the Titanic's officers has achieved general acceptance, but just as these original 'fictional' officers were caused by lack of research or information, some of the fictional officers appearing in novels and films came into being because the writers apparently considered names of the ship's officers was not something that they needed to research. On the other hand, others claimed to have been on the ship to publish their 'memoirs' and profit from the Titanic's fame.

1. S. Störmer, Good-bye, and Good Luck, p. 56. 2. G. Marcus, The Maiden Voyage, p. 83. 3. Wreck and Sinking of the Titanic. The Ocean's Greatest Disaster edited by Marshall Everett the Great Descriptive Writer, p. 45. 4. Sir James Bisset, Of Tramps and Ladies, p. 289.

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