| The Upturned Lifeboat in
Fact and Fiction |
| The Titanic was equipped with
twenty lifeboats; fourteen regular boats and two
smaller boats, called emergency boats, numbered 1
though 16 (even numbers on the port side and odd
on the starboard side of the ship) as well as four
Englehardt collapsible boats, 'numbered' A to D.
Two of these boats (C and D) were stored beneath
regular boats and were successfully loaded and
lowered. The remaining two (A and B) were stored
on top of the officers' quarters. When all the other boats had been lowered, the crew attempted to get the two remaining boats off the roof of the officers' quarters. In the end, both boats were thrown down onto the Boat Deck. A was floated off the Titanic. As the sides of the boat were not completely raised, the boat was soon half-full of water and the people in it in a precarious situation. They were later taken off the boat by Fifth Officer Lowe. |
| Collapsible B Collapsible B landed upside down on the Boat Deck and was washed overboard before it could be righted. Thanks to its construction, the capsized boat remained afloat and ensured the survival of considerable number of men including Second Officer Lightoller, Col. Archibald Gracie, John Thayer Jr., the junior wireless operator Harold Bride, and Chief Baker Joughin. The boat was partly submerged, and the survivors were afraid that if any swell would rise the boat would capsize or at least it would become impossible to remain on the slippery bottom. To counteract the motion of the boat, Lightoller had all the men stand up on the boat and by leaning this way or that, keep the boat as even as possible. (What we called 'Lightoller's Incredible Balancing Act'.) After a few hours Lightoller managed to attract the attention of two lifeboats and the survivors were transferred from B to boats 12 and 4. This hair-raising tale of survival on the bottom of a capsized lifeboat in the middle of the North Atlantic is definitely one of the events that, if they had not actually happened, would be impossible to make up. Any author inventing something like this in a realistic context would probably be told that this could never work. |
| The Historical Survivors According to Col. A. Gracie's account there were about thirty people on the upturned boat, several of whom died before they were rescued. Gracie lists three passengers: A. H. Barkworth, himself, John B. Thayer Jr, and of the crew Lightoller, Bride and Joughin as already mentioned above, and Firemen McGann and Senior, Cooks Collins and Maynard, Steward Whiteley, 'J. Hagan', Seaman McGough "(possibly)". |
| According to the Encyclopedia
Titanica the following men
were on Collapsible B: • Algernon Henry Barkworth • Harold Sydney Bride • John Collins • Eugene Patrick Daly • Sidney Edward Daniels • Edward Arthur Dorkings • Cecil William FitzPatrick • Colonel Archibald Gracie • William Albert Thomas Hebb • Walter Hurst • Charles John Joughin • Charles Herbert Lightoller • William Charles Lindsay • Isaac Hiram Maynard • James McGann • John O'Connor • Patrick O'Keefe • George Alexander Prangnell • Harry Senior • Eustace Philip Snow • Victor Francis Sunderland • John Borland Thayer Jr. • Thomas Arthur Whiteley |
| Collapsible B in Fiction Collapsible B is also the favoured means of escape for many fictional heroes. Not only is it a thrilling story in itself. It also provides men with a means of survival without having to actively entering a lifeboat. There are other ways for the self-respecting hero to survive: 1) being pulled out of the water, like Herr Petersen in the 1943 film, 2) being knocked unconscious and bundled into a boat, as happens to Dr Watson in Sherlock Holmes and the Titanic Tragedy, or 3) being pushed into the boat as it is lowered, the fate of Jamie Perse in the 1996 miniseries. Villains, like Dr. Burton in The Case of Cabin 13 on the other hand often survive by getting into a boat dressed as women. |
| Women are usually still allowed
to get into a lifeboat without their honour
being impinged upon. More recently a few women
also survived the sinking without getting into
a boat, the most famous of whom is surely Rose
Dewitt Bukater in Cameron's Titanic. In addition to the historical characters the following fictional people have therefore made their way onto Collapsible B: |
| • H.
Hesse - H. Hesse, Der Untergang
der Titanic. Bericht eines Überlebenden
(1927) • Officer Bigalow - Clive Cussler, Raise the Titanic (1976) • Sherlock Holmes - William Seil, Sherlock Holmes and the Titanic Tragedy (1996) • Barry O'Neil and Pegeen Flynn - Eve Bunting, SOS Titanic (1996) • Morgan Fairfield and Peter Wilksbury (who dies) - Jim Walker, Murder on the Titanic (1998) • John Darnell, his servant Sung, and an unnamed woman - Sam McCarver, The Case of Cabin 13 (1999) • Miranda Thorne (née Mary Cooke) - Robert Peck, Amanda Miranda (1999) • Tomas McGuire - Kristen Miller, One Night to Remember (2012) • Booker Bailey - Giselle Beaumont, On the Edge of Daylight (2018). |
| J. Bruce Ismay can be
found balancing on a fictional version of
Collapsible B. According to Max
Dittmar-Pittmann - and following his
lead J. Pelz von Felinau - Ismay survives
standing on a swamped 'raft' which takes the
place of Collapsible B in these stories. Robert Prechtl, following Max Dittmar-Pittmann, also replaces Collapsible B with a raft. It was built by a gang of mutinous stokers, trimmers and other crew members. They had perviously stormed a lifeboat, but where chased away by Lightoller, who shoots one of the men who had entered the boat. The mutineers don't use the raft in the end as they try and fail to get away in one of the lifeboats as it passes the gangway door to the cargo hold where they work. This 'raft of the Medusa' then stands in for Collapsible B as this is where Prechtl places several of the historical characters who survived standing on the upturned lifeboat, like Lightoller and Bride. Valora Luck in Stacey Lee's Luck of the Titanic finds her way briefly onto the upturned lifeboat but is washed off when the first funnel smashes into the water. Together with her brother Jamie she next finds refuge on a drifting chaise longue, in what is perhaps best described as an homage to Rose and Jack. However, they both fit onto this piece of furniture, but only one of them survives. |
| As always, I am grateful for all information about more fictional characters who survive by joining the people on the upturned lifeboat. |
| Back to Fictional Officers of the Titanic |