Sea Control - Sea Control 476 - Titanic & the City of Widows with Julie Cook

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Links1. The Titanic and the City of Widows It Left Behind – The Forgotten Victims of the Fatal Voyage, by Julie Cook, Pen and Sword History, April 6, 2020.

Hey folks, it's Jared. I'm joined by author Julie Cook today to discuss her book Titanic and the City of Widows about the disaster and the families left behind. This episode was edited and produced by Andrew Frame. Here at SimSec, we aim to further international maritime peace and security through an exchange of ideas, the rigor of critical thought and writing. If you haven't already, please check out SimSec.org for new articles on the most important maritime topics. Our latest call for submissions is for the annual fiction contest. If you'd like to contribute to the discussion, check out the Write for SimSec tab to learn how you can submit articles for publication. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec podcast network, The Bilge Bumps.

You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of iron brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. And with that, Kimber's Men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Hello, our showmates, and welcome back to Board Seat Control. My guest today is Julie Cook, and we'll be discussing your book, The Titanic and the City of Widows That Left Behind. So, Julie, welcome. Could you start by telling the listeners a little bit more about yourself, please?

Hello, yeah, thanks for having me. Yes, so I'm the descendant of a Titanic stoker. He died on the Titanic when he was 40. And I'm also a journalist and an author. And so the first book I wanted to write was about the Titanic because of my family connection. And I felt that women and children of the crew had been sort of left out from history. So that's where I come from on the Titanic story. Well, thank you for coming aboard.

As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. to already explain what your family connection to titanic was but how did you become aware of that connection initially and then how was the story of what had happened passed down within your family yes so my father would uh sit and i remember being very young and my father sitting me down next to him when we watched the walter lord a night to remember i was probably a bit young to watch actually looking back but um that was my first memory and he would sit there and say oh your great-grandfather died on that ship and to me that seemed unfathomable you know it was this beautiful massive ship on this epic hollywood movie um and it seemed strange that

that would apply to us but yeah he then explained who he was he was his grandfather and my great grandfather and what he did and that he was a stoker and to me it all seems quite distant at that point because well number one i had no idea what a stoker was my dad told me he was a fireman And I thought that meant a fireman putting out fires, obviously explained what that meant. But on my association, as I got older, was that the Titanic was a rich person's tragedy. It was very beautiful and opulent. And so it was really, I kept going back to that first memory. My dad told me, oh, you're great, grab a barbicide on it.

So do you and your family have then a different response to things like the movie? So you mentioned A Night to Remember. I think the one that's going to pop in most listeners said that it was obviously Titanic from 1997. Do you and your family have different response to things like that? And I guess I should really timestamp this for the listeners we're recording on. I'm not ignoring you. I'm looking at my phone to get the date right. Friday, July 14th.

I mean, we're just weeks removed from the submersible Titan disaster. Do you and your family respond differently to things like that? Yeah, I went and saw the 97 James Cameron film at the cinema. I was 20 or something. and it was such an epic, you know, huge film on every scale that it was hard not to be in awe of it. But yes, I prefer The Night to Remember. I found it slightly more thoughtfully done, I think.

I think also because the James Cameron film had this other story, which the Rose and Jack story, which is obviously not true. So, yeah, I think people have kind of created, as in that case, in titanic stories around the titanic myths around the titanic and legends which i'll kind of jump on a bandwagon a bit really i guess my father isn't around anymore but he used to be quite upset about it he used to find it quite upsetting that people were sort of making a buck really out of the titanic to put it in in in a crass way um whereas i at 20 just thought it was a fascinating film um he's not around anymore as i said but yeah he he i mean there's comedy even over here there was

a comedy that had a sketch about the Titanic he was always very upset about things like that and took it really to heart uh so yeah it was it was emotional for him and then did you have any reaction to what happened with the submersible titan yes of course um so many reasons one I found it you know awfully distressing those days waiting to hear what had happened to those four people it was just horrendous and two because myself and another author were offered a chance to go on that very submersible um in 2021 we were approached by an American television company who wanted us to go down on that very submersible at the time it didn't get that far and I didn't go but I had actually said yeah I'll do it you know it'll be interesting but I I look at it now and I think

you shudder and think god thank goodness um never happened but yes so obviously I was very worried rest of the world that was horrendous horrendous time can you tell me a little bit more about why it didn't happen if you're able to yeah um so there was a production company uh who had asked me to go down as a descendant and writer it was after my book had come out and uh to go down and sort of talk about my feelings going down to the ship really and i agreed and i hadn't really thought it through if i wanted i hadn't thought how dangerous and crazy this might be but yes we talked about it we talked about date times visas and whatnot um and then eventually it sort of fizzled out at the time they said the production company said it was because of

the post-pandemic world it was difficult getting visas and things like that um but i've since heard from one of the presenters who was going to do it that actually there were safety concerns even then there were safety concerns so they didn't tell me that which i'm you know not that they were withholding that because it didn't go ahead but i think that was one of the reasons it didn't happened so safety concerns visas etc but yeah who knows what perhaps it was actually safe i think that's what it was yes uh safety concerns is a pretty safe bet um so the city in the book what is the city you're referencing and how many of the men lost on titanic were from there yeah the city is southampton and there were 549 uh accounted for from southampton who died

and so it was a massive massive tragedy at the time because the city wasn't as populated as it is now. And it was said that there wasn't a street in the city that didn't lose somebody connected to the Titanic. So to lose 549 men in a seafaring city on one ship was pretty big at that time. What was life like for the poor families in Southampton? Was there a systemic response to assist those families in the wake of the loss? Yeah, I mean, they were already incredibly poor. There'd been a coal strike that year, a miners' strike. So there wasn't a lot of coal coming to the ships and therefore steamships weren't sailing as often so a lot of sailors had been out of work and people associated with the

docks had been out of work for many months and so when the Titanic went down and people lost their livelihoods there was nothing and obviously no social security like we have now so it wasn't really systematic it was kind of the Salvation Army got involved initially they were the first ones to step up and sort of get food parcels for the widows and children that kind of thing And it wasn't really until months, months later that there was the Titanic Relief Fund, which came to be about, started by the mayor. But that was quite a while afterwards. How did the notification process work out for the families initially? Because the ship goes down, it's kind of in the middle of the ocean.

Yeah, there's one or two vessels who are kind of nearby. But how are the families actually finding out at that point? because I believe the only means of communication at that point is telegraph from sea back to what I assume is some sort of wireless office that's in the city there. Yeah, yeah, it was really haphazard and really confusing. As you say, that wasn't like now where we have rolling news and find out instantly what's happened.

A lot of them were in limbo for many, many days. There were different editions of the local paper, the Daily Echo, which was getting most of the news first. So they printed a first edition, which I included in my book, which said, the Titanic had sunk, but all lives had been saved. Everyone had been put onto another boat and everyone was coming home, nothing to worry about.

And so the first information the wives and children got was that. And that was, phew, thank God, they're all okay. You know, it's fine. And then the subsequent additions began to say, well, actually, no, there are some lives lost. And it was this sort of drip, drip, drip feeding of information, which was so confusing and so distressing for people because for many days and even weeks for some of them,

they just didn't have a solid answer about their loved one. Is there any time frame where it becomes concrete as an addition announces like, no, actually it was a catastrophe and this is what has happened? Yeah, I mean, for some lucky ones, I say lucky in averted commas, for some lucky ones, there was the White Star Line headquarters in Southampton. They had sort of a scrawled couple of pieces of paper at the front where people could queue. Women and children were queuing into the night with their prams and buggies and whatnot. And they had two lists. they had a survived list and a missing list. And the widower would queue, get to the front,

read the pieces of paper and see which their husband's name was on. And that was kind of the definitive answer. But for some that were still missing, their names didn't appear. So it was a telegram much later, or it was simply no news meant that he was gone. And it was really tragic. My great-grandmother, for example, didn't get the definitive news. It was, I think, a couple of weeks later,

eventually she got a telegram that he was lost and that was essentially meaning dead um so she had to wait quite a while to get that confirmation did the families have any particular advocates they're trying to negotiate all this afterwards uh yes they initially no um initially it was just you know the salvation army and people stepping in to represent them they were incredibly poor people um and they were seen as that was awful they were seen as the lowest of the low because The wives of the lower members of the Titanic, so the stokers like my family member, the greasers, the guys who worked down in the boiler rooms and then the stewards, they lived in very poor parts of the city. And so they were kind of down upon really in that society. So there wasn't really anyone's advocate for them.

A lot of them were barely literate. You know, they didn't have a lot. Some of the children didn't even have shoes. It was a really poor area. And then once the mayor, a few months later, he started the Titanic Relief Fund. That's when people started to get help. But it did take several months to get that. And even then, it was done in tier levels.

So if you were the wife of an officer, you got quite a reasonable amount from this charitable fund. If you were the wife of a greaser or a stoker, you didn't. You got a much lower amount. So again, it was still done in class, just as the Titanic evacuation was. Did the White Star Line actually provide any of the support to these families via insurance or anything else? They were quite dreadful about it, really. When I interviewed some people, I interviewed a descendant of a man who died. He was a steward.

And they stopped their pay the minute the ship went down. They instantly stopped their pay. And they sent his wife a telegram saying he's lost, his pay has stopped. And they deducted the cost of his uniform from his pay as he had died. I mean, it's just absolutely horrendous. So, no, they were pretty bad for some time. And it was only after compensation claims began to be asked for that they did actually get compensation. But that was a good year later.

And again, you know, some did, some didn't. It's like a court scene. These women had to go to court and prove who they were and to say how they were related to this person and say what he earned, say how long they'd been married. And back then, a lot of people don't forget. It wasn't just wives who were dependents. It was mothers and sisters. A lot of women were dependent on that one man going to work. And they had to be sort of interrogated in a box in this courtroom, which was quite shocking, really, I think.

And I should have asked this at the beginning. Can you explain what the job of a stoker was? Because that will give the listener some better idea, especially one who's not familiar with more old-fashioned ships. Why would it be difficult for him to get out of the ship once catastrophe strikes? Yes. Yes. And so the stokers were the men who worked down in the boiler rooms and their job was to literally pick up coal on shovels and throw it into the furnaces and keep doing that again and again in sort of 50 degree heat. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit. I know you use different temperatures over there. It's hot. I know it's hot. Probably 120 degrees, something like that.

Exactly. Over 100. So it was very, very hot, very uncomfortable. And it was backbreaking work. I mean, they had to be super strong and fit. to do that and they lost so much salt during these jobs that they were given salt tablet um to replace their salts when they got off often they were called the skeletons is that when they walked off the ship they were they were skeletal from everything they'd lost but yes so they worked in the bowels of the ship so that's why if you'd been on ship at that point when the titanic hit you would have it would have been very very difficult to to escape all right I've looked it up while you were talking there. Yeah, it's 50 Celsius is 122 Fahrenheit.

So, yeah, it's quite warm. Yeah. So Titanic is a sister ship, the Olympic. How did the crew, and that vessel was scheduled to depart just days after Titanic's loss. How did the crew of the Olympic respond? Well, they went on mutiny, which I think is incredible, just four days later. I think nowadays, I don't think a company would have the audacity to send a sister ship into port four days after the loss of its major ship on a maiden voyage. But anyway, so the Olympic was there, it was going to set sail, and it was actually the stokers and the greasers.

The greasers, by the way, were the men who lubricated the machinery in the bowels of the ship. That's what they were called. They all walked off. They walked off the ship with their kit bags over their shoulder before it set sail, walked off in front of everybody and said, we're not getting back on this boat until the lifeboats are sorted out, until we have enough lifeboats for everybody, we're not getting back on. And this was a really big deal for somebody, for people that low, you know, in the eyes of society to make that kind of stand. and it actually did lead to change it led to the solas convention which is the safety of lives at sea convention which then subsequently made sure from then on that every single boat at sea had enough lifeboats and so what those smokers did was was massive it was a really really big stand

that they took and a risk because you know they wouldn't have got paid and would have been risky a lot were there any other stories that you found particularly wrenching as you went about your research? Yeah, loads. So many. I mean, there were women who had lost a husband before and then lost a husband in the Titanic. Women who were pregnant with child and their husband had gone away. And then a couple of women I looked into, they actually lost their babies because of the shock and the grief and the poverty. Mothers who lost their sons who were 16, there was a 16-year-old bellboy um and the mother loves him i mean we can't imagine that now can we a 16 year old going to see it as a as a man but but these women lost really young sons um yeah massive it went on

forever i mean i sat in the archives in southampton and read these sort of handwritten accounts from the titanic relief fund of different women and what they'd lost as some women turned to drink because they were just so depressed and destitute um and back then if a woman turned to drink she was struck off the fund so they'd stop your money until you sorted yourself out so you know this was sort of post post-victorian england where attitudes towards women who who sinned in the eyes of society were pretty harsh so these women had to be very pious to keep their money and otherwise they didn't get it so yeah incredibly sad stories i'm sorry that's all that we have time for today i'd like to thank my guest julie cook julie where can we find you online and what are you working on

neck um yeah i'm on twitter and all the socials um and i've just had a book come out called the trauma of captivity which is about prisoners of war and the books are all available on amazon and barnes and noble and and all the usual places and um yeah it'd be good to hear from you well thank you again for joining us the listeners thanks for tuning in we'll see you next time I walked up to the barroom counter Way, hey, put it in the alley There I met with Greasy Annie Put it down the shimbo now

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