Most stories around the stricken Titanic are about men, but a new book hopes to shed light on the sometimes hidden narratives of the women at the centre of the tragedy
She may have slipped beneath the icy waters of the Atlantic almost 114 years ago, but the legend of the Titanic is one which refuses to sink. While the events of that fateful night in 1912 remain compelling, most stories about the stricken liner revolve around the roles and actions of men. Now a new book hopes to shed light on the sometimes hidden narratives of the women at the centre of the tragedy.
“I wanted people to know that women played a great role in Titanic – those who were on board and those whose lives it touched,” explains author of Titanic Women’s Stories, Melinda Ratchford. “Their history needed to be recorded and passed on.”
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For centuries ‘men have been the storytellers, according to Melinda, who says: “It’s not that women were ignored, they were just overshadowed. In 1912 it was a man’s world. I wanted to explore the issues of gender and the roles of men and women in society through the lens of that liner. All the case studies in my book have a tale to tell – it’s just that they haven’t had a voice.”
One captivating story is that of Maria Robinson. She was not on board Titanic, but the love of her life, bandmaster Wallace Hartley, was. She gave him the violin to mark their engagement which he courageously continued to play, as part of the ship’s eight man band, while the liner sank beneath the waves on April 15.
Melinda says: “Maria was born into a prosperous Yorkshire family. She was very independent and, by the standards of her time, considered late to marriage. Everything changed when she met Wallace Hartley.” By 1912, they were looking forward to marrying that June. As an engagement gift, Maria presented him with a violin which, after securing work on Titanic, he took with him on board.
He did not survive, but the instrument was recovered and returned to Maria, who kept it in the attic. She never married and died in 1939. In 2013 the violin was sold for more £1million and is now on display at Titanic Belfast Museum. Melinda continues: “I suppose the violin became their lasting connection. It’ s a love story that was interrupted, yet never extinguished.”
The author’s fascination with all things Titanic began in 1958, aged 10, when she was growing up in North Carolina, where she still lives. The grandmother-of-three says: “I sneaked the Walter Lord book, A Night to Remember, out of the library. The story stayed with me. My parents each came from families of 12, so I had 44 aunts and uncles, Some were born in the late 1800s. I used to love to hear about all that history; I just absorbed it.”
Titanic became a backdrop to her life, as she researched its stories. As a teacher, she began designing lessons for her young charges about the tragedy. She says: “I like to think I am intellectually curious – my husband just calls it nosy.” Melinda, who became a college professor, has visited many of the locations associated with the liner across the world, including the wreck site itself. She says: “Buzz Aldrin [the astronaut] was on that trip and he went down two-and-a-half miles to see the liner on the ocean floor. I remember he said ‘now I have seen two wonders of this world’.”
There were almost 500 women on the Titanic. For the book, Melinda has featured 16, with a range of backgrounds and ages and from different classes. Many of their stories are being told for the first time. She says: “We’ve heard of the wealthy Astors and Ida Straus who decided to stay with her husband on the ship, but I was just as interested in those whose stories weren’t known; those hidden accounts.”
That also includes a woman whose fate remains a mystery. Anne Eliza ‘Lizzy’ Isham was a well known Chicago and New York City philanthropist, society hostess and veteran first class passenger. After spending the summer in Paris, she decided to return home and had a ticket for the Titanic. Yet nobody remembers seeing her on board and her body was not recovered. Melinda says: “She was very high profile, so how could someone so well known not have been spotted on the ship? Did she make it off and disappear to a new life? Or did she drown? After all this time the Titanic still has secrets.”
She admits that the Titanic women she has researched now feel like friends. She says: “I know this sounds bizarre, but I do feel like I know them. There are those I’d love to share a cup of tea with, others I’d like to join in a strong drink. With them all, I want to know more. Do I have a favourite? No – I admire them all. For some, it’s the bravery in what they overcame, for others it’s the lives they had to carve out for themselves afterwards. It’s been my mission not to let their names and stories die. History always needs to be passed forward.”
Violet Constance Jessop
A strikingly beautiful woman, Violet was involved in three major shipping incidents and was also the only female Titanic crew member to write an autobiography. Melinda says: “A rule in baseball says three strikes, and you’re out. They never met Violet Jessop.” The daughter of Irish immigrant sheep farmers in Argentina, the family returned to England after her father’s death and Violet established a career as a stewardess at sea.
She was on board the RMS Olympic when, in 1911, it collided with another vessel. No-one was hurt and, undeterred, Violet transferred to sister ship the Titanic the following year. She escaped in a lifeboat, but in 1916, while nursing on board the hospital ship Britannic – a second sister vessel to Titanic – the ship detonated a German naval mine and sank. Thirty people died. Violet survived, albeit with a serious head injury, but later returned to sea, retiring at the age of 61. She died aged 83 in 1971 and is buried in Suffolk – with violets on her grave.
Helen Ragnhild Ostby
Helen was the daughter of a prominent jeweller from Rhode Island and often accompanied him on trips abroad. A renowned tennis player and debutante, she later recalled how her father, Engelhart, had returned to his cabin to fetch warm clothing, as women and children were loaded onto lifeboats. She watched as the ship “stood on end very quietly for a minute, then went down like an arrow.”
Her father perished, but she survived – subsequently helping run his company. Living in Germany, she fled through Flanders when WWI broke out. By 1930, she’d moved to Belgium, living there for a decade, before again fleeing through Europe to escape the Nazis. At one point hiding in a ditch, she later remarked: ‘‘Well, you have to make the best of things.” Melinda says: “I think her story is a testament to the increasing confidence of women in leading independent and productive lives. Having come so close to losing her life on Titanic, I wonder if she was then determined to grab life a bit by the horns.”
*Titanic Women’s Stories by Melinda E Ratchford is published by History Press, price £20.
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