TOM WHITELEY - age 18

Tom Whiteley’s elder sister was an actress who played the Gaiety Theatre (famous for The Gaiety Girls), in the early 1900s. The family lived at Highgate in 1912, and his mother was Theatre Manageress at the New Theatre from 1911 to 1914. These were the addresses to which the Titanic ‘saved’ telegraphs were sent. For a youngster crossing the Atlantic for the first time it might seem sensible to ‘work his passage’ rather then spend any money he might have had. He certainly could not have afforded the Titanic in any case. He used this way of crossing the Atlantic several times.

There is a wealth of Titanic content already available, so we will limit ourselves to just one aspect.

^{We can do no better than refer you to the New York Tribune of Friday 19th April 1912 for Tom’s account of the sinking. (Full text below.) That Tom, with a fractured leg, survived six hours first in the water and then on the upturned boat must be down to his tough 18-year-old constitution. His claim to be the last survivor to be rescued may well be true. It would have been quicker and easier to disembark all the survivors capable of moving under their own steam before raising Tom to deck level.} 

He had celebrated his 18th birthday just two weeks previously. So how Tom's age could be reported as 21 is amazing. That's newspapers for you.

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After his stay in St Vincent’s Hospital in New York he enters the limelight for the first time in his life. Interviewed by the Press, presenting his story on stage, and no doubt being given much other attention, as an impressionable young man he must have acquired a taste of glory. Perhaps the rest of his life was an unwitting search for the same attention. There can be no doubt that family activity in the theatre would have influenced his search for a career.

 THOMAS WHITELY

Thomas Whitely, an intelligent young fellow of twenty-one, with light hair and blue eyes, who was a waiter in the first saloon, taken to St Vincent’s Hospital with a fractured right leg and numerous bruises, told the following story of the disaster:

“I had turned in. My quarters were on the E deck, which is five decks down. I was awakened about 11:30 p.m. I did not feel any shock, but a shipmate of mine took me by the shoulder and said to get out. I said: ‘Is it 5:30 o’clock already?’ He said: ‘No; we’ve hit a berg’.

“I looked out of the port, the sea was like glass and I did not believe him. I looked on deck and found it covered with ice. Stokehole No. II began to fill with water at once. All the watertight doors were closed. They had to be opened again to let men go down and draw the fires to prevent an explosion. One fellow, I don’t know who it was, went down with about twenty others and drew all the fires.

“The order came: ‘All hands above decks with lifebelts!’ The deck was crowded. The second officer was getting boat No. 1 ready. He asked me to give him a hand. I helped fill the boats. They were crowded with women and children. There were two collapsible boats on each side in addition to the regular lifeboats. At the order of the second officer we got the collapsible boat on the port side ready and No. 1 on the starboard followed. The collapsible boat No. 2 on the starboard jammed. I got my leg caught in one of the ropes. The second officer was hacking at the rope with a knife. I was being dragged around the deck by that rope, when I looked up and saw the boat filled with people turning end up on the davits. The boat overturned like that.” He waved his hand to show just how it happened.

“In some way I got overboard myself and found something to hold on to – an oak dresser about the size of this hospital bed. I wasn’t more than sixty feet from the Titanic when she went down. I was aft and could see her big stern rise up in the air as she went down bow first. I saw all the machinery drop out of her.

“I was in the water about half an hour and could hear the cries of thousands of people, it seemed. Then I drifted near a boat wrong side up. About thirty men were clinging to it. They refused to let me get on. Someone tried to hit me with an oar, but I scrambled on to her. At 8:40 o’clock in the morning we were taken aboard the Carpathia.

“There was a bit of a panic when it first happened. The officers had to use their revolvers. The chief officer shot one man – I didn’t see this, but three others did – and then he shot himself. But everybody behaved splendidly, especially the firemen.

“It was a black berg we struck, and though the night was clear it was impossible to see one of that color. I saw another like it when drifting on that overturned lifeboat.

“The berg the Titanic hit was on the starboard bow, and they were doing twenty-five knots, trying to break the record to New York.

“Phillips, the first Marconi operator, stuck to his post till the last. He was on the overturned lifeboat with me and was dead when they took him aboard the Carpathia. They tried to revive him with brandy and all that, but it was too late. There were four burials at sea on the Carpathia – one sailor, two firemen and Phillips.”

We can add nothing to the mystery of taking the White Star Line to court.

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