I think my name was published at the time as having been drowned. The widowed heiress lost a fortune — and then her dignity after her second, abusive husband sold their story. Even those survivors who occupied privileged positions did not escape the Titanic's shadow. Eighteen-year-old Madeleine Astor was travelling on the liner with her husband, John Jacob Astor together, above , one of the richest men in the world. She had recently discovered she was pregnant and was returning home from her honeymoon in Egypt and Europe when she lost her husband in the disaster.
As she disembarked the Carpathia in New York, one witness recalled: "I never saw a sadder face or one more beautiful, or anything braver. She would be eligible to benefit from the inheritance only if she remained unmarried for the rest of her life. Madeleine — a bride, a widow, an heiress and a mother all in the course of a single year — played the part of the grieving widow to perfection, until she decided to forego the huge fortune and marry a man she had known since childhood.
She went on to have two sons with William Dick, yet by Madeleine was bored with her all-too-ordinary existence. Thanks to her second husband's wealth, she was more than comfortably off; but she had told her doctor, who always travelled with her, that the Titanic had "ruined her nerves" and, as a result, she regarded herself as something of an "invalid".
In January , Madeleine booked a first-class cabin on the Vulcania, where she met the handsome Italian prize fighter, Enzo Fiermonte. The boxer — whose name translated as "fiery mountain" — became infatuated by her wealth and, although both were already married and had children, the couple embarked on a messy, toxic relationship. After their own marriage — which took place in November in a New York hospital after Madeleine broke her arm during a scuffle with Fiermonte — the couple caused an international scandal when they travelled to Italy.
When he stepped on to Italian soil, the police seized Fiermonte's documents, as he had avoided compulsory military service while living in America, then the authorities impounded his passport. One lawyer told Madeleine that, as Italy did not recognise Fiermonte's divorce from his first wife, she "might face a sentence of from one to five years for participating in bigamy". Mussolini himself disapproved of Fiermonte's behaviour — "when he [Fiermonte] went to America he acted in a way Italy cannot approve", said a spokesman.
By the time the situation was smoothed out — with the help of a generous settlement for Fiermonte's first wife and son — the couple began to fight so violently that Madeleine's body was covered in bruises. According to court records, "Once he broke her wrist, and on another occasion he broke her ribs. She was frequently left bedfast by his attacks Their final separation was late last year [] when Fiermonte beat her senseless.
Then, a year later, she experienced a betrayal worse than any barbed insult or petty infidelity: Fiermonte sold the story of their marriage to the vulgar True Story magazine. Claiming to stand as "one of the most startling and illuminating commentaries on life among the idle rich ever written", the serialisation over the course of three months devastated Madeleine. Her reputation ruined, she felt depressed, almost suicidal.
And after hearing of the death of her mother, in August , she became increasingly dependent on prescription drugs. On 27 March , she died at the age of While the official cause of death was heart failure, it was rumoured that she had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Fiermonte — who went on to fulfill his dream of becoming an actor — later said of his former wife that, "She carried her doubts with her always, like her pearls.
In many respects, Jack Thayer seemingly personified the word "survivor". In the Titanic's final moments, the year-old, who'd been travelling in first-class with his parents, waited until the ship had almost submerged before he jumped from a rail into the sea.
Thayer had lost his father in the disaster, but bore his grief with dignity and honour, and after returning to America with his mother, Marian, another Titanic survivor, he attempted to resume his life as though nothing had happened.
By , the couple had announced their engagement and, on 15 December of that year, they married in Philadelphia. The following September, John, the first of their six children was born one died in infancy from Spanish flu. Yet Jack was not there to see the birth of his first and favourite son, as he was fighting in France.
On the Meuse-Argonne front, he would have witnessed death on a mass scale. In those days, a man did not talk about his feelings.
In fact, nobody really talked about emotions at all. It just wasn't done. After a career in banking, in Jack accepted a job as treasurer of the University of Pennsylvania; and then, in , he was promoted to the position of financial vice-president. By all accounts he led a busy, active, seemingly happy and fulfilled life.
Looking back, it is curious that he should want to go on frozen water after what he had been through with the Titanic. Of course, at the time I thought nothing of this, as he never, ever mentioned the disaster. He was not afraid of water, and loved to swim, but he never sailed and would never go on an ocean liner.
As Thayer's children began to approach the age he had been when he took that fateful voyage, Jack began to think about how to deal with his memories of the Titanic — images, conversations, emotions, fears he had kept to himself for nearly 30 years. It also disrupts the normal temperature regulation processes of the human body and inhibits the decision-making skills necessary to save oneself. However, when humans fall into cold water they rarely die of hypothermia.
In reality, they seldom live long enough to see their core body temperatures drop to critical levels, succumbing first to drowning or cardiac arrest. This is due to something called the cold shock response. As well, the cold water triggers constriction of the blood vessels, leading to increases in blood pressure, and in some people, cardiac arrest.
These effects subside within several minutes, only to be replaced by the effects of cold incapacitation. It seems most likely that Joaghin was lucky, and possibly that he spent less time in the water than he estimates.
Leave a comment! Enter your keywords. Sign-Up Here. A few men who crowded in were turned back at the point of Captain Smith's revolver, and several of them were felled before order was restored.
I recall being pushed towards one of the boats and being helped in. In the wake of the tragedy, Sir Duff-Gordon received criticism for not adhering to the ship's "women and children first" evacuation policy. A few years later in , Lady Duff-Gordon escaped death again after canceling her voyage on the doomed Lusitania.
Benjamin Guggenheim was a member of the powerful Guggenheim family, which earned its fortune in the mining industry. It's just a repair. Tomorrow the Titanic will go on again. Guggenheim, whose body was never recovered, reportedly put a rose in his buttonhole and quipped, "We've dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen. He later passed on a message to his estranged wife to a Titanic survivor.
After getting her start as a young girl in vaudeville, Gibson went on to become a model and launch a career as a silent film star.
She was years-old when she booked a passage on the Titanic. Gibson reportedly heard the ship crash into an iceberg. She grabbed her mother and together they escaped the ship on the first lifeboat.
Gibson subsequently appeared as herself in a now-lost film about her experienced called " Saved from the Titanic. Gibson quit acting shortly afterward. After that, Gibson's life is a bit cloudy. Her affair with a prominent film producer was a scandal in America and prompted Gibson to move to Paris.
As WWII began, there were allegations that she herself was a Nazi sympathizer — the veracity of those rumors is unclear. Later, while living in Italy in the s, the former actress was imprisoned by fascists. She survived prison but died shortly after the war. The industrialist was the founding president of Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, a now-defunct steel-manufacturing business.
Wick had been traveling in Europe in order to improve his health. Unfortunately, he booked a trip on the Titanic in order to return to the US. According to Encyclopedia Titanica , he was last seen on the deck of the ship, waving to his wife, daughter, cousin, and aunt as they escaped on a lifeboat. They both survived the catastrophe by getting on the same lifeboat as Molly Brown.
Later, in , she was admitted to the bar and became the first woman barrister to practice in the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales. Hays started out in the railway business as a teenaged clerk. The American railway magnate may have had some reserves about embarking on the Titanic's maiden voyage.
But Hays had died when the Titanic sank — his body was later recovered and he was buried in Montreal. The American writer traveled extensively and befriended a number of prominent individuals, including Theodore Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan. She booked a passage on the Titanic in order to return to the US to care for her son, who'd been injured. Despite breaking her ankle during the chaotic evacuation, according to Biography. Harris was a major player on Broadway when he lost his life on the Titanic.
He'd started producing plays and managing stars back in , and was returning to the US after a business trip to London. He went down with the ship after ensuring his wife Renee, who had previously broken her elbow after falling down the ship's grand staircase, got on a lifeboat. Renee achieved prominence by taking up her husband's line of work , becoming one of the first female theatrical producers in the US.
The Independent reported that banker and tennis star Karl Behr only booked a trip on the Titanic in order to pursue his future wife, Helen Newsom. Behr survived the disaster because he was asked to help row one of the lifeboats. According to Encyclopedia Titanica , it was reported that he may have asked Newsom for her hand in marriage while they were adrift in a lifeboat.
Behr went on to continue his successful tennis career after surviving the disaster. The Georgia native started out as a journalist, working for the New York Herald and the Boston Post — two now-defunct papers. But, according to Biography. He penned a series about fictional detective Professor Augustus S. Van Dusen. His most famous story was " The Problem of Cell Futrelle and his wife dined with Henry and Renee Harris on the night the ship sank. Futrelle ensured that his wife got on a lifeboat and was last seen speaking on deck with John Jacob Astor.
Rosenbaum was a stylist, fashion buyer, and journalist who was returning to the US on the Titanic after embarking on a reporting assignment in Paris. As the ship went down, the stylist would play the toy's tune to calm and distract the crying children on her lifeboat. And the poor children were so interested, most of them stopped crying. He served in Cuba and the Philippines. Later, he became President Theodore Roosevelt's military aide in
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