Fatal Voyage: The Titanic

Many people were heroes the night Titanic sank. Some of their stories are well known. The band members, for example, continued to play until the waters came. But others, with less glamorous positions who also took their work seriously, died on the job. People like the mail men.

RMS Titanic was a Royal Mail Steamer. She was carrying at least 200 sacks of registered mail. At Queenstown, Ireland stacks of letters and packages were taken on board. (Note Titanic’s lifeboats in this linked picture from The Irish Picture Library.)

Five members of the British and American postal crew were assigned to the ship. A survivor reported seeing all of them working furiously, sloshing about in water, trying to get the registered mail to the top decks as the ship was sinking. None of the postal crew survived.

After Titanic struck the berg, her mail clerk, John Richard Jago Smith, was called to the bridge to report damage to the mail room. It was bad.

Oscar Scott Woody - an American postal clerk - died on his 44th birthday. He left New York on April 2nd, travel orders in hand, specifically to work Titanic’s maiden voyage. His pocket watch was found on his body.

The daughters of John Starr March had tried to convince their father to stay off the ships. He told them he’d never drown at sea. He was wrong. His watch, recovered on his body, stopped ticking at 1:27 a.m. on April 15th. This tends to confirm the reports of survivors who said postal clerks had not been drowned by the first in-rush of water but continued to try to save the mail.

As Titanic continued to take on water, James Bertrom Williamson, a Brit, died with his colleagues. His mother later wrote a letter acknowledging the praise her son was given as he tried to save the mail instead of himself. So did the father of another mail clerk, whose letter regrets the loss of his son but acknowledges his son’s heroism as a source of pride.

In addition to the sacks of registered mail, totaling around 1.6 million pieces, the ship carried 3,164 standard mailbags each holding about 2,000 pieces of mail. Total mail loss was estimated at 6-9 million pieces plus 700-800 parcels.

Registered mailbags were reportedly used to help recover the infant survivors of the disaster.