The first encounter was with a shy Canadian who would rather not give his name. He was visiting friends in Belfast and it was only when we got on board SS Nomadic that he revealed he was the great grandson of Albert and Vera Dick. The couple were returning to Calgary in Canada from London as first class passengers and when disaster struck, both got a place in a lifeboat.  Bert’s survival was viewed with suspicion and his business suffered as a result. The couple had one daughter. They have kept out of the limelight and will continue to do so.

My second tourist with a direct link was with me just a few weeks ago. Jill Kirby, originally from Southampton but now living in California is the great niece of Alfred Albert White. He, like my great grandfather, was one of Titanic’s crew. On Jill’s first visit to Belfast, she wanted to hook up with someone who also had a close family tie to Belfast. We spent an enjoyable day together and inevitably the subject came up about how her ancestor had survived while mine had not. Alfred was Jill’s grandmother’s brother, a greaser working in the engine room, resident in Southampton. He had also served on the Oceanic. The story goes that when Titanic hit the iceberg, he was told to go and have a look at the damage to the outer hull. He took a lantern with him to try to see over the side. As he was walking up the stairs the engine rooms were flooding. When he reached the deck the first funnel was already underwater and suddenly the boat snapped in half below him. He was eventually was rescued on lifeboat number 4, which also contained Madeleine Astor. He described being hit on the head by people with oars who were trying to stop additional people from getting in to lifeboats.
Jill and I swapped family stories about Titanic and what had happened to the families afterwards. As regular readers will know, my own great grandfather perished on Titanic and left my five year old grandfather orphaned. Alfred died of a heart attack in a bank in Southampton High Street in 1922. He had survived another disaster at sea. During the First World War, his ship, Aragon was torpedoed off the coast of Alexandria. He is buried in Southampton Common cemetery and Jill is in the process of having his gravestone fixed up. That too is an interesting parallel because I spent some time over the summer restoring the headstone dedicated to Thomas Millar in Victoria Cemetery in Carrickfergus.

As I mentioned earlier, Jill and I explored the various paths that our family had taken and wondered what it must have been like on that night 99 years ago when it was such a lottery as to who survived and who did not. My great grandfather’s last hours were probably spent in the engine rooms, doing what he could and no doubt thinking about his two children.  Alfred seems to have had a pluckier attitude and although he survived, Jill reckons that the trauma remained with him in his final ten years.
Jill will be travelling as a passenger on the Titanic Memorial Crossing in 2012 and I look forward to meeting up with her again. I believe there will be other descendants on board and it will be a great moment to have all of those people on deck together to pay tribute to our forebearers.

To all readers of Titanic Dock, I hope you have a great Christmas and I look forward to 2011, as we enter the centenary year of Titanic’s launch.