Titanic Survivor Info, Passenger Stories & News

Eleanor I. Shuman
ELGIN, Illinois - March 9, 1998 - one of the last survivors of the Titanic, died on Saturday from an undisclosed illness, a spokesman at Sherman Hospital said. She was 87.
   Shuman was less than 2 years old when the ship went down in 1912. She was traveling with her mother, brother and two Swedish teens during the voyage home from Europe, following a visit to relatives. Shuman's mother, brother and one of the teens were among the 705 survivors.
   She said she remembered people screaming and crying on the ship and seeing hands reaching up to her. Shuman saw the premiere of the movie "Titanic" last year and met director James Cameron. Schuman said that though she enjoyed the film, its realism brought back haunting memories of drowning victims reaching out to her.
   "I kept saying to myself, 'I was there', but it is hard to pin it to those things mum told me about," she said of the movie. "I've seen it twice and I thought it was wonderful."
   Her death leaves five survivors of the disaster.

Madeline Astor
Madeline inherited from her husband the income from a five-million-dollar trust fund and the use of his home on Fifth Avenue and in the Newport so long as she did not marry. In August 1912, she gave birth to a son with whom she was pregnant on the Titanic, and she named him after her husband, John Jacob Astor. She relinquished the Astor income and mansions during World War I to marry William K. Dick of New York, and by him she had two more sons. She divorced Dick in Reno, Nevada in 1933 to marry Italian prize fighter Enzo Firemonte. Five years later this marriage also ended in divorce. She died in Palm Beach, Florida in 1940 at the age of 47.

Richard and Sally Beckwith
Ricahrd and Sally continued to travel and entertained frequently at their homes in New York City and Squam Lake, New Hampshire. Richard died in New York in 1933 and his wife in that city in 1955.

Fredrick Fleet
He was the lookout who first sighted the iceberg that sank the Titanic. He left the sea in 1936. He worked for Harland and Wolff's Southampton shipyard during World War II, after which he became a night watchman for the Union Castle Line. As he moved into old age, he sold newspapers on a street corner in Southampton. In 1965, despondant over his finances and the recent loss of his wife, Fleet took his own life.

Masabumi Hosono
The Titanic was sinking fast. Horrified passengers rushed onto lifeboats being lowered into the dark, icy sea. Desperate men were stopped at gunpoint so women and children could escape first.
Masabumi Hosono stood on the deck, torn between the fear of shame and the instinct for survival. Then the 42-year-old Japanese bureaucrat found himself in the right place at the right moment. There were two spots open in a lifeboat. Hosono hesitated, but when he saw a man next to him jump in, he swallowed his fear and followed.
Hosono's decision saved his life -- yet it brought him decades of shame in Japan. He was branded a coward, fired from his job and spent the rest of his days embittered.

Edith Brown Haisman
SOUTHAMPTON, England - January 20, 1997 - Mrs. , the oldest survivor of the Titanic, died at the age of 100. She was 15 years old when placed in lifeboat No. 13 as the Titanic sank. Her father Thomas Brown, a glass of brandy in hand, waved from the deck saying "I will see you in New York."
   In 1993 she described her ordeal:
   "I was in lifeboat No. 13. I always remembered that. My father was waving to us and talking to a clergyman, the Rev. Carter.
   "The Titanic went in the ice and I heard three bangs. Before we hit, there had been terrific vibrations from the engines during the night as the ship was really racing over the sea.
   "As the lifeboat pulled away we heard cries from people left on the ship and in the water and explosions in the ship. There were lots of bodies floating. We kept on rescuing people and trying to cover them up against the cold. We were in the lifeboat nine hours.
   "I kept looking in the water for my father and when we reached New York we went to the hosptials to see if he had been picked up."
   Edith married the late Frederick Haisman in South Africa. They had 10 children and more than 30 grandchildren.

Olaus Abelseth
Olaus tried vacationing in Canada to calm his nerves following his ordeal with the Titanic, but found that simply going back to work was just what he needed. Returning to the South Dakota farm he had first homesteaded in 1908, he raised cattle and sheep for the next 30 years before retiring in North Dakota where he died in 1980.

Joseph Boxhall
Joseph was 4th officer on the Titanic and attained a command with the Royal Navy but was never made captain while in the merchant service. He left the sea in 1940 and in 1958 acted as technical advisor to the film "A Night To Remember." Following his death in 1967, his ashes were scattered over the ocean in the vicinity of the Titanic's sinking place.

Harold Bride
Harold Bride was the Titanic's wireless man. He kept a very low profile in the years following the disaster. World War I found him as a wireless operator on the tiny steamer, the Mona's Isle. He later embarked on a career as a salesman before retiring to Scotland where he passed away in 1956.