Charles Lightoller

Charles Herbert Lightoller (born March 30, 1874 in Chorley , Lancashire , England , † December 8, 1952 in Twickenham , Middlesex , England) was a British seaman and second officer of the Titanic . He was the most senior officer who survived the sinking.

Charles H. Lightoller (between 1920 and 1930)

Career

Lightoller came from a wealthy family who owned a cotton mill in Chorley. At the age of 13 he began a four-year training course on Primrose Hill . His second ship was the Holt Hill , which was stranded in a heavy storm on the uninhabited island of St. Paul . Lightoller and the rest of the crew were rescued by the Coorong and brought to Adelaide , Australia , from where he returned to England with the Duke of Abercom . After further trips, he switched from sailing ships to steamers in 1895 at the age of 21 . He served in the African Royal Mail Service for three years until he became seriously ill with malaria .

He turned for a time from the seafaring and took in Yukon on Gold Rush Klondike in part, without success, and then tried his hand as a cowboy in Alberta , Canada . To earn his return to England, he worked as a hobo . In 1899 he reached his home completely penniless on a cattle freighter.

In January 1900, Lightoller began his career with the White Star Line , he was hired as fourth officer on the Medic . He then moved to the Majestic under the command of Edward John Smith , who later became the captain of the Titanic . His promotion to third officer brought him to the RMS Oceanic , the flagship of the White Star Line at the time. After another interlude on the Majestic , his last post before being recalled to the Titanic was that of a first officer on the Oceanic .

Titanic

Lightoller came aboard the Titanic two weeks before the maiden voyage and served as first officer during the test drives at sea. But then Captain Smith brought Henry T. Wilde from the RMS Olympic , and this ousted the previous Chief Officer William M. Murdoch to the position of First Officer, Lightoller had to give way to the rank of Second Officer.

On the night of the sinking, Lightoller had a bridge watch from 6:00 p.m. on April 14, 1912. At around 7:35 p.m., he noticed a rapid drop in air temperature, with the weather clear and the sea unusually calm. At 8:55 p.m. this was also discussed in a conversation with Captain Smith. Although only the Caronia's radio call had been hung up in the chart room of the Titanic of the numerous ice warnings that day, at around 9:30 p.m. Lightoller instructed Sixth Officer James P. Moody to urge the men in the crow's nest to pay close attention. He also informed the first officer Murdoch of this when he handed the bridge over to him at 10:00 p.m.

Lightoller then retired to his cabin and was preparing for sleep when the Titanic collided with an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. in the North Atlantic . He ran on deck but could not see anything and returned to his cabin to await orders. At midnight he was informed of the damage by fourth officer Joseph Boxhall .

Lightoller supervised the lowering of the lifeboats on the port side. He was stricter than Murdoch on starboard and interpreted his orders in such a way that only women and children were allowed to board the boats. He also let lifeboats with vacant seats off instead of letting men board. This was done in the expectation that after the ship went down, the boats would row back to pick up survivors. He also turned back John Jacob Astor , who wanted to accompany his pregnant wife Madeleine . He also forced a few men at gunpoint to get off lifeboat No. 2.

He turned down Chief Officer Wilde's suggestion to operate the foldable lifeboat D. Thereupon he turned to the folding boat B, which was still moored on the roof of the officers' cabins. He was able to solve this shortly before the sinking, then he jumped into the water. He got sucked into the water breaking into the ship and almost drowned when he was pressed against the grille of a fan shaft. However, he was released by an air pressure wave from inside the ship.

After surfacing, he was able to reach the folding boat B, which was now floating keel up in the water, and hold on to a rope. Shortly thereafter, the first of the Titanic's four large funnels fell into the water and narrowly missed it. The pressure wave drove the boat and him out of the danger zone. Together with other survivors, he managed to climb onto the fallen hull. He took command and, thanks to his experience as a seaman and by skillful weight shifting, they were able to keep it from capsizing until it was picked up by another lifeboat later that night. Lightoller was the last survivor to board the Carpathia , which rushed to the rescue .

The investigation

As the highest ranking surviving officer, Lightoller was a key witness in the subsequent investigation into the disaster. He testified before the American and British investigative commissions, defending his employer, the White Star Line, against the numerous allegations. Many of the suggestions for improvement that he made during the interviews were later adopted and implemented by various nations. These included measuring the number of lifeboat places based on the number of people on board and not on the tonnage, lifeboat exercises for passengers and crew, a radio station manned around the clock and the sending of official ice warnings.

According to statements made by his granddaughter in 2010, the disaster, according to Lightoller, was due to the fact that there was a misunderstanding on the bridge between helmsman Robert Hichens and the first officer on duty William M. Murdoch. Hichens confused starboard and port . In addition, the managing director of the White Star Line, Joseph Bruce Ismay , who was traveling on board the Titanic , ordered the captain to continue after the collision. As a result, the ingress of water was drastically worsened.

The surviving officers of the Titanic, left to right: Harold Lowe , Charles Lightoller, Joseph Boxhall . Sitting in front: Herbert Pitman .

After the Titanic

Lightoller (right) and Pitman

Lightoller served in the First World War as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy , first on the Oceanic , which was now in military service and whose sinking he survived in September 1914 on the Scottish island of Foula , later as the commander of torpedo boats and the destroyer Garry . He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross twice, including as captain of the Garry for ramming and sinking the German submarine SM UB 110 on July 19, 1918 in the North Sea . At the end of the war he held the rank of commander.

After the Titanic accident, Lightoller wanted to stay with the White Star Line. Like many surviving crew members, he had to recognize that serving on the Titanic was a stigma . He had no prospects of promotion and eventually quit. He tried his hand at being an innkeeper and chicken farmer until he and his wife got lucky in property speculations and became wealthy.

In the 1930s he wrote his autobiography Titanic and other ships , which, after some initial difficulties, had considerable success. However, the book was withdrawn from trading after the Marconi Company threatened legal action. In the book, Lightoller had expressed himself critically about the role of radio operators on the Titanic, who were not part of the ship's personnel but were employed by the Marconi Company.

The Sundowner ship in Ramsgate Harbor, Kent in 2010

However, Lightoller did not turn his back entirely on seafaring, he bought the Sundowner as his private yacht. With this ship he and his son Roger took part in Operation Dynamo in World War II in 1940 . They helped evacuate the Allied soldiers encircled by the Germans in Dunkirk to Great Britain.

In the post-war period he ran a small shipyard called Richmond Slipways in London , which built motor boats for the police.

Charles Lightoller died of heart disease in Twickenham in December 1952 at the age of 78. His ashes found their final resting place in Richmond near London.

family

Charles was the son of Frederick James Lightoller and the former Sarah Jane Widdows. His mother Sarah died shortly after he was born, and his siblings Richard Ashton and Caroline Mary fell victim to scarlet fever in early childhood . His father Frederick later emigrated to New Zealand .

Lightoller was married to Sylvia Hawley-Wilson, whom he met in 1903 as an officer on the Suevic on a trip from England to Australia and married shortly afterwards. They had five children: Roger, Richard, Mavis, Doreen and Brian. He lost two of his sons in World War II: the youngest son Brian died as a pilot in the Royal Air Force in the bombing of Wilhelmshaven on the first night after Great Britain entered the war , the eldest son Roger died as a soldier in the Royal Navy during the last months of the war in Granville, France .

media

In the British film The Last Night of the Titanic from 1958, which is based on the book by Walter Lord and tells the sinking of the Titanic from the perspective of Lightoller, Kenneth More took over his role. In the 1997 film adaptation of the Titanic , Charles Lightoller was portrayed by Jonathan Phillips .

The character of Mr. Dawson in the movie Dunkirk (2017) by Mark Rylance was based on Lightoller and his role during Operation Dynamo.

Works

• Titanic and Other Ships. Nicholson and Watson, London 1935.

Web links

• Charles Lightoller in the Encyclopedia Titanica (English)
• Charles Lightoller at titanic-titanic.com (English)
• I Was There - Charles Lightoller tells of the sinking of the Titanic in his own words (audio document from 1936, approx. 22 minutes, BBC archive)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Did the helmsman confuse left and right? Article from Welt online on September 29, 2010, accessed on September 29, 2010
2. ↑ Dunkirk (2017). Retrieved August 15, 2017 . 
3. ^ "Dunkirk" character who rescued British soldiers based on the most senior officer to survive the Titanic. In: The Vintage News. November 28, 2017, accessed October 22, 2019 .