Frank Tower
Frank Lucks Tower is the figure of a modern legend . He is told that he survived three major ship wrecks.
In 1912 he is said to have been a stoker on the British luxury steamer Titanic , which collided with an iceberg and went down with more than fifteen hundred people on board. In 1914, he is said to have survived the collision of the Canadian ocean liner Empress of Ireland with the freighter Storstad , killing more than a thousand people. In 1915 he is said to have also been a stoker on the RMS Lusitania when it was torpedoed by a German submarine, and to have survived this accident too.
The story of Frank Tower first appeared in the comic strip "Believe It Or Not" by the American adventurer Robert Ripley . Today it is clear that this figure is an invention. History is a modern folk tale, which is fed by the wish that as a human being, one can emerge victorious even from terrible technical tragedies.
The comparable story of Oscar, the Bismarck's cat on board , is not a legend, but is based on credible reports.
In contrast to Tower, there have actually been some people who survived several 20th century shipping tragedies. There was at least one person on the ships of this modern legend who survived two shipwrecks. Also a person who survived three ship accidents:
- Stewardess Violet Jessop survived the collision of the Olympic with the cruiser Hawke in 1911 as well as the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and that of the Britannic in 1916.
- Stoker William Clark survived the sinking of the Titanic and the sinking of the Empress of Ireland .
- The Canadian Leonard L. McMurray survived the sinking of the ocean liner Republic in 1909 and the sinking of the luxury liner Lusitania in 1915.