Charles Lightoller
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Commander Charles Herbert Lightoller DSC & Bar RD RNR (30 March 1874 – 8 December 1952) was the second officer on board the Titanic, and the most senior officer to survive the disaster.
Lightoller later distinguished himself commanding one of the "Little Ships" during the Dunkirk evacuation.
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[edit] Career
Charles Herbert Lightoller was born in Chorley, Lancashire, on 30 March 1874. His mother, Sarah Lightoller, died shortly after giving birth to him. He was born into a cotton family who owned the Lightoller mill in Chorley. His father, Fred Lightoller, abandoned young Charles and left for New Zealand. Not wanting to end up with a factory job like most of Britain's youth at the time, at the age of 13, young Charles began a four-year seafaring apprenticeship on board the Primrose Hill. On his second voyage, he set sail with the crew of the Holt Hill. During a storm in the South Atlantic, the ship report cardand forced to put in at Rio de Janeiro — in the midst of a small pox epidemic and revolution — where repairs were made. Another storm on 13 November 1889 in the Indian Ocean caused the ship to run aground on an uninhabited, four and a half square mile island now called Île Saint-Paul. They were rescued by the Coorong and taken to Adelaide, Australia. Lightoller joined the crew of the clipper ship Duke of Abercorn for his return to England.
Charles returned to the Primrose Hill for his third voyage. They arrived in Calcutta, India, where he passed his Second Mate's Certificate. The cargo of coal caught fire while he was serving as Third Mate on board the windjammer Knight of St. Michael, and for his successful efforts in fighting the fire and saving the ship, Lightoller was promoted to Second Mate.
In 1895, at the age of 21 and a veteran of the dangers at sea, he obtained his Mate’s Ticket and left sailing ships for steamships. After three years of service in Elder Dempster's African Royal Mail Service on the West African coast, he nearly died from a heavy bout of malaria.
Lightoller went to the Yukon in 1898, abandoning the sea, to prospect for gold in the Klondike Gold Rush. Failing at this endeavour, he then became a cowboy in Alberta, Canada. He became a hobo in order to return home, riding the rails back across Canada. He worked as a cattle wrangler on a cattle boat for his passage back to England. In 1899, he arrived home penniless. He obtained his Master's Certificate and joined Greenshields and Cowie where he made another trip on a cattle boat, this time as third mate of the Knight Companion.
In January of the following year (1900), he began his career with the White Star Line as Fourth Officer of the Medic for a run from Britain to South Africa to Australia. Whilst on the Medic, Lightoller was reprimanded for a prank he and some fellow shipmen played on the citizens of Sydney at Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour. In 1900 the Boer War was raging in full fury in distant South Africa where Australian troops fought alongside British, the first war the newly independent country had taken part in. As a result passions were high when White Star Lines' Medic sailed into Sydney Harbor and dropped anchor in Neutral Bay. Its Fourth Officer was Charles Lightoller, who enjoyed a joke as much as the next man. Spending time ashore with shipmates the young sailor was amazed by the depth of concern expressed by locals concerning the South African conflict, so he decided to have some fun at their expense. In the early hours of the morning Lightoller, accompanied by four midshipmen, quietly rowed in pre-dawn darkness to the fortress and climbed its tower. They hoisted a makeshift Boer flag from its lightning conductor before loading a cannon with 14 pounds of blasting powder, white cotton waste, poured in fine grain powder before lighting a 50-foot fuse and quickly making their escape back to the Medic to watch the spectacle from its decks.
Lightoller's plan was to fool locals into believing a Boer raiding party was attacking Sydney and had captured Fort Denison, when the heavy gun went off the resounding bang blew out windows and woke people living around the harbor who leapt from beds to windows to see what was happening, finding a Boer flag fluttering in the dawn breeze and panicking. Unfortunately for Lightoller passengers on the Medic had seen him and his party sneak off the ship and back on board prior to the incident, as had sailors on night watch on other vessels anchored in the vicinity, police and port authorities were soon on deck questioning its crew. Sydney at the turn of the century was a conservative city and its citizenry didn't appreciate common sailors making fools of them.
The White Star Line was forced to pay damages and apologize to the city as the local press bayed for the blood of those responsible, officers and crew of the Medic thought Lightoller's career was over, that he would be dismissed, but the fact that he took the blame and would not divulge the names of others who had taken part in the prank went in his favor. His superiors also saw the humor in his escapade, he was reprimanded and passed over for promotion before the Medic quietly left Sydney Harbor and the controversy behind it.
He later joined the Majestic under the command of Captain Edward J. Smith in the Atlantic. From there, he was promoted to Third Officer on the Oceanic, the flagship of the White Star Line. He moved back to the Majestic as First Mate and then back to the Oceanic as its First Mate.
[edit] Titanic
Two weeks before her maiden voyage, Charles boarded the Titanic and acted as First Officer for the sea trials. Captain Edward J. Smith made Henry Wilde, of the Olympic, the Titanic's Chief Officer causing the original Chief Officer William McMaster Murdoch to drop to First Officer and Lightoller to Second Officer. The original Second Officer David Blair was dropped from the voyage altogether, while the ship's roster of junior officers remained unchanged.
On the night of 14 April 1912, Lightoller commanded the last bridge watch prior to the ship's collision with an iceberg before being relieved by Murdoch. Lightoller had retired to his cabin and was preparing for bed when he felt the collision occur. Wearing only his pajamas, Lightoller hurried out on deck to see what had happened but after seeing nothing retired back to his cabin. Figuring it would be better to remain where other officers knew where to find him if they needed him, he lay awake in his bunk until Fourth Officer Boxhall summoned him to the bridge. He pulled on trousers and a Navy-blue sweater over his pajamas and also donned (along with socks and shoes) his officers' overcoat and hat. Once the fate of the ship became clear, Lightoller immediately went to work assisting in the evacuation of the passengers into the lifeboats. Lightoller was notably stricter than some of the other officers in observing the rule of "women and children first", almost to the point of the rule being "women and children only." Lightoller lowered the lifeboats on the port side of the Titanic. The officer's last action was attempting to launch Collapsible B which was a smaller, Englehardt lifeboat with canvas sides that was stowed atop the officers' quarters on the hurricane deck on the port side. As the ship sank, sea water washed over the entire bow of the Titanic; producing a large wave that rolled aft along the boat deck. Seeing crowds of people run away from the rising water and the collapsible boat wash away upside down, Lightoller decided not to prolong it and dove into the water. Once surfaced from his dive, he spotted the ship's crow's nest now level with the water and temporarily swam towards it as a place of safety before realizing that is was safer to clear away from the foundering vessel. Then Lightoller was sucked under as water flooded down one of the forward ventilators. He was pinned there against the grating for a few seconds. Luckily, a blast of hot air from the depths of the ship erupted out of the ventilator and blew him to the surface. Following this, the officer saw Collapsible B, which the crew had unsuccessfully tried to launch earlier, floating upside down with several swimmers clawing to it. He stroked to it and held on by a rope at the front. Then one of the Titanic's massive funnels broke free and hit the water, washing the collapsible further away from the sinking ship. Later on, Second Officer Lightoller took charge and was able to calm and organize the survivors (numbering around thirty) who were on the overturned lifeboat. He led them in yelling in unison "Boat ahoy!" but with no success. During the night the sea began to rise and Lightoller led the men in shifting their weight with the swells so that their craft would not be swamped. Had they not done this, they would have been thrown into the frigid water again. The men kept this up at his direction for hours in the freezing weather until they were finally rescued by another lifeboat. Second Officer Lightoller was the last survivor to come aboard the rescue ship Carpathia.
As the senior surviving crew member, Lightoller was a key witness at both the American and British inquiries. He blamed the accident on the sea that night being the calmest he ever saw in his life; the floating icebergs gave no tell tale early warning signs of breaking whitewater at their base. He deftly defended his employer the White Star Line despite hints of excessive speed, missing binoculars in the crows' nest, and the plain recklessness of traveling through an ice field on a calm night when all other ships in the vicinity thought it wiser to stop until morning. Lightoller was also able to help channel public outcry over the incident into positive change as many of his recommendations for avoiding such accidents in the future were adopted by maritime nations. Basing lifeboat capacity on numbers of passengers and crew instead of ship tonnage, lifeboat drills so passengers know where their lifeboats are and crew know how to operate them, manned 24 hour wireless (radio) communications in all passenger ships, and official ice warnings from the maritime board are some of his recommendation made at the inquiries.
[edit] After the Titanic
Lightoller returned to duty with White Star Line, serving as a mate on the RMS Oceanic. During World War I, he was assigned as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, first serving on the Oceanic which was converted into an armed merchant cruiser. In 1915 he served as the first Officer during the trials of HMS Campania, another former passenger liner, the RMS Campania, that had just been converted into the Navy's first aircraft carrier. Later he was given his own command, first on torpedo boats and then as master of an RN destroyer. During the war, he won the Distinguished Service Cross twice and eventually finished with the rank of Commander.
After the war, despite loyal service to the White Star Line and faithfully defending his employers at the Titanic inquiries, Lightoller soon found that opportunities for advancement within the line were no longer available. All surviving crewmembers would find that being associated with the Titanic was a black mark from which they could not hope to escape. A disillusioned Lightoller resigned shortly thereafter, taking such odd jobs as an innkeeper and a chicken farmer and later property speculation, at which he and his wife had some success. During the early thirties he commenced writing his autobiography, Titanic and Other Ships which he dedicated to his "persistent wife, who made me do it". This book, after a few problems, was quite popular and began to sell well. However, it was pulled from the shelves when the Marconi Company threatened a lawsuit, due to a comment by Lightoller regarding the Titanic disaster, and the role of the Marconi operators. The retired Lightoller did not turn his back on sailing altogether, however, as he eventually purchased his own private motor yacht, which his wife, Sylvia, named Sundowner, an Australian term meaning "wanderer", and which he later used in the Dunkirk evacuation. The boat is now preserved by Ramsgate Maritime Museum. After World War II Lightoller managed a small boatyard called Richmond Slipways in London, which built motor launches for the river police.
[edit] Family
Charles Lightoller's parents were Frederick James Lightoller and Sarah Jane Widdows. His siblings were Richard Ashton and Caroline Mary Lightoller. Both, however, died in early childhood due to scarlet fever. On an Australian run on board the Suevic in 1903, Lightoller met Sylvia Hawley-Wilson on her way home to Sydney after a stay in England.[1] On the return voyage, she accompanied Lightoller as his bride. They later had five children; Roger T., Richard Trevor, Mavis, Clare, and Brian. Their youngest son Brian, an RAF pilot, was killed in action in a bombing raid over Wilhelmshaven, Germany the very first night of Britain's entry into the war. His eldest son, Roger, serving in the RN, died in France in the final month of the war. Richard gained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel by serving under General Bernard Montgomery's command for the duration of the war while Mavis served in the First Aid Nurse Yeomanry and Clare in the Political Intelligence unit. Part of his distant family the Lightowlers live in Torquay in Devon, all descended from William de Lihtolres of Littleborough near Rochdale Lancashire c1210, see family history site [1].
[edit] Death
Lightoller died on 8 December 1952 aged 78, of heart disease. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered at Mortlake Crematorium Richmond, London, England.
[edit] In popular culture
Lightoller was portrayed in almost every movie filmed about the Titanic. In the German film, Titanic (1943), he was portrayed by Erich Stelmecke. He was played by Kenneth More in the 1958 British film, A Night to Remember and in the 1997 feature film Titanic, Lightoller was played by Jonathan Phillips. He was portrayed in the made for television movies by Malcolm Stoddard in 1979's S.O.S. Titanic, and the 1996 TV miniseries Titanic by Kevin McNulty.
[edit] References
- Charles Lightoller on Titanic-Titanic.com
- Charles Lightoller's Titanic And Other Ships on Titanic-Titanic.com
- Encyclopedia Titanica
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