On the Way to a Better Life: The Titanic’s Third Class
By Slimane
More than a hundred years after the sinking, the third class passengers of the Titanic are still overshadowed by other, better documented stories. Their stories, however, are no less fascinating and diverse. Let’s see what awaited those who bought the cheapest tickets on the most luxurious liner of its time.
This part tells about the period before the voyage. It is about the many nationalities, occupations, and reasons for travel of people in third class, as well as their way to the ship, from their native countries to the ports of call. If you are more interested in their life on board, go to Part II of this article.
Who Were They
The shortest answer to this question is “immigrants”. Indeed, third class was primarily for the people who wanted to start a new life in other countries. Their reasons differed, and we will look into them in the next section. Their nationalities and occupations were even more diverse. As one Welshman wrote in a letter, “there is hundreds of foreigners on her of every nation”.
Of course, the British and Irish passengers come to mind first when one thinks of third class. And for a good reason: they made up a big part of steerage: 118 Brits and 113 Irish. But they would be surpassed by Scandinavians as there were about 196 passengers from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. 180 of them left from Southampton, making up some 36% of those boarding there. The White Star advertised its services very actively in Norway and Sweden, luring many workers to book their passage aboard the newest ships. Ernest Townley had toured the Titanic in Southampton and noted: “Most of the third class passengers I saw on board were fair-haired, happy looking Scandinavians”. Up until Queenstown, their language likely dominated lower decks.
After these three, Lebanese were the biggest group, amounting to 79. Officially, they were Syrians. That’s because Lebanon became an independent country only after World War One, and before that, Lebanon and Palestine were considered a Syria vilayet, or simply a province, under Ottoman rule.
The Titanic carried other Ottoman subjects as well. Twelve Armenians fled their homeland which suffered from Turkish persecution. The Lebanese and Armenian Christians boarded at Cherbourg (102 third-class passengers came aboard there in total). In order to do this, the former left Syria via Beirut, while the latter had to bribe officials (or pay “baksheesh”) to leave via Turkish-occupied Trebizond or Batoum, a Georgian port city controlled by the Russian Empire. In either case, the Armenians then headed to Bulgaria to reach Cherbourg or Marseille in some cases.
It’s important to remember that nationality does not always mean ethnicity. Two groups, Austro-Hungarians and Russians, illustrate this point well. There were 44 Austro-Hugrians listed in third class, but of them, about 20 were actually Croatians and others belonged to different Slavic groups, so Austrians, or Hungarian (Magyar) were in minority. Of the 18 Russians, none was an actual Russian: these were people from Poland and some Baltic countries, all subjects to the Russian Empire, and mostly Jewish. Many of them fled the service in the Russian army.
Among others, there were Americans, but it’s difficult to say how many of them were recent immigrants; Bulgarians, Belgians, Chinese, French (all five of them one Lefebvre family). While there exist many reports about Italians on board, usually far from flattering due to the prejudices of the era, only four passengers from Italy were listed in third class. This was due to the fact that anyone with a dark enough complexion would often be called an Italian or derogatory words like “dagos” related to them. If, say, an Armenian, Jewish, or Serbian person had black hair and tanned skin, many people would think that they were Italians. There was the same number, four, of Greeks, Germans, and Swiss passengers, plus three Portuguese.
Prejudices towards Central and Eastern Europeans were rife — to be fair, people of practically any nationality outside Western Europe and North America faced them. The low number of slavic passengers can be explained by a simple fact: both WSL and Cunard discouraged them from using their Southampton and Liverpool services, respectively. This was seen as positive politics. Many thought steerage passengers dirty and all but wild, but “hunkies”, people from those “semi-civilized” regions, were seen as especially filthy and prone to troublemaking, to the point of knife fights. According to Arthur Rostron, some of them were put “down the forepeak” and “with rats for company”. But, he added, “only a small minority got wild, the majority being quiet to the point of almost pathetic docility”.
It would be impossible to determine every passenger’s religion, but it’s safe to say that the majority belonged to different branches of Christianity or professed Judaism.
What about occupations? Oh, there were all sorts of them. I bet many thought of hard-working laborers first of all, and indeed, there was a fair share of them. Dozens of general laborers hoped to find any jobs overseas that would pay better. Although, not all of the manual workers were in third class: for example, a large company of Cornish miners opted for second class instead. The line was rather blurry. The list of the Titanic’s third class passengers included farm and mill workers, blacksmiths, miners, carpenters, stonemasons, gardeners; bakers, tailors, jewelers, salesmen and merchants; journalists, businessmen, and engineers; servants, cooks, seamstresses, laundresses, and even a popcorn vendor who owned two houses in Merrill, Wisconsin.
All six Chinese men were firemen for the Donaldson steamship line. They all paid for one ticket, £56 9s 11d, which today would be some $9,000.
Irishman Michael Connaughton had settled in Brooklyn as a trolley car driver and for his return there bought a ticket for £7 15s ($1,130 today). His fellow countrymen from Co Westmeath, farmer and a woolen mill’s mechanic Eugene Daly, his cousin Margaret, and their friend Bridget Mulvihill, who had worked as a servant in America since 1906, paid the same price for their cabins. It was a big sum which required some to save money for several years. They used any means to get the money: sold their houses and property, asked friends and families to lend them something, worked more. Others could afford tickets in second class, but preferred to save money for their life after the voyage. An Irish-born New York police officer Daniel Moran made this decision when he bought a £24 3s ticket for himself and his sister. He was returning from Ireland where he took his sister and the inheritance left from their father.
Yet there was also Franz Karun, a hotelier, no less: he ran a boarding house in Galesburg, Illinois, mostly for railway workers. Back in his native Carniola, in Slovenia (a part of Austria-Hungary in 1912), he owned land worth over $700, but sold it prior to the voyage. He valued his personal belongings at even more, $850. Nowadays this would be approximately $22,000 and $26,700, respectively. He bought a ticket for £13 8s 4d, more than $2,000 today.
Similarly, John Sage used to own a pub, the New Inn, in Norfolk and then a bakery and confectionery in Peterborough. Despite this, he did not eschew the job of a dining-car cook on the Canadian Pacific Railway when he and his eldest son moved to Canada. They saved enough to pay a deposit on a citrus farm in Jacksonville, Florida. There, John wanted to grow pecans. “[I] have found a lovely plot of land, Jacksonville is quite the most wonderful of places,” Sage wrote to his wife in 1911. “I count the days until I’m home with my dear ones.” And so he returned to take his big family to this wonderful place. He paid £69 11s for the ticket, but also paid for the family piano and other furniture that they refused to leave behind. Beside that, he sent over £1,000 to pay for the farm. All eleven of the Sages perished in the Atlantic.
At the age of twenty five Bertram Dean ran a pub in London, but made the decision to move to Kansas, to his relatives, with his wife and two children (his daughter Millvina was the youngest passenger on board the Titanic, having been born in February). There, he wanted to open a tobacconist’s shop: he sold his public house, which allowed him to buy a ticket for £20 11s 6d and save some for the shop.
Olaus Abelseth used to be a sailor, farmer, and general laborer, but got to own a livestock farm in Perkins County, South Dakota. Now he led a small group of fellow Norwegians to the States. On the other hand, Malkolm Johnson failed to buy a farm. He ran a concrete laying firm in Minneapolis and got relatively wealthy. Then he decided to acquire a farm at Björkaryd in Sweden, but in vain, and boarded the Titanic to return to America, quite reluctantly because he had wanted to stay in Sweden. Reportedly, he had $2,150 ($66,000 today) sewn into his socks and carried a gold watch on a chain, a gold tie pin, and a diamond signet ring.
Apart from owning a fruit farm in California, American Ernst Danbom, who was returning after a year-long honeymoon in Sweden with his wife and infant son, was an emigrant recruiter with connections in the White Star. This meant that he got a commission for every recruited migrant. Thus he saved a lot by the time the family decided to go back to America. On his body was found $276 cash and $30 in gold (almost $9,000 today). Oskar Hedman of Sweden had a similar job, a settler recruiter for a land firm. He brought 17 Swedes on board the Titanic, though it’s hard to say how profitable this work was: his own ticket was one of the cheapest, £6 19s 6d (which would still be almost $1,000 today).
Job, new, promised, or just possible, was the reason for travel for many in the steerage, but not the only one. We will take a better look at this now.
Why Did They Travel
The United States, Canada, and Australia were the lands of promise for people of all stations, but especially for the working-class people. The States in particular, with their open borders, offered a wide array of opportunities and, as some hoped, allowed to make money much faster than in their homeland. The late 19th century saw a huge wave of migration to these “new lands”, much to the dismay of the “natives”. From 1850 to 1913, it is estimated that America welcomed more than 30 million immigrants, and by 1910, 22% of the US labor force was foreign-born.
Immigrants formed enclaves within cities and towns or — which was rarer — villages. First came the pioneers, then their families and friends followed. Not everyone left their homes willingly, but the opportunity to get a new beginning, promoted by their relatives, was enticing. Frank Goldsmith used to be a machinist for Aveling & Porter in Rochester, Kent. His wife’s parents had moved to Detroit a couple of years prior and had been urging the family to move there. Eventually, after the death of his younger son in December of 1911, Frank agreed. He only booked his family, wife Emily and nine-year-old son Frankie, in third class because WSL had promised the best accommodations in their advertisements. Their cabin cost £20 10s 6d. And so the Goldsmiths took tools, toys, and the Singer sewing machine and embarked on the journey of their life.
The most successful of the immigrants would open their own establishments, like factories, stores, or hotels, creating more employment for their countrymen. This was true for a part of the Swedes on board the Titanic. A Swedish citizen opened a grinding wheels factory in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the 1880s, and since then, the area had been attracting lots of workers from his native Smaland. Local factory owners eagerly hired these newcomers, not only because they worked well, but because they did not unionize. Carl Asplund, for example, had lived in Worcester for some time, then returned to Alseda in Smaland in 1909 with his wife and four children to settle family affairs. He had five children by the time he decided to come back to Worcester to work in the Washburn & Moen barbed wire factory and give his kids a better education, so he paid £31 7s 9d to accommodate the big family on the Titanic.
In fact, it was common among third class passengers to live “between” their new country and their homeland. These so-called sojourners usually crossed the Atlantic at least twice a year and helped others both during the voyage and on land. Like Nikola Lulić, a Croat villager who had deserted from the Austrian army in 1902. He was a miner in Chisholm, Minnesota, and returned to his village only in 1911 to visit his family. Having crossed the Atlantic twice before, he seemed like an experienced sojourner for other Croats, so he helped them throughout the journey, shared secrets of a migrant’s life, and acted as an interpreter.
Such clusters, led by somebody on board or convinced by somebody in America, formed in different countries and met on the Titanic. Fourteen travellers came from the Irish parish of Addergoole, ten of them having bought tickets from the local WSL agent Thomas Durcan. The newcomers were in the safe hands of the Yanks, that is the Irishmen who had been to America before and came back to Ireland for one final farewell and blessing. And to help others with the crossing. One of the Yanks was Catherine Bourke. She settled in Chicago after her parents died, returned to Ireland in 1910… and soon married her childhood sweetheart John. He had never thought of emigrating, but eventually agreed to sell his farm and move to Chicago.
Among the Addergoole Fourteen were two Annies, Kelly and McGowan. They are great examples of the rather tangled family ties that brought people to the States. Kelly had cousins in Chicago and travelled with two other cousins: James Flynn, who had a brother in New York, and Pat Canavan, who was hoping to get a job in Philadelphia. Annie McGowan’s parents had actually emigrated to the USA in the early 1890s, but returned to Addergoole in 1896. Now aged 17, she and her aunt Kate (who convinced Catherine Bourke to return to the States) headed to Chicago to live with another aunt. Of these fourteen, the two Annies and Bridget McDermott were the sole survivors.
In Olaus (or Ole) Abelseth’s group, Adolf Humblen, a forty-two-year-old farmer, was the oldest. Others were Ole’s cousin and carpenter Peter Soholt, his brother-in-law Sigurd Moen (27), who was also a carpenter, hKaren Abelseth (16), and Anna Salkjelsvik (21). Both Anna and Karen had sisters in America, while Sigurd had been to the States before. Ole looked after Karen at the request of her father and helped the others.
The same approach was taken by many Lebanese Christians. Sadly, religious migration was a great driving force in several regions. After the Turkish Revolution of 1908, when the sultan was overthrown, things became very turbulent for the province of Syria. Meanwhile Armenians had been victims of massacres and oppression from the hand of the Ottomans. Moving elsewhere wasn’t just about making money for these people, but about survival. Or freedom: Dahir Shadid fled Lebanon because he accidentally killed a girl while playing with a rifle.
Twenty Titanic passengers hailed from Hardine, a village with thirty churches and monasteries, as well as with an ancient Roman temple. Quite fittingly, in Syriac, “hardin” means “terrorized”. Fittingly, because the people of Hardine were Maronite Christians and were persecuted. They left en masse to the United States or Canada. This wasn’t happening in Hardine alone. All over Lebanon, people struggled to find jobs or were too poor. As soon as they had enough money, Christians tried to move. Many left for Pennsylvania or Ottawa. Pennsylvania’s Wilkes-Barre attracted the Hardine voyagers, most of whom were farmers or simple laborers. Only Gerios Youssef was a shoemaker, and he was heading for Youngstown, Ohio.
These Lebanese groups had lots of sojourners, because people could spend years in America, but usually intended to return home, either for some time or permanently, when they were old. Though not called Yanks, several women from Lebanon returned from different states to see their families. Now that they were confident in their new home and job, they could take their children, relatives, or friends with them, or chaperone young girls going to their fathers. Mariona Assaf (Zād Naṣr Allāh) was forty-five and had worked in Ottawa for five years as a pedlar and greengrocer. She returned to her native settlement Kfar Mishki to see the two sons. She boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg with nine relatives and friends from Kfar Mishki. Only Boulos Hanna planned to go to Youngstown: for all others, the destination was Ottawa, where some others have settled before as well, like Mansour Hanna or Sleiman Khalil Attala, a journalist (though he wasn’t from Kfar Mishki).
Shawnee Abi Saab preferred to call herself Jenny George in America. She and her husband had moved to the States in the hopes of saving money to buy land in Lebanon. Unfortunately, her husband, George Whabee, died in 1908. Shawnee resorted to doing laundry and housework in Youngstown. It did not bring much money, but she invited her three sons and two daughters to come over. Another tragedy struck when Shawnee’s son Thomas became seriously ill in 1910. Mountain air would help him, it was hoped, and he returned to Lebanon with another brother. This was in vain as his condition deteriorated. Shawnee went back to Lebanon as well, but only arrived after his funeral. Several months later the grieving mother embarked on the Titanic at Cherbourg. But she wasn’t alone. Three cousins followed her to work in a steel mill in Youngstown, as well as Banoura Ayoub, a niece of her cousin who was only thirteen. Banoura and Shawnee survived, but not the three men.
Also coming from small villages were a group of Bulgarians and Armenians. Eight Bulgarians, boarding in Southampton, were potters and laborers from the same poor village, Gumoshtnik. The Armenians were all young men, but, save for one, already married. This was a way for their parents to ensure that they would return, sooner or later. How many of them wanted to come back is anyone’s guess. 30,000 of their countrymen were massacred just three years prior, and now they were fleeing the nationalists bent on Turkification of their people. In 1912, more than 9,000 Armenians arrived in the USA, while some opted for Canada. Not all of the young men who boarded the Titanic had everything planned, and a couple of them gave the addresses of factories, rather than homes, as their destination on the embarkation papers.
Just as the Armenians, most Jewish passengers fled their hostile homeland. Shtetls could be safe havens for them, but these settlements were surrounded by antisemitic neighbors and troubled by the news about pogroms here and there. However, some Jewish voyagers came from cities and towns, not shtetls. Besides, a part of them lived in England for a couple of years before emigrating to the US or Canada, like Abraham Hyman, a Lithuanian Jew, and David Livshin, who was originally from Latvia. Both had lived in Manchester, which had a big Jewish community. Hyman ran a Kosher grocery, while Livshin was a watchmaker and jeweler, and America seemed to them as a land of more opportunities. Also among the Jewish passengers were Beila Moor, a garment maker travelling with her son Meier, Morris Sirota, an aspiring tailor, and Eliezer Gilinski, a young locksmith who left Lithuania to avoid military service.
Finally, another reason to flee a country was political. Though not as common as economic or religious migrants, there were a couple of political refugees. August Wennerström, for example. A twenty-seven-year-old Swedish socialist, he was a typesetter, but also a journalist. Back in 1905, he called King Oscar II of Sweden “the king of thieves” in his article, which resulted in confiscation and charges. Although acquitted, August (whose actual surname was Andersson) decided to move to the United States with another socialist, carpenter Carl Jansson. The two weren’t sure that the Swedish government would allow them to leave the country, so they went to Denmark, bought tickets under false names, and proceeded to Southampton.
As you can see even from a few examples, a big number of passengers had actually settled in America and boarded the Titanic to return to their new (or not so new) homes. Many were visiting families, like Lulić or some of the Irish. William Brocklebank worked as a groom in Illinois and was returning from a three month vacation. Karun, as mentioned above, returned to Slovenia to sell his land. Vice versa, some were on their way to visit their families in America. And, of course, several wives crossed the ocean to finally reunite with their husbands who had saved enough money. Alma Palsson came with her four small children from Sweden to live with her husband Nils, once a miner and now a tram conductor in Chicago. The family never reunited: all five died in the sinking.
A few young women were probably more excited than many others because they were going to see their fiancés. Bertha Mulvihill came to Ireland for her sister’s wedding and then, without telling anyone, boarded the Titanic to surprise her own fiancé. And while Bertha was only hoping that the wedding would come soon, Sarah Roth, a tailor of Tarnów, Austria, was days away from the long-awaited ceremony. After all, she had been engaged for seven years! Her husband-to-be was a clerk in a department store in New York called Daniel Iles and he invited Sarah once he earned enough money. She, of course, had her trousseau and savings with her.
Where there are happy weddings, there are also broken marriages. Rhoda Abbott knew it first-hand. She came from Hertfordshire’s Saint Albans to Providence, Rhode Island, all the way back in 1893. There she married a boxing champion Stanton Abbott, but in 1911 separated from him. That year she came back to Saint Albans with her two sons (on the Olympic, by the way) and lived with her mother while working as a seamstress. Her son Eugene was only 12, so he went to school, and Rossmore, 15, worked as a boot maker. They were too homesick, so Rhoda agreed to head to Rhode Island.
Margaret Ford’s story was equally sad. She hailed from Scotland, but lived in Sussex. After she gave birth to her fifth child in 1904, her husband left her. The children did their best to help their mother, and Frances, one of the daughters, emigrated to the States in 1911 to work as a servant in a wealthy household in Long Island. This gave hope to the rest of the family, and Margaret left with her four children, followed by her sister Elizabeth Johnston and her family. All of them died.
But work remained the main reason. Elizabeth Dowdell, a housekeeper from Union Hill, New Jersey, only travelled because she watched over five-year-old Virginia Emanuel. Virginia was the daughter of opera singer Estelle Emanuel and was sent to her grandparents in New York, because Estelle had signed a contract in England for six months. They shared the cabin with Amy Stanley who used to be a servant in Oxfordshire and was heading to Connecticut to become a children’s maid. Other servants included a few girls from Sweden and Finland, like Erna Andersson. They entered domestic service to work for Swedish farmers, because these farmers’ own daughters refused to do this kind of work.
A number of the Lebanese and Croatians were planning to work in foundries in Youngstown. They probably did not know that their boss, Colonel George Wick, was on the same ship, but in first class. Frederick Goodwin was a printer-turned-electrical engineer from Fulham and wanted to get a job at the big power station in Niagara Falls. His brother was already there, and Goodwin took his entire family with him: his wife Augusta and six children. They were supposed to travel on a cheap ship, but due to the coal strike they were transferred to the Titanic, to the cabin that cost £46 18s (that’s no less than $5,300 in today’s money). This proved tragic for the family as none of the Goodwins survived.
Some of the most unusual voyagers were Welshmen Leslie Williams and David “Dai” Bowen. Leslie was a blacksmith and David was a coal miner, but additionally, they were lightweight boxing champions. After successful matches in Wales, they got a contract for boxing contests in the US. They were going to board the Baltic, but wanted to get new tailored suits and so decided to travel on board the Titanic.
Apart from the people who went to the States to get a job, there were people who were returning home from working in other countries. The Ohio-born blacksmith Anthony Abbing came all the way from South Africa, where he worked for a while. Nathan Goldsmith, a Jewish shoemaker from Latvia, a part of the Russian Empire at the time, had moved with his family to Pennsylvania, where his brother lived, in 1907. Later Nathan left them to also work in South Africa and was now on his way to reunite with his wife and two sons. But it never came to happen.
All these people, of various nationalities and stations, with different backgrounds and even more different futures, have gathered on the great liner. Optimistic, fearful, homesick, or inspired, they were looking forward not only to the new lives ahead, but to the several days on board.
What Was Their Journey Like
First they had to get to the ship, of course. You’ve seen what corners of the world these people came from. Understandably, it was not always an easy way. Those from Kfar Mishki spent days on horseback just to reach Beirut. Other Lebanese travellers opted for camel caravans. They slept in tents, had simple meals, and danced on cold nights to the music of mijwiz (wooden flutes) and drums. The Greeks travelled by ships to Marseille and then by train to Cherbourg. Wennerström and Jansson also came to Southampton by sea, probably on a cattle vessel. For the Swedes, the journey through Copenhagen would take about five days, for the Lebanese, more than a month. And even the Titanic was yet another leg of the journey for most of them: very few were going to stay in New York.
Such journeys could be unpredictable, and it’s safe to say that many people did not plan to board the Titanic specifically. True, there were agents who persuaded potential voyagers to consider the newest liner, but they mostly operated in Ireland and Sweden. Others just hoped that there would be a cheap ship and were pleasantly surprised to find that they arrived just in time to sail on the Titanic.
On the fine, though overcast and quite chilly day, the third class passengers going from London’s Waterloo Station arrived at Southampton on the special boat train for second and third classes. It departed the station before the first class one and was supposed to take passengers to the new LSWR facilities at Berth 44 in less than two hours. But the train was delayed, and passengers were afraid that they would miss the ship. Thankfully, they arrived in time. Their boarding was scheduled from 9:30 to 11 a.m.
When the Titanic reached Cherbourg, at about 6:30 p.m., just before the sunset, the tender Traffic carried some 102 third class passengers to the ship along with mail for Queenstown and New York. The craft, tossed on the waves, looked particularly small by the giant liner’s side. It was cold there, and people, exhausted by waiting at the station with heaps of luggage and by their long journey prior to that, were eager to board as soon as possible.
The same happened the next day in Queenstown. The tender America carried 113 Irishmen to the Titanic, along with three first class passengers, seven from second class, a bunch of journalists and photographers, and postal workers. The mail from Ireland was loaded on board while the last letters and postcards from passengers were off-loaded to be sent to friends, relatives, and loved ones. The passengers of this tender travelled in groups, so the short journey was filled with lively talks and music. The arrival of dozens of the Irish made stewards in third class sigh with relief: “at least this lot spoke English”, as one of them said.
Once they reached their ports, third class passengers had to undergo a medical examination. US immigration laws required separation of passengers from different classes to prevent diseases from spreading. Medical examinations were enforced for the same reason.
Hundreds, if not thousands passed through busy medics in all three ports. Busy though they were, these doctors did not miss anything suspicious. Edward Dorking almost did not board the ship, because doctors got suspicious of his bloodshot eyes. He explained that it was the result of travelling all night, but even this did not help. Dorking later said that he only got to sneak in “when the baggage was being loaded and remained out of sight until the boat started.” The Nicola-Yarred (Nīqūla Yārid) family found this out the hard way. Their journey started in Lebanon and was supposed to finish in Jacksonville, Florida. The father, a flour miller, took his two children, Jamilia (Jamīlah) and Elias (Ilyās), aged 14 and 11, to Florida, where his wife and older children have been living for some time. But he failed to pass the examination due to an eye infection. It was decided that the children should continue the journey alone, with $500 given by their father (about $15,500 in today’s money), and with no knowledge of English. Thankfully, there were many fellow Lebanese passengers eager to help. “We were saddened to leave my father behind, but were excited about being on board the R.M.S. Titanic, the largest, fastest and most luxurious ship of its time,” Elias told much later.
If they passed the examination successfully, passengers made sure they had all the documents they needed. The ticket itself, first and foremost. The tear-off section would be given to an emigration official during inspection, and he would give inspection cards in return. They listed passengers’ names, last residences, the number on the manifest, and had fields for future inspections, including by the ship’s surgeon. In New York, these cards would be pinned to the passengers’ coats. Immigrants had to keep them for several years (usually three years) and have on hand in case they needed to show their card to the authorities. On the back of the card, there would be a reminder written in different languages. Vaccination certificates were required, but this was also marked on the immigration card with a stamp. Of course, one had to provide their ticket, which served as a contract between the passenger and the line as well. It mentioned the allowance of provision and time of meals. This ticket was also important upon disembarking, when each name was checked in the passenger manifest. A baggage claim ticket would be necessary, with passengers having to remember that their luggage could not be heavier than 200 pounds. Passport was not required in the States, but could be necessary to leave the country: the Portuguese men got theirs in the end of March, for example.
Apart from documents and luggage, immigrants had to worry about Ellis Island, their gates to America. They would be examined again, but also interrogated. And here, one had to be careful. If the reason of immigration was too explicit, they risked violating the ban on contract labor. If they were too vague or indefinite, naming no contacts or addresses, they could be denied entrance into the country altogether and later deported.
But this was relatively distant. A more pressing and interesting task was ahead: exploring the huge liner. Read about it in Part II.
Sources:
- Encyclopedia Titanica
- GG Archives
- Lawrence Beesley, The Loss of the S.S. Titanic (1912)
- George Behe, On Board RMS Titanic (2017)
- Richard Davenport-Hines, Voyagers of the Titanic: Passengers, Sailors, Shipbuilders, Aristocrats, and the Worlds They Came From (2011)
- Tad Fitch, J. Kent Layton, Bill Wormstedt, On a Sea of Glass: The Life and Loss of the RMS Titanic (2012)
- Richard Davenport-Hines, Voyagers of the Titanic: Passengers, Sailors, Shipbuilders, Aristocrats, and the Worlds They Came From (2011)
- Veronica Hinke, The Last Night on the Titanic: Unsinkable Drinking, Dining, and Style (2019)
- Walter Lord, A Night to Remember (1955)
- Geoff Tibballs, Voices from the Titanic: The Epic Story of the Tragedy from the People Who Were There (2012)
- John Welshman, Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town (2012)
