Before people were able to take their overseas vacays by plane, they had to take the long
way around; that meant boarding a ship.
And – let’s face it, a magnificent ocean voyage was as luxurious as it could get.
But you see, a lot of things can go wrong when large ships did transatlantic crossings
– especially during the early 1900s.
The passengers weren’t aware of the dangers at the time; at least not as much as the sailors
and crew members.
And luckily enough, some of them survived to share their harrowing stories.
But, I’ll get back to that…….
George William Beauchamp was the legendary sailor who survived two major ship disasters
at the beginning of the 20th century.
He was unlucky enough to experience these disasters firsthand, both on board the Titanic
and Lusitania.
Yet, he was lucky enough to survive both.
Or maybe he was a jinx, who knows?
We’ll let the conspiracy theorists do that one.
Here, we’ll assume that he was just in the wrong places at the wrong times…
George Beauchamp was born in Hampshire, England in 1888, and he was the middle child among
4 other siblings.
His dad was working as a sawyer in the railway works when George, who was still a teenager,
finished school and embarked on a journey at sea.
It seems like he was fascinated by the sea so much that he was determined to turn it
into a career.
It proved to be a career choice that would change his life forever.
For a while, he worked at the Union Castle Line, which was a British shipping line that
operated a fleet of cargo ships and passenger liners between Europe and Africa.
After that, he worked for the Royal Mail Ship, and get this: before that time, RMS stood
for Royal Mail Steamer, which indicated that the Titanic was also constructed to carry
mail.
That’s probably why it also had a huge mail room and a post office in the decks.
Fascinating, right?
– Now, back to our story.
This later position was the one that would change his life, and it was at the White Star
Line.
George was really looking forward to working on board the “unsinkable” ship that we
all know as Titanic.
So, he did everything in his power to get the position.
You see, he applied for a job as a fireman, and he listed all his credentials in the application
as well.
But get this: at the time, George was 42 years old, and he needed to be younger to work in
such a position because it required a lot of physical strength, so he lied about his
age and claimed that he was 32.
He must’ve looked the part, because he got the job!
He would be earning about $7.50 a month.
If you’re wondering how much that would be today, it’s close to 850 bucks.
On April 14th, 1912, at the time of the famous collision, George was on Duty.
He was working the 8pm to 12pm shift and was down in the Number 10 stokehold.
He said that he heard a loud BANG, that sounded like a “roar of Thunder”.
Not even a minute passed, and he and his colleagues were given orders to STOP.
When the engines stopped, the next orders they were given were to immediately shut the
dampers.
At the same time, the watertight doors shut completely to prevent any of the water from
getting in.
A few minutes later, the commander told the firemen to draw fires; but as they were doing
that, water started coming in from underneath the floor.
At that point, the commander told them all to move to the escape ladder.
George started climbing up and didn’t look back until he made it to the boat deck.
They had life-boats available for all the crew members, and each crew member was assigned
to a different boat.
However, the list wasn’t created until that morning, and not all the crew members had
a chance to look at it.
So, when George got there, he was lost.
And, there was another problem with the lifeboats.
It seems like they had so much confidence that the Titanic was unsinkable, they never
even did a boat drill, so almost no-one knew what to do in this situation.
His mission was to try and save as many women and children as he could, and he did that
successfully on boat number 13.
When he finally managed to fill the boat with 70 people, he was given orders to lower it.
That was when a few men helped themselves in as well.
Originally, George was going to be the only man in the lifeboat, and he was going to use
his strength as fireman to guide the boat away from Titanic using the oars provided.
But that wasn’t going to be as easy as they thought.
Unlike many other lifeboats who went out first, George’s boat was too full, and even though
it landed slowly and steadily in the waters, he still struggled to guide it away from the
ship without getting any water in it.
The men who boarded the lifeboat right before it was lowered to the sea found more oars
and helped in distancing the lifeboat away from the Titanic to stop it from taking them
down with it.
They managed to get away from the sinking ship, but not by far.
George recalled that they stopped rowing once they felt they were at a secure distance.
George and the passengers on the lifeboat looked to see if there was a compass on the
lifeboat, and there wasn’t, so they didn’t know where they were or in which direction
to head.
Now, we all know that Titanic sunk at 2:20 in the morning, but the Carpathia - which
was the ship who came to their rescue, didn’t pick up Georges’ boat until 9:50 the next
morning.
That means they were floating in the water for more than 7 hours.
His boat was amongst the last ones to be picked up out of a total of 13 lifeboats filled with
people.
George had had working experience at sea for more than 10 years when he boarded the Titanic,
and when the unfortunate event happened, he thought that it’d be the last time he’d
have to deal with such a tragedy.
But boy, was he mistaken.
The next ship that George was a crew member on was the Lusitania.
And it would also soon face a catastrophe.
It was built in 1906, and by 1915 it’d made 202 trips across the Atlantic.
On May 7th, 1915, the ship was close to completing its 202nd journey from New York to Liverpool
and was about to receive its first and last hit.
There were 1266 passengers and 696 crew members on board.
The Lusitania was travelling parallel to the south coast of Ireland when it was spotted
by a German U-boat at 2:10 in the afternoon.
Walther Schwieger, who was the commanding officer of the U-boat, gave the order to fire
a torpedo at the large ship, because they believed that it was carrying military hardware
to Europe.
Even though the ship was going fast, it wasn’t travelling at full speed, and was easily struck
by the torpedo on the starboard bow.
This caused an explosion at the point of contact, and the ship began to take in water at an
alarming speed.
Even though there were enough lifeboats on the ship to save everyone, the situation became
chaotic due to the large list of people and how fast the ship was sinking.
Less than half of the people on board survived, and among those was George.
The Carpathia rescue ship of this story was a British cruiser called June, who heard about
the sinking a short time after the ship was struck, and left the Harbor in Cork to offer
help.
Now, after that, you can imagine that George began to question his decisions about his
career path.
However, his love for the sea and being a crew member on ships remained.
So, he found the middle ground.
Right after he experienced the second major sinking disaster in his life, he told his
family that he was officially done with working on large ships.
His announcement was way overdue.
George managed to save hundreds of lives during both disasters, but it’s still unclear what
his position was on the Lusitania, and where he worked later.
After he retired, he moved to Southampton in the UK, where he spent the rest of his
days close to the sea.
Now it’s your turn: Do you know about any more legendary people who had such extraordinary
experiences?
Let me know in the comments below.
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