I’m excited that so many are enjoying the characters in my novel, By the Light of the Silvery Moon. Want to know more about the REAL people on the Titanic? My friend Sharyn has been kind enough to write some profiles for us. They are amazing and interesting . . . enjoy!

Only seventeen the night the Titanic sank, John B. “Jack” Thayer struggled under the shadow of the tragedy for the rest of his short life. He would wait thirty years before putting his story to paper, which he published privately in 1940. He wrote his account,* The Sinking of the S.S. Titanic, “. . . primarily as a family record for the information of my children and perhaps their children in memory of my Father, John Borland Thayer, the third of that name, who lost his life in the disaster.”

Besides suffering from the death of his father, Jack also suffered from the loss of his new friend, Milton Long. Jack and Milton jumped from the sinking ship, but Jack never saw the young man again. He barely made it through the night himself, spending hours trying to balance on an upside-down collapsible boat.

Never Forgotten

Jack was just a young, easygoing lad in 1912, described as a “clear-cut chap” by fellow survivor Algernon Barkworth. Before he boarded the Titanic, Jack’s thoughts most likely centered around college, girls, and his future prospects. Though he went on to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, become a successful banker, marry, and father two sons, he always seemed to carry the Titanic with him.

Though we can grieve over this young man’s heartache, we can also be grateful for his willingness to open that wound and share it in words. Who can understand the true nature of a great tragedy better than those who lived through it? And who better to share their newfound focus on life, even when that focus brings with it a clarity of sorrow only survivors can appreciate?

For Jack Thayer, that clarity led him to see things differently. After the sinking, he would witness a terrible world war and the Great Depression. He finally wrote his story down in 1940, just after World War II started. At that time, he looked back at life before Titanic and saw an idyllic age, filled with “ordinary days.” It led him to write this profound assessment:

“Nothing was revealed in the morning, the trend of which was not known the night before. . . . These days were peaceful and ruled by economic theory and practice built up over years of slow and hardly perceptible change. There was peace, and the world had an even tenor to its ways. . . .

True enough, from time to time there were events—catastrophes— . . . which stirred the sleeping world, but not enough to keep it from resuming its slumber. It seems to me that the disaster about to occur was the event, which not only made the world rub its eyes and awake, but woke it with a start, keeping it moving at a rapidly accelerating pace ever since, with less and less peace, satisfaction, and happiness.

Today the individual has to be contented with rapidity of motion, nervous emotion, and economic insecurity. To my mind the world of today awoke April 15, 1912.”

Like many of his fellow survivors, Jack chose to write because of the tragedy he endured, to share with the world something only he could. His voice and the others we have explored reach out to us today. Perhaps, if we listen closely, their words can remind us not to sleep through our often comfortable lives, but to be awake and aware of the work God has for us. Then we can use that knowledge to accomplish His purposes.

* Thayer, John B. The Sinking of the S.S. Titanic. 1940. Academy Chicago Publishers, 1998. 324-356.

Quentin Walpole is stunned when a sweet lady secures his passage to America–and even more surprised to find his wealthy father and older brother on board the ship. Suddenly Amelia finds herself caught between the attentions of two men, but who should she entrust her heart to? As the fateful night arrives, will Amelia lose everything to the icy waters?

April 15, 2012 marked the 100th Anniversary of the Titanic Disaster. One of my newest novels, By the Light of the Silvery Moon, is set on the Titanic, and as I wrote it I couldn’t help but think about my family being on that ship—my husband and kids especially. I tried to picture me and my daughters climbing into a lifeboat and seeing my husband and grown sons standing on the decks. It truly was heartbreaking! Of course, that would have only happened if I was one of the lucky ones. Many mothers had to turn over their children into the arms of strangers. Others stood on the decks, knowing that their own family would soon meet their Maker.

The Titanic disaster was a tragedy that happened 100-years-ago, but it’s lessons are those that be can applied to our lives today.

These are a few that settled in my heart:

1. You can’t guarantee tomorrow. We all know this, but we forget. We live as if we will have tomorrow, and the next day, and the next to focus on what’s really important.

2. Know where you put your faith. The Titanic was touted as an “unsinkable ship,” and the passengers had no reason to doubt that claim. It was an engineering wonder, and not one detail was overlooked in it’s design. It was like a floating hotel or city, and it was easy to put faith in the ingenuity of man. Men can do wonderful things, indeed, but our complete faith must be in God alone.

3. Live every day as if it were the last. Enjoy your family, express your love, focus on what’s important. Even the most wonderful celebrations can turn to heartache when we least expect it.

4. Don’t wait to explain what a relationship with Christ is all about. Children learn about a relationship with Jesus Christ by what they see in our lives, but they also learn by what they hear from our mouths. You can begin training your children even when they are small by reading them Bible stories, explaining about sin and sharing God’s great plan to save the world through the death and resurrection of His Son. Not only will children know the truth and be able to choose to except Jesus Christ for themselves, they also can share the good news with others in need.

5. Do the right thing no matter what others think. When the first passengers got into the lifeboats others on the decks made fun of them. Some thought they were foolish for risking their lives by going down into the cold dark water. Those who climbed into the lifeboats had to turn their back on what others believed, and instead focus on what they felt was right. There are times as parents when we must do the same. If we make a choice to work for a ministry, to adopt another child, to homeschool, or make another hard decision, there may be others who think we are making a foolish mistake. Each of us must follow the direction of God—the Captain of our lives—to direct us. He is with us during the journey, and unlike any human captain God knows what’s ahead and what is best for our families…our lives.

Want more about the Titanic? Check out my new book: By the Light of the Silvery Moon! 

Amelia Gladstone’s hopes are tied up in the Titanic–hopes for a reunion with her sister and an introduction to an admirer. But when she offers a spare ticket to a down-and-out young man, her fate is about to change.

Quentin Walpole is stunned when a sweet lady secures his passage to America–and even more surprised to find his wealthy father and older brother on board the ship. Suddenly Amelia finds herself caught between the attentions of two men, but who should she entrust her heart to? As the fateful night arrives, will Amelia lose everything to the icy waters?

I’m excited that so many are enjoying the characters in my novel, By the Light of the Silvery Moon. Want to know more about the REAL people on the Titanic? My friend Sharyn has been kind enough to write some profiles for us. They are amazing and interesting…enjoy!

A small woman with auburn hair and an Irish lilt, Violet Jessop spent most of her life working as an ocean liner stewardess. And her experience on the Titanic was not her only brush with disaster as an employee of the White Star Line. She started her career on Titanic’s sister ship the Olympic, which collided with another vessel on an early voyage. After surviving Titanic’s sinking in 1912, Violet became a nurse for the British Red Cross and served on the third ship in the series, the Britannic, which sank after striking a mine during World War I.

In 1934, Violet finished writing her memoirs*, originally titled Neptune’s Greenroom under the pseudonym Constance Ransom. A romantic at heart with a sharp wit, Violet tells the full and fascinating story of her life, confining her experiences on the Titanic to three chapters. The book wasn’t published until 1997, almost thirty years after Violet’s death and, not coincidentally, the same year James Cameron’s movie about the sinking started setting box office records.

Throughout her account of her days on the Titanic, Violet hints at a sense of foreboding as the great ship headed out to sea. She expresses a regret that she couldn’t witness their departure from England. “Ah well,” she wrote, “a new scene had opened for us on that bright spring day; who could foretell whether it would be farce, sweet comedy, or tragedy?”

Things Unsaid

The biggest issue with Violet’s account isn’t what she wrote but what she didn’t. In his preface to her book, editor John Maxtone-Graham writes:

Throughout, she was sometimes tantalizingly selective about what she included. In her defense, she can never have guessed, back in 1934, at our insatiable hunger for ever more detail about the disasters that overtook the last two Olympic-class vessels. . . . Often, I wish she had lingered over the kind of detail she either neglects or dismisses with no more than a passing reference.

Violet also tended to give the people she wrote about pseudonyms, keeping their true names anonymous while, at the same time, providing enough information to offer the discerning researcher a good idea of the individual’s identity. In fact, Maxtone-Graham attempts to do just that in his introduction to chapter twenty. He then speculates that her reluctance may have been based solely on the fact that she was still working as a stewardess at the time she wrote her memoir and “obviously felt the need for discretion.”

But what Violet added to the story far outweighed what she left out. Her account offers us a glimpse into the lives of many of those lost. Take, for instance, her memories of a doomed steward named Stanley who was instrumental in saving Violet’s life. After making the seriousness of their situation clear, Stanley spent several minutes helping the stunned stewardess find a hat and something warm to wear. Violet finally headed to the deck with the comment, “So long, Stan, come up soon yourself, won’t you?”

She then wrote: “Halfway up, I looked down and waved to Stan. He was standing with his arms clasped behind him in the corner where he usually kept his evening watch. He suddenly looked very tired.

“Good old, ugly-faced, big-hearted Stanley!”

Indeed, the steward urged Violet toward a seat in a lifeboat he knew, because of his position and gender, he had no chance of securing. We can thank Violet for hearing the truth of his story and sacrifice.

* Jessop, Violet. Titanic Survivor: The Newly Discovered Memoirs of Violet Jessop Who Survived Both the Titanic and Britannic Disasters. Ed. John Maxtone-Graham. Sheridan House Inc., 1997.

Want more about the Titanic? Check out my new book: By the Light of the Silvery Moon! 

Amelia Gladstone’s hopes are tied up in the Titanic–hopes for a reunion with her sister and an introduction to an admirer. But when she offers a spare ticket to a down-and-out young man, her fate is about to change.

Quentin Walpole is stunned when a sweet lady secures his passage to America–and even more surprised to find his wealthy father and older brother on board the ship. Suddenly Amelia finds herself caught between the attentions of two men, but who should she entrust her heart to? As the fateful night arrives, will Amelia lose everything to the icy waters?

I’m excited that so many are enjoying the characters in my novel, By the Light of the Silvery Moon. Want to know more about the REAL people on the Titanic? My friend Sharyn has been kind enough to write some profiles for us. They are amazing and interesting…enjoy!

We don’t hear much about second-class passengers. Most accounts focus on the arrogance and heroism of the first class or the struggles and obstacles faced by those in third. Fortunately, Lawrence Beesley, a young science teacher from England, offered a rare second-class perspective. His book, The Loss of the S.S. Titanic, Its Story and Its Lessons*, was published within months of the sinking and was one of the first major eyewitness analyses of the sinking.

Beesley, in fact, was asked to write a “correct history” of the event to counteract the pieced-together accounts being planned by media outlets eager to get the details to the public, even if their descriptions were “erroneous, full of highly colored details, and generally calculated to disturb public thought on the matter.” In writing his story, Beesley hoped it would “calm public opinion by stating the truth of what happened as nearly as I could recollect it.” But then he shared an even stronger motive: “Another matter aided me in coming to a decision, the duty that we, as survivors of the disaster, owe to those who went down with the ship, to see that the reforms so urgently needed are not allowed to be forgotten.”

The poetry and candor of Beesley’s account flows from a different place than most authors. Rather than follow a story line based on where his imagination led him, he presented his experiences from an all-too-real place. He realized only those who were there felt the tilting of the boat deck, saw the stars lit against the black sky, smelled the ocean and the cold, and sensed the quiet panic of the souls surrounding them. It was this perspective he offered when he described his impression of the sinking Titanic from his lifeboat:
As the oarsmen pulled slowly away we all turned and took a long look at the mighty vessel towering high above our midget boat, and I know it must have been the most extraordinary sight I shall ever be called upon to witness; I realize now how totally inadequate language is to convey to some other person who was not there any real impression of what we saw.

Nevertheless, Beesley tried to put the reader in his shoes, believing that to be the only way anyone could truly understand the often confusing decisions made that night. He asked his audience to set aside the knowledge they have and the images that had been created for them, and invited them to come stand on the deck and watch the great ship’s demise with him. In doing so, he let his readers see the tragedy through the eyes of other people who were there, even those who didn’t make it.

In this way, Lawrence Beesley—and other survivors who shared their account of the disaster—could, in a small way, bring back to life those whose voices were silenced on April 15, 1912.

* Beesley, Lawrence. “The Loss of the S.S. Titanic: Its Story and Its Lessons.” 1912. The Story of the S.S. Titanic: As Told by Its Survivors. Ed. Jack Winocour. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1960. 1-109.

Want more about the Titanic? Check out my new book: By the Light of the Silvery Moon! 

Amelia Gladstone’s hopes are tied up in the Titanic–hopes for a reunion with her sister and an introduction to an admirer. But when she offers a spare ticket to a down-and-out young man, her fate is about to change.

Quentin Walpole is stunned when a sweet lady secures his passage to America–and even more surprised to find his wealthy father and older brother on board the ship. Suddenly Amelia finds herself caught between the attentions of two men, but who should she entrust her heart to? As the fateful night arrives, will Amelia lose everything to the icy waters?