William Thomas Stead - Death On The Titanic

Death On The Titanic

Stead boarded the Titanic for a visit to the United States to take part in a peace congress at Carnegie Hall at the request of William Howard Taft. Survivors of the Titanic reported very little about Stead's last hours. He chatted enthusiastically through the 11-course meal that fateful night, telling thrilling tales (including one about the cursed mummy of the British Museum), but then retired to bed at 10.30pm. After the ship struck the iceberg, Stead helped several women and children into the lifeboats, in an act "typical of his generosity, courage, and humanity", and gave his life jacket to another passenger.

A later sighting of Stead, by survivor Philip Mock, has him clinging to a raft with John Jacob Astor IV. "Their feet became frozen," reported Mock, "and they were compelled to release their hold. Both were drowned." William Stead's body was not recovered. Further tragedy was added by the widely held belief that he was due to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that same year.

Stead had often claimed that he would die from either lynching or drowning. Stead published two pieces that gained greater significance in light of his fate on the Titanic. On 22 March 1886, he published an article named How the Mail Steamer went down in Mid Atlantic by a Survivor, where a steamer collides with another ship, with high loss of life due to lack of lifeboats. Stead had added "This is exactly what might take place and will take place if liners are sent to sea short of boats". In 1892, Stead published a story called From the Old World to the New, in which a vessel, the Majestic, rescues survivors of another ship that collided with an iceberg.