Charles Lightoller
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Commander Charles Herbert Lightoller DSC & Bar RD RNR (30 March 1874 – December 8, 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 Lightoller was born in Chorley, Lancashire on 30 March 1874. He was born into a wealthy cotton family who owned the Lightoller mill in Chorley. At the age of 13, young Charles began a four year sea-faring apprenticeship onboard 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 was demasted and 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 onboard 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. 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 Officer and then back to the Oceanic as its First Officer.
[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 T. 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. Figuring it would be better to remain where other officers knew where to find him if they needed him and rather than run about the ship in a panic, Lightoller got dressed and remained in his cabin calmly smoking his pipe until summoned to the bridge by the Captain. 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."
As the ship sank and Lightoller was thrown into the sea, one of the massive funnels broke free and hit the water, washing Lightoller against Collapsible B, one of two collapsible lifeboats the crew had been unable to launch prior to the sinking. That lifeboat had been overturned when the funnel hit the water and panic had erupted as desperate men clawed their way aboard. Lightoller was able to calm and organize the survivors. He brought aboard some thirty men on the overturned boat and settled in to await rescue. 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.
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 inquires.
[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 a 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 launch, which his wife, Sylvia, named the Sundowner, an Australian term meaning "wanderer", and which he later used in the evacuation at Dunkirk. After World War II he managed a small boatyard called Richmond Slipways in London, which built motor launches for the river police.
[edit] Family
On his second Australian run onboard the Medic, Charles met Sylvia Hawley-Wilson on her way home to Sydney after a stay in England. On the return voyage, she accompanied Lightoller as his bride. They later had five children. Their youngest son Brian, a 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. 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
Charles died on 8 December 1952 of heart disease. His body was laid to rest at Mortlake Crematorium Richmond, London, England.
[edit] In popular culture
Charles was portrayed in almost every movie filmed about the Titanic. The German Titanic (1943 film) role was played 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 film 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
| Officers on the RMS Titanic |
|---|
| Captain Edward J. Smith • Chief Officer Henry T. Wilde • First Officer William M. Murdoch • Second Officer Charles H. Lightoller • Third Officer Herbert J. Pitman • Fourth Officer Joseph G. Boxhall • Fifth Officer Harold G. Lowe • Sixth Officer James P. Moody |
