The Titanic:
Alas an alias
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Background 3: Alas an Alias! (and other stories)

There were a number of passengers travelling on the ship who were not travelling under their real names and hence the heading for this particular investigation. In some cases it is quite obvious why the person concerned was using an alias, in other cases we can but speculate.

Now onto a different tack entirely - in fact several different tacks.

There were a large number of families travelling on the ship, some which survived and some which were decimated. The enquiry held after the tragedy went to great pains to try and establish the lack of discrimination between classes, but it is a salutary exercise to critically examine the data on this issue. In fact the newspapers of the time made much of the survival rates of the different genders and different classes. There were a number of cartoonists who were scathing in their condemnation for peoples’ actions and decisions on that night. Walter Lord in his book ‘The Night Lives On’ makes the following observation:

‘On the Titanic, a man’s life could depend on which side of the Boat Deck he happened to step out on.’

This was a reference to the fact that different officers were in charge of the lifeboats on each side of the ship and that they may have interpreted Captain Smith’s orders differently.

It is interesting to note that Gracie in his book thought that the number of males in each boat was worthy of mention. For example his record for Boat 2 is:

Passengers: Miss Allen (now Mrs. J. B. Mennell), Mrs. Appleton, Mrs. Cornell, Mrs. Douglas and maid (Miss Le Roy), Miss Madill, Mrs. Robert and maid (Amelia Kenchen).

One old man, third class, foreigner, and family: Brahim Youssef, Hanne Youssef, and children Marian and Georges. The rest second and third class.

Bade good-bye to wife and sank with ship: Mr. Douglas.

Crew: Fourth Officer Boxhall, Seaman Osman and Steward Johnstone, cook.

Total: 25

Investigation 3: Alas an Alias! (and other stories)

Use the passenger information to find those passengers travelling under an alias. Remember that alternative names are enclosed in brackets - ‘(‘ and ‘)’ so these can be used in this search.

  1. Locate all those who were travelling under an assumed name.
  2. Can you group any of these together in any way?

The introductory passenger investigation showed how to locate family groups, so refer back to that if unsure as to how to proceed here.

  1. What can you discover about the families on the ship and in particular their survival rates?
  2. Investigate the data and build a table that shows the survival rates of each gender in each class. A more complex table could also include infants and children.

To investigate the issue of gender raised by Lord requires very close checking of the data.

  1. What is the comparison between numbers of male passengers in lifeboats on the starboard side of the ship as compared to those on the port side of the ship?

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