The Titanic Files (Vol.1) E-Book

George Behe

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 547

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

'Without a doubt, George Behe is one of the most prolific Titanic authors. More than that, he is also among the most respected, known for his friendly, generous nature and a keen eye for detail, with a collection of material that is the envy of many a researcher.' – Dan E. Parks, Encyclopedia Titanica Most people know the general story of the Titanic, but there are so many individual avenues for discovery that serious researchers could easily spend the rest of their lives investigating these subjects. For the past fifty years, George Behe has been researching and writing about the Titanic, searching for new information about specific sub-topics that have caught his interest. The result is The Titanic Files, a collection of stories, angles of enquiry and pieces of trivia that reflect George's thoughts on a wide variety of Titanic-related subjects, along with the results of his extensive studies. From the fate of the animals that boarded the ship to whether there were genuine messages in bottles sent from those aboard, this detailed volume is a treasure trove of research material sure to delight any discerning Titanic enthusiast.

Leseprobe

By the same author

Titanic: Psychic Forewarnings of a Tragedy (Patrick Stephens, 1988)

Lost at Sea: Ghost Ships and Other Mysteries, with Michael Goss (Prometheus Books, 1994)

Titanic: Safety, Speed and Sacrifice (Transportation Trails, 1997)

‘Archie’: The Life of Major Archibald Butt from Georgia to the Titanic (Lulu.com Press, 2010)

On Board RMS Titanic: Memories of the Maiden Voyage (Lulu.com Press, 2011)

A Death on the Titanic: The Loss of Major Archibald Butt (Lulu.com Press, 2011)

Voices from the Carpathia (Lulu.com Press, 2015)

Titanic Memoirs (three volumes, Lulu.com Press, 2015)

The Titanic Files: A Paranormal Sourcebook (Lulu.com Press, 2015)

Titanic: The Return Voyage (Lulu.com Press, 2019)

‘Those Brave Fellows’: The Last Hours of the Titanic’s Band (Lulu.com Press, 2019)

The Titanic Disaster: A Medical Dossier (Lulu.com Press, 2021)

‘There’s Talk of an Iceberg’: A Titanic Investigation (Lulu.com Press, 2021)

Fate Deals a Hand: The Titanic’s Professional Gamblers (The History Press, 2023)

Titanic Collections, Volume 1 (The History Press, 2023)

Titanic Collections, Volume 2 (The History Press, 2024)

The Triumvirate (The History Press, 2024)

Titanic: Her Books and Bibliophiles (Lulu.com Press, 2024)

Titanic: A Disaster Foreseen? (Lulu Press, 2024)

Cover illustrations

Front (left to right): Anna, Wiljo and John Hämäläinen (Author’s collection); Sun Yat Sen the Pekingese, who was saved from the Titanic (Courtesy Randy Bigham); Captain Smith and Ben the Borzoi (Author’s collection); Major Archibald Butt (Author’s collection).

Back: A rare woven-in-silk postcard of the Titanic, pre-tragedy (Author’s collection).

First published 2025

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

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www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© George Behe, 2025

The right of George Behe to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 727 8

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1Titanic and the Animal World

2 The Kennels

3 A Mystery Solved: Identifying Titanic’s Officers

4 ‘Archie’: The Life of Major Archibald Butt

5 The Two Deaths of John Jacob Astor

6 Thomson Beattie’s Titanic Experience

7 The Boat Train

8 Attempted Bribes

9 William Murdoch and the Question of Suicide

10 Shot in the Jaw

11 Diamonds

12 Dinner

13 Death by Funnel

14 The Hämäläinen Family

15 ‘I Had No Knowledge At All’

16 Alice Johnson’s Titanic Experience

17 Michael ‘Ty’ Joseph, Titanic Survivor

18 The Man Who Dressed as a Woman

19 Voices from the Grave?

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

I’d like to offer my sincere thanks to Don Lynch, Dr Paul Lee, Randy Bigham, Mike Poirier, Bill Sauder, Phil Gowan, Bruno Piola, Mike Herbold, John Lamoreau, Susanne Störmer and Hermann Söldner for their friendship and for their unfailing generosity in sharing their own research with me.

Thank you, everyone!

Introduction

For many years I have made a habit of filing away little titbits of information about Titanic-related topics that happened to catch my interest. I’ve used some of that information to write articles for the Commutator (the quarterly journal of the Titanic Historical Society) and for my own Titanic website, but many of my other files have gathered dust waiting for me to take a closer look at their contents. I’ve finally done something with that information, and the book you now hold in your hands is the result, a first volume presenting my own interpretation of some of these various topics connected with the disaster.

Some of the subject matter I’ve chosen to write about in this and future volumes is controversial, three examples being whether or not a haze existed around the Titanic on the night of the disaster, whether First Officer William Murdoch fired shots in anger before taking his own life, and whether or not Captain Smith attempted to save the life of a child when his ship went down. The Murdoch suicide question is especially contentious, since many ‘officer groupies’ (to coin a term) refuse to believe that Murdoch could ever have considered doing such a thing.

At any rate, this present volume contains the present author’s own thinking on a wide variety of Titanic-related subjects, and it presents every scrap of information I’m aware of that pertains to the subject matter at hand. This way the reader can see the information upon which I’ve based my own conclusions and can decide for him/herself whether I’ve shed new light on the Titanic disaster or whether I’m unable to see the forest for the trees.

I hope readers will enjoy perusing the information I’ve presented here for their consideration and that I’ve illuminated a few Titanic topics that many researchers have long thought were chiseled in stone.

George BeheGrand Rapids, Michigan

1

Titanic and the Animal World

In addition to transporting passengers and crewmen, RMS Titanic was carrying a number of animals of different species (authorised as well as unauthorised). Let’s take a look at these various creatures.

Animals Transported on Board the Titanic

Canaries

In 2011 a newly published book by Frankie McElroy made the undocumented claim that Hugh McElroy, the Titanic’s purser, was personally caring for a caged canary that was being transported from Southampton to Cherbourg:

Hugh had taken to canary minding, the canary sailed on the Titanic and survived. It was owned by a Mr Meanwell, who lived in [Cerentan], France, and wanted to get his prize-winning precious canary to Cherbourg from England. He asked the Chief Purser to carry it on RMS Titanic, and to have the bird in his office, the canary disembarked when the Titanic arrived in Cherbourg …1

A 31 March 2012 posting by ‘Joseph’ on the Encyclopedia Titanica bulletin board mentioned the price that ‘Mr Meanwell’ supposedly paid for the transport of his canary. However, Joseph failed to document his claim about the transport price and seems to have based his overall statement on the McElroy book’s undocumented claim that Titanic’s purser was caring for a canary in his office:

The canary in a cage never went down with the Titanic, it was carried by Chief Purser Hugh McElroy from Southampton to Cherbourg and recovered after the ship docked in France on April 10th, by the owner who had paid 15 shillings for the fare.2

Despite these undocumented claims, there’s little doubt that a canary was still on board the Titanic when the vessel left Cherbourg and headed towards Queenstown. In fact, in recent years an actual receipt for the bird was discovered by a salvage expedition at the wreck site.

Last year, Premier exhibited a selection of artifacts in Las Vegas, among them a pair of blue and white striped men’s pajamas, a travelling receipt for ‘one canary in a cage’ and a pair of never-worn white gloves.3

Did a ‘Mr Meanwell’ really pay 15 shillings for Purser McElroy to keep a caged canary in his office and transport it from Southampton to Cherbourg on the Titanic? The answer to this question is ‘probably not’, since no survivor ever reported seeing such a canary housed there. In fact, the supposed identification of ‘Mr Meanwell’ seems to be a mistake as well.

Marian Meanwell

Mrs Marian Meanwell was a 63-year-old milliner who was born in England and lived there until 1912, at which time she booked a third-class passage on the Titanic in order to travel from Southampton to New York to be with her daughter. The contract ticket list also shows that Mrs Meanwell paid an extra fee for the transportation of a canary.4

Since Mrs Meanwell was travelling all the way from Southampton to New York, why did her name reportedly appear on the Titanic’s roster of cross-Channel passengers who were scheduled to disembark at Cherbourg? The answer is very simple – it didn’t.

In truth, the names of twelve Titanic cross-Channel passengers are listed at the top of that particular page of the contract ticket list, but at that point a blank space separates those twelve names from the beginning of a second list of names – a separate list of five passengers (Mr Noel, Mrs Meanwell, Mr West, Mr Dulles and Mrs Harper, of whom only Noel was a cross-Channel passenger), who were all transporting listed items of cargo. In addition to Mr Noel’s ‘2 cycles’, and Edwy West’s ‘8 cases’ and ‘1 crated cycle’, a notation shows that Mrs Meanwell paid 5 shillings (not 15 shillings) for the transport of ‘1 canary’, and that William Dulles and Myra Harper each paid £1 19s 4d for the transportation of one dog apiece. (Obviously the freight charge for a tiny caged canary was much less than the charge for carrying larger, heavier, uncaged canines; interestingly, Mrs Meanwell’s 5-shilling canary expense was the same amount of money that Mr West paid for the transport of his ‘8 cases’ all the way to New York, so the superficial impression that Mrs Meanwell’s payment was insufficient to ship her canary to New York is clearly mistaken.)

Appearing immediately after the second list of five cargo-carrying passengers is a third roster listing three final passengers – Lucian Smith, Eloise Smith and John Baumann – all of whom were travelling to New York and who were apparently the last three purchasers of first-class tickets for the Titanic’s maiden voyage. (No serious researcher would ever claim that Baumann and the two Smiths were cross-Channel passengers even though their names appeared on the same sheet of paper as the cross-Channel passengers and the cargo-carrying passengers.)

The reason why the list of five cargo-carrying passengers and the list of three last-minute passengers to New York were recorded on the same page as the cross-Channel passengers is easily explained: it was to avoid wasting the rest of the largely blank ledger page just for the sake of recording those final eight passenger names on a brand-new page. (Instead, the White Star clerk devoted the next page of the contract ticket list solely to ‘Rail Fares’.)5

It seems clear that the list of five cargo-carrying passengers and the subsequent list of three last-minute ticket-buyers were both completely unconnected with the preceding list of cross-Channel passengers. It seems equally clear that the coincidental inclusion of the Meanwell canary and the Dulles and Harper dogs directly beneath the list of cross-Channel passengers has led several researchers to the mistaken conclusion that Mrs Meanwell’s canary disembarked at Cherbourg while for some unexplained reason the Dulles and Harper dogs mysteriously remained on board the Titanic and continued onward toward New York. In truth, Mrs Meanwell and her canary were both present on board the ill-fated vessel when she struck an iceberg and went down in the mid-Atlantic.

Elizabeth Nye

In 2009 a curious bit of information appeared in a biography of Titanic survivor Elizabeth Nye, who was a member of the Salvation Army. The book quoted an article from a 1912 issue of the Army’s publication The War Cry:

The sister has gone through the ordeal in the most wonderful way, and was good enough to give the War Cry a fairly connected story of the disaster as she witnessed it. First of all, though, she excused herself as she had left something on board [the Carpathia] and wanted to fetch it.

What do you think it was she fetched from the Carpathia? Make a guess!

A little yellow canary bird in a brass cage! That was the woman of it! The poor little chap was a little bedraggled; he had been through all the horrors of shipwreck, but not forgotten how to chirp. Mrs Nye had lost money, clothes – everything, but here was a little bit of life she thought should not be forfeited, and she had saved him.6

There would seem to be only three possible explanations for this story about a canary that supposedly survived the Titanic disaster:

1. Mrs Nye carried her own caged canary into lifeboat #11 even though no survivors ever mentioned seeing a caged bird in that or any other lifeboat.

2. Second-class passenger Nye somehow came into possession of third-class passenger Marian Meanwell’s canary on board the Titanic and carried it with her into lifeboat #11.

3. A well-meaning Carpathia passenger might have given a caged canary to Mrs Nye after the rescue, and the War Cry reporter mistakenly assumed the bird had been saved from the Titanic.

In a letter she wrote on board the Carpathia on 16 April 1912, Mrs Nye said, ‘I lost everything I had on board; the only thing I saved was my watch that Dad gave me eleven years ago,’7 so our first suggestion that she saved the canary in lifeboat #11 is clearly untrue. Likewise, her letter’s failure to mention her taking charge of Mrs Meanwell’s canary suggests that our second proposed explanation is untrue as well. The present writer is inclined to favour the third explanation, but there’s no guarantee that this assumption is correct. In short, we may never know if a canary was one of the few non-human beings fortunate enough to survive the sinking of the Titanic.

Cats

Joseph Mulholland

Mr Mulholland served as a stoker on the Titanic while she was being transferred from Belfast to Southampton on 2–3April 1912. In 1962 he spoke with a reporter, who transcribed his recollections:

Big Joe is still fond of cats and perhaps he has reason. He recalls that on his way down to the Titanic before she set sail from Belfast with bands playing and crowds cheering, he took pity on a stray cat which was about to have kittens. He brought the cat aboard and put her in a wooden box down in the stokehold.

At Southampton, when he was ruminating whether to take on the job of storekeeper on the trip or sign off, another seaman called him over and said, ‘Look Big Joe. There is your cat taking its kittens down the gangplank.’

Joe said, ‘That settled it. I went and got my bag and that’s the last I saw of the Titanic.’8

Mulholland also spoke with Irish journalist Paddy Scott, who related his story to fellow journalist Anne Hailes around 1998:

He [Mulholland] said he was waiting for a stoker’s job on a tramp steamer that would bring him work for much of the year when he was offered the job on the Titanic.

He took it and immediately made friends with a fellow stoker on board. On the way to Southampton his colleague urged him to complete the voyage to New York and as they got on well working together on the same furnace, the Belfast man told him he would keep an open mind but really he wanted a tramp steamer as that was big money for a long voyage.

Then his mind was made up for him thanks to a cat which came aboard the ship in Belfast and made a home with the stokers.

She had a litter of four kittens and looking after the mother cat and her brood broke the monotony for the stoker.

But when the Titanic docked at Southampton the cat made a survey of the place, caught each kitten by the back of its neck and carried them, one at a time, down the gangway onto the quayside.

The New Lodge stoker thought – ‘that cat knows something and has decided that the Titanic is no place for her or her family to spend their lives.’

So he took the advice the cat was giving and left the ship, telling Paddy: ‘I had reason to give thanks to God for my decision.’9

It’s curious that our first account has Mulholland being offered a job as Titanic’s storekeeper, whereas the second account implies (more realistically) that he was considering serving on the vessel in his then-current capacity of stoker. It should also be pointed out that the first account has Mulholland’s cat being kept in the stokehold itself, whereas the second (more likely) account implies that the animal was kept by the stokers in their sleeping quarters. In any case, Joseph Mulholland claimed that he followed his cat’s example and signed off the Titanic at Southampton on 4 April 1912.

Interestingly, at least one additional account about Mulholland exists that makes no mention of the cat at all. Researcher Bruno Piola has pointed out to the present author that Joe Mulholland once gave a third account that casts an entirely different light on the alleged reason for his departure from the Titanic:

At a late stage in the preparations, one sailor, Joe Mulholland, had a row with one of the Engineer Officers. ‘I walked off the ship at Southampton just before she sailed,’ he later told Bill Macquitty, maker of the film ‘A Night to Remember’ (see Stage & Sound, 1957).10

This, of course, raises questions about whether Mulholland’s story about the cat was legitimate or whether it was just a tall tale. Did Joseph Mulholland follow his cat’s example and sign off the Titanic at Southampton, or did he just have an argument with one of the engineering officers and walk off the ship in a fit of pique? It’s unlikely we’ll ever know for certain.

Whether or not the Mulholland cat story is true, we have a bit of extra information about other cats that are alleged to have deserted other passenger liners before disaster struck. The Empress of Ireland’s own cat is reported to have abandoned that vessel before she was rammed and sunk in the St Lawrence in May 1914, and Dowie, the Lusitania’s cat, was likewise said to have deserted that ill-fated vessel before it was torpedoed by the Germans in May 1915.11 Is Joe Mulholland’s story about a cat deserting the Titanic true, or did he and other seamen cook up these stories about prescient cats just to add a spine-tingling flavour of the unknown to their stories about these major sea disasters?

Violet Jessop

What might have been a completely different cat from the one owned by Joseph Mulholland was an animal described by Stewardess Violet Jessop, who sailed on the Titanic’s maiden voyage:

Life aboard started off smoothly. Even Jenny, the ship’s cat and part of the crew, had immediately picked herself a comfortable corner; she varied her usual Christmas routine on previous ships by presenting Titanic with a litter of kittens in April.12

Violet Jessop’s comment about Jenny’s ‘usual Christmas routine’ suggests that the cat had shared voyages with her in the past, so it seems unlikely that the animal had any connection with the stray cat that was rescued by Joseph Mulholland. If Jenny and her kittens were entirely different animals from Joseph Mulholland’s cat and kittens, and if these felines did indeed sail on the Titanic’s maiden voyage as Miss Jessop claimed, there is no record of Jenny or her kittens surviving the disaster.

Chickens

Ella White and Marie Young brought poultry (said to be two prize-winning roosters and two hens)13 on board the Titanic. According to one source, the fowl were supposedly purchased from Chasse Ile Rage, Jardin d’Agriculture, and after the disaster Mrs White put in a claim for $250.87 as compensation for her lost live poultry.14

Marie Young

In October 1912 Miss Young wrote an account of her experience on the Titanic:

It so happened that I took an unusual interest in some of the men below decks, for I had talked often with the carpenter and the printer, in having extra crates and labels made for the fancy French poultry we were bringing home, and I saw a little of the ship’s life, in my daily visits to the gaily crowing roosters, and to the hens, who laid eggs busily, undismayed by the novelty and commotion of their surroundings.

I had seen the cooks before their great cauldrons of porcelain, and the bakers turning out the huge loaves of bread, a hamper of which was later brought on deck to supply the life boats.

In accepting some gold coins, the ship’s carpenter said, ‘It is such good luck to receive gold on a first voyage!’ Yet he was the first of the Titanic’s martyrs, who, in sounding the ship just after the iceberg was struck, sank and was lost in the inward rushing sea that engulfed him.15

Miss Young’s comments about seeing Titanic’s cooks and bakers at work suggest that the chickens might possibly have been kept somewhere near the ship’s kitchens on D deck.

Kate Buss

On 13 April Miss Buss, a second-class passenger, wrote the third instalment of her long letter to her parents:

Saturday, 13/4/12 – Morning; just missed Miss W. on the staircase; there are two to each deck. Just think, all these hundreds of miles from land, and cocks can be heard crowing now at this time of night. Just had a bath, so will write a little of today’s doings. Bless those cockerels!16

August Wennerström

On 19 April 1912 Mr Wennerström, a third-class passenger, wrote an account describing his experiences during the Titanic’s maiden voyage:

But then we lived the life in what could be likened to a small genial city, dancing, playing, singing, and awakening early in the morning to the crowing of the rooster, because we did have such farm animals on board. In addition, we had various country and city accommodations like a jail, an infirmary, midwives, nurses, doctors, ministers, a bakery, a hospital, post offices etc.17

Elizabeth Hocking

The evening of 14 April saw Mrs Hocking and her family seated in deck chairs out on the Titanic’s chilly second-class promenade deck. They had been sitting there for some time when suddenly they heard a rooster crow. Mrs Hocking was still feeling uneasy about the ship and, being a native of Cornwall, she couldn’t help but recall her home area’s local tradition that a cock crowing at night was a warning of disaster.

‘I don’t like that,’ Mrs Hocking remarked. ‘I think something is going to happen.’18

Ellen Mockler

Miss Mockler, a steerage passenger who later became a nun, apparently passed near the chicken coops during the Titanic’s evacuation.

One of her former pupils, now a nun herself, remembered Sister Mary Patricia often telling about the Titanic disaster in the classroom. She particularly remembered ‘hearing chickens and hens’ as she headed up to the boat deck, and how, when she reached the boat deck, ‘several of her friends, including Martin Gallagher, fell to their knees in prayer and recited the rosary’.19

In an interview she granted in later years to a Massachusetts newspaper reporter, Sister Mary Patricia (Miss Mockler) seems to have described seeing the chickens with her own eyes. The reporter wrote:

She remembers that chickens escaped from the kitchen and began running around on deck.20

Cows

Edwina Troutt

Although Miss Troutt said nothing about it in 1912, in later years she told close friends in passing that cows were being kept on board the Titanic during the maiden voyage.21 Although we now know this to be a mistake, Edwina’s friend Don Lynch has offered a possible reason for her story:

[Survivor] Marshall Drew said the third class passengers down on the aft well deck made noises that reminded him of animals, and I always thought perhaps Winnie heard it and thought there were indeed animals down there.22

Dogs

On 11 April 1912, while the Titanic was bound for Queenstown, artist Frank Millet wrote a letter to his friend Alfred Parsons regarding things he’d seen on board the new White Star liner:

Queer lot of people on this ship. Looking over the list I only find three or four I know but there are a good many of ‘our people’ I think and a number of obnoxious ostentatious American women, the scourge of any place they infest and worse on shipboard than anywhere. Many of them carry tiny dogs and lead husbands around like pet lambs. I tell you when she starts out the American woman is a buster. She should be put in a harem and kept there.23

Frank Millet was destined to die when the Titanic went down, but just a few days later American newspapers published an article about the dogs he had noticed during the maiden voyage:

SAVED DOGS FROM THE TITANIC

There Were About Thirty Aboard and Half Got Away

New York, April 27 – There were thirty dogs aboard the Titanic belonging to first cabin passengers, all of them the best of their sort in the dog line, and a woman survivor and a lover of dogs said yesterday that she thought about half of them had been saved. The dogs were cared for and fed by the ship’s butcher and when the crash came he let them loose to shift for themselves.

One of the passengers who had a valuable St Bernard saw it running about on the deck looking for its master and he threw it into one of the departing lifeboats that was not full. He himself managed to get into another boat and when they drew alongside the Carpathia one of the first things he heard was the deep toned welcome of the dog which was frantically waving a saved but bedraggled tail over the Carpathia’s decks.

The Harpers had their Pomeranian in their stateroom with them and Mrs Harper picked the little fellow up and took it into the lifeboat with her.

There were three other Pomeranians aboard, and all of them were saved.

One of the dogs that was lost was the Airedale that belonged to the Astors and that became familiar to the public last summer when it appeared in pictures of Col. Astor and Miss Force before their wedding.24

Unfortunately, only two of the ‘facts’ presented in the article are known to be 100 per cent accurate (the information about the Harper and Astor dogs). One wishes that the unnamed dog-loving female survivor (perhaps Nella Goldenberg?) had been interviewed in more depth so that she could provide specific names, etc. for the owners of those thirty dogs who supposedly lost their lives on board the doomed liner. As things stand, though, we must rely on our own research to shed new light on some of the questions raised by the newspaper article.

Of special interest is a brief newspaper interview with survivor Mrs Walter Douglas, who spoke about a fellow occupant of boat #6 who saved her dog. Mrs Douglas was then asked one additional question by the reporter who was recording her experiences.

‘Were there many dogs?’ Mrs Douglas was asked.

‘There were at least half a dozen saved,’ she said.25

As will be seen, Mrs Douglas’s observation that at least six dogs survived the Titanic disaster cannot yet be verified from the evidence currently at our disposal. However, we should at least bear her statement in mind when we come to examine evidence suggesting that more dogs were present on board the Titanic than can now be confirmed with certainty.

At any rate, let’s begin by examining information about the passengers’ dogs that are known to have been on board the Titanic during her maiden voyage.

Harry Anderson

Dog No. 1: Mr Anderson owned a Chow valued at $50 that was lost in the sinking.26

John Jacob Astor

Dog No. 2: Mr Astor owned an Airedale named Kitty that died with her master in the sinking. Kitty was about 14 years old.27

In later years Edith Rosenbaum recalled seeing the Astors and their dog on board the tender after the Titanic arrived at Cherbourg:

We sat about on the huge tender, which had been specially built the year before for those new White Star ships, and for three hours shivered and waited. It was cold. It had been raining. I remember sitting next to Colonel and Mrs John Jacob Astor, who were on their wedding trip, playing with their big dog.28

A newspaper gave a brief description of the Astors’ activities during their honeymoon trip and later on board the Titanic:

The Astor party consisted of Colonel and Mrs Astor, a woman nurse for Mrs Astor and her French maid; the Colonel’s valet, Rollins [Victor Robins], who had been with him for fifteen years or more, and the chauffeur. Then there was Kitty, Colonel Astor’s favourite Airedale terrier that had travelled all over the world with him. The two had been inseparable companions for years, and they were not to be separated, for Kitty went down on board the Titanic with her master.

Pathetically Mrs Astor told of how Kitty got lost in Egypt on the trip up the Nile. She wandered away from Colonel Astor’s side one day at a landing and went sightseeing on her own account. Colonel Astor was greatly distressed by the loss of the dog. He spent a great deal of time looking for her, and when he had to give up and start up the Nile again he employed scores of natives to look for her, promising a handsome reward for her return. Nothing was heard of Kitty until on the return ship she was seen aboard another dahabeah [sic].

Colonel Astor spied Kitty making herself at home on board. The Astor boat was stopped and Kitty found her master with joyous barks. Kitty wore a collar with her own and Colonel Astor’s names and ‘No. 840 Fifth avenue, New York City’ engraved on it. She went on board the wrong dahabiyeh, evidently looking for her master after being lost for a time, and a party of wealthy Americans who had chartered the boat for a Nile trip quickly knew to whom she belonged and were looking for Colonel Astor’s dahabiyeh to return her. After that a closer watch was kept of Kitty. On board the Titanic she slept in Colonel Astor’s room …

Mrs Astor spent a good deal of the time in her room and was hardly off the one deck until the accident. Colonel Astor and she took frequent walks and he romped with Kitty a great deal …

[After leaving the Titanic in lifeboat #4] Mrs Astor watched her husband so long as she could in the darkness and then lost sight of him, but long after she could see him no more she could distinguish persons running up and down the deck. She could follow the terrier’s movements easily and watched her as she raced about, evidently having lost her master.

Kitty went down with the Titanic.29

Another article described the way the Astors spent their days on the Titanic and what happened to them during the evacuation:

Owing to ill health, Mrs Astor spent most of her time in her room and did not venture off the one deck from the time the steamship left England until it hit the berg. When she felt strong enough she would take short walks on the deck with Colonel Astor, and with them was always her husband’s favourite Airedale terrier, Kitty, which had been his companion for fourteen years …

Mrs Astor denies the story that her husband attempted to get into the boat with her. She says that as he placed her in a seat he said it was only a precautionary measure, and after kissing her goodbye said he would see her in a few hours. Kitty, the terrier, was at Colonel Astor’s side all the time, evidently enjoying the excitement of it all …

Before Mrs Astor got into the boat she says her husband put a life belt around her and saw to its adjustment. He then put one on himself. For a time Mrs Astor could see her husband standing on the boat deck and hear Kitty’s barks as she followed her master as he walked forward. Then as the boat got further away the figures of those left on board became blurred and one could not be identified from another.30

In another brief interview Mrs Astor mentioned seeing Kitty on deck as lifeboat #4 pulled away from the ship:

I noticed the ship was going down as we rowed, and I could see Kitty, my favourite terrier, running across the deck.31

Another newspaper article described Mrs Astor’s arrival at her home after the Carpathia reached New York:

So that she might be present to be of any service that might be required, Mrs Astor’s sister, Miss Katherine Force, spent the night with her. Unnerved by the scenes through which they had passed, little else was told Vincent Astor and Miss Force by Mrs Astor and her attendants than the bare facts of the catastrophe. Young Astor was still in such a highly nervous condition and overwrought, because he was finally prepared to abandon hope that his father might have been saved, that he had no word for anyone.

It was, however, made certain to him before his home was shrouded in darkness that the last seen of Colonel Astor had shown him, accompanied by his valet and by his faithful terrier, Kitty, calmly waiting on the decks of the Titanic for what might come.32

Although no eyewitness testimony exists to document it, the following statement appeared in various 1912 newspapers and was reprinted in one of the Titanic books published immediately after the sinking:

In the register of the Titanic’s heroes the name of Robbins should appear. He was Colonel Astor’s old butler, and like the Colonel’s valet, always travelled with him. He is numbered among the Titanic’s dead.

Faithful unto death was Kitty, Colonel Astor’s Airedale terrier and constant companion on land or sea. Kitty was never far from her master’s heels, and the two were familiar figures on Fifth Avenue.

When the crash came, Robbins went below and brought Kitty up on deck. There, the most faithful of friends, she stood beside her master, while the sea embraced them, and she now shares his grave.33

Despite the apparent straightforwardness of the above newspaper statements, and Kitty’s unquestionable presence on board the Titanic, it is unknown if Victor Robins actually went below decks to retrieve Kitty or if the dog was already accompanying the Astors when they left their cabin and went to the boat deck.

Since no known first-hand interviews exist in which Mrs Astor described Kitty being alongside her and her husband during the evacuation, it has occasionally been suggested that the Airedale Mrs Astor saw running around on the Titanic’s deck might actually have belonged to passenger William Carter. This unlikely scenario will be discussed in the section devoted to the Carter dogs.

It has also been claimed that John Jacob Astor was the person who released the dogs from Titanic’s kennels,34 but there is absolutely no evidence to support that allegation; no survivors ever mentioned seeing Astor freeing dogs from the kennels, and any such story would have had to come from a survivor due to the fact that Astor himself perished in the sinking.

Helen Bishop

Dog No. 3: Mrs Bishop owned a ‘small dog’ named Frou Frou (breed unknown) that died in the sinking. She reportedly purchased the dog in the city of Florence:35

Mr and Mrs Astor and Kitty. (Author’s collection)

It broke my heart to leave my little dog ‘Frou Frou’ in my stateroom. I had purchased her in Florence, Italy and she was the pet of the ship. The steward wouldn’t let me take her to the butler [butcher?]. He said she was too pretty, and she was the only one allowed to stay in the cabin. I made a little den for her in our room behind two of my suitcases, but when I started to leave her she tore my dress to bits, tugging at it. I realized, however, that there would be little sympathy for a woman carrying a dog in her arms, when there were lives of women and children to be saved.36

Mrs Bishop later expressed great regret at leaving her dog:

I feel the loss of my dog more than anything … She really wanted to go with me.37

William Carter

Dog No. 4: The Carter family had two dogs, the first being a Pekingese named Hee Too that Mrs Carter picked up in Europe (probably the United Kingdom) and was bringing back to the States.38 Hee Too died in the sinking. The two dogs were valued at $100 and $200 each.39 (In the past, these two dogs were presumed to be either two Airedales or else one Airedale and one King Charles spaniel, but – as will be seen – the evidence does not support the claim about the Airedale breed.)

Stewardess Jane Gold recalled seeing the two Carter dogs during the days of the maiden voyage and referred to them as ‘handsome’.40

Stewardess Annie Martin and her fellow stewardesses were berthed on B deck near the Carter family in B96 & B98, and she later recalled seeing one of the family’s pets before, during and after the sinking:

I saw one of Mrs Carter’s beautiful dogs running about on the deck of the Titanic and afterwards swimming in the water. We had got fond of him on board. He used to come into our cabin and say ‘How do you do’ to us each morning.41

Slightly more than a year after the sinking Mrs Carter acquired a second Pekingese that she also named Hee Too:

There is a certain sentiment surrounding the poodle, too. Mrs Carter made a trip to England especially to get Hee Too. She had a dog just like Hee Too, and she thought a lot of it. With her husband she was bringing the original Hee Too back from Europe on the Titanic, when that steamship struck an iceberg and went to the bottom. Hee Too the First went down with the ship. Mr and Mrs Carter managed to get into a lifeboat with their children and were saved. But poor Hee Too the First, with half a dozen canine companions, was swallowed up in the waters.

The first Hee Too was a great favourite with Mrs Carter, and there was much ado about his sudden and early demise. The Carters heard of another Hee Too in London, who looked for all the world like a twin brother of Hee Too the First. So Mrs Carter got aboard ship, took a trip to England and brought back with her the Hee Too which is now prostrated at Newport.42

Dog No. 5: The Carter family’s second dog was apparently named Mogul, his breed apparently being a King Charles spaniel. Mogul died in the sinking on 15 April, but on 12 April young Lucile Carter made the following entry in her diary:

April 11 [sic] – Swimming bath very rough Mother watches me Mogul dog howls William watches.43

After the Carpathia arrived in New York, a newspaper article published passenger complaints about ‘Mrs John Jacob Astor’. The complaints were almost certainly made about Mrs William Carter while she was still on board the Titanic, even though the newspaper mistakenly assumed her questionable behaviour took place on board the Carpathia:

A pet St Charles dog was the only apparent concern of Mrs John Jacob Astor [Mrs Carter], according to the members of the crew and passengers aboard the rescue steamer Carpathia. According to many of the passengers, she did not concern herself about others who were sick or inquire about lost ones.

The dog, which Mrs Astor carried about at all times, received her entire attention. The dog companion was with her at all times, and even in her lap or on a chair beside her at meals. Passengers who were able to partake sparingly of food were annoyed at times at the special attention she wished conferred on the animal.

On one occasion a waiter unfortunately came near her and disturbed his own equilibrium. She reported the mishap to the steward, who in turn notified the waiter that his conduct had been complained of by Mrs John Jacob Astor.

Mrs Astor had special provisions prepared for her dog companion, which were served to him as though he were a sick passenger. Many complained that the dining room was no place for animals.

No attention was paid to the inconvenience that passengers suffered by the presence of the pet dog.44

Just like her Pekingese Hee Too, Mrs Carter’s King Charles spaniel Mogul never lived to reach the Carpathia.

Regarding the claim that the Carters had an Airedale with them on the Titanic, this (posted on the Encyclopedia Titanica website’s bulletin board) originated with a researcher who discussed the subject with ‘Henry’, a Bryn Mawr resident and Philadelphia antique shop owner who got the story directly from William Carter Jr.45 According to a message posted by the researcher in an online forum:

On occasion, William Carter 2d did speak to family and friends about the sinking. He would only comment that he remembered having to tearfully abandon his beloved Airedale when he entered boat #4. The dog was not allowed to enter the boat. He said that John Jacob Astor took the dog’s leash and promised young Carter that he would take care of it.46

On the face of it, this account seems believable, but a second public statement by the same researcher throws its accuracy into serious question:

The Ellis Island records indicate that the Carter family arrived in New York City on the Olympic on 3 April 1912. Naturally, this could not have happened. Their names are crossed off on the original manifest, indicating that they must have cancelled their passage on the Olympic very late. Their names remained on the passenger list and the records were adjusted when Olympic reached New York.

The Carters apparently delayed their stay in England for another two weeks in late March/early April, 1912, and decided to take the Titanic back. Somehow I think that voyage on the Olympic two weeks earlier might have saved the Carter marriage (but certainly their manservant, Alexander Cairns, the two beloved Airedales, and the legendary Renault!)47

The key point in this second posting is the researcher’s mistaken belief that the Carters brought two Airedales with them on board the Titanic – a claim that period documentation shows to be mistaken. We therefore suspect that ‘Henry’ probably failed to mention the specific breed of young Billy Carter’s dog and that the extra detail about the ‘beloved Airedale’ was added later in the researcher’s mistaken belief that the dog had to be one of the Carters’ two (supposed) Airedales. The third-hand story about Mr Astor caring for a Carter Airedale on the Titanic’s deck is therefore unreliable, since the Carters didn’t have two Airedales with them on the Titanic as the researcher believed.

It is interesting to note that in 1912 Billy Carter never mentioned having his dog on deck with him when he was leaving the Titanic; on 16 April Washington Dodge wrote the following account for Carpathia passenger Dr Frank Blackmarr while the rescue ship was still at sea:

One lad of 10, Master [William] Carter, told me that after his mother and sister were in the boat, he was refused permission to enter the boat, and Col Astor, who knew the lad, a moment later picked up a girl’s hat and placed it on the lad’s head, lifted him up and said to the officer as he was lowering the boat, ‘Could you let this little girl go with her mother?’ As the lad expressed it, ‘They did not stop to examine me, so I got in with mother.’48

In short, at the time of this writing the William Carter family is known to have had two dogs with them on board the Titanic – a Pekingese named Hee Too and a King Charles spaniel named Mogul.

Robert Daniel

Dog No. 6: Mr Daniel owned a brindle French bulldog named Gamin de Pycombe that was valued at $750. The dog was lost in the sinking.49

Gamin was born in January 1910 and was just 2 years old when he died. His breeder was Gwendoline Romilly of what would later be the Taplow Kennel. He was sired by C.H. Charlemagne of Amersham, a French import to Britain who became Britain’s first pied champion Frenchie, and who later was the first Frenchie to be a champion in both the UK and the USA. Mr Daniel had bought the dog in the United Kingdom for a very high price of £150 (about £11,000 or $17,000 in today’s prices).50

During the maiden voyage, 7-year-old Eva Hart regularly saw a crew member taking the Titanic’s dogs on daily walks around the fantail of the ship, and she soon befriended Robert Daniel’s show dog:

In the course of our explorations I made friends with a little dog and spent a great deal of time playing with it. I loved this animal so much that I would hurry through my breakfast each morning and then rush off to find him, as by then I hadn’t seen him for more than twelve hours. At the age of seven that length of time is an eternity. I was completely fascinated by him and hated being separated for very long. My father saw how fond I had become of this small, flat-faced, endearing dog and promised me, ‘When we get to Canada I will buy you one.’ It was, in fact, another 43 years before I saw that breed of dog again. The animal with which I fell in love was the champion French bulldog which had been purchased in England by Robert W. Daniel, the banker from Philadelphia …51

I was about all day with my father because as I say my mother was sleeping, and to my great joy, I found there were some dogs on board. They weren’t roaming about, they were all in a row of kennels and cages and things at the end of the ship and there was one little French bulldog that I took a great fancy to and my father was quite friendly with I think one of the crew who looked after them and everyday he used to let me go down and play with this little dog, and from that day to this, they have been my favourite dogs, the French bulldogs.52

According to Edith Rosenbaum, Robert Daniel’s bulldog was not in the ship’s kennels on the night of the disaster but instead was in his master’s cabin, which was near Rosenbaum’s own cabin on A Deck. After Titanic struck the iceberg, Miss Rosenbaum was walking along a corridor when she approached Mr Daniel’s cabin:

In going to the lounge I passed the open door of the friend’s room, who had told me to put on a lifebelt, who said, ‘Do you think we shall have to leave the boat?’ I said, ‘Certainly not!’ This friend had just purchased a beautiful bulldog in France, and it was whining and moaning. I remember taking it and tucking it under the bed-covers and patting its head, and then we went to the lounge on ‘A’ deck …53

In going down the corridor I passed the open door of a friend who had purchased a beautiful dog in France. The dog was whining, and I remember tucking it under the bed cover, patting it and then closing the door.54

The dog was scared so I pet him and laid him down in his bed. He was very obedient and sat there and looked at me sweetly as I closed the door. I did not know then that we were in any great danger or else I would have taken him with me.55

After he was taken on board the Carpathia, survivor Richard Williams spoke with a fellow survivor, who told him something about the Titanic’s dogs:

One man told me that some half hour or so before the end he suddenly thought of a dog that he was bringing home with him. He went up to the top deck and opened up all the kennels. This relieved my mind quite a bit, for as I was in the water swimming towards the collapsible lifeboat I thought I saw the small black face of a French bulldog which was evidently swimming in my general direction. At the time I thought I must be seeing things but as I had more important matters on my mind at the moment I promptly forgot about it. This man, however, told me that there was a black-faced French bull, so that the poor little fellow was evidently doing all that he could to get out of this unexpected situation, just like all the rest of us.56

The unidentified male survivor in Williams’ account was apparently Robert Daniel himself, who told his daughter in later years that he tried to save the dogs from going down to certain death in their cages.57

In later years Eva Hart had vivid memories of Daniel’s French bulldog:

After the ship had sunk and we had returned to England, I longed and longed for a little dog like that, but when I described it to people I couldn’t find anyone who knew what type of dog it was. As a result, it wasn’t until 1955 that I discovered the breed. A year later I was given one as a present and at long last had the pleasure of owning such an affectionate animal. The beautiful French bulldog I eventually owned was the image of the one I had played with many years previously on the Titanic.58

William Dulles

Dog No. 7: Mr Dulles brought a dog with him on to the Titanic. Dulles paid £1 19s 4d for the dog’s transport,59 and he and his pet both died in the sinking.60

William Dulles owned Tophill Farm in Goshen, New York, and was a breeder and owner of show dogs. Although Dulles might have been returning from France on the Titanic with a brand-new canine purchase, it’s also possible he might have been bringing his Scottish terrier, EMS Chevalier, back from a breeding trip there.

W.L. McClandish, the owner of EMS Kennels, specialised in Scottish terriers and produced eight champions of that breed between 1905 and 1912. By 1908 Chevalier was being used for breeding purposes at the kennels, and William C. Dulles appears to have purchased the dog early in 1910, as was recorded in the American Kennel Club Stud Book:

EMS Chevalier. (Author’s collection)

EMS Chevalier (135,150) – William C. Dulles, Goshen, N.Y.Breeder, J. Love, England. Whelped, June 6, 1904. Brindle. By Camowen’s Laddie out of Carter Jean, by Kempoch King out of Bess, by Hardy out of Bessie; Kempoch King by Kempoch Cairn out of Kempoch Cora; Camowen Laddie by Seafield out of Seafield Annie, by St Clair Chief out of St Clair Judy; Seafield by Jock out of St Clair Betsy.61

On 11 February 1910 it was announced that Chevalier had been entered in the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in Madison Square Garden and acquitted himself admirably there:

(Class 492 (Scottish Terriers); open; dogs) – First, Tickle ’Em Jock. Andrew Albright, jr.; second, Ch. Walescott Invader. Walescott Kennels; third, Em’s Chevalier, William C.62

On 24 February Chevalier was entered in the New England Kennel Show in Boston, and the results of the judging were announced that same day:

Scottish Terriers, Dogs – William C. Dulles’ EM’s Chevalier. Bitches – N.H. Mulford’s Gevyned Lassie; reserve, William C. Dulles’ Laindon Lovelock.63

By spring 1911 William Dulles was using Chevalier for breeding purposes in the States, and the Newcastle Kennels produced Bodkin, Clipper, Greyrock, Keyway, Puff, Relish, Specialist and a number of other puppies courtesy of EMS Chevalier.64 However, all new records of Chevalier’s breeding activities seem to have ceased after 1911, and the only subsequent reference to the dog (published in 1917) mentions that Albourne Bombardier (born in 1912) was a descendant of Chevalier (stemming from one of the dog’s pre-1912 liaisons).65

All that is known of Dulles’s travels in 1912 is that he sailed with his mother for Paris on 20 January. From Paris they went to Rome and met friends, with whom they toured the Continent, at which point Mr Dulles left his mother in Paris and boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg.66

Did William Dulles and his mother bring a dog with them when they sailed from the United States to France in January 1912? If so, was that dog EMS Chevalier? Did Chevalier and Dulles die together on the Titanic, or did Dulles purchase a brand-new dog in Europe and have it with him on board the ill-fated ship? We may never know for certain.

Myra Harper

Dog No. 8: Mrs Harper owned Sun Yat Sen, a red Pekingese with black mask.67 She and her husband paid £1 19s 4d for the transport of their pet on the Titanic.68

In later years, stewardess Violet Jessop claimed to have seen a woman (whose name she disguised with a pseudonym) who brought a Pekingese on board the Titanic. (However, it seems likely that Jessop was remembering another woman from a different ocean voyage.)

My daydreaming ended with the further arrival of passengers. My heart sank as Mrs Cyrus Klapton, clutching her pet Pekingese, bore down towards my section followed by a downcast maid. She had invariably reduced each successive maid to submission ere she boarded the ship. Their spirits would finally be broken by a combination of Mrs Klapton and the rough sea voyage.69

After the collision, Henry Harper carried his dog with him when he and his wife Myra took their places in lifeboat #3:

I stepped in and sat down among the stokers. There was no one in sight on the decks. I had on my arm a little brown Pekingese spaniel we had picked up in Paris and named Sun Yat Sen in honour of his country’s first President. The little dog kept very quiet. I found out, after boarding the Carpathia, that several dogs had been rescued in the same way in the early boats. There seemed to be lots of room, and nobody made any objection.70

Sun Yat Sen arrived safely in the United States and took up his abode in the Harper kennels in New York City. Later that year, a newspaper mentioned the dog’s entry in a Pekingese Club of America dog show on 17 December in the grand ballroom of the Plaza Hotel.

‘The entries include many interesting and well known Pekingese,’ the New York Herald reported, ‘and the one that will undoubtedly attract the most attention outside of the judging ring is Sun-Yat-Sen, who, with its mistress, Mrs Henry S. Harper, was saved from the Titanic.’ The dog was entered in the Class 5 division – animals of 8lb and under:

When visitors to the Pekingese show come to the entry in the catalogue which reads, ‘Sun Yat Sen, date of birth, breeder and pedigree unknown,’ they probably will want to interview little Sun.

Sun will tell them that it is because all trace of his origin was lost when the Titanic sank and he just escaped finding a watery grave himself.

He was traveling with Mrs H.S. Harper, who had just purchased him in London, and his mistress remembered him all through the awful time and carried him with her in the lifeboat.

Mrs Harper has several other exceedingly good specimens, but Sun Yat Sen is her favorite.71

Sun Yat Sen. (Courtesy Randy Bigham)

During the months after the disaster, Sun Yat Sen was mated to a Pekingese named Ai-Gee Eureka, of the famous ‘Weaver’ strain, a massive red belonging to Mrs A. Goodson of New York City.72

In June 1913 a newspaper article described Sun Yat Sen’s living arrangements in the kennels on the second floor of Mrs Harper’s brownstone house in Gramercy Park:

Overlooking Gramercy Park and in a luxurious and polished parquet floored chamber are quartered the expensive and recently imported Pekingese dogs, the property of Mrs Henry S. Harper, wife of one of the brothers of the well-known publishing firm of this city. Although Peter of Braywick, Yuan-Shi-Kai of Braywick, Sun-Yat-Sen of Braywick and their wives and cousins may have had a happy time of it at Hatchford Park, Cobham, England, the seat of Sir Henry and Lady Samuelson, they surely could not have been better looked after than where they are now in the stately residence of their new mistress.

Mrs Harper is fond of dogs, but she doesn’t desire to lock up her breed so that it can be of no service or delight to any one save herself. The Pekingese blood that Mrs Harper has in her kennels is available to every person who desires to embrace the opportunity of breeding from these valuable animals. There are about twenty Pekingese at 131 East Twenty-First Street, and these are under the superintendence of Miss Le Doux, an English woman well versed in all that is required in this extremely valuable variety of dogs, which really command greater prices in Europe than they do here. Miss Le Doux was with Lady Samuelson for six years, and when the Hatchford Park kennel of Pekingese was distributed and Mrs Harper acquired the best of them the New York enthusiast prevailed on Miss Le Doux to voyage with her.

Mrs Harper has gone in for Pekingese for about eighteen months, and, like all owners of these quaint little dogs of the Imperial Palace of Pekin and of the temples, she loves them because of their affectionate ways. On entering the picture-hung room, Sun-Yat-Sen of Braywick was the first to rush forward and bark. The sire of this little fellow, Champion Chu-erh of Aldebourne, is reckoned the best Peke that ever lived and his good looks have been handed down to his stock.73

A supplementary article gave additional details about the living arrangements of Sun Yat Sen and his brethren:

Mrs Harper certainly keeps her dogs in splendid shape. They are looked after by Miss Le Doux, an English woman of great experience. There is a kennel maid under her. The dogs are fed on the choicest of foods and kept robust in every way. In a large room, on the walls of which hang several oil paintings, is a capacious exercising ring. In this the dogs are turned to romp and play. If there be a quarrelsome one among them he is left to himself in some other run or placed with a mate disinclined to take any dog insult, which dog, in time, masters the bully, and then all is peace in Gramercy Park.

On all sides these little dogs are carefully looked after. This attention to their needs is due not alone to affection, but is also a means to a profitable end, for a first class puppy is worth $200 or perhaps more when it is three months old. It must not be expected that every puppy in a litter of four or five is worth so much; but a good short faced, square muzzled, big eyed and short bodied specimen will command that figure …

Mrs Harper certainly looks after her dogs carefully, and always has them as her faithful companions both in New York and at her country residence at Long Lakes, NY. Very often the dogs may be seen at exercise, on leashes, in Gramercy Park. Their outlook from their kennels is also upon that strictly reserved piece of ground and the Players Club. There are several international prize winners in Mrs Harper’s kennels and many home-breds which will be seen at forthcoming canine events.74

On 21 May 1913 the Olympic arrived in New York carrying fifteen prize-winning Pekingese, among whom was a dog named Sun-Yat-Sen. (This dog was from a British kennel, however, and was making his first trip to America.)75

In July 1913 Mrs Harper began running newspaper advertisements describing Sun Yat Sen’s distinguished ancestry (‘By Ch. Chu-Erk of Alderbourne’) and promoting his stud fee of $25.76

Late the following year, a New York newspaper extolled the virtues of this tiny survivor of the Titanic disaster.

Sun Yat Sen is a red dog, the red being a dark shade usually associated with the collies … [The dog] is currently in great shape. He would be the ideal dog to cross because of his excellent blood and his Pekingese temperament.77

Margaret Hays

Dog No. 9: Miss Hays owned a Pomeranian puppy named Bebe that was given to her by a friend in Paris.78 The dog, which had a ‘silken brown coat and snappy brown eyes’,79 was carried by Miss Hays into lifeboat #7 and survived the disaster:

The night of the terrible disaster, when the Titanic