Our maritime ceremonies correspondent Angus Young reports on a story that James Cameron entirely failed to put in his movie.
Joseph Boxhall knew his ship was in trouble when he came across a passenger holding a piece of ice. The Titanic’s fourth officer had been having a cup of tea in his cabin when an iceberg was spotted by a lookout. Moments later, as he made his way to the bridge, he felt a collision but it didn’t break his step.
Aged 28, Joseph was already an experienced seaman when the luxury liner’s maiden voyage came to an abrupt end. Born in Hull, he was a third generation seafarer who started his apprenticeship aged just 15 on a transatlantic crossing from Liverpool to Portland in Oregon. By the time he gained his Extra Masters’ certificate in 1907 after studying at Trinity House he had already sailed around the globe several times onboard ships owned by the Hull-based Wilson Line.
He then joined the White Star Line and was eventually offered a post as fourth officer on the newly-completed Titanic in March 1912, joining her for sea trials shortly afterwards.
Joseph’s encounter with the ice-carrying passenger came as he descended to the ship’s lower decks to check for signs of damage. In a memoir recorded in 1962 he recalled: “I took this piece of ice and walked along the upper deck on the starboard side to see where it had come from and there, just inside the ship’s rail, was a powdering of ice running along as though she’d compressed it.”
On a second search for damage he entered the ship’s mail room and saw clerks frantically pulling letters out of the racks, Standing at the top of a flight of stairs leading down to the main handling room he saw a mailbag float by beneath him. “I instinctively stooped down to try to pick it up. I just couldn’t reach it. I realised then it was serious,” he said.
Reporting back to Captain Edward Smith, he was ordered to start taking covers off the ship’s lifeboats before launching a number of distress rockets from the bridge. With all the rockets fired, Smith ordered him to take command of one of the lifeboats. “I tumbled into this lifeboat and we got lowered down,” he recalled 50 years later. “I found that I only had three of the ship’s crew – a steward, the cook and a sailor. I tried to count the passengers but it was difficult because they couldn’t speak English. I reckon I had about 30 onboard the boat. The captain looked over from the bridge and told me to go round to the starboard side to the gangway doors which were practically at the opposite side to where I was lowered. I had great difficulty in getting the boat round there. I was using the stroke oar standing up and there was a lady helping, she was steering the boat round the ship’s stern. When I passed round the boat to get to this gangway door her propellers were out of the water. I’m not certain if I didn’t pass underneath them.”
When Joseph reached the gangway doors they were crowded with people. “I didn’t dare go alongside because if they had jumped they would have swamped the boat. It was only small with no buoyancy tanks in her. I pulled away about a quarter of a mile. What struck me as being strange was that I couldn’t see any of the other boats.”
While his boat ended up on the ship’s starboard side, the other boats were on the port side. Seemingly alone in the ocean, Joseph and those in the boat could only watch as Titanic disappeared from view. “The sea was perfectly still when we left the ship. Every star in the heavens was visible but there was no moon so it was dark. For a long time we didn’t move the boat. You could see by the arrangements of the lights (on Titanic), all the lights were burning and you could see that she was going down. You could see that her stern was getting pretty low. We pulled, we got away clear of the ship and we just laid on the oars until we realised that she had gone and we heard all the screams. We couldn’t do anything. The screams went on for some considerable time.”
Their boat was eventually found by the British ocean liner Carpathia. They were the first of the 700 survivors of the disaster to be rescued. It’s estimated around 1,500 people lost their lives.
Joseph resumed his career with White Star until the First World War when he was commissioned to serve on a Royal Navy battleship before being given command of a torpedo boat based in Gibraltar.
After the war, he returned to White Star and eventually became a chief officer before retiring in 1940. Following his death in 1967 at the age of 83, his ashes were scattered at his request at the position he had calculated as Titanic’s final resting place.
In 2006 a plaque commemorating his life was placed on his former home in Westbourne Avenue.