I am not particularly enamored by the story of the Titanic, which sank on April 15, 1912. To be sure, I think it was a grave tragedy: 1,517 passengers died after the boat hit an iceberg. Yet I never felt pulled by the Romance of the luxury ship, nor engaged with the minutiae about the way it sank. However, the story of Charles John Joughin, who was the chief baker on board, is super compelling and macabre, and thus I shall tell it here.
Charles Joughin (b 1878) had two wives, two children, and survived three shipwrecks. The Titanic was the most famous, but he also made it out of the SS Congress in 1916 (which was grounded but no one was killed), and in 1941 SS Oregon (which sank and left 17 people dead).
Charles Joughin’s accounts of what he did that awful night that the Titanic sank are the stuff of legends, if you’re sitting around at a bar telling stories: the man took an extremely long time to get round to tending to his apparently eminent death. When he was awakened as the ship hit the iceberg, he first had all his sub-cooks load up the life rafts with loaves of bread. Then, he returned to his room and drank a bunch of whiskey. He made his way to some of the boats and helped women and children load up, eventually throwing at least one woman in the boat who was reluctant to board.
Other things Charles Joughin did to pass the time as the Titanic was sinking included returning to his cabin for more whiskey, throwing deck chairs overboard (in hopes they might float and be of use to him later), getting himself a glass of water, and transferring items from one pocket to another. By this point he had made his way to some of the last non-submerged parts of the ship. He was the last passenger at the tip of the boat as it went down, and later declared that he stepped into the ocean without even wetting his head.
Charles lived until 1956.
Sources: https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-survivor/charles-john-joughin.html
