25. Lightoller’s remarkable life is only partially known
Charles Lightoller has been portrayed in films many times, nearly all of them centering on the night in 1912 when Titanic sank. Kenneth More played him in A Night to Remember in 1957, Jonathan Phillips in James Cameron’s Titanic four decades later. His role in the evacuation of Dunkirk was fictionalized (as Mr. Dawson) in 2017 when the character was played by Mark Rylance in the film Dunkirk. His service in the Royal Navy during World War I has seldom been presented, and the rest of his life is often ignored entirely, including his time spent in the Canadian Yukon and when shipwrecked for eight days in the Indian Ocean.
Following the loss of Titanic, he was briefly famous, and in a newspaper article he penned for the Christian Science Journal he attributed his survival of the disaster as “With God, all things are possible”. In his memoirs, he described another period of his life, the time spent in the Yukon prospecting, and then traveling across Canada by hopping trains, a bit more pithily. “I’d tried it out, I’d had a great time, and I’d got back…Admittedly I’d gone broke; on the other hand, I had got back”.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“The Second Officer Who Survived Titanic and Saved 130 Lives at Dunkirk”. History Channel Online
“Shipping Reports”. Sidney Morning Herald. October 9, 1900. Online
“A Night to Remember”. Walter Lord. 2005
“Titanic: Minute by Minute”. Jonathan Mayo. 2016
“Titanic: Why was lifeboat not full?” Belfast Telegraph Online. April 23, 2012
“Five Titanic Myths Spread By Films”. Rosie Waites, BBC News. April 5, 2012
“Testimony of Charles Lightoller”. British Wreck Commissioners Inquiry, Day 11. 1912. Online
“White Star Line (Oceanic Steam Navigation Company)”. Duncan Haws. 1990
“The First Destroyers”. David Lyon. 2006
“Fips: Legendary German U-Boat Commander”. Geoffrey Brooks. 1999
“Sundowner”. Article, Association of Dunkirk Little Ships. Online
“Pillar of Fire: Dunkirk 1940”. Ronald Atkin. 2000
“Ashcroft, Gerald Edward (Oral History)”. Gerald Ashcroft, Imperial War Museum (UK). Online
“Mr. Lightoller Goes to Dunkirk”. Martyn Day, St. Margarets, London. August 13, 2017. Online
History Collection – Haunting Photographs and Quotes from Titanic Survivors
National Archives – They Said It Couldn’t Sink
Our Warwickshire – The Ss Suevic And The Aftermath Of Its Accident
RNLI Lifeboats – 1907: The Suevic Rescue
ThoughtCo – A Timeline of the Sinking of the Titanic
History Channel – Why Did the Titanic Sink?
The Guardian – Key That Could Have Saved The Titanic Goes Up For Auction