Rhoda Abbott
With Richard Williams in Collapsible Lifeboat A, was Rhoda Abbott, the only woman left onboard Titanic at the end to survive in the water. Rhoda was on her way back to America. English born and bred, she had lived there since her youth. It was in America she met and married Stanton Abbott, a fellow ex-patriot, and the former US middleweight champion. Her two sons, Rossmore and Eugene, were also born and brought up there. She had only returned to England in 1911 because her marriage broke down. But her boys became homesick. So Rhoda booked passage on the Titanic to go home.
The family traveled in steerage. When disaster struck, Rhoda hustled her two sons towards the lifeboats. But she was shocked to discover the crew would not allow them to accompany her. At 16 and 13, the boys were no longer classed as children and so like the other men were obliged to stay behind. It was unthinkable for Rhoda to leave without her sons. So she opted to remain with them. As Titanic was about to sink, the family jumped from the deck into the sea.
Rhoda made it to Collapsible lifeboat A, but her two boys were lost almost as soon as the ship went down. Once on the Carpathia, Rhoda was reunited with Amy Stanley, a near neighbor in steerage. Shocked and grieving, Rhoda would talk only to Amy about her terrible loss. “The youngest went first then the other son went, ” Amy later recalled. “She [Rhoda] grew numb and cold and couldn’t remember when she got on the Carpathia. There was a piece of cork in her hair, and I managed to get a comb, and it took a long time, but finally, we got it out.”
Rhoda’s ordeal in the waterlogged lifeboat left her severely ill. She remained in her cot for the whole of the voyage back to New York and then spent two weeks in a hospital. For the rest of her life, she suffered chronic asthma. Rhoda did marry again, but after traveling back to England to settle her father in laws estate, Rhoda’s husband had a stroke. The couple could not return to the US. Once her husband died, the outbreak of World War II prevented Rhoda from returning home. She remained in the UK, alone and parted from her friends until her death in 1946.