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Family Stories... Who Cancelled There Trip Aboard The Titanic On Count Of Sickness Or A Death In The Family Etc.

Years ago in Scotland, the Clark family had a dream. Clark and his wife worked and saved, making plans for their nine children and themselves to travel to the US. It had taken years, but they had finally saved enough money and had gotten passports and reservations for the whole family on a new liner to the US.

The entire family was filled with anticipation and excitement about their new life. However, 7 days before their departure, the youngest son was bitten by a dog. The doctor sewed up the little boy but hung a yellow sheet on the Clarks' front door. Because of the possibility of rabies, they were being quarantined for 14 days.

The family's dreams were dashed. They would not be able to make the trip to America as they had planned. The father, filled with disappointment and anger, stomped to the dock to watch the ship leave--without the Clark family. The father shed tears of disappointment and cursed both his son and God for their misfortune.

Five days later, the tragic news spread throughout Scotland--the mighty "Titanic" had sunk. The unsinkable ship had sunk, taking hundreds of lives with it. The Clark family was to have been on that ship, but because the son had been bitten by a dog, they were left behind in Scotland.


In 1898, a book called Futility or Wreck of the Titan by Morgan Robertson came out. The book told the story of a ship that set sailed, had not a lot of lifeboats, and after 4 days hit an iceberg and sank. Everybody on board died except for 13 people. The book told the destiny of the Titanic.

The magazine POPULAR was printing a story for the may issue in 1912. The story was about a ship that set sail and hit a berg. The story was being printed at the same time Titanic was getting ready to leave Southampton. The author dreamed the story when sailing on the Olympic.

Passengers and non-passengers:

When boarding the ship in Queenstown, the passengers worried about getting on because of the hull number, 3909 04. If mirror imaged it reads NO POPE.

A man and his family who were going to immigrate to America. Mr. Rouse was going to go ahead so he can prepare for the arrival of his wife and daughter. He took them to the dock, and his wife begged him not to go 'cause she told him that the ship is too big. He said it's fine. When she got news that the ship sank she fainted. He was never found.

A Man Named, Stephen Jenkin, was staying in Europe with his folks. When he booked passage on the Titanic to go home, he had a bad feeling about the ship. Just in case he died on the crossing he left his valuables with his parents. Well, he did die on the crossing.

John Hume's, violinist of the 8 man orchestra, mother begged him so hard not to go. She dreamt that something terrible would happen.

Henry B. Harris, a theatre producer, cabled that his wife and him was to travel on Titanic. His business associate, William Klein, was filled with sense of doom and told him to cancel. He replied back saying it was to late. When the ship went down, he kissed his wife goodbye and helped her into the boat.

Mrs. William Bucknell was to board at Cherbourg. She told Molly Brown that she was to afraid to board the ship. But she got on anyway. The night of April 14, she retired to her room. When she meet up with Molly later after. She exclaimed, "Didn't I tell you? I knew it."

In Scotland that night, a Salvation Army Captain was at a orphanage. He was sitting next to a dying girl when she told him her prediction about the ship. He told her it was a dream. She went into a coma shortly after. Right before she died, he heard the latch on the door being unlatched and it felt like someone was with them. {this gets me}

When Titanic left the dock. It approached two other ships, the New York and Oceanic. The New York's ropes snapped from the dock. So the stern of the New York was going toward the stern of Titanic. Captain Smith ordered the engines to be reversed. A tugboat came and took the New York away. Many thought it was a big omen for the trip.

In September of 1911, the Royal Navy cruiser Hawke ran into the Olympic making a hole in the stern. Captain Smith was in charge of the Olympic. Nobody blamed him. Only a question remained in the minds of the people. Can a ship that big be handled.??.....

Stories Of Passengers Aboard Titanic

Ruth Becker

Ruth Becker was 12 years old in 1912 when she and her family travelled on the Titanic. After the sinking, Ruth attended high school and college in Ohio, after which she taught high school in Kansas. She married a classmate, Daniel Blanchard, and after her divorce twenty years later, she resumed her teaching career. Like most survivors, she refused to talk about the sinking and her own children, when young, did not know that she had been on the Titanic.It was only after her retirement, when she was living in Santa Barbara, California, that she began speaking about it, granting interviews and attending conventions of the Titanic Histrorical Society. In March of 1990, she made her first sea voyage since 1912, a cruise to Mexico. She passed away later that year at the age of ninety.

Richard Becker

Richard Becker was Ruth's younger brother and was two years old at the time of the disaster. Richard became a singer and in later life a social welfare worker. Widowed twice, he passed away in 1975.

Nellie Becker

Nellie Becker was the children's mother. She was married to a missionary stationed in India and her three children were sailing to America for treatment of an illness Richard had contracted in India. Once in America, she and her three children settled in Benton Harbour, Michigan, until her husband's arrival from India the following year. It was apparent to him and the children that her personality had changed since the disaster. She was far more emotional and was given to emotional outbursts. Until her death in 1961, she was never able to discuss the Titanic disaster without dissolving into tears.

Marion Becker

Marion contracted tuberculosis at a young age and died in Glendale, California in 1944.

Olaus Abelseth

Olaus tried vacationing in Canada to calm his nerves following his ordeal with the Titanic, but found that simply going back to work was just what he needed. Returning to the South Dakota farm he had first homesteaded in 1908, he raised cattle and sheep for the next 30 years before retiring in North Dakota where he died in 1980.

Madeline Astor

Madeline inherited from her husband the income from a five-million-dollar trust fund and the use of his home on Fifth Avenue and in the Newport so long as she did not marry. In August 1912, she gave birth to a son with whom she was pregnant on the Titanic, and she named him after her husband, John Jacob Astor. She relinquished the Astor income and mansions during World War I to marry William K. Dick of New York, and by him she had two more sons. She divorced Dick in Reno, Nevada in 1933 to marry Italian prize fighter Enzo Firemonte. Five years later this marriage also ended in divorce. She died in Palm Beach, Florida in 1940 at the age of 47.

Richard and Sally Beckwith

Richard and Sally continued to travel and entertained frequently at their homes in New York City and Squam Lake, New Hampshire. Richard died in New York in 1933 and his wife in that city in 1955.

Joseph Boxhall

Joseph was 4th officer on the Titanic and attained a command with the Royal Navy but was never made captain while in the merchant service. He left the sea in 1940 and in 1958 acted as technical advisor to the film "A Night To Remember." Following his death in 1967, his ashes were scattered over the ocean in the vicinity of the Titanic's sinking place.

Harold Bride

Harold Bride was the Titanic's wireless man. He kept a very low profile in the years following the disaster. World War I found him as a wireless operator on the tiny steamer, the Mona's Isle. He later embarked on a career as a salesman before retiring to Scotland where he passed away in 1956.

Molly Brown

Molly's life took a surprising turn after the sinking. Previously, her efforts to be accepted by the Denver society had been unsuccessful, the selflessness and heroism she had shown on the Titanic prompted her neighbours, for a short time, to open their doors to her. In 1914, she was named a otential candidate for Congress. As time passed on, however, she grew increasingly eccentric. Her husband died interstate and she found herself at odds with her children over his money. In 1932, at the age of 65, she died suddenly in New York City after a stroke. It was only after her death, when she became the subject of the hit Broadway musical and film, "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" that she gained some of the fame she would have so enjoyed in life.

Fredrick Fleet

He was the lookout who first sighted the iceberg that sank the Titanic. He left the sea in 1936. He worked for Harland and Wolff's Southampton shipyard during World War II, after which he became a night watchman for the Union Castle Line. As he moved into old age, he sold newspapers on a street corner in Southampton. In 1965, despondant over his finances and the recent loss of his wife, Fleet took his own life.

J. Bruce Ismay

Ismay retired as planned from the International Mercantile Marine in June 1913, but the position of managing director of the White Star Line that he had hoped to retain was denied him. Survivng the Titanic disaster had made him far too unpopular with the public. He spent his remaining years alternating between his homes in London and Ireland. Because Ismay had never had many close friends, and subsequently had few business contacts, it was mistakenly easy to assume that he had become a recluse. He did enjoy being kept informed of shipping news but those around him were forbidden to speak of the Titanic. He died in 1937.