Iowa’s Titanic legacy, 110 years later

The Titanic sank 12,500 feet to the bottom of the North Atlantic 110 years ago next week. The largest ship ever built to that day, with it went 46,000 tons of steel, 1,400 tons of cargo (including a brand-new 1912 Renault Coupe de Ville car), and 1,523 passengers.

The vessel, almost three football fields in length, and with smokestacks as tall as a 15-story building, was designed to carry 3,547 people across the waves, but held only 16 lifeboats (and four collapsible extras) that could accommodate a total of 1,178 passengers. With the tradition of “women and children first,” many of these petite rowboats, descended the side of the ship half empty, leaving only 705 souls to survive among the more than 2,200 passengers and crew aboard.

Of those 1,523 passengers were 15 who listed Iowa as their final destination. The majority of these, being immigrants from Sweden or Eastern Europe, were classified as “steerage” (added weight needed toward the bottom of the ship to help balance the vessel while turning at sea) and were the first to succumb to a barrage of frigid water after the “floating palace” grazed an iceberg 400 miles east of Newfoundland, Canada.

A few, however, who had claimed Iowa as their birthplace or former state of residency, survived the wreck.

Among these was the socialite wife of the co-founder of Douglas Starch Works in Cedar Rapids (now Ingredion) traveling in First Class. She was lowered in a lifeboat as her husband stood aboard and watched from above, saying, “I must be a gentleman.”

Another, also in First Class (although on a lower deck than those with “old money”), was a farm girl from Manchester who left home to attend college, met a young real estate investor from North Dakota, and was returning on Titanic with him to pursue a career as a music teacher. She hugged the love of her life one last time before stepping into lifeboat number five. After arrival in New York on board the rescue ship, Carpathia, she told to a newspaper writer that she prayed every day that she would see him again. His body was never recovered from the wreck site.

Others included a young Second Class passenger, whose sister had earlier settled in Central City, and sent her a ticket for passage to America on the Titanic. While aboard, she was a babysitter for two toddler children who had been secretly kidnapped by their estranged father who was attempting to start a new life with them in the states.

She, and the little boys, survived clinging to a flimsy collapsible lifeboat made of fabric. Their father was lost at sea and the boys reunited with their mother in France. Their surprised babysitter, knowing each was safe, then boarded a train for Iowa, ultimately married in Cedar Rapids, and moved with their son to a small, scenic town overlooking a lake in northern Minnesota.

Perhaps the most harrowing of all, however, was a four year old girl who would never know her true identity. The story has it that she was thrown overboard into the arms of a swimming passenger who handed her into a lifeboat.

The traumatized child only knew her parents as “ma” and “pa,” so after an investigation upon arrival in New York, she was place on an orphan train and sent west, where, with her past unbeknown to them, she was adopted by a newlywed railroad worker and his wife in Council Bluffs. She seldom spoke of the infamous wreck and died in relative obscurity in western Iowa in 1982.

Over the last 110 years, the legacy of Titanic has largely been told through the accounts of the ultra wealthy such as Isadore and Ida Straus or John Jacob Astor, or maybe, the plight of the 3rd Class through the epic motion picture, “Titanic,” which celebrates the 25th anniversary of its release this year.

To learn the forgotten tales of heroism, survival, and death by Iowans in the most legendary shipwreck of all times, the Marion Heritage Center will be hosting “A Day on the Titanic” with exhibits, lectures, and even a “Taste of the Titanic,” serving desserts from the last dinner on the ship, Sunday April 10 from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. The event will display massive detailed models of ocean liners from the Golden Age of travel, artifacts of the White Star Line, and the “Meet me at the Clock” clock from the 1997 film classic. It also includes a special screening of the movie.

The legacy of those lost and the survivors have lived on in our hearts and souls for 110 years. Let us remember the Iowans who were among them.

David V. Wendell is a Marion historian, author and special events coordinator specializing in American history.