TIME MACHINE: The Titanic’s Iowa connections

When the Titanic sank April 15, 1912, more than 1,500 people perished, including Iowans and people with ties to the state.

The stories of heartbreak and survival filled The Gazette for weeks after the disaster.

Among the first reports, received April 16, was that Walter Douglas, a wealthy Cedar Rapids and Minneapolis businessman, and his wife, Mahala, were aboard the ocean liner on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City.

They had been abroad to buy furniture and fixtures for their new home on Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota. The report said they were “undoubtedly all right.”

But that was not the case. Mahala was among those rescued after her husband put her in Lifeboat 2 and said he would follow as soon as all the women and children were off the ship. Douglas, 50, was among those who perished. His body was recovered, with burial at Oak Hill Cemetery in Cedar Rapids.

Other stories

Gunner Tenglin, who arrived in Burlington in southeast Iowa on April 25, was one of the third-class passengers who survived by climbing aboard one of the ship’s collapsible rafts. Those on the raft had to stand and had to knock others off who were trying to climb on, Tenglin said.

“It meant the death of all of us should they have swamped our raft in overloading it,” he said. “The people began to die on the raft rapidly and one big Swede was kept busy throwing bodies into the sea. Several men swimming in the water near us were allowed to take the places of the dead men.”

Carrie Toogood Chaffee, a native of Manchester in northeast Iowa, was returning from Europe with her husband, Herbert, a wealthy North Dakota farmer, so they could be home for the birth of a grandchild.

“I have not given up hope but that my husband was saved in some way. I simply cannot lose hope,” Carrie Chaffee said. Her husband’s body was never found.

Bertha Lehmann, a second-class passenger, was traveling from Berne, Switzerland, to her sister’s home east of Central City. She arrived on deck as the last lifeboat was about to be lowered. She was put on the boat with eight other women.

“The boat would hold about fifty people, and the rest were all men, Mr. Ismay being one of them,” The Gazette reported, noting that Ismay was chairman of the White Star Line, owner of the Titanic.

“They rowed a few feet from the ship when they came across another boat which had been overturned, with 40 men clinging to its sides. These men were all taken into the boat.”

The extra weight put the edge of the lifeboat close to the water line.

Frank Lefebvre had immigrated to Mystic, in south-central Iowa, with his oldest son to work the coal mines and earn ocean passage for the rest of his family. He learned April 20 that his wife and four small children had been on the Titanic.

When Lefebvre heard that two boys, ages 2 and 4, had been rescued, he headed to New York, hoping they were his sons. They were not, meaning Lefebvre had lost five family members. Later, Lefebvre and his girlfriend were charged with violating immigration laws and were deported.

Artist Francis Millet, nephew of Mrs. C.A. Cumming, wife of the head of the fine arts department at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, was lost.

But the Rev. William Ernest Carter of Philadelphia, a cousin of the wife of Johnson County Attorney W.J. McDonald, was among those who were rescued.

Albert Caldwell and his wife and baby son were second-class passengers. Caldwell placed his family in Lifeboat 13. It wasn’t full. Mrs. Caldwell begged the man in charge of the boat to allow her husband to take a seat. She was the only woman on the boat, and no one else was waiting to board. The crewman allowed it.

After hours on the ocean, the Caldwells were picked up by the RMS Carpathia, a Canard ship that rescued Titanic passengers from lifeboats and took them to New York City. Two years later, Caldwell was principal of the high school in Ames.

Ernest Tomlin, 23, of London, had written two of his fellow students at Drake University, saying he would soon be back in Des Moines and would sail from Southhampton on April 10. The Titanic was the only ship to leave Southampton that day. Tomlin’s name was found on the list of the ship’s third-class passengers. His body was recovered and buried at sea.

A native of Denmark, Louis Mickelsen was a fireman aboard the Titanic. When he heard the captain’s last order, “You have all done your duty. It’s every man for himself now,” Mickelsen jumped into the ocean and made his way to a raft. He eventually found his way to Cedar Rapids and worked for the municipal waterworks until he retired in 1955.

Anna Nysten Gustafson, 22, was a nurse for the Danbom families of Sweden and the only one from the party of 11 to survive. She stayed in New York City until 1915, then traveled to Boone, Iowa, moving a few months later to Des Moines.

Marion Kenyon of Connecticut, had formerly lived in Fremont County in far southwest Iowa where her father had been editor of the Fremont County Democrat. She survived, but her husband, Frederick, did not.

Phillip Bichell, an itinerant accordion player, told the Des Moines Register in 1933 when he was 70 years old that he had been hired as an entertainer on the ship and was one of three men in a lifeboat that took him to safety.

Emil Wallberg, an engineer and University of Iowa graduate, survived and built the beacon tower at Cape Race, Newfoundland, the nearest point to the wreck of the Titanic.

Carlos Hurd, a native of Cherokee County in northwest Iowa, and his wife, Katherine, were passengers aboard the Carpathia, which rescued 706 Titanic survivors. A reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Hurd, then 36, broke the first stories of the disaster for his newspaper.

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