Hypothetical: If you were aboard the Titanic.

[Rain Man]

Would you have lived or died? Find out here and I'll let you know.

Tell me if you want to be a man, or if you'll take on the role of either gender, and I'll roll the dice for you and assign you a real person who was on the ship.* (If you're a woman, let me know too and I can give you a female dice roll.) If you don't tell me, I'll assume you're a guy.

I'll let you know the person's name, age, origin, embarkation point, destination, passenger class if they were a passenger, and their department and job if they were on the crew. In some cases we don't know so you'll get a blank, but the information is pretty good.

Oh, and if you were a passenger your crew stuff will come back as unknown, and vice versa if you were crew. There was a small handful of people who were both passengers and crew. The ship's orchestra and the Guarantee Workers were the two groups listed in both classes. (Guarantee workers were the expert repair guys who were assigned to the maiden voyage to make repairs of anything new that was broken. They apparently didn't have expertise in major hull repairs.)

You're then welcome to look up more detail about the person if you can find it. Some of them have interesting stories.

So sign up in the thread and I'll let you know.


* For some reason I'm missing a small number of people, but I've got about 98 percent of them in my database.

If you died and your body was recovered, here are the ships that recovered you, based on your body ID number:

MB – CS Mackay-Bennett (bodies 1–306)
M – CS Minia (bodies 307–323)
MM – CGS Montmagny (bodies 326–329)
A – SS Algerine (body 330)
O – RMS Oceanic (bodies 331–333)
I – SS Ilford (body 334)
OT – SS Ottawa [57] (body 335)

If you survived, you can go here to see the story of your particular lifeboat. Hard lifeboats were labeled 1 through 16, and four collapsible lifeboats were labeled A through D.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifebo..._the_lifeboats

[bringbackmarty]

sure I'm in.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by InChiefsHell

Do Me!!

...I mean...er...roll the dice...

You and your wife had a nice high end 2nd class cabin, which cost five times the monthly wage of the stewards. You were traveling in style as you emigrated from Britain to America to open up a carpentry practice. You had everything you owned on the ship since you were moving permanently. You were also carrying $1,250 in cash, which was the cost of two Model T's.

You accompanied your wife to Lifeboat 10 just as the level of urgency was ramping up, but it was mostly for women. So you stayed behind, and sadly, it was the difference between life and death. She survived, though she lost everything she owned. You did not survive, and also lost everything you owned.

Name Ware, Mr. John James
Outcome Dead - Body Not Recovered
Gender Male
Age 45
Home Bristol, Avon, England
Embarkation Southampton
Destination New Britain, Connecticut, US
Passenger Class 2nd Class
Crew Department Unknown
Crew Job Unknown

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by bringbackmarty

sure I'm in.

https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.or...ril-ricks.html

You and two other storekeepers were together on deck as the ship went down, and with no other options you all leapt into the water. One storekeeper managed to swim to a lifeboat and was pulled aboard. He survived, but reported that he saw you unconscious in the water. He presumed that something had struck you or that you had fallen into some wreckage. Either way, it was a fatal incident.

It's kind of cool that you were the 100th body recovered. Small victories.

Name Ricks, Mr. Cyril G.
Outcome Dead - Body Recovered - No. 100MB
Gender Male
Age 23
Home Southampton, Hampshire, England
Embarkation Southampton
Destination Unknown
Passenger Class Unknown
Crew Department Victualing Crew
Crew Job Storekeeper

[Pitt Gorilla]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

You survived, but it was probably more your parents' doing than yours.

You were on the ship with your dad, mom, and your two-month old sister, and you were immigrating from London to ... wait for it ... wait for it ... Wichita, Kansas. (They were going so the father could co-own a tobacco store with a relative.) Interestingly, you weren't supposed to be on the Titanic, but had to transfer from another ship due to that pesky coal strike. I remember another of our passengers had the same bad luck.

Bertram survived along with his wife and sister, but his father didn't make it. After landing in New York, they eventually retreated back to London. Bertram ended up working for a shipbuilder and liked talking about the Titanic, though I'm not sure that he'd have a great story to tell. His little sister Milvina was the last Titanic survivor to pass away, in 2009.

https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.or...vere-dean.html

Name Dean, Master Bertram Vere
Outcome Survived, Lifeboat 10
Gender Male
Age 1
Home Bartley Farm, Hampshire, England
Embarkation Southampton
Destination Wichita, Kansas, US
Passenger Class 3rd Class
Crew Department Unknown
Crew Job Unknown

My father's family is British, so this is pretty cool. Thanks.

[Graystoke]

Sink or swim

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Graystoke

Sink or swim

Well, this is unfortunate. A bunch of workers were running late as the ship was about to leave, so the recruited you at the last minute. Your punctuality killed you.

I had no idea that the islands of Guernsey and Jersey were so close to France. I had to look up their location.

https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.or...ard-steel.html

Name Steel, Mr. Robert Edward
Outcome Dead - Body Not Recovered
Gender Male
Age 30
Home Guernsey, Channel Islands
Embarkation Southampton
Destination Unknown
Passenger Class Unknown
Crew Department Engineering Crew
Crew Job Trimmer

[KS Smitty]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Your gender didn't aid you as much as your age. But it doesn't matter how it happened. You survived. You were part of the last call for women and children in Collapsible Boat C, riding to safety with Bruce Ismay, the CEO of White Star Lines.

Oh, but this stinks. You died of meningitis three months later, becoming the first Titanic survivor to die. That's a kick in the pant.

https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.or...ria-nakid.html

Nackid, Miss Maria
Survived, Lifeboat C
Female
1
Zgharta , Lebanon
Cherbourg
Waterbury, Connecticut, US
3rd Class
Unknown
Unknown

It appears that I may have been older than is listed, my parents had 5 more children after arriving in America some of which still live in or around Waterbury.
Also Daddy's version of what happened was very exciting.
https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.or...unt-20247.html

[007]

oh why not.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by 007

oh why not.

Alas, not much is known of you. It appears that your first name was Edward, and we know that you didn't make it out. It's uncertain, but it seems like some or all of the men in your position stayed below deck until the very end, trying to keep the ship's power going. I salute you.

Name Benville, Mr. E.
Outcome Dead - Body Not Recovered
Gender Male
Age 42
Home Southampton, Hampshire, England
Embarkation Southampton
Destination Unknown
Passenger Class Unknown
Crew Department Engineering Crew
Crew Job Fireman/Stoker

[007]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Alas, not much is known of you. It appears that your first name was Edward, and we know that you didn't make it out. It's uncertain, but it seems like some or all of the men in your position stayed below deck until the very end, trying to keep the ship's power going. I salute you.

Name Benville, Mr. E.
Outcome Dead - Body Not Recovered
Gender Male
Age 42
Home Southampton, Hampshire, England
Embarkation Southampton
Destination Unknown
Passenger Class Unknown
Crew Department Engineering Crew
Crew Job Fireman/Stoker

So I could have been one of the first to drown.

[Chiefs4TheWin]

Dice me up good sir!

[morphius]

After what you did to my body in WWII bombers, no thank you! haha.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Okay, we're back and sinking again, which is bad news for you.

Name Meyer, Mr. August
Outcome Dead - Body Not Recovered
Gender Male
Age 31
Home Harrow, London, England
Embarkation Southampton
Destination New York City
Passenger Class 2nd Class
Crew Department Unknown
Crew Job Unknown

Born in Roden, Hesse, Germany on May 26, 1880, I was looking to make a fresh start in America. Unmarried and with few good prospects, I thought a relocation to the New World would serve me well. While not bad looking, I knew the intensity of my stare would sometimes dismay the damsels.

I had asked my older brother Carl to join me, but he was well-settled, and had no interest in going. While we knew when we parted we might never see each other again, certainly we never imagined just how final the parting was.

A baker, I knew that I could ply my trade anywhere in the world so long as an oven was available, and I knew that enclaves in New York City of Germans might help the assimilation. Or, I had heard, parts of the western US were less developed and some had concentrations of Germans.

I emigrated to England as step one of the journey. I lived at 26 St Kilda's Road (NOT St. Kildas), in a section of London commonly known as Harrow-on-the-Hill, which is near the famed Wembley Stadium. Part of a block of row houses so common in London, it still stands today.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/26...949!4d-0.33984


I boarded in Southampton as a second class passenger, paying a fare of 13 pounds. I had scrimped and saved for years to come up with this fare, as well as a small pool of additional funds to start my new life. With me were all my worldly possessions -- or at least what little I could pack into a steamer trunk.

As a second class passenger, I enjoyed amenities that were not at all bad. The Titanic had three classes of passenger. Most of the poor immigrants were third class passengers, who paid 7 pounds. As a second class passenger, however, I was mostly with middle class tourists, as compared to the elite first class passengers -- who paid from 30 to 870 pounds for their right to ride Charon's boat.

Sources:

https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.or...ust-meyer.html

https://www.geni.com/people/August-M...00016155789590

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passen...he_RMS_Titanic

[Steron]

Roll 'em

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by 007

So I could have been one of the first to drown.

Possibly. But it seems like a lot of those guys didn't drown early. They just kept to their stations and didn't get a chance at the lifeboats.