The Shipwrecked Life of the Titanic Captain: Edward J. Smith

Edward John Smith was born in Staffordshire, England, on January 27, 1850. He was the son of a potter and had two siblings. He attended a school in Etruria that was partially funded by the Wedgwood Pottery Works Company. Dropping out of school at the age of twelve, Smith began his work on boats as a teenager and earned his master’s certificate in 1875, fulfilling the requirements to be a ship captain at only fifteen years old.

After working up the ranks, Smith captained his first ship in 1876 called the Lizzie Fennell, which was a one-thousand-ton ship that moved goods to and from South America. In 1880, Smith became a junior officer for the White Star Line and later signed onto the crew of Senator Weber in 1887. That same year, he married a woman named Eleanor Pennington, who lived in a small village in the countryside. They had one daughter, named Helen, in 1902.

Few of the ships he captained went well without any concern, and Smith faced problems throughout his captaining career. Several times he ran ships ashore, making him well known for damaging vessels. An example of an incident he was involved in was in 1911 when he was the captain of a ship called the Olympic (The sister ship to the Titanic). In this event, the Olympic collided with a British Cruiser called Hawke off the Isle of Wight. Both ships experienced excessive damage, but Smith was able to get the Olympic to Southampton with two compartments filled with water and one propeller shaft twisted. 

Even though he caused a lot of damage to ships during his time as captain, he was still very well-liked by his crew members and passengers. He earned the nickname the “Millionaire’s Captain” for his popularity with wealthy travelers, which led to him becoming the captain of the White Star Line. In 1912, he left his command of the Olympic– which was quickly repaired after the crash with the British Hawke– and became the captain of the ship designed to travel to Southampton, England, and New York City; The Titanic. This journey to the United States was supposed to be the last before his retirement.

Smith was in Belfast on April 2, 1912, for the Titanic’s first trials on the sea. Two days after beginning the voyage he docked the ship in Southampton and was then prepared for the maiden voyage across the North Atlantic Ocean. Stopping in Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland, he picked up passengers and mail deliveries to be delivered to the United States. By this time, there were more than 2,200 people aboard the ship as it began its journey into the ocean.

The first few days of the official journey seemed to have passed without incident. But on the morning of April 14, the ship called Caronia sent a warning to the Titanic about ice being in their current path. Smith announced this news to the ship’s bridge and led a first-class passenger religious prayer. That afternoon, receiving another message of warning about ice from the ship the Baltic, Smith finally altered the direction of the Titanic’s course but kept their current speed of 23 knots. He then showed and gave the message to the chairman of the White Star Line and president of the IMM who was also aboard the Titanic, Joseph Ismay, who pocketed the note until later in the evening.

Around 7 p.m. in the evening, Smith attended a private dinner party in the ship’s a la carte restaurant. It was there that another ice warning from a nearby ship named the Californian was overheard as it was speaking to another ship in its fleet. The Titanic crew overheard this warning themselves, the first warning they had heard themselves, and began to feel growing panic. Meanwhile, after his dinner party was finally finished, Smith met with his second officer Charles Lightoller on the bridge. After their long conversation about how to keep progressing on their voyage, Smith retired to his room to get some rest. 

While Smith was preparing for bed, the Titanic became swamped with telegraphic messages for passengers on board, along with more warnings from the Mesaba and the Californian. These messages were quickly cut off by operators.

At around 11:40 p.m., a crew member spotted an iceberg in the ship’s path, and immediately alerted the crew. The crew was unable to move the ship away in time, and scraped against the iceberg, leading to damage to the front of the ship. 300 ft. of the starboard section of the ship (the front) was damaged with holes and puncture marks. The Titanic was made to withstand four compartments filled with water, but the way the iceberg scraped the ship opened up five compartments.

Alerted of the damage, Smith quickly went up to the bridge and demanded a report of the damage. Thomas Andrews, the Titanic’s designer, gave him the report that the ship was going to sink. Smith ordered the immediate preparation of the lifeboats, as well as sending out his first distress call just after midnight.

The Titanic was completely unprepared for the use of lifeboats, having only twenty lifeboats on board– enough to carry only a mere 53% of the Titanic’s passengers if they were completely and skillfully filled. Smith tried to help with loading passengers onto lifeboats and managed transmissions that were sent to the ship and was last seen by passengers heading back to the bridge of the ship.

It was around 2 a.m. in the morning on April 15 that he told his crew “Well boys, you’ve done your duty and done it well. I ask no more of you. I release you” and “You know the rule of the sea. It’s every man for himself now, and God bless you.” It was then at 2:20 a.m. when the Titanic split into two, slipping into the 27F Atlantic waters of the ocean, taking Captain Smith with it on its journey below the waves.

There are many stories about how Edward Smith acted before his death on the night the Titanic sank. Some reports say that he shot himself before the inevitable drowning, while others say he jumped in the chilly waters to bring a drowning child back onto the ship. What is most widely believed to have been his actions was to go down with his ship and drown in the water–a marine tradition for a captain with a sinking ship. His body was never found.

Of the 2,200 people believed to have been passengers and crew members, around 1,500 are believed to have perished that night, including Edward J. Smith. After the Titanic sank, there were many investigations into who was at fault for the Titanic’s tragic sinking, and it was decided that Smith was not to be held responsible for the shipwreck.