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Titanic's passenger list online
14/04/2007 22:16 - (SA)
London - The names, ages and professions
of passengers listed on the Titanic's fateful journey have gone
online for the first time, 95 years after the luxury ocean liner
sank on its maiden voyage.
Dozens of pages featuring the original handwritten passenger
list are available, revealing the cabin class of passengers.
They poignantly show the emigration plans of many hopefuls
setting sail from Southampton for a new life in America in 1912.
The White Star liner, touted as "unsinkable", left port on
April 10, only to sink after hitting an iceberg, with the loss
of 1 523 lives.
Among the passengers, for example, was George Mackay, a
20-year-old butler from Scotland travelling third class and
hoping to start a new life in America.
In first class the Countess of Rothes is recorded as
travelling with her cousin Gladys Cherry and her personal maid
Roberta Maioni. They survived after being picked up by the ship
Carpathia.
The list, which is available for free for one
week at findmypast.com, could help genealogists trace family
members. Previously, the list could only be seen at the National
Archives in Kew, southwest London.
Findmypast is an online research site that provides
information on genealogy.
The online listing coincides with a commemoration service to
be held in the British port of Southampton on Sunday for the
hundreds of residents who took the voyage as either passengers
or crew and who died when the Titanic went down mid Atlantic.
The list completes the set of passengers lists for the ships
leaving the UK during the decade between 1910 and 1919.
The lucky few who narrowly escaped
A spokesperson for findmypast said the lists were considered so
high-profile by the National Archives that they qualified for
the same level of security as Henry VIII's divorce papers and
the Domesday Book and could only be consulted under supervision.
He said it also gives details of the lucky few who narrowly
escaped the fate of the other passengers when they disembarked
from the ship in France.
The original documents also show that some passengers who
intended to board at Queenstown (Cobh in County Cork) did not
actually embark, despite having purchased tickets, he said.
- Reuters
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South Africa
