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The Countess of Rothes(Noel Lucy Martha Dyer-Edwards) was born on March 21st, 1879. She boarded the Titanic at age thirty-three with her cousin Miss Gladys Cherry, and her maid, Miss Roberta Maioni.
She was the daughter of Mr. Thomas Dyer-Edwards, who was famous for owning a chapel on Gloucestershire, which was founded by the Abbot's in 1530. Mr. Edwards was the first man to have renewed and restored the old chapel, and to improve its building after the late Mr. Ackers had the chapel.
Soon, when Miss Edwards was around her twenties, she met Norman Evelyn Leslie(nineteenth Earl of Rothes), and their relationship became a wedding on the 21 of June, 1900.
As soon as Miss Edwards said, "I do", she became the Countess of Rothes. She had two children with his lordship.
Lady Rothes was heading to America on the Titanic so that she could join her husband, who wished to settle down for the rest of his life as a fruit-farmer, and spend a summer vacation in Pasadena, California. Other reports say that she was heading for Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
When the Titanic snak, her ladyship boarded lifeboat 8 with her cousin and her maid. There, she took the tiller, and Able Seaman Tom Jones said,"She had a lot to say, so I put her to steering the boat." He admired the Countess of Rothes greatly, and later presented her with a plaque from the lifeboat, representing the number.
On board the Carpathia, her ladyship earned the title of "the plucky little Countess", for she helped the sick in steerage, and helped make clothes for the babies.
A stewardess said,"You have made yourself famous by rowing the boats", and her ladyship replied,"I hope not; I have done nothing."
At the Ritz Carlton, her ladyship joined her husband and they left for California
The Countess's husband died in 1927, and she soon met Colonel Claude MacFie that same year and became Mrs. Noel MacFie in December. She lived with him in Sussex and died there on September 21st, 1956.
Ruth Becker was 12 years old in 1912 when she and her family traveled on the Titanic. After the sinking, Ruth attended high school and college in Ohio, after which she taught high school in Kansas. She married a classmate, Daniel Blanchard, and after her divorce twenty years later, she resumed her teaching career. Like most survivors, she refused to talk about the sinking and her own children, when young, did not know that she had been on the Titanic. It was only after her retirement, when she was living in Santa Barbara, California, that she began to speak about it, granting interviews and attending conventions of the Titanic Historical Society. In March 1990, she made her first sea voyage since 1912, a cruise to Mexico. She passed away later that year at the age of ninety.
Richard Becker was Ruth's younger brother and was two years old at the time of the disaster. richard became a singer and in later life a social welfare worker. Widowed twice, he passed away in 1975.
Nellie Becker was the children's mother. She was married to a missionary stationed in India and her three children were sailing to America for treatment of an illness Richard had contracted in India. Once in America, she and her three children settled in Benton Harbour, Michigan, until her husband's arrival from India the following year. It was apparent to him and the children that her personality had changed since the disaster. She was far more emotional and was given to emotional outbursts. Until her death in 1961, she was never able to discuss the Titanic disaster without bursting into tears.
Marion contracted tuberculosis at a young age and died in Glendale, California in 1944.
Olaus tried vacationing in Canada to calm his nerves following the ordeal with the Titanic, but found that simply going back to work was just what he needed. Returning to the South Dakota farm he had first homesteaded in 1908, he raised cattle and sheeep for the next 30 years before retiring in North Dakota where he died in 1980.
Richard and Sally continued to travel and entertained frequently at their homes in New York City and Squam Lake, New Hampshire. Richard died in New York in 1933 and his wife in 1955 in the same city.
Joseph was 4th officer on the Titanic and attained a command with the Royal Navy but was never made captain while in the merchant service. He left the sea in 1940 and in 1958 acted as technical advisor to the film "A Night To Remember." Following his death in 1967, his ashed were scattered over the ocean in the vicinity of the Titanic's sinking place.
Harold Bride was the Titanic's wireless man. he kept a very low profile in the years following the disaster. World War I found him as a wireless operator on the tiny steamer, the Mona's Isle. He later emabarked on a career as a saleman before retiring to Scotland where he passed away in 1956.
He was the lookout who first sighted the iceberg that sank the Titanic. He left the sea in 1936. He worked for Harland and Wolff's Southampton shipyard during World War II, after which he became a night watchman for the Union Castle Line. As he moved into old age, he sold newspapers on a street corner in Southampton. In 1965, despondent over his finances and the recent loss of his wife, Fleet took his own life.
The Titanic was sinking fast. Horrified passengers rushed onto lifeboats being lowered into the dark, icy sea. Desperate men were stopped at gunpoint so women and children could escape first. Masabumi Hosono stood on the deck, torn between the fear of shame and the instinct for survival. Then the 42-year-old Japenese bureaucrat found himself in the right place at the right moment. There were two spots open in a lifeboat. Hosono hesitated, but when he saw a man next to him jump in, he swallowed his fear and followed. Hosono's decision saved his life--yet it brought him decades of shame in Japan. He was branded a coward, fired from his job and spent the rest of his days embittered.
