Mr Alexander Braid Johnston(e) was born in Crail, Fife, Scotland on 16 June 1852. He was the son of gas fitter William Johnston and the former Janet Braid.
Johnston and his family had moved to Liverpool sometime prior to 1871 where he was apprenticed as an engine fitter. He first appears on shipping records in the late 1870s when he was 6th engineer aboard Gallia and went on to work aboard numerous Cunard ships.
Johnston was married in Liverpool in 1875 to fellow-Scot Annie Robertson (b. 1855), with the couple having four children; one daughter and three sons.
In April 1912 Alexander Johnston was chief engineer aboard the Carpathia when that ship rescued the survivors of the Titanic disaster.
Johnston remained a resident of Galloway Street in Liverpool and died there in January 1928; his widow Annie died in November 1934 and they are both buried in Kirkdale Cemetery.
