Mr Ernest Grocott was born in Liverpool, England on 24 July 1882. He was the eldest child of Arthur Grocott, a chandlery shopkeeper originally from Nottinghamshire, and the former Selina Kynsey of Liverpool. He had four younger siblings, three sisters and one brother.

Raised primarily in Liverpool, by 1911 Grocott and his family lived at 19 Henthorne Road in New Ferry, Cheshire. 

Ernest initially earned a living as a printer and compositor but by 1907 had been working at sea for an unknown period of time; between 1907 and 1909 he worked as a waiter and/or officers’ messman aboard Carmania. In April 1909 he was a waiter aboard the Carpathia when that ship rescued the survivors of the Titanic disaster. 

Ernest remained at sea into the 1920s but later took shore-based work as an electrician in the shipyards. In 1913 he married Mary Ann Smith (1886-1959) but the couple had no children. 

Ernest Grocott died in Liverpool in 1947.