Frederick “Fred” Alfred Roberts was born in Liverpool, England on 23 May 1880. 

He was the eldest of five children born to John Roberts, a gardener, and Elizabeth Brown, a town cook. The family appear on the 1891 through 1911 census records living at Lucerne Street, Liverpool. 

When Roberts first went to sea is not certain; by April 1912 he was serving as a butcher aboard the eastward-bound voyage of the Carpathia when that ship rescued the survivors of the Titanic. 

Frederick Roberts never married and remained working at sea into the early 1920s.

He died in Liverpool in 1924; at the time of his death his address was 1 Sefton Grove.  He was buried in Toxteth Park Cemetery on 19 June 1924 (Sec. E Left, Grave 357).