Officers‘ letters

[Sarah S]

Were are the letters of titanic officers located? Do their descendants keep them or are they gathered in some archive? Can normal citizens like us get permission to read their letters or would you need to be a close relative or friend of their families?

Sometimes I see a few postcards written by officers and other passengers online. It gets me curious over some of their other letters that could give us more information about them. Have researchers already read through all letters that exist from officers?, and those researchers who have permission to read their letters, will they share what is written inside them?

 

[Seumas]

Descendants, collectors and maritime museums have the bulk of them. For example, Walter Lord's correspondence with Bert Pitman and Joseph Boxhall is located in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London and is available to view on request.

In years gone past the likes of George Behe, Don Lynch, the late Phil Gowan and the late Brian Ticehurst etc have found a lot of material from the Titanic's officers.

There has been a substantial collection of Harry Wilde's letters published in book form which you may be interested in reading. These were especially interesting because Wilde was once the Titanic officer of whom the least was known of his personal life. The publication of his letters changed all that. They revealed him to have been a very articulate, thoughtful, caring man who had a dry sense of humour and thought the world of his wife and kids.

Dan Parkes has facsimiles of quite a number of William Murdoch's letters and postcards which you can view on his website.

 

[Sarah S]

Descendants, collectors and maritime museums have the bulk of them. For example, Walter Lord's correspondence with Bert Pitman and Joseph Boxhall is located in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London and is available to view on request.

In years gone past the likes of George Behe, Don Lynch, the late Phil Gowan and the late Brian Ticehurst etc have found a lot of material from the Titanic's officers.

There has been a substantial collection of Harry Wilde's letters published in book form which you may be interested in reading. These were especially interesting because Wilde was once the Titanic officer of whom the least was known of his personal life. The publication of his letters changed all that. They revealed him to have been a very articulate, thoughtful, caring man who had a dry sense of humour and thought the world of his wife and kids.

Dan Parkes has facsimiles of quite a number of William Murdoch's letters and postcards which you can view on his website.

I would love to somehow order myself copies of their correspondences and letters, especially from their early lives. I feel like there are way too little books written about the individual officers. If there are so many letters, postcards and correspondences in these museums and online available, why hasn’t anybody written complete books about the officers that kind of extract their life experience and attitude/personality from their letters? I know there is a book about Lowe and Murdoch which are very detailed about their lives, yet I kind of expected more books with all the material there is. Of course it would be awesome to just get the letters myself and analyse their words as I please, but I lack the expertise and experience for that and just don’t know how to sort everything out.

 

[Seumas]

I would love to somehow order myself copies of their correspondences and letters, especially from their early lives. I feel like there are way too little books written about the individual officers. If there are so many letters, postcards and correspondences in these museums and online available, why hasn’t anybody written complete books about the officers that kind of extract their life experience and attitude/personality from their letters? I know there is a book about Lowe and Murdoch which are very detailed about their lives, yet I kind of expected more books with all the material there is. Of course it would be awesome to just get the letters myself and analyse their words as I please, but I lack the expertise and experience for that and just don’t know how to sort everything out.

The museums don't have anything from the early lives of the Titanic's officers. It's just material related to the sinking and the resulting inquiries.

To be fair to them, Harry Wilde (in the last fifteen years), Charles Lightoller and Harold Lowe's families have been very good at sharing a substantial amount of information about their ancestors with researchers.

In addition to print biographies of William Murdoch and Harold Lowe, there have also been biographies of Edward Smith, Charles Lightoller* and the Carpathia's captain Arthur Rostron. I'm afraid, I don't know how many of these are still in print or not.

*Distinct from his own autobiography.

 

[Sarah S]

I am mostly interested in the officers apart from their titanic affiliation, but rather their attitudes, lifestyle, family/friendships, which countries they have traveled and what their opinions of the local cultures were. I hoped I could draw such conclusions based on their correspondences and letters. But most museums don’t focus on the officers like that. It is almost impossible to find out anything about Moody for example although despite his short life he came around a lot! But his letters aren’t publicly available I assume.
I appreciate that families of Lowe, Wilde and Murdoch did share a lot. If you or anybody else can suggest me biographies that go in detail about their personal lives would be really great.

 

[Thomas Krom]

From all the officer's I've seen letters written by captain Smith, chief officer Wilde, first officer Murdoch, second officer Lightoller, third officer Pitman and fourth officer Boxhall and fifth officer Lowe written between 1894 to 1962. If you like to see some of them I would gladly make them available to you.

I've seen some samples of letters written by sixth officer Moody, however I never saw them in their fullest. One very talented and the second most resourceful person on the officers' on my book (with the best being @Wednesday Prince in my humble opinion) is the writer and historian Inger Sheil has these letters and other rare documentation on sixth officer Moody in her possession as given to her by the Moody family. However, she is quite sensitive about showing them to anyone else.

 

[Seumas]

However, she is quite sensitive about showing them to anyone else.

I can't say I blame Inger Shiel for that.

She has said in the past that she has dealt with far too many idiots and also one or two disturbing obsessives demanding information from her and now only deals with people she knows or who have good references. I think she is quite right to be selective.

 

[Thomas Krom]

She has said in the past that she has dealt with far too many idiots and also one or two disturbing obsessives demanding information from her and now only deals with people she knows or who have good references. I think she is quite right to be selective.

Do you know what exactly happened my friend? With an upcoming project I hoped to possibly reach out to her for help, as soon Wednesday and I will be starting on a very big project together. I can't give away too much detail for now, but we hope it will be a milestone for the community.

 

[Seumas]

Do you know what exactly happened my friend? With an upcoming project I hoped to possibly reach out to her for help, as soon Wednesday and I will be starting on a very big project together. I can't give away too much detail for now, but we hope it will be a milestone for the community.

Specific details no. However, she has said in the past on this forum that she has had far too much grief from people who were timewasters, were ungrateful or were obsessive in their demands.

If you can get two or three respected people in the Titanic community to put in a good reference for you she is more likely to respond positively.

 

[Thomas Krom]

If you can get two or three respected people in the Titanic community to put in a good reference for you she is more likely to respond positively.

Perhaps then I can arrange something. We hope the project will be able to help many generations to come.

 

[Sarah S]

From all the officer's I've seen letters written by captain Smith, chief officer Wilde, first officer Murdoch, second officer Lightoller, third officer Pitman and fourth officer Boxhall and fifth officer Lowe written between 1894 to 1962. If you like to see some of them I would gladly make them available to you.

I've seen some samples of letters written by sixth officer Moody, however I never saw them in their fullest.

if there is a way for me to get a glance into these letters, I’d be more than grateful if you could show me where I can read them.
I never intended to come off as obsessive or intrusive, but I find it always very sad when equally curious researchers get blocked from accessing these kinds of material.

 

[Dan Parkes]

Sarah - quite a few of the letters are available on my websites, wherever possible.

I met with Inger earlier this year and looked at her Moody collection - unpublished photographs etc -and it was fantastic to see. I filmed our meeting and hope to release a video sometime soon (although I did not film the unpublished photographs of course, upon her request).

We also discussed that she is wanting to release a book on the officers at some point - which would be fantastic I believe.

I am hoping to publish some rarely seen letters myself next year, all going well - so watch this space!

 

[Sarah S]

Sarah - quite a few of the letters are available on my websites, wherever possible.

I met with Inger earlier this year and looked at her Moody collection - unpublished photographs etc -and it was fantastic to see. I filmed our meeting and hope to release a video sometime soon (although I did not film the unpublished photographs of course, upon her request).

We also discussed that she is wanting to release a book on the officers at some point - which would be fantastic I believe.

I am hoping to publish some rarely seen letters myself next year, all going well - so watch this space!

Thank you for this information,
Will this video that you filmed contain new information on the officers?
And is there a reason why you weren’t allowed to film the Moody pictures, like do his relatives forbid that? I’m interested in him the most but found that I’m always blocked from accessing material on him.

 

[Dan Parkes]

Thank you for this information,
Will this video that you filmed contain new information on the officers?
And is there a reason why you weren’t allowed to film the Moody pictures, like do his relatives forbid that? I’m interested in him the most but found that I’m always blocked from accessing material on him.

The video will be specifically about Inger and her fantastic book on Lowe, but also her job as she is a curator at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney, so I filmed her at work. Women are often under-represented in this world, so I wanted an opportunity to celebrate what she has achieved.

Inger is incredibly generous with her knowledge and collection, so it is certainly not a case of "blocking" but simply being careful as some images in her collection have ended up online without any credit. Her generosity can be seen in the Facebook group I run where she often posts some fantastic extracts from her collection.

As for Moody, Inger was also very helpful with my online biography on Moody - and so is probably where you will find the most information at present on the sixth officer (other than of course in her book on Lowe). There are 11 pages of information: Titanic's Officers - RMS Titanic - Sixth Officer Moody