The waiters

[leonard schwartz]

hi
it seems that all the restaurant staff went down.
very few of them were saved why was that??

leonard schwartz

 

[Matt Smith]

Well I know that some of them spoke very little English and that would take a big roll.

Matt

 

[Bob Godfrey]

I think the restaurant waiters had little chance of finding a place in a lifeboat for two main reasons. First, they were male. Second, they were a long way from first choice when crew members were needed to man the boats - when seamen were not available, the likes of stewards and firemen were second choice as they had (or should have had) at least rudimentary training in evacuation procedures. A number of other groups, like the musicians, postal workers, bellboys, even the doctors, found themselves in the same unfortunate situation.

 

[Dave Gittins]

Three of the restaurant staff survived. They were Paul Maugé (clerk) and the two female cashiers, Ruth Bowker and Margaret Martin.

According to Maugé, the male staff were kept below decks by stewards. Nobody knows who authorised this. Maugé and the Chef, M Rousseau, made it to the boat deck, perhaps because they wore ordinary clothes and were taken for passengers. Maugé jumped into a boat, but Rousseau was big fat chap and could not, or would not, jump.

To be fair, many of the stewards who held them back very likely were lost also.

 

[Bob Godfrey]

There were 35 waiters and 9 of their bodies were recovered - same as the overall ratio of lost & recovered. This makes it pretty clear that the restaurant staff were not confined below decks at the time the ship went down, though as Dave said it seems there was an effort to keep them out of the way in the early stages. They certainly were not locked in a room and forgotten about, as is sometimes suggested.

 

[Dave Gittins]

A feature of too many books is the distortion of evidence. Maugé said that the restaurant staff were restrained by a few stewards and kept in a third class area. That's all. His story gets into books as "locked in a room and forgotten about". That's so typical of the stuff that's churned out. As Bob says, figures suggest that many of them reached the deck at some stage.