Marion Wright

Miss Marion Wright was born on 26 May 1885, likely in Reading, Berkshire, the daughter of Thomas Wright and Jane Taylor. She moved to live in Yeovil, Somerset with her family when very young. Her widowed father, a farmer, remarried in the late 1880s to Miss Ada Frances Huntley, and Marion spent her young years as carer to her three stepsisters. In 1912, she was living at The Park, Yeovil.

In the late 1900s, on a visit to her friend who lived at West Park in Yeovil, she first met Arthur Woolcott, who was later to become her husband. He had originally gone to America in 1907 and worked as a draughtsman but had had the opportunity to purchase an 80-acre fruit farm in partnership with a friend in the Willamette Valley near Cottage Grove, Oregon. He later had the chance to buy out that friend and had come back to England to raise the necessary funds. The farm was his by 1910. After much correspondence between Marion and Arthur, their engagement was announced and it was arranged that the wedding should take place in America.

She boarded the Titanic at Southampton as a second-class passenger (ticket number 220844, £13 10s). She shared a starboard cabin with Mrs. Bessie Watt and her daughter, Miss Bertha Watt of Aberdeen. She also made friends with Kate Buss of Sittingbourne, Kent and came to know Alfred Pain from Canada. It turned out they had mutual friends in Somerset.  Stuart Collett, meanwhile, under instruction from an aunt, took Miss Wright — with whom Collet may already have known — under his wing.

On the evening of 14 April, Marion sang the solos of Lead Kindly Light and There is a Green Hill Far Away at a hymn service by Rev Ernest Carter.

Marion described the collision as like a "huge crash of glass" followed by the stopping of the engines, which alarmed her more:

The stopping of the engines on an ocean liner creates such a calm, such a painful silence, that it inspires passengers that something is not exactly right.

Sources differ over her next actions; she went on deck with either Kate Buss and Douglas Norman and/or Bessie Watt. She was assured there was no danger, but the large throng of passengers hurriedly putting their lifebelts on told a different story. Marion said it was impossible to see what was happening at one end of the deck from the other, and she was surprised when she heard an officer call out "Any more ladies". She went over and was able to get into a boat; she estimated there were about 35 people on board. She also recalled that Alfred Pain had found her and guided her to a lifeboat (probably lifeboat 9).

Miss Wright watched the liner sink and claimed to have heard the band play Nearer, My God, to Thee. In the boat beside herself and the other women, were six men, including two crew members; she said the boat could have held at least fifteen more.

At around 6.30 the boat tied up alongside the Carpathia and the occupants clambered on board. She described the generosity of the crew of the Carpathia and the amusement the latter gained from seeing the survivors in their "queer clothes."

In a letter written on the Carpathia, she said

It was terrible and is terrible and I don't think I'll ever forget it. I was met on deck by a gentleman to whom I had often talked and he said an iceberg had struck us but there was no danger. The 'Titanic' must have had her bottom nearly taken away by the iceberg, from the first class to the steerage, for she went down gradually, bit by bit. When she broke in two, which she did a few moments before she sunk, going down with a huge explosion, the cries of the people left on board were heart-rending.

Arthur Woolcott only heard of the disaster as he was en route to New York to meet Marion; he learned that she had survived but missed her at the dockside when Carpathia berthed. He asked at some local hospitals and was eventually led to the home of Mr and Mrs Henry Milne, No. 20, West 128th Street. He went to the door to ask for help, and Marion answered. Thus reunited, they soon arranged to marry. However, the ordeal had evidently taken its toll on Marion, for she was described as thoroughly exhausted as she stepped off the train in Cottage Grove to start her new life as Mrs Marion Wright Woolcott. She stayed at the home of Mr Curtis Viatch to recuperate.

On 25 April, she wrote to her family in Yeovil,

After all I have gone through I shall be very glad to be in my new home and I don't think I shall ever want to cross the ocean again just yet awhile. It has been sad losing all I had, wedding presents and everything I had worked so hard at, but they are nothing in comparison to all the lives that were lost.

Later, Marion would tell her story to a local church group, and at the end, she was presented with a silver purse by her new Cottage Grove neighbours. The evening ended with these words from the Rev. Sutcliffe (in response to derogatory remarks made by a Eugene, Oregon official about Mrs Woolcott's new residence):

'Mrs Woolcott will find one year in Cottage Grove as good as a century in Eugene or an eternity at the bottom of the sea.'

They successfully ran their farmstead in Oregon but never raised enough money to return to England. Her survival led to a 53-year marriage, three sons, John, Russ and Bob and eight grandchildren.

Marion's husband, Arthur, died in 1961, and Marion on 4 July 1965, aged 80.

In a corner of the Cottage Grove museum is a memorial to its adopted daughter's involvement in the most famous sea voyage ever made. Marion and Arthur are buried in the Cottage Grove, Oregon cemetery.