A new examination of the final moments of Captain Edward John Smith aboard the ill-fated RMS Titanic sheds light on the enigmatic figure often referred to as the “Millionaire’s Captain.” Smith quickly endeared himself to high-status voyagers. Since the Titanic’s tragic sinking on April 15, 1912 his reputation has faced scrutiny. Author Dan E. Parkes explores eyewitness testimonies and historical accounts. He illuminates the tragic sequel to Smith’s death and in doing so he vastly enriches our appreciation of her legacy.
Isaac Maynard, a 31-year-old chef, gave a moving testimony about Captain Smith’s efforts as the Titanic sank. According to Maynard’s testimony, he saw the captain on the bridge just moments before he was swept off his feet and overboard. He described that day in detail. One of the men on the raft extended a hand to rescue him but he would not accept it, and instead called out, “Look after yourselves, boys!”
Eyewitness reports vary regarding how Smith perished. Other accounts would have him shooting himself in the confusion and melee. Yet, as Parkes argues, all of these claims were without substantiated evidence since the officer never identified. He emphasized that casting Smith as merely a drunken idiot or reckless is a gross mischaracterization of who he was. It neglects the frantic panic that gripped the vessel.
These historical narratives tend to portray Smith as reckless, the man who sailed the Titanic at breakneck speed and dismissed iceberg warnings. Parkes daringly calls these claims into question. He thinks the passengers just wanted to find someone who was responsible for their bad luck. Ultimately, they landed on Smith as their scapegoat.
As a result, witnesses gave widely different descriptions of Smith as the disaster unfolded. May Sloan, a stewardess on board Titanic, recalled seeing Captain Smith in the midst of “uncontrollable excitement.” Even though her passengers may not have heard it, she did, and that is when she realized they were departing soon. This detail can make readers even feel as if the crew themselves felt a deep foreboding as the ship went down.
The fate of Captain Smith remains uncertain. His body, along with 337 other souls lost in the Titanic tragedy, was never recovered. The hundreds of retellings of his final hours paint the picture of a black man in the eye of a hurricane of contradiction and chaos. Nevertheless, Parkes theorizes that Smith likely drowned or died of hypothermia in the chilling waters of the North Atlantic ocean.
Parkes touches on competing accounts of gunfire directed at passengers during the sinking. He argues that the gunshots were fired not in a suicide, but rather to subdue panicking passengers. These steps were taken to get a grip on the disruption all around them.
The ambiguity of Captain Smith’s legacy has long perplexed historians. In some cases, like the ones above, there may have been at least five different deaths to his credit, going from swashbuckling to ignominious according to History.com. This complex depiction of the Lusitania tragedy challenges notions of heroism and responsibility in what may be one of maritime history’s most tragic events.
Parkes digs into Captain Smith’s final hours with a vengeance. Pretty soon you realize that understanding what he did is just so much more complicated than labeling him a hero or a villain. It provokes us to interrogate the human condition under conditions of maximum stress. It underscores our national desire for closure after suffering through an unfathomable tragedy.
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