Titanic's Haitian Passenger

On April 10, 1912, the Titanic departed Southampton, England and made its first stop in Cherbourg, France at 6:30 pm. Two tenders carried 281 passengers to the ship, representing 26 nationalities. Among those boarding in Cherbourg was Joseph Laroche, his wife Juliette, and their daughters, three-year-old Simonne and 21-month-old Louise. Joseph was the only black passenger to board the ship. The Laroche family were bound for Haiti, where Joseph, 25, had been born.

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Joseph Laroche and family

During the 17th century, a French nobleman named Laroche had arrived in Haiti and married a native girl. The family had prospered, and years later, Joseph’s uncle became Haiti’s president. At age 15, Joseph left Haiti to study engineering in France, under the supervision of the Bishop of Haiti. He completed his studies, obtained an engineering position with the Paris underground, and studied English. He met his English teacher’s sister, Juliette Lafargue, and the two were married in 1908. Simonne was born the following year.

Due to racial discrimination, Joseph had difficulty finding a well-paying engineering position in France. When Juliette became pregnant with their third child in 1912, Joseph decided to move his family back to Haiti, where his uncle, the president, had arranged a job for him as a math teacher.

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Joseph Laroche

Joseph’s mother was overjoyed to have her son and his family moving home. She paid for their first class accommodations on the liner SS France. But when Joseph and Juliette learned the ship did not allow children to dine with their parents, they cancelled their reservations and booked second class tickets on the Titanic instead.

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Passenger boarding area in Cherbourg in 1912

On the night of Titanic's sinking, Joseph put his wife and daughters into a lifeboat. They were rescued and taken aboard the Carpathia, but Joseph perished. His body was not recovered.

Juliette and other grief-stricken young mothers on the Carpathia soon needed diapers for their children. They hid their dinner napkins by sitting on them, and put them to use as diapers.

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Envelope used to hold Titanic boarding passes, saved by Juliette Laroche

Juliette and her daughters were taken in temporarily by a charity in New York. She decided not to continue on to Haiti, but returned to France with the girls, where she could again be near her aging father, a widower. One month later, her son was born. She named him Joseph, after his late father.

Juliette never discussed the Titanic with anyone. Many years later in 1994, her daughter Louise met with a founding member of the Association Francaise du Titanic.“We had all been terribly affected. My mother had great difficulty talking about the disaster and she kept those atrocious images with her the rest of her life. We also received no compensation until 1918 and so ran into extreme financial difficulty.”

With the money she received six years after the disaster, Juliette opened a small fabric-dying business, which helped support her family. The girls stayed close to their mother and never married, but Juliette's son Joseph married and had three children.

In 1995, Louise helped unveil a stone marker in Cherbourg to commemorate the passengers who boarded the Titanic there 83 years earlier.

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Louise Laroche

In 2003, a three-act opera based on the life of Joseph Laroche premiered at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, Georgia.

Photo credits: Cherbourg-titanic.com, Encyclopediatitanica.com

Titanic's Big Game Hunter

Thomas Drake emigrated from England to Pennsylvania in 1829, opened a fabric mill, and began manufacturing denim. Soon, he was making jeans under the trademark, ‘Kentucky Blue Jeans.’ He became the cloth supplier for the Union Army uniforms during the Civil War, and increased his wealth through various investments. When he died in 1890, his only surviving child, Charlotte, inherited his fortune, plus the family mansion, Montebello. Located in Germantown, Pennsylvania, it occupied a full square block.

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Montebello, home of Charlotte Cardeza

At age 20, Charlotte had married James Cardeza, the grandson of a Portuguese Count, and had one son, Thomas. When Charlotte discovered that James had a mistress as well as another child, the marriage ended in divorce. As Thomas grew, the independently wealthy Charlotte traveled with him around the globe. She purchased a luxurious ocean-going yacht for their excursions, named the Eleanor. They traveled to the world’s most exotic ports with a crew of 39, and Charlotte soon preferred the Eleanor to Montebello, which she considered to be only her summer home.

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The Eleanor

A long-time associate of Charlotte wrote that she had a “wonderful mind, a splendid knowledge of literature, conversant with the best in music and art ... perhaps the most outstanding characteristic was her kindness, particularly to the poor and those in trouble.”

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Charlotte Drake Cardeza

Charlotte and Thomas became big game hunters, bagging tigers, lions, and wild boar on African and Indian safaris. Charlotte became known as the best female hunter in America. In April 1912, they were returning to Pennsylvania following an African safari and a visit to Thomas’s hunting property in Hungary. Rather than take the Eleanor, mother and son booked passage on the Titanic, perhaps due to Thomas’s ill health.

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Charlotte on safari

They brought along 14 trunks, three large packing crates, four suitcases, Charlotte’s maid, and Thomas’s valet. They booked the most expensive suite of rooms on the ship, which included two bedrooms, a wardrobe room, a sitting room, a bath, and a 50-foot private promenade.

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Thomas Cardeza

As the lifeboats were loaded following the collision with the iceberg, Charlotte managed to convince the crew to allow Thomas to board Lifeboat 3 with her, along with their maid and valet. Also on Lifeboat 3 were the Speddens. Mrs. Spedden later recorded in her diary an account of that night, and historians believe the following passage refers to Charlotte Cardeza:

“One fatwoman in our boat had been a handful all along, for she never stopped talking and telling the sailors what to do… As we approached (the Carpathia) “our woman” promptly sprang up in order to get off first, when we had been warned to sit still, and it gave me the greatest satisfaction to grab her by her lifebelt and drag her down. She fell in the bottom of the boat with her heels in the air and was furious because we held her there till we were alongside the Carpathia when we were charmed to let her go up in the sling first.”

Charlotte later sued the White Star Line for the loss of her valuables. The amount of the claim, nearly 36,000 British pounds, or around $178,000, was the highest of any passenger. She finally settled down at Montebello when her health began to fail, and died in 1939. She was 85.

She left several priceless paintings to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a generous yearly stipend to her maid. Most of her estate was left to Thomas. The same year, Thomas and his wife, Mary, gave a $5,000,000 endowment to Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia to found the Charlotte Drake Cardeza Foundation. Mary suffered from a chronic blood disorder, and the specific purpose of the Foundation was to be for research in diseases of the blood. Its work continues today, with renowned research and educational programs.

Photo credits: aftitanic.free.fr, encyclopediatitanica.com

Orphans of the Titanic

Michel Navratil of Slovakia had married Marcelle Carette of Buenos Aires, settled in France and had two sons, Michel and Edmund. When the couple entered divorce proceedings, Marcelle was given full custody of the boys. However, when her husband asked to keep them over the Easter holiday in 1912, she consented. Little did she know what lay ahead for them. Mr. Navratil borrowed his employer’s passport and on April 10^th, signed on to the Titanic as Louis Hoffman. He gave the boys, ages four and two, the names of Lolo and Momon. During the voyage, he only let them out of his sight once to play cards, asking a French-speaking woman to watch them for a few hours.

Michel and Edmund Navratil

As the ship sank and the lifeboats were loaded, Mr. Navratil placed his sons in the arms of passenger Margaret Hays in the last boat available. Michel Jr. remembered his father’s last words to him: “My child, when your mother comes for you, as she surely will, tell her that I loved her dearly and still do. Tell her I expected her to follow us, so that we might all live happily together in the peace and freedom of the New World.”

Following rescue, Margaret Hays offered to take care of little Michel and Edmund in New York until relatives could be located. Around the world, newspapers printed their story and photograph, calling them the Orphans of the Titanic.

In France, Marcelle had known the boys and their father had disappeared but had no idea they’d sailed on the Titanic until she recognized her sons in the newspaper. She immediately contacted the White Star Line and was given passage aboard the Oceanic to New York. They were reunited on May 16, thirty-one days after the sinking, and returned to France. The body of Mr. Navratil was recovered and buried in Nova Scotia.

Michel and Edmund with their mother

Michel Jr. became a professor of philosophy and was one of the last survivors of the Titanic. He once said, “I only lived up to four years old. Since then I’ve been a floater, someone grabbing at extra time and I’ve let myself go on this ocean.” In 1987, he returned to America for the first time since the sinking to mark the 75^th anniversary, and visited his father’s grave as well. He died in 2001 at the age of 92.

Edmund became an architect and was involved in the Resistance during World War II. He was captured and made a prisoner of war, and although he escaped, his health suffered. He died in 1953 at age 43.