The Titanic family plagued by tragedy: How mother who lost her life savings and was widowed in 1912 disaster was immigrating to the US to cure her tuberculosis (and her daughter's life was equally as devastating) Colourised photo of Charlotte and Marjorie Collyer was released this week Read More: Untold story of how engineer from Haiti and his pregnant wife got Ticket tickets because the 'unsinkable' vessel was more child friendly By Lydia Hawken For Mailonline Published: 14:21, 18 August 2024 | Updated: 14:47, 18 August 2024 e-mail View comments When Harvey and Charlotte Collyer and their daughter Marjorie set foot on the Titanic in 1912, they knew that their lives were about to change forever. The family-of-three were relocating from Hampshire to Idaho , in the hopes the mild climate would cure Charlotte's tuberculosis. The couple had stayed in touch with friends who had made their fortune by from a fruit farm in the States and thought they could provide a better quality of life for Marjorie.
Instead, the family was left forever fractured when Harvey - who had been carrying their entire life-savings in his breastpocket - became one of the 1,500 people who died when the 'unsinkable' ship plunged into the North Atlantic. As they waited to hear of any news of Harvey in the following days, Charlotte and Marjorie posed for a photo with the White Star Line blanket that had been given on board one of the 20 lifeboats - which was colourised by Channel 4's Titanic in Colour documentary earlier this week. Charlotte Collyer and her daughter Marjorie, seven, pictured in Idaho a month after the disaster which claimed the life of Mrs Collyer's husband Harvey.
Four years later, she died from TB, leaving her daughter an orphan At first, a devastated Charlotte considered pursuing Harvey's American dream - before returning to the UK with Marjorie, where she would sadly die just three years later. In a sense, Marjorie was orphaned for a third time when her step-father died in 1919 - and spent the rest of her unhappy childhood being raised by her uncle in Surrey. Here FEMAIL delves into one of Titanic's most tragic stories - and how Charlotte and Marjorie were forever scarred by the events of that fateful night.
Life before Titanic Charlotte was born in June 1881 and was the eldest of coachman Allen Tate and his wife Louisa's six children. The family were based in Cobham and Charlotte is believed to have met her husband Harvey while working as a cook for Sidney Sedgwick, who was a Curate at the St May and St Nicholas Church in Leatherhead. At the time, Harvey was working as the church's sexton and verger.
The couple married in the Leatherhead church in May 1903. The following year, they welcomed their daughter Marjorie Lottie and later relocated to Bishopstoke in Hampshire with Reverend Sedgiwck and his family. Pictured: Harvey Collyner, his wife Charlotte and their daughter Marjorie pictured before they decided to immigrate to the US The ill-fated White Star liner RMS Titanic, which struck an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic As well as continuing his work as a verger, Harvey also became a bell-ringer as well as running the town's grocery store.
During their time in Bishopstoke, Harvey and Charlotte's friends had immigrated to Idaho and sent letters raving about the climate and success of their farming business. After Charlotte developed respiratory problems, the family decided to follow in their friend's footsteps and booked a second-class ticket on Titanic. This cost £26, which is roughly £3,700 today.
In an essay for the for the San Francisco Call, which was published one month after the disaster, Charlotte detailed how hundreds of members of the local community gathered to send them on their way in April 2012. She wrote: 'In the afternoon, members of the church arranged a surprise for my husband. They led him to a seat under the old tree in the churchyard and then some went up into the belfry and, in his honour, they rang all the chimes that they knew.
Pictured: a second-class cabin on the Titanic. The Collyner paid £26 for a ticket, which is roughly £3,700 today Pictured: the second-class smoking room on the Titanic, which the Collyner family would have had access to 'It took more than an hour and he was very pleased. Somehow it makes me a little sad.
They ran the old chimes as well as the gay ones and to me it was too much of a farewell ceremony.' The following day, the family-of-three travelled to Southampton and took out their entire life-savings, which Harvey kept inside the breast pocket of his coat. After selling their home, the Collyers kept a few personal items in Titanic's hold - which also went down with the ship.
When a friend asked if she was 'afraid to venture at sea', Charlotte said: 'What, on this boat? Even the worst storm couldn't harm her.' 'We've struck an iceberg..
. there's no danger' Elsewhere in her essay, Charlotte explained how she didn't remember much about their first few days on board the ship as she felt seasick. On 14 April, the family enjoyed 'the best dinner that money could buy' - even though Charlotte felt it was 'too heavy and rich'.
Pictured: Titanic survivor Marjorie Collyer before she boarded the ill-fated ship with her her parents in 1912 After listening to the orchestra, Charlotte retired early as she felt nauseous. In her essay, the mother-of-one thanked a 'sweet' stewardess, who came to check on her and later died in the disaster. Describing how they were passing through the 'Devil's Hole', the stewardess told Charlotte: 'Many accidents have happened near here.
They say that icebergs drift down as far as this. It’s getting to be very cold on deck, so perhaps there’s ice around us now!' At 11:40, the Titanic collided with a iceberg, which witnesses estimated was over 400ft long and 100ft tall. The family felt the impact of the collision in their cabin and Charlotte said it was as if the ship had been 'seized by a giant hand and shaken once, twice; then stopped dead in its course.
' At first, the couple assumed there had been an accident in the engine room - as they could tell that some had stopped running. Recalling how they were 'not alarmed' at first, Harvey eventually decided to go investigate. Titanic survivors Laurence Beesley, Marjorie Dutton, Gus Cohen and Violet Jessup seen looking at a drawing of the ship over dinner at the Dorchester Hotel When he returned, Harvey 'excitedly' told her: 'What do you think? We've struck an iceberg - a big one - but there's no danger.
An officer told me so!' Harvey then insisted fellow passengers weren't frightened and detailed how he had seen a group of professional gamblers picking their cards up off the floor and continuing their game. Charlotte wrote: 'This story reassured me. If those people at their cards were not worried, why should I be?' However, Harvey and Charlotte became alarmed when they heard 'hundreds of people running along the passageway' and passing their cabin door to get to their deck - later likening the noise to 'rats scurrying'.
The family then made the split-decision decision to head up to the deck to investigate - leaving behind all of their possessions and Charlotte and Marjorie still dressed in their nightgowns. The mother added: 'We did not doubt for an instant that we would return.' When the family reached the deck, they heard officers telling the 'great many people' who had gathered that there was 'no danger whatever'.
Although the family were not frightened at first, their mood changed when a ship stoker - who was responsible for putting coal in the furnace - emerged from the engine room with all the fingers on one hand cut off. Pictured: Senior Titanic officers on board the ship. Captain William Murdoch - who was described as a 'bulldog' by Charlotte Collyner - seen front centre right After Charlotte asked if there was any danger, the worker said it was 'hell down below' and said the boat was going to 'sink like a log in ten minutes'.
As a result, Captain Murdoch - whom Charlotte described as a 'bulldog' - then blocked this passageway so no more engine room workers could interact with passengers. Last moments with Harvey A short while later, Charlotte heard officers shouting at one another to lower the lifeboats and let women and children get in first - confirming their worst suspicion. The widow said: 'They struck utter terror into my heart, and now they will ring in my cars until I die.
They meant my own safety; but they also meant the greatest loss I have ever suffered — the life of my husband.' Although the first lifeboat filled up quickly, Charlotte said the remaining women - including herself - took more convincing to leave their husbands. Charlotte and Marjorie could have had a place in the second boat but she still refused to leave Harvey.
When the third boat was half-full, a sailor grabbed Marjorie and placed her in a lifeboat - meaning eight-year-old never got the chance to say goodbye to her father. Pictured: Commander Harold Godfrey Lowe, who tied five Titanic life boats together before searching for survivors. Pictured: Digital imagining of the Titantic sinking.
The ship had been marketed as 'unsinkable' by White Star Line At this moment, Charlotte clung to Harvey and felt the deck moving beneath her. Despite not being able to remember what she told him, Charlotte said she found comfort in the knowledge that Harvey knew she didn't want to leave his side. As she was manhandled onto the boat, Harvey said: 'Go, Lotty! For God’s sake, be brave, and go! I’ll get a seat in another boat.
' Once on the lifeboat, Charlotte said she and other women were 'strengthened by this same promise'. She added: 'I let myself be saved, because I believed that he, too, would escape.' As they sailed away, Charlotte was struck by the 'terrible beauty' of the sinking ship and thanked the 'brave musicians' for playing as long as possible.
While witnessing the horrors, Charlotte fainted and her hair became tangled in the rowlock - resulting in half of it being torn out by the root. Lifeboats at The White Star Lines Pier 54 in NYC after the sinking of Titanic. They were transported on Cunard liner Carpathia, which responded to Titanic’s distress signals and rescued more than 700 passengers This photo was taken outside the White Star Line’s offices in central London the day after the sinking and shows 16-year-old Ned Parfett.
The newspaper seller died during WWI After Titanic slipped below the surface of the ocean, Commander Lowe - who had not crossed the Atlantic before - tied five lifeboats together with a rope to ensure they were all grouped together when the Carpathia ship came to the rescue. Charlotte ended the essay - which was presumably ghost-written by a US journalist - by revealing her plans to continue on to Idaho. Describing how they can 'never face the sea again', she added: 'I must take my little Marjorie to the place where her father would have taken us both.
That is all I care about — to do what he would have had me do.' Charlotte was reportedly paid $300 for sharing her story after her husband died with their life-savings in his pocket. Her story captured the hearts of wealthy New Yorkers and Charlotte was given a further $450 from various charities - as well as $200 from the American Relief Fund.
White Star Line’s marine superintendent Benjamin Steel is pictured walking alongside the dock, taking a quiet moment away from the crowds who had gathered to watch Titanic depart from Southampton Six-year-old Robert Douglas Speddon spinning a top on the first-class Promenade Deck watched by his father Frederick When she arrived in New York with Marjorie, Charlotte wrote to her mother: 'How can I live without him? If they had not wrenched Madge from me, I should have stayed and gone with him.’ She also referenced the moment immortalised in the film A Night To Remember, when the band played Nearer My God To Thee as the ship went down. 'Sometimes I feel we lived too much for each other that is why I've lost him,' she said.
'But mother we shall meet him in heaven. When that band played Nearer My God to Thee I know he thought of you and me for we both loved that hymn.' Elsewhere in the letter, Charlotte asked her mother to send her a photo of Harvey - promising to reimburse her at a later date.
Charlotte's brother Alan - who had been living in Niagara, Canada - raced to find his sibling in New York following the disaster. In an interview with a Niagara Falls newspaper, Alan claimed Charlotte saw Harvey getting into a lifeboat - but disembarked when he realised women were still on board the ship. Return to England and second marriage Pictured: A Night to Remember author Walter Lord (centre) with Marjorie Dutton (right) in March 1957 Charlotte received financial aid through the Mansion House Titanic Relief and American Relief fund and returned to England in 1914.
At the end of that year, the mother married James Ashbrook Holme, who was originally from Liverpool. Charlotte's remarriage reportedly caused tension with Harvey's family, who had a plaque devoted to him in St. Mary's Church in Leatherhead.
The couple's wedding certificate revealed Charlotte's younger sister Eva Tate acted as a witness while Reverend Sedgwick, whom Harvey had worked for, officiated the ceremony. After this, the couple relocated to Grayshott - a village on the border Hampshire and Surrey - to run the The Fox and Pelican pub. It was believed that Haslemere had a milder climate, which would ease Charlotte's tuberculosis.
Majorie's tragic later life In November 2016, Charlotte died of tuberculosis and left her daughter £720. Read More Tragic faces of Titanic seen in colour for the first time - including traumatised widow Following her mother's death, Marjorie went to live with her gamekeeper uncle Walter Collyner, his wife Edith and their two teenage sons. Historians have questioned if social services were involved in his decision.
Less than three years later, James also passed away and left money to Walter Collyner in his will, which was presumably for Marjorie. In December 1927, Marjorie married mechanic Royden Bernard Bowman Dutton and the couple married in St Mary and St Nicholas' Church, where her father had worked and her parents married. The pair then moved to Chilworth, Surrey, and there has been speculation they had a child, who died as a baby.
Roy died in 1943 - leaving Marjorie a widow at the age of 40. In 1955, Marjorie - who worked as a doctor's receptionist - was one of the 63 survivors who was interviewed by author Walter Lord with his book 'A Night to Remember'. In her later life, Marjorie moved into a nursing home in Alverstoke, Hampshire and died at the age of 61 in February 1965 following a stroke.
What caused the 'unsinkable' Titanic's maiden voyage to end in diaster and why were there not enough lifeboats? On April 14 1912, Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean at around 23:40 local time, generating six narrow openings in the vessel's starboard hull, believed to have occurred as a result of the rivets in the hull snapping . The ship sank two hours and 40 minutes later, in the early hours of April 15. An estimated 1,517 people died.
The judge who led the British inquiry into the Titanic disaster, John Charles Bigham, 1st Viscount Mersey, wrote in his journal that the ship was travelling at 'excessive speed' and there was 'no reduction of speed' in the icy environment. Photograph of Titanic leaving Southampton at the start of her maiden voyage on April 10, 1912. Five days after this photo was taken the ship was on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean The 'unsinkable' liner was going at around 22.
5 knots or 25 miles per hour, just 0.5 knots below its top speed of 23 knots. It has been suggested that White Star Line chairman Bruce Ismay wanted to beat a record set by Titanic's sister ship, the RMS Olympic, on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York the year before.
However, Royal Museums Greenwich claims stories of the captain trying to make a speed record are 'without substance', despite the testimony from Mrs Lines. Another theory posited in 2004 by a US engineer was that a smouldering coal fire in the depths of Titanic meant the ship had to get to New York faster than originally planned. According to Robert Essenhigh at Ohio State University, Titanic's records show there was a fire one of Titanic's coal bunkers, forward bunker #6.
It was a clear, starry sky above the Titanic as it struck an iceberg in the night of April 14, 1912 (pictured: the actual iceberg which sank the ship, photographed from nearby German ship Prinz Adalbert) More than 1,500 people – around 70 per cent of the passengers onboard – tragically perished after the Titanic hit an iceberg 112 years ago Passengers who survived the tragedy told of a beautiful, cloudless night, with some even claiming they spent their final moments on deck before boarding a lifeboat discussing the brightness of the stars - so, how was it missed? One theory suggests that a freak weather event created the phenomenon, which possibly both obscured the iceberg until it was too late and hindered communication with a nearby ship. Historian and broadcaster Tim Maltin claims the Titanic's crew fell victim to a thermal inversion, which is caused by a band of cold air forcing itself underneath a band of warmer air, the Times reports. He believes that the cold current in the North Atlantic Ocean called Labrador pushed this cold air beneath the warm Gulf Stream, creating a mirage.
The light rays are bent downwards, which creates the illusion that the horizon is higher than it actually is. The scattered light also creates a haze lingering over the water, which Maltin believes likely hid the iceberg behind it in the moonless night. Those on the vantage point, the crow's nest of the ship, likely will have only seen the gap between true horizon and the refracted one as a haze.
This 'haze' was later described by surviving crew members as well as other ships in the area at the time. The survivor and rescuer reports clearly indicate a thermal inversion being present that night, according to Maltin, author of Titanic: A Very Deceiving Night. Lookouts later said the iceberg had looked dark as the haze blurred its lines and made it difficult to set apart from the sea.
'The reason why the berg appeared to be dark was because they were seeing it against a lighter haze,' Maltin told the Times. James Moody was on night watch when the collision happened and took the call from the watchman, asking him 'What do you see?' The man responded: 'Iceberg, dead ahead.' By 2.
20am, with hundreds of people still on board, the ship plunged beneath the waves, taking more than 1,500, including Moody, with it. Among the nearby ships which might have been able to help save some of the 2,240 passengers and crew was the SS Californian, which failed to communicate with the Titanic and spot that it was sinking because of the haze. It wasn't carrying any passengers and would have had plenty of space for the people on Titanic.
Due to the false horizon, crewmembers on the SS Californian thought they were looking at a much smaller ship that was closer to them, Maltin theorised. They thought as a small vessel, the other ship would not be equipped with a wireless operator, and therefore concluded the best way to communicate with the Titanic would be via a powerful morse lamp. This was briefly spotted by those on the Titanic, as Colonel Archibald Gracie, who survived the tragedy, later said.
He told how he pointed out a 'bright white light' to other passengers, which he believed to come from a ship 'about five miles off'. 'But instead of growing brighter [when I leaned over the rail of the ship], we men saw the light fade and then pass altogether,' Colonel Gracie was quoted as saying in the book 'Titanic: A Survivor's Story by Colonel Archibald Gracie' by Deborah Collcutt. The morse code sent from the SS Californian to the Titanic and back was distorted by the haze and therefore they couldn't effectively communicate, Maltin argues.
Famously, Titanic did not have enough lifeboats to hold the 2,224 souls on board. If it had, many more hundreds – if not all – of the lives that were lost that night could have been saved. Titanic had a total of 20 lifeboats, which all together could accommodate 1,178 people, just over half of the total (although two of these boats weren't launched when the ship went down).
There are several suggestions as to why there weren't more. Firstly, it was said that Titanic's designers felt too many lifeboats would clutter the deck and obscure views of the sea for first class passengers. Looking at a plan of Titanic, the lifeboats were mostly kept on the officers' promenade towards the front and the second class promenade towards the back.
The first class promenade, meanwhile, was almost completely free of lifeboats, meaning the first class passengers could stroll and admire clear views of the Atlantic on either side. Although it seems unthinkable now, Titanic's selling point was clearly its grandeur and luxury, not its safety. Additionally, it wasn't anticipated that Titanic would need its lifeboats to hold all passengers at the same time.
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