Thank you for listening to the Rest is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, sign up at restishistorypod. Com. That's restishistorypod. Com. My dear Mom and Dad, it don't seem possible we're out on the briny writing to you. Well 'Oh, dear. ' So far we're having a delightful trip. The weather is beautiful and the ship magnificent. We can't describe the tables. It's like a floating town. I can tell you we do swank. We shall miss it on the trains. We go third on them. You would not imagine you were on a ship. There's hardly any motion. She's so large. We've not felt sick. Yet we expect to get to Queens town today. So I thought I'd drop this with the mails. We had a fine send off from Southampton. Lots of love. Don't worry about us. Ever your loving children, Harvey, Lott, and Madge. So that Tom was a letter from a chap called Harvey Collier to his parents from the Titanic. Harvey was a grocer from a place called Bishopstoke in Hampshire. He was also a big bell ringer in the local church. He and his family were emigrating to Idaho.

When they left, because Harvey was big in the local church. There was a great send-off for them. They sat them down in the churchyard and people went up to the tower and rang the bells for them. It was very moving. Harvey loved it. His wife Charlotte was sitting there and she was a bit ambivalent about going to America. She was a little bit tearful or something. They had all their savings with them, which he had in banknotes in the lining of his jacket. I don't think it's giving anything away to say that the fate of the Collier family is very poignant. Those are the human details, aren't they, that make the story of the Titanic just so incredibly resonant.

It is. The idea of writing back to your loved one saying, Don't worry about us. Everything's great. It's all going to be fine. Of course, the reason that we're doing this episode, the reason that the Titanic has the mythic resonance that it does, is the contrast between the confidence and the horror that know is coming. Before we get to the horror, we're going to look at some of the details of the people who were traveling. Everyone will know that there are lots of millionaires on it, but they will also know, particularly if they've seen Titanic, the film, that there are lots of people in steerage. In the last episode, I quoted Francis Wilson making the comment that basically the Titanic is a ship that only seems to be a luxury hotel, but actually it's there to carry poor emigrants. In these next two episodes, we're going to look at the range of people who are traveling on the Titanic. As anyone who has seen the James Cameron in a film will know, there are, of course, millionaires, and then there are people down in steerage. We're going to look at both groups of people. Dominic, we're also going to look at the people who are traveling in second class who don't make it into the film and who slightly tend to be written out because we do enjoy the the downtown Abbey idea of upstairs and downstairs, don't we?

And the fact that actually there are lots of people in the middle is often written out of the story.

It is because I think people want to turn it into a parable, a morality tale about inequality and hubris. And so you have John Jacob, Esther, and then you have some very poor guy played by Leonardo DiCaprio or something. Absolutely. But actually, we miss in that the complexity of all these people who were there, many of whom were, as you say, in the middle and make the story much more complicated.

Right. So having said that, should we kick off with the Millionaires?

Yeah, why not?

We're very much a class-based podcast.

We are.

So let's go in with the Millionaires first.

So in the last episode, we talked about how the Titanic was a product of the Gilded Age, of the capitalism of the Gilded Age, of the competition between different companies, British, German, for control of the Atlantic trade we talked about. It's Belfast, didn't we? We had the Titanic going through all its tests and then being brought to Southampton, and then, of course, sailing out of Southampton Harbor. You were very rude, if I remember, about Captain Smith, weren't you? Yes, I was. You were accused of incompetence. I think very harshly.

Not incompetence, but perhaps not being as fully on the ball as once he was. Dominic, I think the evidence is top.

Anyone can have a mistake. Anyone can have a mistake in a transatlantic crossing. Come on.

He has four mistakes in the space of a year. But anyway, let's not get onto that.

He did a lot of very successful voyages, and I think it's harsh to judge him on that.

On his last year.

On one, yeah. Actually, most of the passengers that morning start off in London, and they come from Waterloo. Now, we talked last time about how Southampton had been built up as this great rival to Liverpool. It's been built up by the Liverpool and Southwestern railway, among other companies. At about 7:30, there is a train that will leave Waterloo. It's the boat train and it will head to Southampton. There are hundreds of people on this train. Actually, there are paparazzi at Waterloo, aren't there?

Yeah. So that's brilliant, isn't it? Camera fiends, they're called. Yes. I love that phrase.

So there are camera fiends there because, as you say, there are so many millionaires. So the train goes off. Waterloo is being redeveloped, so it's very chaotic and messy and sooty and all that stuff. They head down to Southampton. And at Southampton, 427 passengers in first and second class get on and 495 in third class. And then they pick up more passengers, actually a lot more first-class passengers at Sherbourg because they go straight to Sherbourg. Here, clearly, they're picking up Americans, for example, who have been traveling in the continent, who have been in Paris, and so on and so forth.

And we talked, didn't we, how they have to go out in little boats to take them out because Titanic is so huge, it can't actually get into Cherbourg.

And so they finally pull out to Cherbourg at eight o'clock that evening, and they are heading for Queens town, now Cove in Ireland. So of those first class passengers, there are 337 of them, I think. The interesting thing is that there are always different estimates for the numbers. Each book gives you a slightly different figure because we're never entirely sure who turned up and who didn't, which we'll come to in a second.

But it's definite that it's not filled to capacity, is it? By some estimates, under 50 %.

Now, that is really interesting. And there's a couple of things in that. One is them is that the competition for the transatlantic crossing is so fierce, there was actually a massive overcapacity. So there are more births than there are potential first-class passengers. But the other thing, Richard Davenport-Heinz has a really good section on this, I think. He says it was a great trait of Edwardian millionaires. It was seen as a badge of their quality that they would change their plans and cancel things and put everybody out at the last minute. That was a sign of your status. People were always canceling things in a way that now, I think, well, maybe tech billionaires cancel things. I don't know. I feel bad about canceling. I I wouldn't book a transatlantic crossing and then just not turn up.

I mean, that's the expression of your middle class bourgeois up tightness.

It is. Yes, it is, Tom.

Whereas if you're a high spending, gilded age billionaire, there's nothing you'd enjoy more than letting people down.

No. I need to be less polite to waiters and things like that.

Several millionaires could have been on this maiden voyage of the Titanic. There's Milton Hursley.Chocolate.

Millionaire.chocolate guy.

To be honest. He deserved to go down.

That's terrible chocolate, isn't it? Hurses. Terrible.

Terrible chocolate. There's Henry Clay Frick, as in the Frick, the art gallery. George Vanda built another very guilted-age American millionaire name. He doesn't go. But of course, the famous person who doesn't go is the guy who's behind the whole shebang, who is Peerpoint Morgan. Yeah. So he takes over Frick's booking, but then he cancels because he is keen to oversee the movement of his art collection from Paris to America. Or that is what he says, because this is the focus for some hot conspiracy theories. Are you up to speed with them?

I know they exist. I consider them demented, so I haven't really gone into them as much as I should.

The conspiracy theory is that We talked about how Morgan is basically behind the setting up of the American Central Bank, isn't he? That he comes to the rescue. Yeah, well, he- He's America's banker. Yeah. The conspiracy theory is that John Jacob Esther, Benjamin Guggenheim, and Isidore Strauss all of whom are absolute top league millionaires, are against this. And so Morgan has arranged for them to go on the Titanic so that they can be removed, taken out of the equation. Which I agree, doesn't seem an entirely... It seems a roundabout in the expensive way of getting rid of them.

An unreliable way. What if they get into the lifeboats?

Exactly. But I just mentioned that. I just put that out there because we don't want people listening to think that we're not acknowledging the conspiracy theories because you particularly had quite a lot of grief for your skepticism towards JFK conspiracy theories.

That's true. I'm actually just part of the conspiracy, to be quite frank. I can admit that now.

Okay. So Esther is by Father Richard, isn't he?

He is. Colonel Jack He's called John Jacob Esther IV. The Astors are the paradigmatic dominant family, dynasty of Gilded Age New York. He owns a lot of New York, among of the things. It's not just a hotelier, he's a slum landlord.

But the hotels are interesting, aren't they? Because they provide the model for the luxury in first class that the Titanic embodies.

Absolutely, they do. So the most famous one, of course, is the Waldorf Astoria. It has Aster in the name. The Waldorf Astoria was seen as having set standards in hotels. It's the Waldorf Astoria, really, that invents the idea of you going to a downtown city center hotel and there being a tea room, a bar, a lounge, a gentleman's club atmosphere. In other words, it's not just a place you sleep, it's a place where all life is there.

A range of entertainments are on tap. Exactly. But also the fact that he is this notorious slum landlord while enjoying all this luxury in the luxury hotels and things, I think that that is also something that gets superimposed in the public imagination on the Titanic. Yeah, I think so. The idea of them sipping cocktails and champagne and things in first class while down in steerage, it's all rats and build water. I mean, we will come to that and see whether that is accurate or not. Yeah.

He looks as American millionaires of that era did. They tried to be more English than the English. He wears an overcoat with a velvet collar. That's actually been Nigel Farage, isn't it? He wears a bowler hat, and he has an umbrella, and he's got this nice mustache and all that thing.

He looks like the father in Mary Poppins. Yes, he does. Mr. Banks.

But interestingly, he has a child bride, doesn't he?

He does. Madeleine Force, as was.

Yes, Madelyne Force, which is slightly more 1970s rock star behavior. She was 18, and this was very controversial because she's decades his junior. They had a big reception at Fifth Avenue, where he's going to introduce her to all his friends and all the other society people. Lots of people didn't turn up. So lots of people would ignore them when they went to the opera and things. They have gone off to France and Egypt. She is pregnant, four months pregnant. They are now coming back to New York and they have this big retinue. They have a valet, she has a maid, she has a nurse maid, and they have a dog called Kitty. I know you're very keen on the dogs.

Yes. In Ayrdale, one of 12 confirmed dogs, Dominic, who were on the Titanic. Confirmed dogs? Yes. They might have been other dogs. We don't know. Right. Who got smuggled aboard. There were several Ayrdales. There was a King Charles spaniel, There was a fox terrier, there was a Fox Terrier, there was a Bulldog, and there was a Great Dane. Great Dane.

Who takes a Great Dane on the ship?

Well, the Great Dane does not get into the lifeboat, and nor, I'm afraid, does Kitty. So Kitty drowns. But there are three that do get onto the boats in due course. There are two Pomeranians. One of those is called Lady, and she gets smuggled on, wrapped in a blanket. Then there's a Picanese called Sonia Tsen, who also makes it on. Sonia Tsen is the Chinese leader. People who listened to our Top Dogs episode, there was Luti, the Picanese. Clearly, Picanese are given not entirely politically correct names. This is very much a Victorian and Edwardian thing. Sonia Tsen gets away as well. There's also the ship's cat, Jenny, who sadly doesn't make it.

Jenny doesn't make it? No. That's sad.

There are animals as well as-Yes. Millionaires and so on.

But back to the humans for a second, Tom.

Yes, back to the human story. Yes.

Other Other millionaires, there's a chap called, you mentioned him already, Ben Guggenheim. So the Guggenheim family, again, an art gallery name, the Guggenheim Gallery and so on. The Guggenheims had made their money out in Colorado in the Silver Mines in Leadville. They are notorious stripe breakers, very hard-nosed business tycoons. Ben Guggenheim, I think, is generally thought the most attractive of them. He's actually left the family business. He He lives on Fifth Avenue. He sees himself as so many people did. He's a bit like a character in a Henry James novel or something.

They all are, aren't they?

Yeah, they are. They go off to Europe and they hang around in Venice and Paris. He's got a lover, hasn't he?

He has married a bride who is only 18 years old.

It's all that thing. It is. Was that Gillian Anderson or somebody there joining us? Yeah.

We will not be receiving that.

Ben Guggenheim has a mistress in Paris called Leontine Obard. Who is a singer. She's traveling with him. Again, he's got a big entourage. She's got a maid. He's got a valet. They have a chauffeur called René. René Pernot. He's got the ultimate French name.

He's down in second class, isn't he? Yes.

They're all there. Again, probably because he's with his mistress, they probably keep themselves to themselves and don't mix. We don't know, but their sense is that they would not have mixed that closely with the other millionaires because they would have been horrified at the I thought of him with this French mistress. Then there's the Wideners.

We mentioned them, didn't we, in the first episode? The grandfather of it all, the patriarchal figure, Peter Widener, he joined with Morgan in setting up American and steel and all kinds of things like that. His son and his grandson are on the Titanic.

Yes. George and Eleanor, his son and daughter-in-law, and they have gone to Paris to buy the stuff, the trousseau for their daughter's wedding. They've taken their son with them. Their son is Harry. He's a very attractive person, I think, Harry. Yeah, he is. Because he's a great bibliophile. Yes. So he's in his mid-20s, isn't he? And since he first went to Harvard, he has become an addict of first editions. So he's got loads of Dickens' first edition, Ben Johnson. Yeah.

And he's got a Shakespeare first folio.

Yes. Very impressive.

And with him on the ship, he's carrying a 1598 edition of Francis Bacon's Essays, which he bought for £260. His mother's pearls were insured for £150,000. So that gives you some sense.

You're going to be adding multiple knots to that to make the modern equivalent. Yeah.

But people who've seen Titanic, the film, will remember that Rose, the character played by Kate Winslet, in her cabin. She has the Demoiselle d'Avignon by Picasso. Yes. I think she has a Degas, I think she has a Monet, all of which obviously didn't sink, but in the film do sink, and people always laugh about that. But it does reflect the fact that, of course, all these treasures, masterpieces of European art that are now in American art galleries, most of them were transported on ships like the Titanic. They were.

Yeah. How did they get there? Yeah. Exactly. And that these are precisely the people who are transporting them. This is what they do. Compared it to the Henry James characters, this is absolutely Absolutely that world, that they will have folios of bacon stuffed into their pockets.

Yeah, because I think there's a library at Harvard, isn't there? The Wendell Memorial Library, which was set up after his death by his family. Yes, obviously, they didn't take Domenosite Avenue because it still exists. But there are masterpieces of art, I guess, down there on the ocean bed.

There must be. There must be. There's finance, there's railroads. The railroads are represented. There are two family parties that are related to railroad tokens. There's the Théa family. They're the owners of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which is the biggest in terms of traffic and revenue in the United States. The Hayes family, so they are the Grand Trunk railway of Canada.

And Dominic, are there Are they gay couples?

Yes, there is a gay couple. And this is the world of politics. And they're an extraordinary pair. So there's a guy called Francis. I would call him Francis Millet, but I guess Americans would call him Millet. They would call him Francis Mallet. He's a painter. He's a very impressive man. He'd served with the Union troops in the Civil War. He'd been a war correspondence in Russia when the Russians fought the Ottomans in the 1870s. He was brilliant at sketching these beautiful sketches of public buildings in Boston. And he is the head of the American Academy in Rome, this guy, Francis Millet. And he lives with a man in Washington, a much younger man.

Archie Butt.

Archie Butt. But, exactly, who is the military advisor to President Taft.

Slimmer of the Year.

Slimmer of the Year, right. And their household is full of Filipino boys, which might have some listeners raising their eyebrows. Archie But is also quite a jolly and an impressive person. He had served in the Spanish-American War, and he made himself indispensable to Theodore Roosevelt and then to his successor, William Howard Taft. There's a lovely description in Richard Davenport-Heinds' book, Titanic Lives. He says, Why Taft liked Archie Butt around him? He says, Butt misplayed shots to revive the golf mad President when he was disheartened, sat up late playing bridge with him, laughed at his dull legal jokes, mitigated his boredom, ate the horrible meals which the obese President liked. And these meals, broiled chicken homony and melon for breakfast, fish chowder, mustard, pickles, baked beans, and brown bread for lunch. And then he would mollify the President when people shouted, Hello, fatia.

He sounds a wonderful man, doesn't he? Yeah. He sounds great fun. Yeah. And in due course, because he drowns, I mean, spoiler alert. Yeah. And Taft is devastated, really devastated.

Tuft is absolutely devastated. So there's this couple. It's pretty clear they were a couple, I think. Francis Mallet and Archie Butt.

So that's interesting. And then, Dominic, are there any major underwear entrepreneurs?

There are, yes. So obviously, the British aristocracy is there in alliance, Tom, with big underwear.

Well, it's big laundry, isn't it?

It's big laundry. Yeah, it's not just underwear. It's sexy laundry. So There's a guy called with the splendid name of Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon. So Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon is like a Englishman from a parody. He plays Bridge and he fences and he's lost an eye in a shooting accident.

He'd fenced for England.

Yeah. Oswald Moseley, of course, former Restes History associate, also fenced at the highest level, didn't he? But he didn't marry a lingeria pioneer like Sir Cosmo did.

But actually, Dominic, there is a link between Oswald Moseley and lingerie because he provides the model for Sir Roderick Spode in the PG Woodhouse novels. And his terrible secret is that he runs ULily, doesn't he? Which is a lingerie company. So maybe there was a no doing a rift on Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon.

Who knows? Yeah, I hadn't thought of that. I hadn't thought of that, Tom. Because Sir Cosmo had married this woman called Lucy Wallace, who was the world's greatest entrepreneur of lacy underwear.

Yeah, so she was a distressed gentlewoman. She was posh, but she'd lost all her money, and so she goes into business and makes a tremendous success of it.

Yeah. People look down on her, I suppose, because she was in trade.

But she gets sponsored by Duchesses, so Duchesses start buying her corsets and things, and then it becomes very socially exclusive.

She had everything connects in this world of the Millionaires because she had gone to New York and she had stayed at the Waldorf Astoria while she had been opening her shop in New York. She is one of these great pioneers who has shops both in London and New York. This isn't like Victoria's Secret or something. This is stuff that is being bought, as you say, by Duchesses and whatnot.

Rigby & Pella, I believe.

Right. Rigby & Pella is exactly the comparison, Tom. Very good.

Corsettier to the late queen.

Yeah, very good. Corsettiers would appeal to our next first-class passenger, who I would say is the greatest newspaperman who's ever existed, Tom.

Yeah, I would not disagree.

He is WT Stead, and he is the great populist newspaper editor of the late Victorian period. He's the person who really invents populist newspapers, I would say. Wt Stead, listeners of very long standing, will remember that he is the man behind the sending of General Gordon, the ultimate friend of the rest of history, to Carter Zoom. Do you remember that, Tom?

I do, yeah.

Back in the 1880s?

Yeah.

It was W. T. Stead who then kicks up a huge fuss about dreadnaughts and all that stuff. The German is going to overtake Britain. His most famous thing, of course, is when he bought a prostitute, a a young girl, didn't he?

Yeah, to demonstrate how easy it was. Yes. What was it? The maiden tribute of the modern Babylon or something. Exactly.

He was prosecuted. He became a huge hero to the British working classes because he was seen as having have, you know, lift the lid on the seething underbelly, Tom, of the white slave trade, as it was called. He's a complete mountabank, isn't he? He's a sensationalist.

Very entertaining.Brilliantly entertaining.

I imagine it would have been tremendously entertaining company on the ship.

I imagine so, yeah.

Can I tell you an interesting fact about his... I mean, he does die on the ship. Yeah. He's a committed spiritualist as well. So he's into all that stuff. His house in London is in Smith Square, just down from the House of Parliament. His daughter, Estelle, lived with him there before he drowned. Before he left, one evening, she's in her bedroom when a man walks in to her room, takes off his hat, sits down at the desk, and starts writing poetry.

Oh my gosh, it's unusual.

She goes over and has a look and says, What are you doing? He doesn't say anything, but she can see that it's poetry. He just completely ignores her. Then he vanishes. Then the same thing happens the night after, and the night after, and the night after that. She mentions it to her father, and her father draws the obvious conclusion that this guy is clearly a ghost. He has a bit of kit called a spirit indicator. Is that real?

Does that work?

It's a device for communicating with the dead. Right. And so Estelle uses it. It turns out that this guy who's been coming in is a poet, and he's called Gordon Knight, and he had specialized in rollicking songs of the sea. Now that they've made contact, he and Estelle get on really, really well. They have an absolutely brilliant time. When Wednesday dies on the Titanic, it's very touching because Gordon Knight, this minor poet, is able to make contact with her father in the afterworld and pass on messages so they can stay in touch.

Oh, that's nice, isn't it?

Yeah.

That's a lovely detail.

Yeah. Obviously, there's a lot of tragedy in this story, but it's nice to know that ghosts-Great behavior from ghosts. Yeah, which may be to do with the fact that he's a minor poet.

Do you think so? If he'd been a more successful poet, he'd be head of other things on his mind.

I think by and large, if you meet the ghost of a minor poet, he's probably going to be all right.

Yeah. A decent, quiet, retiring person. Not seduced by worldly success because they haven't had much success in their life. No. They're only a minor poet.

No. Although possibly the whole walking into a girl's bedroom is a bit odd.

But you'd be guttered if the person who communicated you from the afterlife was TS Elliott or somebody, wouldn't you? I mean, a chilly, austere, difficult person.

I think, personally, I'd quite like to.

You'd like it? Yeah, I think so. Okay. Yeah. Well, on that bombshell, Tom, I think we should take a very quick break, and then we'll come back and we'll continue talking about first-class passengers. Probably not so much about ghosts and poets. We'll also move on to the second-class passengers. Welcome back to The Rest is History. We are talking about the passengers on the Titanic. Tom, one of the things that strikes me about so many of these first-class passengers is that it's often seen as you've got first class on one side or millionaires, Boston brahman's and gilded age American plutocrats. And on the other side, you have all the immigrants. But actually, a huge proportion of these millionaires are themselves the sons or daughters or whatever, of immigrants, aren't they? I was looking at the list of names that Richard Davenport-Heinz gives in his book. Henry Stengel, John Bowman, Jacob Birnbaum, William Greenfield, Samuel Goldenberg, Adolf Salfeld, Abraham Lincoln, Salomon, Martin Rothschild, George Rosenschind. An awful lot of these people in first class are actually first, second, third generations who are Jewish German-Americans, aren't they? It's really remarkable how many of such people there are.

That is the melting pot of guilted age America, right?

Yeah. Well, that's a lovely profound insight there. That had left you completely.

I wasn't expecting that. It's your period, Dominic.

Well, Richard McVine says, he says, First class was only steerage, twice removed.

Very good. Which is true. Well, because we talked about this in connection with Andrew Carnegie. Yeah, we did. Who, of course, doesn't drown on the Titanic, but is going out and then going backwards and forwards. Logan Roy type figure.

Very Logan Roy. What's it like being a first class passenger? The guy we were talking about before, Frank Millay, he wrote about this. He said, Of Titanic. She has everything but taxi cabs and theaters, table dote, restaurant à la carte, gymnasium, Turkish Bath, Squash Court, Palm Garden, smoking rooms for ladies and gents. That's just some of the public rooms.

They had riding machines in the gym.

Wow, a riding machine. They should bring those back. I'd love that. Yeah, I know. Not that I go to the gym, I mean, I'd like the thoughts of other people going on them.

Apparently, very good for the thighs.

Yeah, I'm sure that's true. They have dining saloons, they have louanges, they have cafés. There are quarters for the first class dogs. Yes.

Sonia and ladies Yeah.

They have the first swimming pool on a ship. They have an operating theater in the sick Bay. And the private rooms are very, very fancy. So Malay again. As for the rooms, they are larger than the ordinary hotel room, much more luxurious, with wooden bedsteds, dressing tables, hot and cold water, electric fans, electric heater. The suites with their damask hangings, mahogany oak furniture are really very sumptuous. And they're done in a great medley of architectural styles. Some of Some of them are Regency, Queen Anne, some of them Louis Caz, Louis Cez, Tudor, Georgian. You choose what style you like.

But having said that, Dominic, there is a integrity to the design because the white star logo is everywhere, isn't it? So all the crockery, all the plates and everything, they're all stamped with the white star logo, all the cutlery, everything.

It's the comparison that you made before with the Whorl of Historia. It's exactly the right comparison, I think. I mean, for these guys, it's not an immigrant ship. It's a floating hotel. They go to the gym, they go to the steam bath, they play poker all the time. I mean, the food, they obviously spend an enormous amount of time in this big Jacobian dining room, and the list of food is mind boggling.

Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?

Oysters, salmon, lamb, roast duck, beef. And this, of course, is maybe there'll be people who've done cruises and things to sell. That's nothing. On the cruise, we had much better than that. But this is more than 100 years ago when refrigeration techniques and all these kinds of things are in their infancy. And it's a tremendous enterprise to get all this stuff ready, to have the huge armies of cooks and chefs and whatnot.

But I think for two other people who are traveling first class, Isme and Andrews, who are responsible for the design, for the conception of the Titanic, for the attention to detail, tail, looking around and seeing how everything is perfect. I mean, that's why they're going there. So when Isme went previously, he went on the Olympic, and he was checking to make sure things that could be improved. These improvements are now manifest on the Titanic.

Yeah, they've got the right fish knives or whatever, the things that were missing, potato peelers.

Everything is just so, just so.

Yes, exactly.

And obviously, that is something that they are incredibly proud of and that people are responding to. So whether it's the millionaires or whether it's the guy that we began with writing back and saying, It's amazing. Everybody is saying, This is incredible.

Yeah, and interestingly, the millionaires say it's incredible. So Colonel Archibald, Gracie IV, he says, It's like a summer palace on the seashore, surrounded with every comfort. There's nothing to indicate that we're on the storming Atlantic Ocean.Lady Duff-Gordon.So L'Anjari.

L'anjari. I was entranced with the beauty of the liner. Fancy strawberries in April and in mid-ocean. Why you would think you were at the Ritz. Again, the comparison with the hotel. So that's first class. Now, the one thing that people probably will be thinking if they've seen the film is this is all hermetically sealed off from the rest of the ship because there are barriers, and they're actually locked barriers, aren't they? Metal barriers between first class and second class. But the reason for that is not the snobbery of White Star. It is demanded by US immigration authorities, isn't it? It is. Us immigration demands that there must be barriers on the ship because they are terrified of contagious diseases.

Right.

And they want to limit the spread of disease.

And And so people have had to be checked before they bought the ship and all that thing.

So that's an important point because I think that's often seen as this is the snobbery of the millionaires or the snobbery of the company. But that's not right at all. It's the bureaucratic demands of the immigration service. So second class. It's a smaller group than first or third. And as you said, Tom, they are totally missing, aren't they, from the film? And I actually think from most popular accounts of the Titanic disaster, don't you?

Yeah, because as you You said the power of the Titanic is that it serves almost everybody as a metaphor. And so certainly for left-wing critiques of British-American Atlantic society, the idea of haves and have nots doesn't really have have place for people who are in the middle. It's Plutocrats or paupers, but that's not the case with this. Yeah.

Of course, the nature of industrial society at the beginning of the 20th century is there are tens of millions of people who don't fit into those categories. These are the people in second class. They are clergymen, teachers, people who own shops, clerks. There are some chauffeurs. There are some workmen who are bashing out. It's exactly as you expect.

Well, and servants, so chauffeurs and ballets as well are going second class. Also, just as we said that the first class is modeled on the luxury hotels that are growing up, there are establishments now that are catering for the middle classes, and that's effectively the vibe that is being replicated on the Titanic. So lions, what is it? Lions cornerhouses and things.

Tea shops, yeah. It's a respectable boarding house atmosphere, isn't it? Don't you think?

Yes. So films about the Second World War, the Nippies, and civil servants will meet their wives when they're having domestic problems. And they'll hide behind menus and things like that. That's the the mood that you're getting in the second class quarters.

Yeah, it was the a hotel that would feature in an Agatha Christie novel. Exactly. Not super swanky.

And the characters. So as you said, clergymen and doctors and so on.

Yeah, absolutely. Interestingly, the single biggest group in the second class decks is Cornishmen. So there are several dozen Cornish miners who are going out to a Michigan Copper Belt, and they are very introverted, the Cornish miners. They don't really mix with other people. There is a hotel in Southampton that caters specifically for Cornish voyages.

And there's one in New York, isn't there?

There is indeed in Brooklyn run by John and Sid Blake, the Star Hotel, if anybody's thinking of checking in. Anybody from, I don't know, or whatever is thinking of traveling to New York. But second class has really fun characters, I think. So There's a couple of people who run off with their mistresses. There's a man, a confectioner called Henry Morley from Worcester. He has run off with a 19-year-old girl called Kate Phillips.

So middle-aged men running off with teenage girls. This is quite a theme, isn't it? Totally.

And there's another one, a Lancashire carrot and potato salesman called Harry Formthorpe, is running off with Lizzie Wilkinson. She's not a teenager. She's 29. She's 11 years. He's junior.

But still, what would the clergyman be making of this?

Well, he'd very much disproved of this man, Michel Navratil.

Oh, yes. This is the guy who's kidnapped his children from his wife.

He's kidnapped his children. So he was from Slovakia, originally. What became Slovakia? He had married an Italian woman and they lived in Nice. They had a very acrimonious divorce. He accused her of having run off with somebody else. He collects his boys and then runs off with them. He leaves a note for his wife that says, You will never see the children again, but never fear about them. They will be in good hands. He He buys second-class Titanic tickets, and the boys and this bloke, this bloke is, by the way, carrying a revolver, they get on the ship. So he's there with his boys. Do you know what, Tom? This is a big spoiler. He lives. And do you know what happened to him?

No, I don't.

He became a French philosophy professor in later life.

Did he?

Yeah. And he lived until the 1960s or 1970s or something.

Goodness.

I mean, who would have guessed?

French philosophers do have exciting personal lives. They do.

Yeah, they definitely do.

Foucault. Who was the guy who strangled his wife? Althusser, I think.

Oh, really? I didn't know he strangled his wife.

Yes. Anyway, could I just mention two travelers from outside Europe?

Do.

So one of them is the only black man traveling on the Titanic. And he is from Haiti, and he's a guy called Joseph Laroche. He's a very brilliant engineer, and he's gone to Paris, aged 15, to study engineering. He lived there. He's married a French woman. They have two daughters who are aged three and two. But he suffers from discrimination in France, and he's fed up with this. And he's had an offer from his uncle, who is President of Haiti, to go back and he can have a job as a math teacher. Wow.

Are they given out by the President, maths teaching jobs?

Yes. So he's going back. And they were going to go later in the year. But because his wife is pregnant and they want to get to Haiti before she is due to give birth to the baby, they decide that they'll go early, second class on the Titanic. And that's what they're doing. So they're on second class. And another guy from outside Europe is a Japanese, the only Japanese person who is... He's called Masabumi Hosono, and he's a civil servant who's been in Russia. So he studied Russian in Tokyo. He's then gone to Russia to study the railway system there, and he is traveling back to Japan across the Atlantic over America, and then he'll go to Japan from the Pacific Coast. So both of these men will feature in due course when we look at what happens when the Titanic hits the iceberg. But I just wanted to flag them up.

I mean, there's so many interesting characters in segment class. There's a guy who's a rubber merchant from Liverpool called Joseph Finney, and he has a teenage companion with him, slightly dubiously. Richard Davenport describes him as a handsome bachelor with his gainy mead. Oh, right.

More middle-aged men traveling with teenagers.

Exactly. He's traveling with a 16-year old apprentice Cooper called Alfred Gaskel. Then this should appeal to you, Tom, a Mennonite missionary with the splendid name of Clemer Funk.

You wouldn't believe that if you read it in a novel.

No. Clemer Funk, she She's from Pennsylvania.

It's a woman.

Yeah. Yeah. Because they're not obvious. Why would they name like that?

I can't imagine Clemer Funk. A massive mustache.

Right. Clemer Func could be the sheriff of some, I don't know. Hard-boiled, hard But no, a Mennonite missionary.

I imagine not hard drinking.

Mennonite missionary who taught girls in a one-room school out in India, in Madia Pradesh. She is traveling home to see her father who is ill. She has gone all the way from rural India. She had to go to Bombay. Then she went from Bombay all the way to London, I guess. Then she has got on the Titanic. She's been on quite a journey.

Yeah, she has.

Another Another, possibly same-sex couple who claimed to be mother and daughter, but clearly aren't, they are called Lucy Temple and Imanita Shelle. Lucy Temple is from the Bluegrass country of Kentucky. Richard Devon Port-Heyes is very funny about them. He says, An older woman from a millier of stables and racetracks traveling with a younger woman from the drabbest of convict settlements should arouse mistrust. One imagines Lutti Parish with a rasper, with a rasping voice and skin like dirty leather, and Imanita Shelley with a sharp, pigsy face and lashing tongue.

Does he actually have any evidence for this, or is it- No.

And then he says, There were surely poultry scams lurking in their history.

It seems a bit harsh.

It's harsh. It makes sense, though. It's funny. It's insightful, Tom. That's the insides of a top historian.

Yes. Sharp, Pixie face and lashing time. Yeah. Okay.

Actually, generally, we just say if the second class passengers, they love it, don't they? They think it's brilliant. They're having an absolute whale of a time. And the thing about the second class is, second class on a Titanic is as good as first class on any other ship.

You should be writing advertising copy for-I should.

I love the Titanic. I think it should be pretty clear to the listeners now. I'm very much on White Star's team. And if they're still around, if they have a success in a company, they're interested in sponsorship deals, I'm there. I'm absolutely there. You're all over it. So that is second class. It's absolutely wonderful. I think they get a very bad rap.

Well, they don't get a rap at all, do they? The second class passengers?

No, I think White Star getting a bad rap, Tom. I think people judge it harshly on the last day or the last few hours of the voyage.

But the rest of it was brilliant.

Exactly.

Yes. A lovely time apart from the last two hours.

Right. We should end with Lawrence Beesley. They're sailing past the Isle of White, and another guy called Lawrence Beesley is a widower from second class. He sits down to a letter to his son to tell him what it's like. He says, The ship is like a palace. There's an uninterrupted deck run of 165 yards for exercise and a ripping swimming bath, gymnasium, and squash racket caught in a huge lound and surrounding verandas. My cabin is ripping, hot and cold water, and a very comfy-looking bed, and plenty of room.

I would like to see 'ripping'. Yeah. 'Ripping' come back as a word of praise.

To be honest, that's why I liked that quotation. It was just for that.

It's a 'ripping' quotation. Thank you, Tom.

It's been a 'ripping voyage'.

It's been a 'ripping voyage' so far. Let's hope it carries on. But the next episode, we will be looking at Steerage.

Third Class.

Which will be familiar to all viewers of the film as a place where there's endless Irish dancing, people have a great time, and up tight millionaires daughters get to meet people who have won their place by playing cards.

But also excitingly, Tom, we won't just be talking about third class. We will also be introducing not a friend of the rest of this history, the iceberg, which will be striking at the end of the next episode, very excitingly.

I just want to stand up for the iceberg community. The iceberg is doing what icebergs do, which is to float. I don't want to be prejudiced against it. If it hadn't been there, then we wouldn't be doing this episode.

We wouldn't be doing the story, no, because we haven't done other transit lands in voyages. Have we? Except for Columbus, of course, and Elan Cortés. If you would like to join our Steerage community at the Rest is History Club.

We think of everyone in a club as millionaires, don't we?

We do. They're millionaires to us, anyway. Therestishistory. Com You get all kinds of benefits. Crucially, you get to hear the whole of this Titanic series right away. If not, you will have to wait till next time. So on that bombshell. Thank you very much. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Hi, Restless History fans. If you want more Tom Holland in your life, and frankly, why wouldn't you?

I have some good news for you. I'm Emily Dean, and I'm thrilled to say that this This week, Tom is a guest on my podcast, Walking the Dog, where you get to hear well-known faces at their most relaxed because I talk to them over a leisurely outdoor stroll with my dog, Raymond. And you can join us this week for a very special two-part in-depth chat with Tom Holland. And yes, I'm afraid I did ask him this question. Tom, how often do you think about the Roman Empire? I think about it a huge amount. In fact, there are days where I barely stop thinking about it. My brain is occupied by the Romans. It's like, goal. If you want to hear more of my chat with Tom, give Walking the Dog a Listen this week. And while you're there, you can take your pick from episodes starring the likes of Ricky Gervais, Jack Whitehall, and Jimmy Carr. What's that, Raymond?

Yes, The Rest is History did do an episode all about the greatest dogs in history. No, you weren't in it. Most spoiled dog in history, maybe.