April 15 of this year marked the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, "the unsinkable ship" that would go down on her maiden voyage. The Titanic was loaded with over 2,300 souls when she collided with a huge iceberg 600 miles southeast of Halifax at 11:40 p.m. on April 14 and sank two hours later carrying over 1,600 of her passengers and crew with her.
     Survivors of the ill‑fated ship would share their experiences during hearings held by the U.S. Senate and a British royal enquiry and with members of their families. Stories would be passed on to the coming generations. For Titanic survivors there were vivid memories, unanswered questions and feelings of guilt. Her passengers included some of the wealthiest people in the world as well as over 1,000 passengers of limited means, emigrants from Ireland, Scandinavia and elsewhere seeking a new life in America.
     One hundred years later, two Eastport residents have family connections to the fateful voyage of the Titanic.
A fortuitous change of plans
     Chris Wadsworth Brown's grandmother, Gladys May Brown, as a young woman was scheduled to accompany her family on the Titanic. But for a change of plans the family would have been on the ship. Brown's father, the Rev. George Gorwood, had booked passage for his family on the great ship after he decided to move his wife and four children from England to Maine. The young Gladys Brown did not want to leave England but was excited about sailing on the Titanic.
     Brown was residing at the Eastport Memorial Nursing home in 1997 when a staffer asked her if she would like to watch a video of the movie Titanic. Brown replied, "Oh, I saw the Titanic moored at Southampton, England. I don't know if seeing a picture of it would be the same."
      Brown's father, who would be assigned a church in Monticello in Aroostook County, was notified to come two weeks earlier so he would arrive in time for a Methodist conference in Portland. The family and Brown, then 17 years old, ended up sailing on the SS Canada for Portland. A storm while crossing the Atlantic would result in the family arriving two days after the conference. The family walked off the ship into a March snowstorm and her father had to use money from the sale of the family's furniture to purchase coats and boots for them.
     Gladys Brown would attend the Eastern Maine Conference Seminary in Bucksport. By the time she graduated in 1916 her family had moved to Woodland, where she met Victor Brown, the man she married in 1917. The couple moved to Perry later that year when Victor obtained a job as the agent for the Perry station of the Washington County Railroad. He held that position until 1938, when the station's ticket counter closed and he was transferred to Eastport, where he worked as general station agent.
     Although fate appeared to have thrown a few obstacles in her arrival in the United States, Gladys May Brown would live to the age of 107. She passed away December 13, 2002, at the Eastport Memorial Nursing Home.

A honeymoon to remember
     Lora Whelan's father, Sidney Whelan, is the nephew of George A. Harder, a Titanic survivor. Harder, at 25, was on his wedding trip with his wife Dorothy. The honeymooning couple had boarded the ship in Cherbourg, France, and were returning to the U.S. aboard the Titanic. On the night the ship collided in the Atlantic, the couple had been dancing and had just returned to their stateroom when they felt a definite but not extreme jolt. In his U.S. Senate testimony Harder described it as "a dull thump. Then I could feel the boat quiver and could feel a sort of rumbling, scraping noise along the side of the boat." He looked through the cabin's porthole and saw an iceberg about 50 to 100 feet away that was as high as the top deck of the ship.
     The Harders went up to the main deck. "Nobody seemed to think anything serious had happened," he told the Senate. But when he and his wife walked around the deck, he noticed that it was listing "quite a good deal on the starboard side."
     Shortly after that, at about midnight, an officer invited passengers to get in a lifeboat, which the captain had requested to be put in the water alongside to assess the damage. "We got to the second one, and we were told to go right in." The Harders boarded the lifeboat and never returned to the ship.
     Sidney Whelan remembers Harder's son commenting that his father had occasional nightmares the rest of his life of that night at sea. The Harders were frequently asked to lecture about the Titanic disaster, but they refused. Like so many other men who escaped, Whelan says that his uncle found the stigma of surviving the disaster difficult to live with.
     Many years later Harder and his second wife went to the Cunard Line office in Manhattan in the 1950s to book trans‑Atlantic accommodations. When the salesman learned that they planned to travel to Europe, he pushed hard to have the couple book their trip on the brand new Queen Elizabeth. Harder suggested that he'd prefer an older, tried-and-true ship. The salesman pushed more vigorously, noting the glories of the new flagship on her maiden voyage. Losing patience Harder said, "Young man, I was on the Titanic on her maiden voyage." Whelan remembers the story and adds, "With that, the young salesman turned beet red with embarrassment, slammed shut the deck plan of the Q.E. and proceeded to sell them a cabin on one of his other trans‑Atlantic liners."
     Even those who caught a glimpse of the great ship remembered it all their lives. Dale Lincoln of Perry recalls his aunt Phyllis Rogers, who was living in England in 1912. One day her parents took her to see a large ship named Titanic at Southampton, England. Along with others, she watched the ship set sail. A few years later, Rogers sailed from England on a much smaller ship. Her stories about the hazards of being a teenage lady, on a ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, with her maiden aunt are more interesting than her Titanic story. Upon arriving in New York Harbor all passengers on her ship were quarantined at Ellis Island for two weeks.
     In the 1920s, Rogers married George Lester Spinney of Eastport. They resided in Billerica, Mass., for several years. After retiring in the 1970s they lived in Eastport on County Road across from the Eastport Water Company.

The ship's fateful voyage
     The Titanic departed Southampton on April 10, under the command of Captain Edward John Smith, the most senior of the White Star Line's captains, headed for the French port of Cherbourg. After taking on passengers at the French port, she proceeded to Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland, and on April 11 took on additional passengers. That afternoon the Titanic weighed anchor for the last time. She had clear weather until April 14, when she crossed a cold weather front with strong winds and high waves. By evening it became clear, calm and very cold.
     The Titanic received a series of warnings from other ships of drifting ice in the area of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Nonetheless the ship continued to steam at full speed. At 11:40 p.m. lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately ahead and alerted the bridge. First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship to be steered around the obstacle and the engines to be put in reverse, but it was too late; the starboard side of the Titanic struck the iceberg, creating a series of holes below the waterline.
     Five of the ship's watertight compartments were breached, and she could not survive more than four compartments being flooded. Had the ship struck the iceberg head on at whatever speed and whatever resulting shock, the bulkhead system of watertight compartments would probably have saved the vessel. It was the impossible that happened. The ship's side was torn for a length that made the bulkhead system ineffective.
     Two hours and 40 minutes after the Titanic struck the iceberg, her rate of sinking suddenly increased as her forward deck dipped underwater and the sea poured in through open hatches and gates. At 2:20 a.m. the stern sank, pitching remaining passengers and crew into lethally cold water. Wireless, rockets and lamps sent distress signals, but none of the ships that responded were near enough to reach her before she sank. A nearby ship, the Californian, which was the last to have been in contact with the Titanic before the collision, saw her flares but failed to assist.
     Around 4 a.m., the Carpathia arrived on the scene in response to the Titanic's earlier distress calls. The 710 people who survived the disaster were conveyed by the Carpathia to New York, the Titanic's original destination. Once the massive loss of life became known, the White Star Line chartered the cable ship CS Mackay‑Bennett from Halifax to retrieve bodies. Three other Canadian ships followed in the search. The Canadian ships and five more passing North Atlantic steamships retrieved 328 of the victims. The majority of bodies recovered were buried in three Halifax cemeteries.

A freaky station
     An Eastport connection to the disaster appears in the testimony of Gilbert William Balfour, inspector for the Marconi Company, before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee Hearings of the Committee on Commerce held May 4, 1912, in New York City. Balfour of Liverpool was a traveling inspector at the time attached to the ship Baltic. Balfour reported that a message received from the Titanic said, "Struck an iceberg." It gave the ship's position and said, "Immediate assistance is required."
     Several ships received the message, and Balfour tells the committee of the various responses. He stated, "At 3.05 the station at Eastport, call letters W.Q., was asking the Frankfurt in re C.Q.D. calls. This station had been jamming all the night. Jamming is a term we use to indicate interferences, trying to get in, trying to get the way through. They were talking about things not really having to do with the rescue."
     Senator Smith asked, "How far was Eastport, Maine, from you?" Balfour replied, "I could not exactly say. It is in the Bay of Fundy. It is very far and it is a very freaky station. You can hear it halfway across the ocean."
     On May 3 the British government also commenced an investigation of the Titanic disaster. Both inquiries reached similar conclusions: The number of lifeboats was inadequate and out of date. Captain Smith had failed to take proper heed of ice warnings; the lifeboats had not been properly filled or crewed; and the collision was the direct result of steaming into a danger area at too high a speed. The recommendations included major changes in maritime regulations to implement new safety measures, such as ensuring that more lifeboats were provided, that lifeboat drills were properly carried out and that wireless equipment of passenger ships was manned around the clock. An international ice patrol was set up to monitor the presence of icebergs in the North Atlantic, and maritime safety regulations were harmonized internationally through the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. Both measures are still in force today. No ship has been sunk by an iceberg in the North Atlantic since the Titanic.