The Titanic Life of a Hero
A Man Who Lived Like the Main Character in a Boys' Adventure Story
A hero of the Titanic was also a cowboy, gold prospector, a decorated naval officer and an amateur secret agent
If ever a man was born to a life of adventure it was Charles Herbert Lightoller – Hero of the Titanic, cowboy, gold prospector, decorated naval officer, amateur spy and a hero of Dunkirk.
Lightoller was born in Chorley in North West England in 1874 and just 13 years later he went to sea on sailing ships.
On only his second trip, he and his shipmates were shipwrecked on a desert island in the Indian Ocean.
Soon after that, his ship’s cargo of coal caught fire and he was promoted to second mate for his efforts in saving the vessel.
At the age of 19 he gained his mates’s certificate. An attack of malaria nearly killed him in 1898. It certainly killed his love of the sea, at least temporarily, and he joined thousands of other hopefuls on the Klondike Gold Rush.
But he left the Yukon empty-handed and kept body and soul together in Canada by signing on as a cowboy before working his passage back to England on a cattle boat.
The sea called him again and he joined the White Star line in 1900 after gaining his master’s ticket.
He served on several of White Star’s transatlantic liners before being selected as Second Officer for the maiden voyage of the Titanic in 1912.
After the ship struck the iceberg, Lightoller was in charge of the port side and began loading up the lifeboats with women and children. When some men tried to take over one of the boats he forced them out at gunpoint. His gun was empty.
Lightoller began trying to launch one of four collapsible boats and had just freed it when the ship lurched violently, hurling him into the water and trapping him against a ventilator grating. His life expectancy was measured in seconds but he was blasted back to the surface when the freezing sea water hit the hot boilers.
As he struggled to regain his wits, one of the giant funnels collapsed and smashed into the water just a few yards away. He swam to the lifeboat he had managed to free, which was floating upside down nearby. He helped about 30 other men join him on the craft and they stayed there balancing precariously for many hours until they were rescued by the Carpathia.
Lightoller distinguished himself as a Royal Navy officer in World War One. His exploits as captain of first a torpedo boat and then a destroyer included attacking a Zeppelin and sinking a U-boat by ramming her. He was awarded two Distinguished Service Crosses and promoted to lieutenant commander.
When peace came, Lightoller returned to the White Star line but it soon became clear that he and his fellow surviving officers from the Titanic where, for some perverse reason, being punished over the disaster. None of them was ever given a command. He quit the sea and he and his wife made a living out of property.
Then in July, 1939, two months before the Second World War broke out, Lightoller was asked by the Government to conduct a secret survey of the German coastline. He and his wife, Sylvia, did so in their motor cruiser, Sundowner, posing as a couple of holidaymakers.
Still the Navy had not finished with Lightoller. In May 1940, when the British army was trapped he, his son Roger and a young sea scout took Sundowner over the Channel with the amazing armada of “Little Ships” that was to produce the miracle of Dunkirk.
The little Sundowner dodged bombs and cannon fire as the Luftwaffe screamed overhead and returned with 130 souls crammed aboard.
Lightoller died, aged 78, in December 1952.
