The RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912. The largest ocean liner ever built, the Titanic was four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, with over 2,200 people on board when she struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. April 14. She sank two hours and forty minutes later resulting in the deaths of up to 1,635 people, making it one of the deadliest maritime disasters in history.
Seven warnings of sea ice were sent to the ship’s wireless operators leading up to April 14, Titanic‘s wireless operators received seven warnings of sea ice leading up to the night of 14 April, but was travelling at a speed of about 22 knots when her lookouts sighted the iceberg. Unable to turn quickly enough to avoid colliding into the iceberg, the ship suffered a glancing blow that buckled the steel plates covering her starboard side and opened six of her sixteen compartments to the sea. The Titanic had been designed to stay afloat with up to four of her forward compartments flooded, and the crew used distress rockets and wireless messages to attract rescue vessels as the passengers were put into lifeboats.
You never know who the courageous will turn out to be in a disaster. As the Titanic sank, a countess grabbed an oar in a lifeboat and started rowing. The sailor beside her would later say she saved them all.
Yes, within hours, the “unsinkable” ship would slip beneath the icy waters of the North Atlantic taking over fifteen hundred souls with it. In the chaos of evacuation, social class meant everything and nothing simultaneously. First-class passengers received priority access to lifeboats. But in those lifeboats, drifting in freezing darkness far from the dying ship, titles and wealth couldn’t row an oar or calm a panicked heart.
Lifeboat 8 was lowered at 1:10 AM with twenty-eight people aboard, mostly women and children from first and second class. One of those women was Lucy Noël Martha Leslie, Countess of Rothes. She was thirty-three years old. Traveling with her cousin Gladys Cherry and maid Roberta Maioni. Returning to Britain after spending time in America.
She had every reason to huddle in the bottom of that lifeboat, wrapped in blankets, waiting to be rescued like the titled lady she was. Instead, she grabbed an oar.
The boat’s commander was Able Seaman Thomas Jones, one of only two crew members assigned to the lifeboat. He was responsible for navigating and managing twenty-eight terrified people in a small wooden boat in the middle of the freezing Atlantic at night.
When Countess of Rothes asked what she could do to help, Jones later recalled that he could barely believe what happened next. This aristocratic woman took a position at the oars beside him and began rowing. Not delicately — not symbolically — she actually rowed for hours, through the darkness and cold.
But it wasn’t just the physical labor that made the difference. It was the Countess’ voice, her presence, and her refusal to let fear consume the lifeboat.
You never know what unknown heroes surround us. For example, the Bible is full of unsung heroes of the faith. Perhaps this Countess was one such hero to serve her purpose in saving many lives.
“The ultimate judge of a person’s character is their ability to exceed expectations with little recognition from others or when praise is not given. The Bible is filled with unsung heroes of the faith whose names may be obscure to us but to God they are His heroes of the faith.” (Anonymous)
