“As the Titanic set off on her maiden voyage carrying every class of man woman and child for every conceivable reason, she cut a fine figure in the water with her impressive lines, and her four giant funnels proclaiming the grandeur of this newest addition to the White Star Line. It had been decided that even though only three funnels were needed a fourth would provide the symmetry and add that touch of splendour that this great ship deserved, so a fourth was added to the design but not to the boiler system. Acting as a ventilation shaft to the galleys below it was at the foot of this fourth dummy funnel that the first class passengers’ dogs were housed in luxury kennels.”
It is not generally known that dogs were part of the Titanic passenger list, and no records have been kept of them other than the accounts of survivors. These include a certain amount of myth and legend that have built up around the demise of this icon of the sea. Various reports seem to agree that there were 12 dogs on board on that fateful trip, three that had boarded at Southampton and the rest who joined the ship at Cherbourg.
There are stories of 50 year old Ann Isham refusing to get into the lifeboat as she was not allowed to take her Great Dane in with her, and more than one report tells of her body discovered days later floating with her arms around her dead dog, but once again this has never been substantiated.
Among those we know of are a Pomeranian called Lady that belonged to Miss Margaret Hays and a Pekenese called Sun Yat Sen belonging to Henry J Harper, who together with another Pomeranian belonging to Mrs Elizabeth Barrett Rothschild were the only three dogs known to have survived the disaster, tucked safely in their owners arms in one of the lifeboats. In addition to these lucky three were a French bulldog, two Airedales a Chow and a Great Dane that we know of, and we are told that a dog show had been arranged to enable the passengers to show off their pampered pooches the following Monday but fate had other ideas.
A crew member was assigned to walk the dogs regularly and this provided an entertaining diversion for dogs and humans alike, as they were paraded along the deck to the delight of the passengers. Some of the smaller breeds shared their owner’s cabin and it is this very fact that save the three on that fateful night, as they were secreted under coats and blankets and stowed unnoticed in valuable lifeboat space. It is said that when it was realised that the ship would go down some kindly passenger took it upon themselves to release the dogs from their kennels and although this cannot be proven it is good to think it might have been the case.
However, the biggest myth of them all is the tale of Rigel the huge black Newfoundland who was said to belong to William McMaster Murdoch first officer of the Titanic. After the collision and the decision to evacuate Murdoch took charge of the starboard evacuation where, it is said, he was hit by a huge wave and never seen again, but the story goes that Rigel entered the water and searched for his master, swimming around in the icy water for hours on end, until finally accepting his loss and swimming alongside lifeboat 4. It was reported that when this lifeboat drifted perilously close to the rescue boat Carpathia it was his barking that alerted the crew of their presence and thus prevented them from being run over.
Rigel was hailed a hero in the papers of the day, and it was said that he was adopted by the Carpathia’s Master of Arms and taken to his home in Scotland. None of this is fact and many believe it was fabricated by an enterprising journalist of the time to boost sales and keep the story running, but Rigel is mentioned in so many accounts that it is just possible that there is a grain of truth in the story.
One fact that is undisputed is that several of the passengers that did survive and yet lose their dogs actually claimed for them under insurance policies which counted them as valuables and paid out without question. Which just goes to prove that pet insurance is not new!
Faced with the tragic and obscene loss of life on the Titanic, and more especially the high proportion of third class passengers that perished, a few dead dogs seems almost irrelevant, and the fact that their owners were paid compensation for their loss is outrageous when widows and children were left to struggle without their breadwinner, but nevertheless these hapless creatures should not be forgotten as they too were part of the Titanic Story and victims of the Night to Remember.
