My thanks to Dougie Gray for alerting me to this amazing story on Facebook. The article had appeared in the Acton Gazette on 11th July 1958:
‘A little grey-haired woman of 73, who survived the Titanic disaster, this week broke a 46-year silence when she spoke to me about the night 1,500 people perished in mid-Atlantic.
For Mrs Ellen Barber of 113, Wendell Road, Shepherd’s Bush, has never liked to talk about “that night.”
Until this week she was one of the last living survivors not to have given her version of the greatest true saga of the sea in history.
Now she has spoken. Simply, but movingly, telling of how this horror appeared through the eyes of a then 27-year-old lady’s maid.
In 1912, Mrs Barber was working for the rich Cavendish family in Kent. Then, as now, she made many of the dresses the people around her wore.
She went wherever her lady went. And that was how she came to be aboard the Titanic.
Mrs Cavendish had twice taken Mrs Barber to America with her when she was visiting relatives.
It was by chance that the Cavendish family managed to buy tickets for the Titanic’s maiden voyage.
There was rejoicing in the home which, in little over a fortnight’s time, would be plunged into deep mourning.
The morning of Wednesday, April 10, 1912, dawned fair over the hop fields of Kent as the family set out for Southampton.
At the quayside there was a band playing to welcome the passengers. The whole town was en fete. Flags fluttered, the crowds jostled and cheered good-naturedly to watch the ship set sail that would never return!
Life aboard the biggest luxury liner to set sail across the Atlantic was one big happy party. Mrs Barber takes up the story on that fateful Sunday:
“I got up at the usual time for breakfast. I had a cabin to myself below deck at the front of the ship. I should have shared it with another maid, but her mistress wanted her nearer to the promenade deck.”
“It was a nice day, and after breakfast I went up on board to sit in the deckchair and get on with some needlework. Next to me sat the millionaire, Mr Jacob Astor.”
All that afternoon was spent in reading and sitting in a deckchair in the warm Atlantic breeze. And Mrs Barber takes up the story again after supper that night:
“I remember Mrs Cavendish telling me there was a service in the lounge if I wanted to go to it. I did not go.”
“At about 10.30 or 11 o’clock, I went to bed after seeing that Mrs Cavendish did not want anything else. But she was quite happy, and I went down to my cabin.”
“I did not read for long in bed and soon switched the light out. I always slept well aboard ship, and this night was no exception. It took a lot to wake me in those days.”
In fact, it took an iceberg hitting the underneath of the Titanic to wake Ellen, and even then, she turned over and went to sleep again!
“I just heard a bump,” she said, “It made me stir momentarily, but that was all. I thought no more about it.”
“Then I heard a lot of noise in the passage outside, so I thought I’d better go and investigate. I went up to Mrs Cavendish and she said it was nothing. I went back to bed.”
“Then I heard some people shouting and running about in the passage. This time I knew there was something wrong, and I got up to go and see for myself.” What Mrs Barber saw she thinks was not seen by any survivor.
“The water was coming up the stairs leading down into the hold. I turned to a steward and pointed to the water and said there must be something wrong.”
“He took hold of me and shook me. To this day I don’t quite know why he did that. I suppose it was either because he was frightened or that he thought I was going crazy.”
“I then went up to Mrs Cavendish again. I told her I wished she would get up as I thought there was really something wrong!”
That was more than anyone else on-board must have thought, for everyone had said the Titanic was unsinkable and that nothing could go wrong with it.
“The next thing,” Mrs Barber continued, “was that we got our lifebelts on and the lifeboats were made ready. Mrs Cavendish dressed, and together with Mr Cavendish we went up to the boat deck.”
“I had heard during the voyage that much of the Titanic was still not finished, and I saw as the chaos mounted, several things go wrong that could have saved lives.”
“The main thing was that the watertight doors would not close. Most of these fittings were to be finished in New York or back in England. They should have been done before”
Mrs Barber was one of the lucky ones. Together with Mrs Cavendish she climbed into lifeboat No.6 with 28 other people. Even this lifeboat was not ready to meet such an emergency.
“The plug in the bottom was out. This was only noticed just as it was about to be dropped into the water. If this had happened, we would all have drowned. Luckily, someone shouted at the last minute, and it was found and put in.”
“Mrs Cavendish, who took an oar herself, sat throughout the whole of the night with her foot over the plug so that it would not come out. Also in boat number six was the wife of a millionaire, Mrs Rothschild.
The order was: “Women and children first.” Mr Cavendish having helped the ladies into the boat, stood on the deck and waved goodbye. He was never seen again. He was one of the 1,500 who drowned that night as the Titanic pivoted high into the air and plunged beneath the sea in a last snort of anger.
There was not much talked about in boat number six. “We were all too shocked to say anything,” remembers Mrs Barber. “I even hid my eyes when they told me the ship was going down behind us. I was too scared.”
“The only way I knew it had gone was because until then the sea had been lit up by its thousand and one lights. Suddenly, everything was black. I knew that for many the end had come!”
“We weren’t helped by the naval man in our boat saying that the nearest land was Newfoundland, and that was 120 miles away!”
“Dawn had broken before we sighted another ship. We were lucky that the sea was calm, because if we had been washed away and left in the Atlantic for a few days we would all have died. There was no water or food in the boat, as there should have been.”
“Finally, we were picked up by the Carpathian. A good rest, and we were in America. We weren’t met by any of the Press as we should have been today. We were left to go sadly alone on our way.”
A few weeks later, Mrs Barber returned to England. Only once more she crossed the Atlantic, and then it was on the world-beating Mauritania. Since then, she has never made another sea voyage.
“It’s not that I’m frightened,” she admitted. “It’s just that I don’t fancy it anymore. Mrs Cavendish has written to me since and said that she did not think I would like New York anymore now. Too much traffic.”
She has only one ambition now, this little old lady who is part of history: “I want to return to Kent, if possible, otherwise I’m quite happy.”
What a remarkable personal account of that tragic voyage!
Steve Russell
(Thanks once again to Dougie and also to Colin Woodley for sending me the newspaper article)
She can’t be 113 as the ship sank 113 years ago have I missed something?
113 Wendell Road was her address….