TITANIC the Love Boat
By James Heinz
There is no better source for what happened to the Crosby family on the TITANIC than the sworn affidavit of Catherine Crosby, as given on May 17, 1912, to the US Senate Titanic Inquiry.
“Deponent further says that, on the 10th day of April, 1912, at Southampton, England, she embarked as a passenger on the steamer TITANIC for the port of New York; that her husband, Edward G. Crosby, and her daughter, Harriette H. Crosby, were with her on said steamer; that she and her husband occupied stateroom No. 22 and her daughter occupied stateroom No. 26, they being first class passengers on said steamer.”
According to deck plans found at www.encyclopeida-titanica.org, staterooms B22 and B26 were on the outside of the port side of the ship, across the hall from one another. Their ticket was number WE/P 5735 and cost 71 English pounds, the equivalent of 4,000 English pounds today, or over $5,000 today.
When you read the stories of the passengers of the TITANIC, you realize that the ship was a 1912 version of the 1970’s TV show, “The Love Boat”. Being a random collection of 3,327 human beings, TITANIC was actually a large floating soap opera. Some examples of her salacious seaborne sex scandals are:
In the confusion of the sinking, an adult man placed two male toddlers in the last lifeboat to leave TITANIC. The children were recovered, but had no identification, spoke no English, and could not identify themselves. Their pictures were published in newspapers worldwide, which resulted in their mother identifying them as the Navratil brothers, Michel (age 4) and Edmund (age 2). Their father had abducted them during a child custody dispute and boarded TITANIC using a stolen passport. Michel later claimed to remember the experience and his father’s last words to him. Michel was the last male survivor of TITANIC. He died in 2001, but not before viewing James Cameron’s 1997 film. Which he liked.
Billionaire Benjamin Guggenheim was returning from Paris after an extended stay with his mistress, who was on the ship with him in another cabin under an assumed name.
A Canadian hockey coach traveling with his mother and sister also had his mistress aboard in another cabin under an assumed name.
Actress Dorothy Gibson had divorced her husband to marry her married lover who refused to divorce his wife.
A retired opera singer struggled with the opium addiction, which would kill her in a year, while her husband had an affair with her maid.
And then there was the case of 43 year old William Harbeck, of Toledo OH. Harbeck’s body was recovered clutching a purse belonging to 22 year old French model Henriette Yrois. Inside the purse were Yrois’ personal belongings…and Harbeck’s wedding ring. It turned out that the couple were crossing the Atlantic pretending to be man and wife. Yrois did not survive and her body was not recovered. When Harbeck’s real wife showed up to claim the body, she was turned away because it was believed that Mrs. Harbeck had drowned. The real Mrs. Harbeck was so amused at this that she buried her husband in an unmarked grave.
And finally, the mother of all scandals. The world’s richest man at the time was John Jacob Astor IV. In 1909, he divorced his first wife after 18 years of marriage and promptly announced he would marry 18 year old Madeleine Force, who was 29 years younger. At that time strict social conventions made divorce among the upper classes unthinkable. Estranged couples might lead live apart and even lead separate lives but never, ever formally divorced.
As a result, most of Astor’s friends, family, and business associates stopped speaking to him. It took the couple two years to find a minister who would marry them. He had left America in 1909 to let the heat die down. His wife was apparently pregnant when they married, another scandal, and the Astor family was only returning so their child would be born in America.
So it should not come as a big surprise that Edward Crosby was concealing his own family’s sex scandal, one involving his daughter, Harriette.
Harriette was married in 1893 to Marvin Giles. They lived in Detroit, Michigan. The marriage failed and they divorced around 1900. There had no children.
In 1910 Harriette travelled to Paris to study music. At a party in Paris, Harriette met Edouard Bourdois. They became lovers and she became pregnant out of wedlock, a considerable scandal for upper class people of the time.
Harriette was joined by her father and mother and they travelled to England where, on February 11, 1912, she gave birth to a baby girl, Andree or Andree-Catherine. The family moved on to France and, while they prepared to travel home, Andree was left behind to be cared for by a nanny at a Paris boarding school. Edward Crosby’s cover story for the trip was that he was in Europe gathering ideas for a proposed new ship.
For an unmarried woman to carry her own baby aboard the first class section of a luxurious liner like the TITANIC would have caused a great scandal. If society could ostracize and drive into exile the world’s richest man for what was then regarded as sexual misconduct, what would they have done to the daughter of an obscure Milwaukee ship owner?
By an incredible coincidence, Charles Hays of the Grand Trunk Line was also a first class passenger returning from England aboard TITANIC. By an even more incredible coincidence, on the night of April 14, 1912, he remarked to Edward Crosby and another man over brandy and cigars in the liner’s smoking room that he was concerned about the contest between shipping lines to see who could cross the Atlantic the fastest. He concluded with this statement: “The time will come soon when this trend will be checked by some appalling disaster.”
Three hours later TITANIC struck the iceberg.
Catherine Crosby’s statement: “(On the night of April 14, 1912), I had not retired long when I was suddenly awakened by the thumping of the boat. The engines stopped suddenly. This was about 11.30. Capt. Crosby got up, dressed, and went out, and came back again and said to me, “You will lie there and drown,” and went out again. He said to my daughter, “The boat is badly damaged; but I think the watertight compartments will hold her up.” I then got up and dressed, and my daughter dressed, and followed my husband on deck, and she got up on deck, and the officer told her to go back and get on her life preserver and come back on deck as soon as possible. She reported that to me, and we both went out on deck where the officer told us to come. I think it was the first or second boat (lifeboat #7) that we got into. This was on the left-hand side where the officer told us to come, and it was the deck above the one on which our staterooms were located; our staterooms were located on the B deck, and we went to the A deck where the officer and lifeboat were.”
Although by her use of the term “This was on the left hand side”, Catherine Crosby seems to suggest that lifeboat #7 was on the port side, it was in fact on the starboard side. She may be referring to getting into the left hand (port) side of lifeboat #7, which was the side closest to the ship. For some reason, the Crosby family had crossed over from the port side to the starboard side.
Mrs. Crosby was also apparently confused as to the deck designations. Her family did stay on B deck, also known as the bridge deck. The deck above B deck was A deck, also known as the promenade deck. However, all the ship’s lifeboats were carried on the deck above A deck, known appropriately enough as the boat deck, which was the highest deck of the ship. Despite B deck being called the bridge deck, the bridge was actually located on the boat deck.
On this plan of the boat deck at https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-deckplans/boat-deck.html lifeboat #7 is the third “30’-0” Lifeboat” lifeboat on the starboard side back from the bow.
Catherine Crosby’s statement continued “We got into the lifeboat that was hanging over the rail alongside the deck; we got in and men and women, with their families, got in the boat with us; there was no discrimination between men and women. About 36 persons got in the boat with us. There were only two officers in the boat, and the rest were all first class passengers.“
Wikipedia states: “Boat 7 was the first to be launched, at about 12:40 a.m. It had a capacity of 65 persons but was lowered with only 28 aboard. The lifeboat was launched without its drain plug, causing water to leak into the bottom of the boat. As occupant Dorothy Gibson later put it, “this was remedied by volunteer contributions from the lingerie of the women and the garments of men.”. Catherine Crosby was so cold that the boat’s officer wrapped a sail around her to try to keep her warm.
Those aboard lifeboat #7 had to sit for hours with their feet soaking in ice-cold water until they were picked up by RMS CARPATHIA sometime after 4 am. Lifeboat #7 was the fourth lifeboat recovered by CARPATHIA. There were three male crew members and ten other men aboard. Some of the men felt that manual labor was beneath their station in life and refused to help row the boat.
At this point it appears from Catherine Crosby’s statement that the entire family had escaped. Her statement continues:
“My husband did not come back again after he left me, and I don’t know what became of him, except that his body was found and brought to Milwaukee and buried.” From her statement, it appears that Crosby left his family after they had followed him onto the boat deck.
Catherine Crosby did not know what happened to her husband. But I know what he was doing after he separated from his family. He was looking for Charles Hays.
The book “Unskinkable: The Full Story of RMS Titanic”, by Daniel Butler, tells us that at about 1:45 am Hays approached a friend of his who was helping to clear port side lifeboats 2 and 4, and told the friend: “…this ship is good for 8 hours left. I have just been getting this from one of the best old seamen, Mr. Crosby of Milwaukee.” Apparently after separating from his family, Crosby went looking for Hays.
Author Chris Kohl in his book “Titanic: The Great Lakes Connection”, says that Crosby was seen by people who knew him, possibly the Hays family, reassuring people that the ship would stay afloat for eight hours. Kohl describes Crosby’s last moments as: “Several survivors told Catherine Crosby that they had seen her husband struggling in the water just before the ship went down. One of the lifeboats passed him and attempted to pick him up, but he, seeing that the boat was already crowded, turned away. ‘Never mind me’ he told them, ‘I guess I’ll come out all right.’”
Like everyone else who survived, Catherine and Harriet Crosby would be forever haunted by the sounds the people in the water made during the 20 minutes or so that it took them to die: “I heard the terrible cries of the people that were on board when the boat went down, and heard repeated explosions, as though the boilers had exploded, and we then knew that the steamer had gone down, as her lights were out, and the cries of the people and the explosions were terrible.”
The next people to see Crosby were the crew of the steamer MACKAY BENNETT, which between April 20 and 26, 1915, recovered a total of 328 bodies from the TITANIC debris field. Body #269 was listed as:
“NO. 269. – MALE. – ESTIMATED AGE, 65. – HAIR, GREY.
CLOTHING – Green tweed suit and overcoat.
EFFECTS – $500; £80 in notes; £6 in gold in purse; 8s. 6d. in silver; pipe; memo book.
NAME – E. G. CROSBY, Milwaukee, Wis.”
The fact that his body was recovered tends to show that he did not drown, but rather died of hypothermia, since all but one of the recovered bodies were wearing life jackets and most appeared to have died of exposure. If true, this means that one of the voices that the Crosby women heard calling for help after the TITANIC sank was their husband and father.
As a first class passenger, Crosby was embalmed and placed in a coffin. Second class passengers were embalmed and wrapped in canvas. Third class passengers were buried at sea.
The exact same thing happened to all the families mentioned in this story. For the Astor, Crosby, and Hays families, the men died and their bodies were recovered, while their family members all survived. Perhaps Astor’s last words explain their demise: “We are safer here than in that little boat.”
Wikipedia says: “After [the Titanic] sank, the New York American broke the news on April 16 with a lead devoted almost entirely to John Jacob Astor; at the end it mentioned that 1800 others were also lost.”
Crosby’s body was taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia and delivered to Howard G. Kelley of the Grand Trunk Railway for transportation back to Milwaukee on May 3, 1912. Kelly also retrieved the body of his boss Charles Hays.
According to TITANIC: The Midwest Connection: “Out of respect for the late Captain Crosby, all operations in the Crosby transportation offices ceased for 5 minutes on Thursday morning, April 25, 1912, from 1030 to 1035. Even the Crosby ships steaming across the lake stopped their engines for five minutes. Memorial services were held around Lake Michigan: at the Grand Army of the Republic posts in Milwaukee, Muskegon, and Grand Haven, and on board the company’s flagship NYACK at Grand Haven, as well as aboard his namesake the passenger steamer E. G. CROSBY on April 28.”
Edward Crosby’s funeral was held aboard the NYACK in Muskegon harbor on May 7, 1912. He was then cremated at Forest Home Cemetery and his ashes were laid to rest within Fairview Mausoleum, at 6316 West Fairview Avenue, Milwaukee.
Enyclopedia-Titanica shows that Crosby’s will was probated on April 30, 1912, and consisted of: “1,899 shares of the capital stock of the Crosby Transportation Company, value $100 each…which shares of stock we find of NO MARKET VALUE… and that the property of said corporation consists of the following steamers:
Steamer NYACK
Steamer E. G. CROSBY
Steamer CONESTOGA
Steamer MAY GRAHAM
-all steam vessels duly licensed and enrolled and hailing from the port of Milwaukee.” The estate was found to have liabilities totaling $181,053 and cash assets of $12,949. Although Catherine Crosby told the Senate committee that they lived at 474 Marshall Street in Milwaukee, the will specifically states that Crosby owned no real estate.
According to Encyclopedia Titanica, Harriette and Catherine returned to Paris to claim Andree in May 1913. Catherine Crosby continued to live in Milwaukee until her death of pneumonia on July 29, 1920. She was cremated and interred with her husband.
Frederick Crosby succeeded his father as president of the Crosby Transportation Company. He sold the firm in 1927, became an insurance executive and moved to Rhode Island where he died in 1966. He was cremated and his ashes were interred with those of his wife in Summit Cemetery in Waukesha County.
Although there is a meme on the internet that Crosby did not want to buy lifeboats for his own vessels, and supposedly died because he could not find a lifeboat, I could find no evidence to support this.
If Crosby did stint on buying lifeboats for his Great Lakes ships, his death changed company policy. Titanic: The Midwest Connection says that it was reported that a proposed new ship that Crosby had contemplated building “would carry lifeboats and life rafts…to accommodate 520 persons although the vessel will only have accommodation for 476 passengers and crew.”
But the Crosby family still had one more voyage to make together.
Photo at the top of page: CONESTOGA
PHOTO CREDIT: Great Lakes Marine Collection of the Milwaukee Public Library and Wisconsin Marine Historical Society
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James Heinz is the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society’s acquisitions director. He became interested in maritime history as a kid watching Jacques Cousteau’s adventures on TV. He was a Great Lakes wreck diver until three episodes of the bends forced him to retire from diving. He was a University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee police officer for thirty years. He regularly flies either a Cessna 152 or 172.
