#jack thayer

[falling-through-a-trapdoor]

“What do you do for fun?” I like reading about Macabre tragedies in history and becoming emotionally attached to those who were lost.. you know normal stuff :)

[felicitykings]

Jack! Jack Thayer! You didn't get off on a boat? Apparently not.

TITANIC (2012) ↳ Episode 4

[kamen-rider-fanatic]

Today is Tuesday, April 15th 2025, For a lot of us it seems like an average day. We get up, Say good bye to our loved ones, so go to work, others off to meet with friends, others just to be alone. But 113 years ago, early in the morning, out on the cold North Atlantic ocean, Many people we're unknowingly about to become apart of history. 113 years ago, it was Monday, April 15th 1912. The final day of Titanic's maiden voyage. But the first day of her voyage into eternity. At 2:20am, she slipped beneath the surface of the waves, not to be seen again by human eyes, for 73 long years. And despite all that, she held strong in the memories and hearts of many. 10 years from today, 20, 50, 100, we will always look back on this day, and remember.

"There was peace and the world had an even tenor to it's way. Nothing was revealed in the morning the trend of which was not known the night before. It seems to me that the disaster about to occur was the event that not only made the world rub it's eyes and awake but woke it with a start keeping it moving at a rapidly accelerating pace ever since with less and less peace, satisfaction and happiness. To my mind the world of today awoke April 15th, 1912." -Jack B. Thayer, Titanic Survivor

"Many brave things were done that night but none more brave than by those few men playing minute after minute as the ship settled quietly lower and lower in the sea…the music they played serving alike as their own immortal requiem and their right to be recorded on the rulls of undying fame." -Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor

"Striking the water was like a thousand knives being driven into one's body. The temperature was 28 degrees, four degrees below freezing." -Charles Lightoller, Second Officer aboard Titanic

"The sounds of people drowning are something that I can not describe to you, and neither can anyone else. Its the most dreadful sound and there is a terrible silence that follows it." -Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor

"When anyone asks how I can best describe my experience in nearly 40 years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog the like, but in all my experience, I have never been in any accident of any sort worth speaking about. …… I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort. You see, I am not very good material for a story" -Captain Smith, Commander of Titanic

"Come at once, we have struck a berg, it's a CQD old man." -Jack Phillips, Wireless Operator

"And it wasn't until we were in the lifeboat and rowing away, it wasn't until then I realized that ship's going to sink. It hits me there." -Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor

[if-not-now-tell-me-when]

Random Titanic things I sit and ruminate on on a Saturday morning:

Towards the end of the film, old Rose says that "there were twenty boats floating nearby, and only one came back. One. Six were saved from the water, myself included. Six, out of 1500." Which sure makes for a good dramatic moment, as well as a searing indictment of the very real fact that Titanic's 700 survivors sat in underfilled lifeboats and listened to hundreds of their fellow passengers freeze to death. And the majority did nothing to help them.

But! As with many things from Cameron's film, it's heavily inaccurate. It is impossible to gain an exact count of how many survivors were rescued after the ship went down. The most accurate estimates range from 44 to 49.

Collapsibles A and B, both of which had floated off the sinking Titanic before they could be properly launched, became havens for a small number of survivors. Collapsible A likely saved 10 survivors, who spent the night standing or crouching in the swamped and half-submerged boat. Collapsible B floated off the ship upside down, and became a raft that about 30 survivors spent the night balancing on, including some of our most well known figures like Officer Lightoller, Colonel Gracie, Harold Bride and Jack Thayer. The survivors of A were picked up by lifeboat 14, and B's survivors were distributed between boats 4 and 12.

Lifeboats 4 and 14 both returned to the wreck site to search for survivors. Boat 4 likely picked up eight survivors, six of whom lived through the night. 14 picked up three, along with the survivors of Collapsible A.

And Collapsible D, the last boat successfully launched from the Titanic, was close enough to the site of the sinking to pick up one swimmer, Mr. Frederick Hoyt.

[macaronis-telegraph]

Let me tell you about Jack Thayer.

John “Jack” Borland Thayer III, at the age of 17, was heading home to Philadelphia via New York along with his mother and father¹ as first class passengers on the ill-fated maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic. Upon the collision with the iceberg and the loading of the lifeboats, Jack went to investigate and quickly found himself separated from his parents. He assumed they had both managed to board a lifeboat, and he was half correct - his mother, Marian Thayer, hade made it onto lifeboat 4.

Not young enough to find easy refuge on a lifeboat, Jack spent those final moments onboard the Titanic with Milton C. Long, who was in a similar state of separation from his family. Together they worked up the courage to jump into the water, for hopes of swimming out to an already launched lifeboat, but they hesitated, Jack later saying that he feared being stunned upon hitting the water, due to the below freezing temperatures. Eventually, though, when the boat deck was only an estimated ten yards above the water, they finally took the plunge.

“Long and myself stood by each other and jumped on the rail. We did not give each other any messages for home because neither of us thought we would ever get back.” ²

Milton jumped first. Jack followed, but would never see Milton again. Jack’s account of his time in the water is as follows:

“I jumped out, feet first, went down, and as I came up I was pushed away from the ship by some force. I was sucked down again, and as I came up I was pushed out again and twisted around by a large wave,³ coming up in the midst of a great deal of small wreckage. My hand touched the canvas fender of an overturned lifeboat. I looked up and saw some men on the top. One of them helped me up. In a short time the bottom was covered with twenty-five or thirty men. The assistant wireless operator⁴ was right next to me holding on to me and kneeling in the water.” ²

This upside-down lifeboat was the Engelhardt boat B, one of the Titanic’s four “collapsible” lifeboats. B in particular had been swept off of the deck before it could be properly launched, landing itself in the water bottom-side up. This boat carried 30 men through the cold night, only three of them passengers, the rest crew, being led by 2nd Officer Charles Lightoller. It was a constant battle of balance, desperate not to release the small pocked of air trapped under the boat that kept it afloat. By daybreak, they were all standing, the lifeboat almost fully submerged, feet freezing.⁵

With daylight, they were finally able to locate the other lifeboats, and with a whistle easily identified as that of an officer’s, Lightoller directed two lifeboats to meet their overturned one, so the exhausted men could all offload onto drier and safer wood. Of these two boats, one of them was lifeboat 4, holding Jack’s mother.

One can hardly imagine what it must’ve been like for Marian Thayer, the crushing emotions she may have felt in those moments. To take the sea in a lifeboat, knowing both her husband and son were still on board the doomed ship. To see that ship disappear under the surf, and to hear the screams until they too vanished like the liner. To know that the worst has happened to her family, but maybe, that dangerous inkling of hope, or more so, denial, that many survivors had felt, telling themselves that their loved ones must be on one of the other lifeboats - they just must. And then as the dawn brakes, distraught and cold, she doesn’t even recognize a familiar face on that overturned boat they had gone to relieve. Jack, too, did not notice his mother at this time, likely hypothermic⁶ from his plunge the night before. It wasn’t until they were safe onboard the RMS Carpathia that the two were truly reunited, and as I said before, one can only imagine the outpouring of emotions that must have caused. Not to mention, that there was still someone missing from this reunion. Jack’s father had not survived.

While Jack and his mother’s survival might call for a relatively happy ending, I’m afraid that can’t be the case. After graduating from college, becoming a successful banker, and settling down with a family, Jack still found himself extremely haunted by that fateful night in 1912. In 1940, he wrote about his experiences to try and expel the troubles from his mind, but it seemed that it was not enough. Then, with the outbreak of WWII, both of his two sons joined the services, and one did not return. Not long after, Jack Thayer followed his late son, taking his own life on September 18th, 1945.

...

Notes:

1. Jack’s father was John B. Thayer II, vice president of the Pennsylvania railroad.

2. These quotations are as written in The Truth About the Titanic, written by Col. Archibald Gracie. Gracie was one of the other two passengers (all three of which were first class) who found refuge on the Engelhardt boat B.

3. This large wave was likely caused by the falling of one of the Titanic’s funnels. This wave also accounts for how Jack jumped off of the starboard side, but ended up on port. 

4. Refers to Harold S. Bride, the junior wireless operator, working for the Marconi Company. 

5. While Jack came out of the whole ordeal uninjured, other occupants of lifeboat B did not fare as well. Bride, for example, suffered frostbitten and broken feet.

6. Jack having hypothermia is entirely my own speculation. I have not seen any material stating that Jack suffered any medical conditions from that night, nor am I a doctor, but it does not seem unlikely to me due to the temperature, him being soaked through, and the fact that he did not register the presence of his own mother.  

[hothistoryconfessions]

[honeybeelullaby]

There was peace. The world had an even tenor to its way. Nothing was revealed in the morning the trend of which was not known the night before. It seems to me that the disaster about to occur was the event that not only made the world rub its eyes and awake, but woke it with a start, keeping it moving at a rapidly increasing pace ever since, with less and less peace, satisfaction and happiness. To my mind the world of today awoke April 15th, 1912.

John Borland “Jack” Thayer, Titanic survivor (1894 - 1945)

[tamayokny]

Everything seemed perfectly normal--yet not quite. In his cabin on B Deck, 17-year-old Jack Thayer had just called good night to his father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. John B. Thayer of Philadelphia. The Thayers had connecting staterooms, an arrangement compatible with Mr. Thayer’s position as Second Vice President of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Now, as young Jack stood buttoning his pajama jacket, the steady hum of the breeze through his half-opened porthole suddenly stopped.

A Night to Remember by Walter Lord