TITANIC; SUPERSTARS AND SCAPEGOATS BOOK. JAMES MOODY...
"All of the horrors at sea seem to happen at night..."
James Paul Moody wrote those fateful words in a letter to his sister, just a few years before his appointment as Sixth Officer of the RMS Titanic.
Scarborough born James was just twenty- four years old at the time of the Titanic disaster. As a junior officer, he should by rights have left in one of the lifeboats to oversee the small, quietly bobbing armada as it evacuated the sagging ship.
Being all too conscious of just how few, trained seamen were left on board the fatally compromised Titanic, Moody instead stayed behind, labouring manically at the boats in a brave, doomed attempt to save every last life on board.
James Moody was last seen by surviving Second Officer, Charles Lightoller. He describes seeing Moody on the roof of the officer's quarters, attempting to cut the ropes on a brace of collapsible lifeboats that were kept in place there.
His body was never recovered. James Moody's sacrifice was needless and noble in the same, searingly poignant instance.
After writing my book, I gradually came to understand that the chapter on this incredibly selfless and heroic young man had affected me by far the deepest of them all...