One of the most TERRIFYING moments on the Titanic
A month after the Titanic sank, the passing liner RMS Oceanic came upon a lifeboat drifting nearly 200 miles from the wreck site. It was Collapsible Lifeboat A, one of the last boats launched from the doomed ship.
Aboard the lifeboat were three badly decomposed bodies. One was identified as Thomson Beattie, a second-class passenger from Omagh, Ireland, who had been traveling to New York in hopes of building a new life. Beattie was a widower and a successful businessman, known for his quiet, reserved nature.
On the night of April 15, 1912, Beattie made it to Collapsible Lifeboat A, one of the final boats launched as Titanic sank. The canvas-sided boat drifted partially flooded, offering little protection from the cold. Beattie survived the initial sinking but died of exposure during the night. When Fifth Officer Harold Lowe later cleared the lifeboat, Beattie’s body, along with two crewmen believed to be from the boiler rooms, was left behind.
All three were buried at sea with full ceremony. In a haunting coincidence, Thomson Beattie was buried on his mother’s birthday, near the same region of ocean where she herself had been born decades earlier while crossing to Canada.
Though lost far from home, Thomson Beattie is remembered today by a memorial stone in the family plot in Fergus, Ontario, his story forever tied to one of the Titanic’s most haunting lifeboats.
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