Harold Lowe

Lowe was born in Eglwys Rhos, Caernarfonshire, Wales, on 21 November 1882, in his grandfather's home "Bryn Lupus." He was the third of seven children born to George Edward Lowe and Emma Harriet Quick. Though he spent most of his shore life in Wales, Lowe was English by ancestry. He spoke Welsh fluently but when he spoke English, he did not speak with a Welsh accent. The family eventually settled in Barmouth, Merionethshire, a seaside town where Lowe and his brothers became enthusiastic boatsmen.^[1] He spent most of his childhood in Penrallt House.^[2]

When Lowe was 13, his older brother George Jr. died in a boating accident. George, aged 17, had disappeared and his body was later found floating Aberamffra Bay; it is speculated that he went to secure the punt he often sailed in and accidentally fell into the water, could not swim, and subsequently drowned. Lowe himself had a similar accident a year later; he took his father's punt out on the Aberamffra Bay during bad weather and it capsized. However, unlike his brother, Harold could swim and managed to make his way back to shore.^[1]

After the death of his brother, Lowe became the eldest son in the family. His father, in turn, had ambitions for him to be apprenticed to a successful Liverpool businessman, but Lowe was determined to go to sea and wanted to be paid for his work. As a result, he ran away from his home and began his career at sea as a ship's boy aboard the Welsh coastal schooners as he worked to attain his certifications. Eventually, he joined the Merchant Navy, serving first in the Far East with the Blue Funnel Line and then along the West African Coast with the Elder Dempster Line. Around this time, he also joined the Royal Naval Reserve as a rating.

In 1906, he passed his certification and gained his second mate's certificate, then in 1908, he attained his first mate's certificate. By the time he started with the White Star Line, in 1911, he had gained his Master's certificate and, in his own words, "experience with pretty well every ship afloat – the different classes of ships afloat – from the schooner to the square-rigged sailing vessel, and from that to steamships, and of all sizes." He joined the White Star Line 1911, and served as third officer on the SS Tropic and SS Belgic before he was transferred to the RMS Titanic as her Fifth Officer.^[3]

Like the ship's other junior officers, Lowe reported to White Star's Liverpool offices at nine o'clock in the morning on 26 March 1912, and travelled to board Titanic at Belfast the following day. Despite his numerous years at sea, the maiden voyage of the Titanic was to be his first transatlantic crossing. He later described himself as being a "stranger to everyone aboard" the Titanic as he had never worked with the other officers before, and they had all travelled the Atlantic before at least once while he had not.^[3]

In Belfast, Lowe and Sixth Officer James Moody were tasked with inspecting the starboard lifeboats and their equipment. On sailing day, 10 April, Lowe and Moody were each put in charge of two starboard lifeboats which were lowered and rowed around the dock to satisfy the Board of Trade officials that Titanic met safety regulations.

White Star operated a watchkeeping system whereby the three senior officers worked the same four-hour watches in every 12-hour period while the junior officers stood the traditional system of four hours on/four hours off with the rest of the Titanic's deck department. This was divided into two watches, designated Port and Starboard, and pairs of junior officers were assigned to each watch. Lowe was assigned to the Port Watch, standing duties with Third Officer Herbert Pitman. During delivery trip from Belfast to Southampton, and then again during departure from Southampton, Lowe's departure position was in the wheelhouse, in charge of the bridge telephones; his duty was relaying messages and commands from the captain and harbour pilot to his fellow officers stationed at their respective departure positions.

The sinking

On 14 April 1912, the night of the sinking, Lowe had been relieved at 8.00 PM by Sixth Officer Moody. He was asleep in his quarters when the ship hit the iceberg at 11.40 PM and remained asleep through the collision as well as Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall's attempt to awake him. As he explained later, "We officers do not have any too much sleep, and therefore when we sleep, we die." Eventually Lowe finally awakened to passengers outside the officer's quarters who were wearing lifebelts. He realised the seriousness of the situation, and immediately got dressed and went to work; it is not fully known when he got his pistol (described by Lowe as a "Browning Automatic"), it may have been as he was dressing or it may have been later during the 15 minutes his whereabouts were unknown, which may have been the time he went back to his room.^[3]

Third Officer Pitman charged him with loading lifeboat No. 5. During this time, he ordered the White Star Line chairman J. Bruce Ismay away from the boat, telling him to "...get to hell out of that...".^[4] Around 1.30 AM, Lowe engaged in a conversation with Sixth Officer Moody: While launching lifeboats Nos. 14 and 16 on the port side of the ship, the two junior officers felt that this group of boats needed to have an officer with them. Moody insisted that Lowe should get onto lifeboat No. 14 and that he would get on another lifeboat. By the time lifeboat 14 was being launched, things were beginning to get precarious on the boat deck as the majority of passengers began to realise that the giant ship was foundering. As lifeboat 14 was descending, Lowe used his pistol to fire three shots along the side of the ship in order to frighten away a group of men attempting to leap into the lifeboat. During the Senate Inquiries, Lowe was emphatic in stating that he had not hit anyone, saying that he had looked where he was shooting.^[5]

After reaching the water, Lowe ordered his lifeboat to be rowed about 150 yd (140 m) away from Titanic. When the ship foundered at around 2.20 AM, Lowe had begun to gather several lifeboats together. He wished to return to pick up survivors and began to redistribute survivors in the group of lifeboats he had gathered into a flotilla, in order to ready one lifeboat for a search for additional survivors.

In charge of lifeboat No. 14, he took back to the site of the sinking a hand-picked team of crewmen to assist in the rescue operation. They waited until the swimmers had thinned out before returning so that they would not be swamped and capsized by their numbers. It was only well-into the operation that they realised this had been unnecessary; the water being simply too cold for anyone to survive any great amount of time, let alone have the energy to swamp a lifeboat.^[3] In total there were four men taken out of the water, one of whom died later that night. Many more voices could be heard in the darkness, but locating them proved to be a largely fruitless task, despite the best efforts of the crew. Lowe's is noted as being the only lifeboat to return to the wreck site for survivors, and one of two lifeboats to pick up survivors from the water, the other being Lifeboat No. 4, which had been near enough to the foundering ship to allow people to swim up to it.

Lowe had his crew of men raise the mast (he was the only officer to make use of the mast and sail in each lifeboat); using a breeze that had sprung up, he continued on to take Collapsible D, which was having difficulty in rowing due to lack of seamen, in tow. He later spotted the water-filled Collapsible A and rescued around 12 survivors from there into Boat 14.^[6] Lowe and his group of lifeboats were picked up the next morning by the RMS Carpathia. An image taken by a passenger on the Carpathia clearly shows Lowe at the tiller of lifeboat 14 as they approach rescue.^[7] He remained aboard his lifeboat long enough to ship the mast and make certain everything was properly stowed before boarding the ship.

Inquiries

The Titanic survivors arrived at Pier 54 in New York on 18 April. Immediately upon landing Lowe was served with a warrant which called upon him to testify in the American inquiry into the sinking. His testimony in the American Senate Hearing was direct and the exchanges between him and Senator William Alden Smith were noted to have been antagonistic; when Smith asked him what an iceberg was composed of, Lowe responded, "Ice, I suppose, sir."^[8] According to Titanic's Second Officer Charles Lightoller, the surviving officers considered the inquiry 'a farce' and were highly resentful owing to perceived poor treatment by the American authorities. They were especially bemused that an enquiry into the sinking of a ship was being conducted by men with no knowledge of sailing, or the sea.^[9] Along with other surviving officers, Lowe boarded the RMS Adriatic on 2 May to return to England, where he went on to participate in the corresponding British inquiry.

Upon his return to his home town of Barmouth 1,300 people attended a reception held in his honor at the Picture Pavilion. He was presented with a commemorative gold watch, with the inscription "Presented to Harold Godfrey Lowe, 5th officer R.M.S. Titanic by his friends in Barmouth and elsewhere in recognition and appreciation of his gallant services at the foundering of the Titanic 15th April 1912." He was also presented with a set of nautical equipment from survivor Renee Harris inscribed with "To Harold Godfrey Lowe, 5th Officer RMS Titanic. "The real hero of the Titanic." With deepest gratitude from Mrs Henry B. Harris of New York."^[1]

After the inquiries, Lowe returned to sea aboard the SS Medic as the ship's third officer in July 1912. His presence on the ship attracted the attention of the local Australian newspapers but Lowe refused to discuss the disaster any further, remarking that he was "so sick of it all."^[1]

In June 1913, he received commission as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve and was promoted to Lieutanent in April 1914.^[1]

During the First World War, Lowe was initially was aboard HMS Donegal which was part of the Grand Fleet; the ship narrowly missed action in the Battle of Jutland, being sent on detached service in the mid-Atlantic just before the naval engagement. He was soon transferred to HMS Suffolk, and saw service in Vladivostok in the Siberian intervention during the Russian Civil War.^[1]

After the war he returned to serve with International Mercantile Marine ships and the White Star Line. Though he reached the rank of senior officer, like his fellow surviving Titanic officers, Lowe never held a command of his own.

In 1923, Lowe was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He was released from the Naval Reserves in 1927 with the rank of Commander, having received the Reserve Decoration. He continued working for the White Star Line till his retirement in 1931.^[1][10]

From 1932 to 1938, Lowe was a member of the Conwy Borough Council, representing the Deganwy Ward; he was elected for two terms unopposed before retiring. He also turned down an offer to run for mayor. With the outbreak of World War II, Lowe served as an Air Raid Warden and volunteered his home as a sector post, until a stroke in 1942 obliged him to take to a wheelchair and forced him to abandon his wartime role.^[1]

In September 1913, Lowe married Ellen Marion "Nellie" Whitehouse and began using Colwyn Bay, where his wife's family lived, as his shore address. They had two children together: Florence Josephine Edge (known as "Josie") who was born in 1914 and died in 1996; and Harold William George who was born in 1918 while Lowe was serving in World War I and died in 1999. Lowe's grandson, John Harold Lowe, son of Josie, was a captain in the British Merchant Navy.^[11]

He was initiated as a freemason in the St. Trillo Lodge in 1921.

After retiring from seafaring in 1931, Lowe moved his family from Colwyn Bay to Deganwy. He served as a churchwarden, and spent time fishing on his motorboat Pirate on River Conwy. He was also an enthusiastic shooter, and was considered a great shot, once even being invited to participate at the King's Prize in the annual Imperial Meeting competition.^[1]

Lowe was a life-long teetotaler, a life choice likely influenced because of his father's alcoholism. An allegation made during the U.S. inquiries that he was drunk during the night the Titanic sank made him noticeably angry and upset; he had to be persuaded to not take the matter any further after vehemently denying it, saying, "I am an abstainer... I say it, sir, without fear of contradiction."^[1]

Lowe died of hypertension and chronic malaria on 12 May 1944 at the age of 61; he was the first of the surviving officers of the Titanic to die. His body was buried at St. Trillo's Churchyard in Rhos-on-Sea in North Wales.

Lowe is the subject of a biography by author Inger Sheil titled Titanic Valour: The Life of Fifth Officer Harold Lowe. In this biography, the author gathers multiple glowing references from both passengers and crew alike, many of whom credit him with having saved their lives. The author notes not just the volume of feeling shown towards Lowe by the people he helped, but also 'a surprising depth'. His strong leadership, organisational skills and encouragement was credited by numerous passengers as having been decisive in their survival; his actions on the night being described as 'exemplary'. Lowe later received multiple gifts and offers of money (which he always turned down) from grateful passengers, and would respond to such praise with the polite, but humble assertion that it was unnecessary as he had simply been doing his job. Survivor Renee Harris, writing in 1932, asserted that through all the years, Lowe had stood out in her memory as "one of the finest men it has been my privilege to meet."^[1]

In 2004, a menu of the first meal ever served aboard Titanic, which Lowe had sent to his then-fiancée when the ship was docked in Ireland, sold for £51,000, breaking the record for auctioned Titanic memorabilia at that time.^[12]

A small blue plaque, unveiled on 7 April 2012, marks Lowe's final home at 1 Marine Crescent in Deganwy, where he lived until his death in 1944.^[13][14]

A slate plaque in Lowe's memory was hung on the centennial anniversary of Titanic's sinking in Barmouth, Gwynedd, Wales. Memorializing Lowe's service, the plaque is inscribed in both Welsh and English, with pictures of Lowe and Titanic. It reads: "In Commemoration of local hero 5th Officer Harold Godfrey Lowe who left Barmouth aged 14 to go to sea. He played a heroic role in the rescue of survivors during the sinking of RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912." The plaque was unveiled by his grandson, Captain John Lowe and Maddy Matthews.^[15]

A 2018 opinion piece in the Huffington Post titled "Here's Why You've Never Heard of the Titanic's Chinese Survivors", was less favourable to Lowe, who allegedly initially refused to save one man because he was a "Jap". The man, Fang Lang – who is actually supposed to have been one of the 8 Chinese on board the Titanic – was picked up from floating wreckage after passengers pressured Lowe.^[16] This oft-repeated allegation originates from a magazine article penned by 'eye-witness' Titanic passenger Charlotte Collyer in May 1912 and is almost certainly false. As Lowe's biographer and Titanic historian Inger Shiel notes, Collyer was never in the rescue vessel, having been transferred to either boat 10, or 12 before it left Lowe's flotilla; a fact confirmed by several eyewitnesses, including two crewmembers and Collyer's own daughter. Supporting this are Collyer's further claims that the women in her lifeboat later had to row to the Carpathia once dawn arrived,^[17] which happened only to the occupants of boats 10 and 12. Rescue vessel 14 commanded by Lowe approached the Carpathia under sail, meaning Collyer could not have witnessed the events she described. Shiel also notes that Lowe was known to be respectful of the Chinese, having served with them while with the Blue Funnel Line and is reported to have risked his life to save a Chinese sailor from drowning during his early maritime career by diving into the water and keeping his shipmate afloat, despite being on the ship's 'sick list' with blood poisoning at the time of the incident.^[18]