Ḥannā Ilyas Samaan was a passenger on the Titanic.
Background[]
Ḥannā Ilyas Samaan was born in 1872 in Hardīn, Syria, back then, it was a town under the guise of Turkish control but later it would belong to a new country named Lebanon.
He became the father of two boys after being married to a Syrian woman. They were Youssif and Ilyas, born between 1894 and 1900.
In the Spring of 1912, when Hanna was middleaged and around 40 years of age with his sons grown up as young men, they went for a long journey, with the aim of reaching Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania, USA. For Youssif, who was married, this was to get to the home of his wife who had already settled there near her siblings and Ilyas, Hanna and Yousif wanted to be together as a whole family in America. So the three men left the town behind.
Many others from Hardīn wanted to go to Wilkes-Barre as well. They formed a party with the Samaans and tracked all the way to Beirut on donkeys. From there, a ship could bring them over to Marseilles in southern France. There, they had to be inspected by the customs to see if they didn’t carry any sort of contagious diseases. They didn’t. Next up, a long train journey awaited them to get to the north of France. They changed trains in Paris to get to the port from where another ship would take them to America.
Titanic[]
With the tickets Hanna had, he was provided with Third Class passage on the Titanic. He and his boys could board her in Cherbourg on the 10th of April, early in the evening. They were brought to the ship on a tender as the waters at port weren’t deep enough for this mighty new vessel.
The Maiden Voyage went as well as it could be but Mother Nature didn’t allow Titanic to finish her crossing. On the night of April 14, fate had its way and an iceberg was right in front of Titanic’s bow but not noticed until she was less than 800 metres away. Immediately First Officer Murdoch let the bow sway to port but it took too long and she couldn’t be slowed down in time either as he let the propellors get into reverse. The Titanic turned away with her bow but she was still struck on her starboard side with her underside receiving multiple, shallow gaps that could now let the seawater through. The water rushed in.
On April 15, the captain was on the bridge after he had been sounding the ship with the carpenter and the ship’s designer and they found out that the Titanic was no longer seaworthy. For the sake of saving as many lives on board the ship, the lifeboats, at an inadequate number, were readied at 12:05 A.M, twenty-five minutes after striking the iceberg.
For Ḥannā Samaan and his children, the trip ended here. How they fared is not known. As they could not be saved by a lifeboats like 1500 others, they lost their lives when Titanic submerged. She broke and was gone at 2:20 A.M.
The three from Hardīn were not ever found when Titanic’s company, the White Star Line, had sent for a cable ship and various other small vessels to salvage victims.