Arthur Curtis was a Fireman on the Titanic.
Background[]
Arthur Curtis began life in Farnham, Surrey, England where his father George Curtis had him on the 16th December, 1885, with his wife Frances Elizabeth Haines, congenially called ‘Fanny’. Farnham was the place where George had grown up and where he was given the hand of his wife, originally from Somerset. The next year, on the 26th of February, the pair aspersed their son at the town’s Saint Andrew's Church.
Arthur was one of 10 children, with only half of them growing up to become old. The family expansion kicked off with Mathilda in 1878, who had two sisters in 1880 and 1882 respectively: Kate and Nellie. Arthur would never see his elder brother Alfred William, who was taken out of their lives early on, shortly after his birth in 1884, not even reaching toddlerhood. The next child given life was Alice, but she left the family with another heartache in 1886. In the end, much more went wrong with other children. Arthur in the end only would have one younger sibling, Ada, in 1888, as another daughter, whose name is missing, had passed when leaving the womb. A very short life it also was for George junior, who was in the limelight in 1893 but he didn’t make it into 1894. He would be the last.
In 1891, the Curtis’ family could be found in Aldershot, Hampshire. George did horticulture as a way of supporting his family. In 1901, they had transferred themselves to another Hampshire town: Southampton, where they had a home in district Shirley. George now did work as a general store assistant, with his son, 15 years of age, fresh from the school banks, accepting a construction job, laying bricks.
In 1911, Arthur had chosen a profession on the salt chucks. It were tough times for the family, as his mother was somehow disabled. Their misery would grow larger, as there would be heartbrack as in the first months of 1912, father George, was gone from life. He had been doing work as a carrier of goods in a small store before he passed away.
Titanic[]
In April 1912, Arthur was staying in Southampton and had been assigned to the Oceanic as he was back from a trip with this large liner, when he ended up at an even larger ship, which was brand new. He was registered as a Fireman of the First Watch on the Titanic, on the 6th of April, in Southampton.
Arthur was a single man, 26 years of age when he got onboard and was given a berth on F-Deck in the bow. On April 10, Titanic was steaming out of port after noon, Curtis officially would have been busy as the First Watch would toil from 12:00 P.M til 4:00 P.M and would be on duty again at 12:00 A.M. to 4:00 A.M.
On April 14, late at night, Titanic’s flush voyage was interefered by a large iceberg that had been hidden by unsual circumstances. The lookouts were literally left in the dark about its presence, but then there it was, within eyesight but also within close range. Knowing how fast the ship would go and how little time there was, lookout Fred Fleet simultanously rang the bell and telephoned to the bridge. The First Officer had spotted the large mass too and gave order to get the ship around it, with the engines reversed. The Titanic was turned, but only on the last moment, the ship responded enough, to at least get her front away but her starboard side was rasped by the ice and it left a few marks, which weren’t without consequences. These lacerations, small but signficant, were a gateway for the ocean water to investigate the ship. After a while, the water had climbed high onto the first decks, in at least 5 compartments.
At midnight, April 15, Thomas Andrews conversed with Captain Smith, to tell him that he had decuded that with the damage assessed, the incoming water in the bow of the ship was her death sentence. He was determent that the ship would sink. With this shocking information, Smith practicized abandonment of this ship. He needed to get off as many lives as he could, knowning that there was only room for half. The deck hands were brought up and passengers needed to be called on deck as well, with lifevests.
As the collision occured, it was just 20 minutes before Curtis’ shift. It was possible that he was given another task this time at midnight. He could not get himself to a lifeboat. Gradually, the bow delved itself deeper into the ocean, with the evacuation going very slowly. So slow in fact, that there hadn’t been time to get two last Collapsibles ready. They were not hanging in the davits when the ship took a sharp dip down, resulting in a wave that washed over the deck. Titanic picked up speed in her decent. A large groaning noise strated to built as the ship got to a severe angle. It was 2:18 A.M. as the lights flickered out and covered the ship in darkness. Still, some survivors could later describe that ship was no longer whole after that. The hull had cracked and split the ship in two. The stern returned to the water level, to be lifted up again shortly afterwards, now to 90 degrees, to gradually settle. The clock said 2:20 A.M.
Nobody that was still onboard before that time, would now have solid ground under their feet. The cutting temperature of the Atlantic Ocean awaited them. With a lot of screaming and panic, many hundreds of souls lost their lives that way. Others were deep in the ship, trapped in a large steel hull that was now soon turned into a giant coffin.
How Arthur Curtis met his sad fate, is anyone’s guess. We do know however that so many Firemen sacrificed their lives to help others and do their duty. They made the evacuation less deadly as they had kept stoking to keep the lights on, a testimony of their work is that those were still burning 2 minutes before Titanic was gone. Their work enabled the electricians to keep the power going.
With no body in sight, Arthur’s cause of death will be an unknown.
After his death[]
Fanny’s two most important men in her life were cruelly taken from her that year. One could only imagine how much of a toll it would take on her, having been deprived some of her boys and girls shortly after she brought them on earth. The year 1915 saw her life come to an end as well.