Charles Henry Barlow was part of the Engineering Crew on the Titanic, working as a Fireman.
Background[]
Charles Henry Barlow was born to shepherd Thomas Barlow, who had wed Martha Haines. Their son came into this world on Wantage, Berkshire, England on the 8th of July, 1912. Another boy was given to them by 1883 and they named him William.
Charles was officialy part of the Royal Navy on 20 October 1899. He worked on various ships for 9 years. He left them in November 1908. Charles was bound by law to May Nelson in late 1905 in Southampton. It’s unconfirmed whether Nelson was her maiden name or if she had another spouse before Charles or wether she and Charles had any off-spring.
Titanic[]
By 1912 he was in the merchant shipping business and still had his home in Southampton. He came over from the Kildonan Castle in April to be added to the Engineering Crew as a Fireman of Titanic, on the day that she would set sail: April 10. Titanic’s voyage would begin in Southampton just after noon.
Titanic’s Maiden Voyage was running according to plan on the night of April 14, when she was out in the open ocean to encounter something troublesome: a large iceberg. Charles was on a shift in one of the Boiler Rooms from 8:00 P.M. to 12:00 P.M. At 11:39 P.M, Titanic scraped her hull against the iceberg after a failed port manouvre as the iceberg was conceiled for a long time and was spotted too late to get past it without touching.
A while later, the Captain was down in the bow with Thomas Andrews to take a peek at the inflow of water. What they saw was unneverging and certainly not to their liking. On the bridge, at midnight, April 15, Thomas Andrews had worked it out and summed it up to the captain. According to his watertight calculations, the ship would get to the bottom of the Atlantic in 2 hours. The dazed captain then called the hands on deck and let the sailors and officers install the lifeboats for lowering.
What Barlow did throughout the night from the collision onwards is a story untold. He was at least not in a lifeboat and the Titanic was off on her way to the seabed at 2:20 A.M, which left two-thirds of her passengers and crew to the unforgiving bitter ocean. There’s many possiblities of where Barlow could have been at the time of his death. Some Firemen kept feeding furnaces in the dry boiler rooms to keep everything in the Titanic working till she went down.
After his death[]
Vessels were sent out to the wreck site, to bring bodies of Titanic’s victims to land, but many were lost to the sea, including Charles Barlow.
Information on the status of her husband was more than welcomed by May but there was nothing but silence. Eventually, she was apprised of his death. She lamented the fact that so many men on his working schedule that night, had not made it out alive, whereas other stokers were in fact saved in some of the boats. May found new love in 1913 and went on to remarry to a younger man in 1913. They brought fourth one boy, named Frank. May lived on untill 1953.