Clear Annie Cameron
Clear Annie Cameron was a passenger on Titanic.
Background[]
Clear Annie Cameron was a native of Pendleton, Salford, Lancashire, England. She was born to Harry Arthur and Annie Chiles on March 8 in 1877. Her parents were both English and had wed in 1870. Clear had 3 siblings. Earnest and Janet Gertrude were born before her in 1872 and 1874. Their younger sister was Nie, born in 1882.
The Cameron family were in Buxton, Derbyshire in 1881. By 1891, Clear was now in the domestic service. In 1911 she was still doing that job and she made a good living and income off of it. She now served in the household of a high ranking officer
Despite having a more than modest capital, she was not satisfied with her payment. She even owned an autombile. Still, she felt it wasn’t enough and had enough of the life in England.
Clear had a friend, Ellen Wallcroft from Birkshire. Ellen was a cook who also was unsatisfied with her life in England and wanted to earn more money in the new country. Together they traveled to take passage on a ship. The two young women then realised their booked vessel would be grounded because of the coal strike that was causing a lot of disruption in the seafaring.
Titanic[]
In Southampton, they had to be transferred to the Titanic instead. Cameron and Wallcroft were passengers in Second Class when they got onto the ship on April 10. Their cabin was at E-Deck. After noon, Titanic left port to set off on her Maiden Voyage to New York.
The trip crudely aborted by the collision with the iceberg on April 14, by 11:40 P.M. Both women felt the hit while they were sleeping, which roused them immediately. The engines were no longer running. Keen on finding out more about what had struck the ship, they went out and heard someone talking about an iceberg, but a steward wanted to send them back to their beds. Clear and Ellen had no inteniton to follow this instruction and went higher up. On the Boat Deck, they wandered around for a long time, not knowing what to do, but the first distress rockets made it clear, that Titanic was sinking.
Clear and her friend were lowered away in lifeboat 14, which was commanded by Titanic’s Fifth Officer Harold Lowe. Cameron remembers him firing his pistol to disuade any desperate man to throw themselves at the boat. When they rowed away, Cameron had seen the ship break apart. The cries that followed were dreadful to her and would never leave her mind.
Cameron proved herself to be a noble woman. She helped passengers stay warm, rowed and when the rescue ship came to pick them up, she tried to console the many widows that Titanic had made, on board. Even still, she she didn’t find it fair that so many women and children were lost in favor of First Class men. The turmoil surrounding the actions of Ismay and the Duff-Gordons made her angry as she despised what they did.
After Carpathia showed up in New York on April 18, Wallcroft had a brother-in-law picking up Ellen and her with a car. She and her friend went their own way after that.
Later life[]
Clear found work as a maid, before moving to Haverford, Philadelphia because she hated the conditions in New York.
She married Ernest William Francis on 29th April 1914, also a domestic servant and over 10 years her senior. It was not long before she returned to England to go live there with her man.Her life in America was not what she had expected. They settled in Woking, Surrey.
Clear Annie Francis died on 2nd February 1962 in Woking, Surrey, United Kingdom. She was cremated. Her husband died later that year, on September 17.