David Gregory was a Greaser on the Titanic.
Background[]
David Gregory, often referred to as George, was one out of at least 10 children begotten by two English parents, whose crib lay in Hampshire, where David Gregory also came into this world. David lived his first few days, in the first months of 1870, in Fawley, as the son of a blade cutting craftsman, who developed shaving tools and was named Joshua Gregory. Joshua was lawfully tied with Elizabeth Cooper, not his first wife perhaps, as he had gifted life to one son 8 years before their official commitment, in 1851. His name was Adam. The mother’s identity is missing.
Sarah would theoretically be regarded as the firstborn of Joshus and Elizabeth, since 1861. Fanny livened things up in 1864, as another Joshua would be seen for the first time in 1866. David was the elder brother of 1872’s May. The year 1874 saw William appear, who preceded Hannah, who was delivered in 1877. After her, Elizabeth carried two girls at once, before releasing them in 1879, to carry the names Eliza and Emma with Arthur rounding the proliferation off in 1880.
In between those years, the Gregory family was stationed in different places. They made a return to Fawley before 1881. Joshua worked as a utensil smith, kind of similar to what he had done before. His son David, in his early teens, had been involved in an act of theft which by now had landed him at Hants Reformatory, a premise for the very young ones, where such behaviour was being rectified.
With so much fruit arising from her loins, Elizabeth’s life was already over in 1882. In the next two decades, Davids whereabouts are indeterminate, while Joshua Gregory was active as a vendor and sojourned in Sway, Lymington.
In 1911, the red wire of David’s story could be found in Saint Mary, Southampton, where he had a dwelling for which he had to pay rent to stay. He had also forged his way to the combers and would be an oiler for the merchant fleet.
Titanic[]
In April 1912, David would do the same job as in 1911, this time for the highly apprized Titanic, as a Greaser, having recently hopped of the Oruba, he landed himself this position in Southampton on April 6. He was situated in another street when he got on.
Titanic announced her departure with her whistles on the 10th of April. Gregory would be on standby for backing up the heavy jobs of the Engineers and also look after Titanic’s giant moving parts. His main task would be applying oil into small holes, to get the gears bedaubed enough to work efficiently and without friction.
The 14th of April started like any other day and looked well, as the seas had shown themselves as very gentle, with a planar surface. It was just a tad nippy outside and the temperature kept declining over the day, into the night.
Although the captain had altered course since there was ice ahead, the crew had underestimated the elements a little bit. However, they could not have foreseen that the air dynamics had ensconced an iceberg that was somehow directly, as if Mother Nature had a play with this ship, which was regarded unsinkable. The dream of an unproblematic voyage was soon over. At 11:39 A.M, this sizeable iceberg reared its pointy head before the lookouts and could finally be discerned from the horizon. One lookout liaised with an Officer on the bridge after clanging the ship’s bell in the crow’s nest. answered the telephone and calmly wanted to pass it through to another Officer, a senior figure, who was in command. He had already seen the iceberg by now and depended on his quartermaster to convolute Titanic’s stem into a port direction. With the telegraph, he announced a reversal of the proppelors, as Titanic was going fast.
They were given less than a minute since the realisation of the iceberg came, which wasn’t enough to get Titanic safely past. Her nose swivelled significantly only when her starboard side had already made a connection with the pointy heavyweight, which of course only showed her tip. What was under the water line could not be seen but was much larger and it stripped Titanic of some of her paint while water was dispersing into more than 6 seams, into several areas. Captain Smith emerged from his quarters just a minute after impact. He wants to know from his Officer what had transpired. Murdoch recounted and summarised it. With the knowledge that the main watertight doors were sealed off, Smith desired to know how things stood with the influx of water. He had beckoned other crew members first to check things down below before having a look himself, after the Post Clerk had delivered a message about the flooded Mail Room. Smith was assisted by Thomas Andrews, the ship’s designer who knew her through and through and he conducted his own perusal.
Around midnight, Thomas Andrews confirmed to Captain Smith what any commander would fear, but what they wouldn’t have thought possible. The Titanic had been jabbed in such a way that her internals were saturated, with tons of water building up forward. This meant that her built-in safety feature of 16 watertight compartments would be effete, as the sea would simply rise to the top of them and thus come down into the next.
This must have been haunting Smith, but he pressed on with the only thing he could do from this point. At 12:05 A.M on April 15, Monday, Smith obliged his men to remove the canvas covers of the lifeboats, as well as bringing the guard rails around the boats down.
Over the course of 2 hours, 18 lifeboats were launched, but most had not been filled to capacity. The organisation of the eviction was also very tardy and also chaotic. The bridge was only floating for a few moments before the sea came thundering over the bulkwark to pin it down. With the Boat Deck being taken over by more water, with the 2 last collapsibles wiped off before they could be launched properly. The rake of the vesel increased over the next 10 minutes. Her after section was hefted out of the water largely.
The compression on either end, with the heavy Engines being located abaft, caused the Titanic to split between the third and fourth funnel right after a black-out occured in her electricity chambers. The vulnerable expansion joint at the back also gave in and caved. The hind part of the forward section was visible for seconds and then was slumped up.
The rest of the ship was holding out for 2 more minutes, quickly doused in the water and gradually slipped away at a 90 degree angle, while gyring around slowly.
David hadn’t been able to get off the ship and the sea had burried him with many hundreds of others.