George Philips was a Greaser on the Titanic.
Background[]
George Philips was bred in Hound, in the Hampshire region, belonging to blue colar worker William Philips, who had taken the hand of Mary Ann Mason in 1871, from who a lineage of 5 had come into existance before George was given life sometime close to 1884. The first to have gone before him was Robert, also named Bob, who stemmed from 1873. Mary Elizabeth was the name of the child that lived her first day in 1875. Eliza Ann was her sister since 1878 and Alice was yet another girl to be spawned by 1882. Mary’s heritage lay in Birmingham.
Titanic[]
In the Spring of 1912, Philips was a guest of a Mr and Mrs William Ricketts, perhaps paying them, as their address in Southampton was used when he put his name down for a job on the Titanic, on April 6. That day, most of the crew were mustered in Southampton. Philips was now commited to the Engineering Crew as a Greaser, which bascially was a mechanic which most of the time had to douse the holes of heavy mechanisms with a liquid that would optimize the gear’s oscillations. Interestingly, his wage was supposed to be 6 pounds a month, 10 shillings less than most other Greasers.
The sight of Titanic couldn’t have been unfamiliar to him. Just before, he had been included in the staff of Olympic, her sister ship which was 5 months older but not idenitical, but had a very close resemblance to the Titanic.
Olympic would be on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean on April 10, when Titanic would be loaded up and started for her inaugrual voyage and set out for New York, narrowly escaping another ship that had nearly drilled into her sides.
The Titanic cleaved through the water with her sharp bow and demonstrated how her speed was not tapering her comfort in any way. Things went so well, that the director of White Star Line wanted to try some more tempo on the 14th of April. He was a passenger on board and his fellow First Class passengers wanted to bet on the amount of miles that Titanic would do on each day.
The Captain had no time for such games. Although he indeed had turned up the performance of his ship, he had been notified of ice in the area by other vessels. Titanic’s wireless received warnings through the whole day so he put Titanic on an alternate trajectory, which was a slight more southern one.
There was however one iceberg, at 11:39 P.M, that had been obscured by what some later researchers believed to have been a cold water mirage creating a higher, false horizon. The lookouts had been deceived by this and thus they were less than a minute away from this iceberg. Normally, they should've seen it while being at least 10 minutes away from it. Effectively, the lookout made the bridge aware of this iceberg with the ship's bell and via telephone. The First Officer also laid eyes on the object as soon as the very short phone call had ended and tried to position the ship on an far-out port side course, with her engines stopped and put into opposing approach to take out as many speed as possible. There was a delay in the ship's slew to port side. They were not given enough time and the starboard side was very close to the frozen heap.
This iceberg must have had a had a jagged underwater spur, which slashed a few nicks and indentures into Titanic’s plates and seams, over 300 feet of hull below the ship’s waterline, loosening up ribbets that plopped out, while also sprinkling ice fragments on the Forward Well Deck. This damage was spread out and the sea went on a tour inside the Titanic’s keel.
Sensing a collision, the captain was stirred up and hurried out of bed, into his close, to the control center. The first man he employed to investigate was the carpenter, than his Fourth Officer. The Mail Clerk brought bad news and was all wet. He had to wade through the Mail Room to grab bags and bring them to a higher deck. He reported this to Captain Smith. Smith then wanted to viddy the disrupted steel. The captain consulted the brain of Thomas Andrews, who knew every bolt and bit of Titanic as he had shaped her from the day that she and her sister were just a few sketches. Andrews took his own route to the stricken areas. From a safe distance, on one of the catwalks, he could see the water making its way up, fast.
By the time the captain toured the damaged area with Harland and Wolff’s Thomas Andrews, at least 5 compartments were already filling with seawater, and the bow of the doomed ship was alarmingly starting to pitch a tad downward, but no more than 2 degrees of trim.
Andrews had analysed that the incisions were allowing seawater would weight Titanic so far down with her bow pour from one bulkhead into the neighboring compartment. With this in mind, he did a quick calculation and estimated that Titanic might remain afloat for 2 hours or perhaps slightly more. At that point the captain, who had already called up a few other officers, ordered the lifeboats to be uncloaked and loaded at 12:05 A.M, on April 15.
A new day had started and a new challenge awaited them. They had to get at least half the people off Titanic, while not telling them of the danger, to avoid chaos. They went too far, thus the evacuation didn’t succeed.
When 2 hours had passed since Andrews’ verdict, not all lifeboats had gone away. The last two were in an uncomfortable postion and took to long to get down, so before they could start getting them over the side, the Titanic showed her surrender by dipping the bridgewings into the ocean and shelved down at the forward end, with the billowing water casting people away from the boats which now started to float. The spurt of water hurried its way over the Boat Deck and was at the first funnel and leveled it. It was 2:10 A.M. at that time. In the next minutes, the water advanced further aft and violently busted the dome over the First Class Grand Staircase, while knocking out the doors of First Class cabins on A-Deck, which were somewhat dry in the areas further aft.
At 2:15 A.M, the giant ship started to look ever bigger on one end when the rest of it went further down. Like a teeter-totter, the whole bow was down at one point, while the round part was pointing at the starlight sky. It was roughly 2:18 A.M, when Titanic’s spine severed and a large chunk of her midship was destroyed. This caused her rears to settle back.
There was a small hope from survivors in lifeboats that what was left, but nobody could see the keel part taking the aft up into the air again, before standing tall and straight up, bobbing one time before leaving the scene.
George Philips’ time on the Titanic was never described and went down with the ship, as he did himself. He would not leave any body behind. Over 1500 people were lost, the majority being subjected to rimy waters. Some were still inside Titanic as she started a new journey to the bottom. All Engineers died, with only 4 Greasers surviving.