Henry Dorey Stocker was one of the Trimmers on the Titanic.
Background[]
Henry Dorey Stocker was kindled by George Robert Stocker and Mary Rutt. Like them, his crib was placed in Hampshire. Stocker was a native of Highfield, Southampton, since 1892.
In 1882, the slighty older Mary took George’s surname as his fresh lawful wife. Before Henry, she would yield 3 girls and 1 boy. The eldest of the pair, who made them parents in 1883, was Ellen Mary. A brother would follow in 1885. They had sisters in the form of Ethel Lucy and Rose in 1888 and 1889 respectively.
After Henry, May livened things up in 1894 before Charlotte Jane made an appearance in 1896. Morington, also called Morley, completed the expansion in 1898. All of them would make it through childhood.
Henry and his family abided in Bitterne in 1901, with George being a horticulturist. He was ripped out of Henry’s life in 1904, aged only. Mary was doing household duties for another family as her daily. The death of their father caused the brothers and sisters of Henry to be no longer at one place together. By 1911, they were all dispersed to other dens. The same could be said about Henry, who was no longer perching with his mother, who might have been taken in by the people living at Battenberg House, St Georges Place. He had gone to seek his luck and fortune at the shipping lanes, as he would be in need of a job.
Titanic[]
A large shipping company, called the White Star Line, had brought two massive new liners into the world. They were built since 1908 and the first was active since 1911. Her name was RMS Olympic. At Spring 1912, the Olympic had been to Southampton from her last voyage and Henry was on her as a crewmember. In April 1912, he could be found roosting in Sholing.
As Olympic was back on its way, her sistership, the new and improved Titanic, had come over from Belfast. This was going to be her Maiden Voyage. These liners had enormous, powerful engines that could bring the ships to a decent speed, only a few knots slower than their main rivals from the Cunard Line. These Engines needed to be controlled by an extensive Engineering Crew. Titanic had six Boiler Rooms and her furnaces had to be satisfied non-stop during a weekly trip to New York and back, as was going to be her main route.
Backing them up were a couple groups of Trimmers. Such a job was allotted to Henry, who got documented as Trimmer in Southampton on the 6th of April. The lad was 20 years of age and was designated. The Trimmers had 3 dormitories on E-Deck, two decks below the Forecastle. They also had 3 watches. The days were cut up in 6 shifts and every Trimmer had to be in the bunkers for 4 hours straight, twice a day. Henry would have to be up very early on a day, at 4:00 A.M. At 8:00 A.M, he could return to his bunk if he wanted. Later in the afternoon, he would be on call again, from 4:00 til 8:00 P.M. in the evening.
He was onboard on April 10th when the ship glided away from the piers, embarking on the passage to America, via France and Ireland. They had a scare just a few hundred metres into the traverse, as the ship that was named after the big city in the US, the SS New York, had nearly managed to cancel the travel entirely. Titanic had unexpectedly removed the ship form her tightenings with her discharge from the huge propellors. A collision would have been a bad press, but the ship was ill-fated to gather more media attention than ever before, from something unthinkable, that happened when she was five days into her journey.
On April 14th, the Titanic had gotten well over half-way into her course to the east coast of the New Land. On the late night, 21 minutes before clock would strike 12, the ship had bizarrely crossed paths with an iceberg. The lookouts, who had kept peering into the distance, also for close to 4 hours, only had about a minute when they laid eyes on the ice. The First Officer on the bridge got aware of the situation and gave a writ to his helsman, the Quartermaster Robert Hichens. Hichens swiveled the steering wheel round and round till it was hard over, all the way to port. The Engine Room got a new decree as well. They had to engage the reversing Engine. The Firemen had to shut the dampers.
Tense seconds passed while this was going on, but Titanic took too long to have made it past. It looked too close to call but the liner struck the iceberg on starboard side, underneath the waterline.She was dabbed with narrow slits on her starboard bow and a bit further abaft, roughly until the behind the bridge. A lethal infliction, as it turned out. Water roamed freely through the bottom deck of the ship in Boiler Rooms 6 and 5, as well as 3 holds.
The master of this ship, the experienced Captain Smith felt a knock and he sped to the commanding center. After Murdoch, the First Officer, gave him an enumeration of the series of events, Smith wanted him to close the watertight doors, which Murdoch reported he had already done. Smith then wanted to see if he could get information. He send someone to fetch the carpenter, then he requested the Fourth Officer to have a look. The Officer and a Post Officer both came back at the same time, the first saying he had not noticed anything, the latter telling in anguish that his mail sorting had fallen into the water, meaning they had to retrieve bags to upper levels. Smith knew this wasn’t good. He asked for the presence of the ship’s architect, Thomas Andrews.
With both men having taken a look at the mess downstairs, Andrews made a series of estimations, based on mathematical logic. He had crunched the numbers and his words must have hit the captain like a gutpunch. Titanic had 6 seperated spaces getting very wet, very fast. As the bow would come to lay deeper into the ocean, the water would be able to overcome the bulkheads that mostly got to E-deck only. Two hours would remain from here on, to do something. Not saving the ship, as that was impossible. They could only delay the foundering. The people onboard however, had to be put in a lifeboat, which were lacking in number as per outdated regulation by the shipping board.
The captain called hands on deck 5 minutes after midnight and instructed them to get to their boat stations and crank up the davits. The boats had to be ready as quickly as they could, to recieve passengers soon. At 12:25 A.M, the first boat was finally heaved down, but, like many lifeboats, it only carried a fraction of their maximum capacity.The decision to diminsh chances of panic caused passengers and crew alike to believe that Titanic could float long enough to allow a transfer of passengers and crew to a rescue vessel. Many of them were confident she would not sink at all.
At 2:05 A.M, most people were convinced that she indeed could not keep her head above the water and realised they had to get to a boat or it would be game over. Her bow had sunken deeply by now and it was about to enter the wheelhouse. The evacuation was not swift, two boats were still not in place. Two minutes later, the Titanic made a dive and cast everyone out of the two Collapsbles that had been difficult to get off a roof.
Nothing is written about Henry’s time onboard. He was not needed at the time of the collision as his work day was finished many hours before. A total of 1,503 people were lost when she sank in the North Atlantic Ocean at 2:20 A.M, including Henry Stocker. There would not be anything left of Henry when the cableships were chartered to retrieve the dead.