James Tozer was a Greaser on the Titanic.
Background[]
James Tozer became a new resident of Southampton, with his conception occuring on November 14, 1879. His father, George Tozer, stemmed from the town of Exeter, Devon as well. He was in his final year as a soldier when he received his son. George had taken the heart of Irishwoman Anne Ryan, who was placed on earth 5 years after her husband, in Country Limerick. They were yoked in Southampton in 1863.
James was not their first, as they had produced a range of 5, which they begot in different parts of the world. With Mary as the eldest, her genesis lay in Ireland, the country of her mother. The town of Limerick saw Mary turn up first, in 1867.
The country of India belonged to English Empire and the family had paid a visit in some of the years. Their next of issue spawned in 1874, in Calcutta, the main capital of India. His name was George, like his father. Since 1876, another son carried the name Christopher. He was cast on earth in Cawnpore, also in British India.
The Tazor’s rack was located in Saint Mary, Southampton by 1881. That year, the family was completed with Edwin, the last of the offshoots.
It was not all about roses with the Tozer pair. In 1901, George senior was implicated in front of a judge, for hitting Anne. James was no longer part of the commorancy by then.
Titanic[]
In 1912, Tozer, still a Sontonian by residence, was connected to White Star Line and had done a voyage for them on the largest liner in the world, the RMS Olympic. Not long after concluding his trip on this giant as a crew member, he took up work on another, huge ship, that claimed her sister’s title: the RMS Titanic. It was April 6 when James was transmitted to Titanic in Southampton.
James had never wifed any girl when he had a place among her Engineering personnel. He was a 32 year old Greaser, when Titanic came under steam to move through the water for her first destination in service of her company, on April 10.
Greasers, although lower in raking, would flank the Engineers to carry out small assignments for them or do heavy lifting when only one man wouldn’t be sufficient. Their main job was to oil the machinery. Their working places were the Main Engine Room, Turbine Room or occasionally the hotter stoke bunkers.
On April 14, Titanic was blasting along nicely at a steady 22,5 knots on the open ocean, 400 miles away from Newfoundland, when she came across a field of floes. She had been warned throughout the day by other vessels but had not reduced speed, with major consequences. Still carrying this speed throughout the night, she had an untimely collision with an unexpected object.
The lookouts focalised on the horizon for hours, but an iceberg had escaped their vision for a lot of the time and it was only exposed when Titanic was less than a minute away from planting her precious prowl into the floater. The Titanic had to change course rapidly and thus lookout Fred Fleet made the ship’s bell tinkle three times before grabbing the horn of the telephone. He spoke to the Sixth Officer while the First Officer also had caught on that a frost giant was in their path. He bawled a course of action to his quartermaster who obeyed and spun the ship’s wheel all the way to the left, in a bid to veer Titanic to port side, with her rudder at hard-a-starboard. The Officer than ran to the telegraph and positioned the handle at the Engine Room order ‘Full Astern’.
The Titanic made a small hinge to port side but wasn’t slowing down quickly enough. The starboard side was facing the iceberg and a part of the ice below scoured across the iron and steel hull of the ship, which turned bits of it in lethal ravage. The few scracthed sustained by Titanic were small, but enough to a welcoming gate for the sea. Those scratches had occured on a wide spread area.
Water teemed down into the cargo spaces and the firerooms. Captain Smith had sensed the touch and stormed to the bridge. Filled in on what they hit, he gave remit to the carpenter and Fourth Officer to look for apertures. With the words of the, Smith felt something could be severly wrong and he stepped into the holds staring at the inundation below. Master designer Thomas Andrews had also taken a route through the lower decks that viewed upon her underside. Andrews was shocked with what he saw.
Andrew summarised it for the Captain around midnight. Six crucial places were punctured and the three lowest decks forwards were glutted with greenish looking water. This was beyond Titanic’s treshold. The water would weigh her down and could eventually end up above her cargo hatches to then go further aft. There was probably not another moment in Andrews’ life that he wished more that he was wrong, but he was, sadly, right.
The Captain now knew it was serious. He couldn’t wait around, Andrews had given her a span of 2 hours at best. At 12:05 A.M, the crew were collated to handle the lifeboats. They had to be to put together an evacuation of the masses. There would be room for only half. Choices had to made. Smith thought it would be wise to put children and women forward only, for the first time.
Only 18 lifeboats were lowered succesfully in the end, whereas the last two were whisked of the deck by a fast flow of water, which had covered the entire wheelhouse within seconds. Titanic justled vanward and advanced further down, with her first funnel falling in the next minutes before she leaned on her sunken forecastle. The rest of the ship was hefted up from the water, her lights still burning. The Engineers, Electricians and some of the lower classed Engineering crew had made sure of this, even when the ship tilted so badly. The mighty mammoth spilled much of her items and furniture when she cracked open from the awkward stence that had forces pulling the ship apart from at least two directions. The two segments of Titanic were swamped in two minutes. What rested was wreckage, where some of the 1500 souls tried to hang onto, being in body-numbing ice water, which killed many within a half hour.
Some people were still inside the ship. There were Stokers and Greasers among them. Tozer would be lost forever. How, is maybe only something he or one of his colleagues could have known. His name didn’t appear on the list of lifeboat occupants.