Joseph Elias Junior was a young passenger on the Titanic.
Background[]
Joseph Elias Junior was the son of Joseph Elias and a Syrian woman whose name is missing. Joseph jr. was born in 1887. He was the second child that had sprung from their marriage. His father was born in Khafr Mishk= and this is where his sons originated from too. This part of Syria, the Béqaa Valley, would later become the Lebanon. This didn’t happen before 1920, so the inhabitants had to do with the rulers of the time, which were the Turks. Tannous Nasrallah Elias was his elder brother. He was born 2 years prior to Joseph.
Their mother was gone for the United States in 1905. It looks like more siblings were born by then. The mother had left for Ottawa in Ontario, Canada where she peddled goods to earn money for them.
It was in 1912 that Joseph Jr, his father and brother could to Ottawa. Three of his sons had trachoma and could not be part of their journey. They stayed with Joseph’s Jr’s grandmother.
More people from Kafr Mishkī would be with the Elias’ family on their way to Canada. This crowd all wanted to go to Ottawa as well. Some to return after a visit to Kafr Miskhī, others to migrate for the first time. Their route led to Beirut at the sea. This large city had a port and for Joseph Elias Jr and the rest, a vessel could bring them to the south of France.
In Marseilles, they first had to be screened for possible health problems as the French didn’t want foreign diseases spread. Having done so, they went for the next part of the journey, across France to the north, where they were due to board a great liner in the port of Cherbourg.
Titanic[]
It was April 10, in the evening, when Joseph saw a large, imposing passenger ship in Cherbourg harbor. It was time for the three and all the others form Kafr Mishkī to get on a tender for Third Class to be transported to the liner which was too big to dock. Joseph Junior was a Third Class passenger as were the others and the Titanic soon left for another stop at Queenstown on the next day before continuing onwards to New York.
On April 14, late at night, Titanic was in a debacle after everything that could go wrong, went wrong. The incident took place at 11:40 P.M, when Titanic was in an icefield but maintained great speed, of likely 22,5 knots. As it was a moonless night, one nasty iceberg proved fatal as she was seemingly disguised. Only when Titanic was too close to avoid it, it was spotted. Her small rudder couldn’t turn her to port fast enough nor could she be slowed down in time. The result was a collision which happened on starboard side with damage over a large part underneath the water line. Tons of water entered the ship and fast too.
On April 15, on the bridge, the mood was grim. Captain Smith had no choice but to order the lifeboats to be swung out, as the ship’s designer had briefed him that the openings in the hull were fatal and despite Titanic’s strong design, where more than enough to sink her. She would last 2 hours. The order for the lifeboats came at 12:05 A.M.
The ship eventually lost the fight to the sea entering her and went down at 2:20 A.M. With her sinking, many were in the water and either drowned or froze due to subzero temperatures. This cost a lot of people their lives. Joseph Junior and Joseph, Tannous could all not be saved. What they did during the night isn’t known, but they were among the hundreds of victims Titanic left in a watery grave. Their bodies were lost.