Thomas Jubilee Mayzes was a Trimmer on the Titanic.
Background[]
Thomas Jubilee Mayzes was born in the Battersea district in London on the 23th of February 1887. As his middle name suggests, he was born in the year of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, as in 1887 the 50th anniversary of her coronation was celebrated. Thomas was the son of an Essex-born labourer named George Mayzes and his wife Lydia Cunningham from Kent. In 1867, in Kent, they pled their vows to eachother.
Thomas had ten known siblings, of which 8 were his senior. The first child was George who was conceived in 1867. A sister followed in 1870: Lydia. Another girl, Eliza, was next in 1872. Then it was Charles in 1875, preceeding Walter, whose birthyear was 1876. Then it was Samuel James' turn in 1879 followed by yet another son, Frederick Kimball, in 1881. The last child born before Thomas was Maria, in 1884. After Thomas, two younger siblings were born: Maud Elizabeth arrived in 1889 and Daniel was delivered in 1892.
By 1901, his father had died and he lived with his mother and 2 siblings at the same street in Battersea. In 1905, he married Mary Ann Turner in London. The pair had one child, Frederick Thomas, who was conceived in 1907.
In 1911, they were living in Southampton at Commercial Street 8, when Thomas worked as a trimmer on the Oceanic.
Titanic[]
Thomas transferred from Oceanic to sign on to Titanic on April 6, 1912. He was 25 years old at the time. As a trimmer, he had to move coal from the bunkers to the furnishes so the firemen would have enough supply of coal to keep shoveling.
On April 14, at late night, the ship hit an iceberg and started to sink. On April 15, shortly after midnight, the signal was given to evacuate the ship, as Captain Smith had Thomas Andrews analyse the consequences of the damage and he estimated the ship only had a few hours to live.
Mayzes survived the disaster by possibly boarding lifeboat 3. Many stokers were in the first few boats as a lot of them had seen the water coming and knew that the ship was in peril. Titanic met her tragic fate at 2:20 A.M, the ship being broken in two and gliding down the merciless seas with her stern in the air. Many of her crewmembers died that night. Mayzes, luckily, lived on.
After arriving in New York on the Carpathia on April 18, he returned to Engand straight away.
Later life[]
Mayzes still lived at Commercial Street in 1914 but now was at number 33. He volunteered for service when World War 1 broke out and left his family again to go to sea. He worked on the troop ships HM Patrol and Ioliare and HMT St Pancras and Cynic to various ports and then served in the Allied intervention in Russia after 1918. He was demobilised in 1919 and returned to Merchant shipping, after receiving the General Service and Mercantile Marine war medals for his efforts.
He lived in Southampton for the rest of his life and died of typhoid fever on February 9, 1928, at the early age of 40. Towards the end he was repeating the same words: "save the women and children" in his state of derangement.
His widow never remarried and passed away in 1960, having lost her son in 1943 as well.
Sources[]
- Special thanks and credits to Marie Keates for allowing me to use a large part of the information on her blog: https://iwalkalone.co.uk/titanic-tales-from-bitterne-village -Titanic tales from Bitterne Village – I Walk Alone