Thomson Beattie in his younger years
Thomson Beattie was a passenger on the RMS Titanic who perished in the disaster.
Personal life[]
Thomson Beattie was born on November 25, 1875 in Fergus, Ontario, Canada. He was the son of a private banker, John T. Beatie, who originated from Scotland, and Canadian-born Janet Boyd Wilson. The married couple had He had 11 children.
Following the death of his father in 1897, Thomson and his brother Charles enherited the estate and he moved to Winnipeg, Canada, and used his inheritance to start a real estate business with Richard Waugh, they called their business the Haslam Land Company. The company had brought Thomson Beattie much success and he bought a quite chique house where a medical doctor also came to live.
Thomson Beattie feeding pigeons in Italy during the vacation he took in March 1912, with his friends, Thomas McCaffry and John Hugo Ross.
In 1897 Beattie met Thomas Francis McCaffry in the bank business, as Thomas was the Vancouver Union Bank's superintendant. He also met John Hugo Ross who worked in the same office. Ross's secretary, Maud McCarthur, was Beattie's supposed fiancée. Beattie and McCaffrey became very good friends. They dressed the same way, and were often mistaken for siblings. The Winnipeg Free Press commented on how similar they were, and noted that the two 'were almost inseparable'. They traveled together to Agean Sea in 1908 and to North Africa in 1910. The 1912 visit to the Middle East and Europe, with the return aboard the Titanic, was his last voyage.
Waugh became the Mayor of Winnipeg in 1911 so Beattie ran the business of Haslam Land on his own.
Aboard the RMS Titanic[]
In 1912, Beattie, McCaffrey and John Hugo Ross, set out aboard the RMS Franconia for a four-month long tour of the Middle East and Europe. In February they went to Cairo and visited Luxor and Aswan. After leaving Cairo they arrived in Naples and Venice was next.
After he end of the tour in March, Ross fell ill and McCaffry and Beattie were tired, so they decided to return home, changing their reserved tickets for the Mauretania, as Beattie explained to her mother in a letter she sent before leaving: "We have already sold the tickets. We will travel on the Titanic instead, it is a very popular new ship around here. They say she is impossible to sink. I'll see you soon." They boarded the Titanic as First Class passengers at Cherbourg. Beattie and McCaffry shared the cabin labeled C-6, but they would later transfer to cabin A-8. John Hugo Ross had cabin A-10, where he was stationed the whole voyage as he was feeling very unwell. He was still there when the sink sank, and pressumably died there.
On April 14, Titanic had hit an iceberg and started to sink.
McCaffry and Beattie helped lowering the Collapsibles A and B. Beattie managed to swim to Collapsible A, but died overnight of hypothermia. McCaffry failed to reach the boat. He was 46 years old and his body was the 292nd recovered by the MacKay Bennett. He was buried in Montreal's Notre Dame des Neiges cemetery, under a headstone paid for by Union Bank.
After his death[]
His death is surrounded with mystery.
Collapsible A was discovered on the 13th of May 1912 near the Bermudas, 300 miles away from Titanic's wreck site. It was still floating as noticed by the White Star Line ship Oceanic, with three bodies still aboard. It was reported in the press, and seemingly it was the opinion of the doctor aboard Oceanic who had rowed out to the boat, that the three men had died of starvation, as they believed there was evidence that they had tried to eat cork.
It is however unlikely that this was the case, because Collapsible A occupants were transferred to lifeboat 14, and Lowe would certainly have checked if everyone was alive. There's good chance that Thomas Beattie was dead at the point where Lowe apporached the collapsible.
A crazy coincidence is that his mother was born on a ship that was headed for Canada, near the location where Beattie was burried at sea by the crew of the Oceanic.