William John Murdock
William John Murdock was a Fireman on Titanic who emigrated to Australia after surviving the sinking of the great liner.
Background[]
Born in Great Clifton, Cumberland, England on Thursday 17th September 1874, he was the son of Irish immigrant parents, Nathaniel Murdock and Anne McMaster. He was baptized on November, 1st. He became a Fireman and went on to marry Catherine Robson on 27 February 1901. The couple had four children with the youngest dying at only a few months old.
Titanic[]
On March 29, 1912 Murdock signed on to the Titanic as a Fireman for the delivery trip from Belfast to Southampton, from where her Maiden Voyage would begin. It was a short trip but obviously enough to convince him to sign up on April 6 for the long voyage to America. With a young family to support, working as stoker onboard the famous new ship, he could look forward to monthly wages of 6 pounds.
He was one of 163 stokers that would keep the fires burning on the Titanic, right up to its last days above water. Murdock's was a skilled job where he had to feed just the right amount of coal into the flames to keep the ship at the required speed.
He toiled in the depths of the huge ship and his job was often performed stripped to the waist because of the amazing heat emitted by the large furnaces. More than 600 tonnes of coal a day were needed to propel the Titanic across the Atlantic.
On the night of April 14, the ship hit an iceberg, and the stokers could no longer feed the coal into the furnaces of Boiler Room 6, and the engines stopped.
Amidst the chaos of getting people into lifeboats and the Titanic slowly descending into its watery grave, it is possible William made it to Collapsible lifeboat D. He could have been part of the crew or as one of the very few survivors hauled out of the freezing waters of the Atlantic after the ship sank. There is no evidence for this, but he did survive.
Collapsible D later approached the Carpathia, that had come at speed immediately after receiving Titanic's distress calls, and rescued the surviving passengers and crew of the Titanic.
After the sinking[]
After the devastation of losing 76% of his fellow crew members, not to mention the numbers of passengers, Murdock headed back to Belfast and his family. He continued to work on the sea up until the 1920s. During that time the Murdock family emigrated to Sydney. He worked on ships between Newcastle and Sydney.
William died on July 1, 1941. Catherine would not remarry and live on untill March 22, 1965 and they were laid to rest in the same grave.