Frederick Fleet
Frederick Fleet | |
|---|---|
 Frederick Fleet at age 24, 1912. | |
| Born | 15 October 1887 |
| Died | 10 January 1965 (aged 77) |
Frederick Fleet (15 October 1887 – 10 January 1965) was a British sailor, crewman and survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic after it struck an iceberg on 14 April 1912.[1] Employed as a lookout aboard the Titanic, it was Fleet who first sighted the iceberg, ringing the bridge to proclaim, "Iceberg, right ahead!".[2] Fleet testified at the inquiries that if he had been issued binoculars, he would have seen the iceberg sooner, because it was a blue iceberg in calm seas on a moonless night.[3]
Biography
Early life and sea career
Fleet was born in Liverpool on 15 October 1887. He never knew his father, and his mother abandoned him and ran away with a boyfriend to Springfield, Massachusetts, in the United States never to be heard from again.[4] Frederick was raised by a succession of foster families and distant relatives. In 1903 he went to sea as a deck boy, working his way up to able seaman.[5]
Before joining the crew of the RMS Titanic he had sailed for over four years as a lookout in the RMS Oceanic.[5] As a seaman, Fleet earned five pounds per month plus an extra 5 shillings for lookout duty.[5] And it was as a lookout that Fleet joined the Titanic in April 1912, along with other five watchmen.[5]
Fleet was one of the Titanic crew members assigned to man the lifeboats, after the ship started to go down. As such, he survived the ship's sinking and later served in the merchant service through World War I and again in World War II, after having been unemployed in the 1930s.
Fleet served in the Titanic's sister ship Olympic from 1920 to 1935 and signed on as ship's lookout and able seaman. When his wife died shortly after Christmas 1964, he was evicted and he then became depressed and committed suicide by hanging two weeks later in January 1965. Many[who?] have said that in many ways, Fleet was also the last victim of the Titanic. People who knew him said that he suffered from terrible guilt all his life because he had lived while so many perished. Out of 2,224 passengers and crew in the Titanic, he was one of only 710 who survived. Fleet was buried in a pauper's grave at Hollybrook Cemetery, in Southampton. The grave went unmarked until 1993, when a headstone bearing an engraving of the Titanic was erected through donations by the Titanic Historical Society.
References
- ^ Fleet was second-in-charge aboard lifeboat #6
- ^ United States Senate Inquiry Day 4, Testimony of Frederick Fleet.
- ^ "Sorry for bringing these 100 years too late": Sick pranksters leave binoculars on grave of Titanic lookout, Mirror.co.uk.
- ^ Spignesi, Stephen J. (January 2012). The Titanic For Dummies. John Wiley & Sons. p. 118. ISBN 978-1118177662.
- ^ a b c d Stories from The Titanic, National Archives UK.
