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 five other watchmen.[5]
Titanic
Fleet boarded the Titanic in Southampton on April 10, 1912. The ship made two stops, first in Cherbourg, France and Queenstown, in Ireland. The lookouts, six in total, made two-hour shifts due to extreme cold in the crow's nest.[6] The trip was uneventful until the night of April 14, 1912. At 22:00 (10PM) that night, Fleet and his fellow lookout Reginald Lee replaced George Symons and Archie Jewell at the nest.[7] They passed on the order given earlier to them by second officer Charles Lightoller to watch out for small ice.[4] The night was calm and moonless, which made it harder to spot the icebergs due to the lack of ripples and reflection. Besides, despite repeated requests for binoculars, the ship didn't carry any on board. It's sometimes attributed to the last-minute change in the hierarchy of the ship when officer David Blair was replaced by Henry Tingle Wilde, without Blair notifying were the binoculars were placed. It's been also said that Blair accidentally took the keys of the cupboard containing the binoculars with him, though it's disputed. Despite the two inquiries into the disaster, nothing clarified why the lookouts weren't provided with binoculars, though there are many explanations such as the one that the White Star Line steamers' lookouts didn't particularly use them. Besides, some experts have said that even using binoculars, neither Fleet nor Lee could have spotted the iceberg any sooner given the conditions of the night.
At 23:40 (11:40PM), Fleet first spotted the iceberg and rang the nest's bell three times to warn the bridge of something ahead. Then, using the nest's telephone he pronounced the infamous "Iceberg! Right Ahead!" warning to sixth officer James Paul Moody who immediately notified first officer William McMaster Murdoch; in charge of the bridge. From the nest, Fleet realized that the collision was unavoidable and first thought that it could bring down the mast to which th nest was attached. After the collision, Fleet and Lee remained on duty for twenty more minutes.
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.
- ^ a b Spignesi, Stephen J. (January 2012). The Titanic For Dummies. John Wiley & Sons. p. 118. ISBN 978-1118177662. Cite error: The named reference "bookdummies" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ a b c d Stories from The Titanic, National Archives UK.
- ^ Golden, Frank; Tipton, Michael (June 2002). Essentials of Sea Survival. Human Kinetics Pub Inc. p. 12. ISBN 978-0736002158.
- ^ Matthews, Rupert (March 2011). Titanic: The Tragic Story of the Ill-fated Ocean Liner. Arcturus Publishing. ISBN 1848377630.
