Eva Hart

Eva (Miriam) Hart
Born	(1905-01-31)31 January 1905 Ilford, Essex, England
Died	14 February 1996(1996-02-14) (aged 91) Chadwell Heath, London, England
Cause of death	Cancer

Eva Miriam Hart MBE (31 January 1905 – 14 February 1996) was a survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912.

Biography

Early life

Eva Miriam Hart was born on 31 January 1905 in Ilford, Essex, England to Benjamin Hart and Esther Bloomfield. She was the only child of Benjamin and Esther. Her mother had been previously married and had several children from her first marriage who died young. Eva was educated at St. Mary's Convent (Later St. Mary's Hare Park) in Gidea Park, Essex. In early 1912, Benjamin decided to take his family and emigrate to Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he planned to open a drug store.

Aboard Titanic

Eva's father Benjamin (who disappeared aboard the Titanic, herself and her mother Esther

Eva Hart was seven years old when she and her parents, Benjamin and Esther, boarded the Titanic as second-class passengers on 10 April 1912 at Southampton, England. They had originally been booked on a ship called Philadelphia but the coal strike at Southampton that Spring kept Philadelphia from sailing and many of her passengers were transferred to Titanic. Almost instantly, Hart's mother felt uneasy about Titanic and feared that some catastrophe would happen. To call a ship unsinkable was, in her mother's mind, flying in the face of God. With such fear, Esther slept only during the day and stayed awake in her cabin at night fully dressed.

Eva was sleeping when the Titanic struck the iceberg at 11:40 pm on 14 April. Eva's father rushed into her cabin to alert her and her mother, and after wrapping her in a blanket, he carried her to the boat's deck. He placed his wife and daughter in Lifeboat No. 14 and told Hart to 'hold Mummy's hand and be a good girl.' It was the last thing her father ever said to her, and the last time she ever saw him.

Hart and her mother were picked up by the rescue ship RMS Carpathia and arrived in New York, New York on 18 April. Her father perished and his body, if recovered, was never identified.

Eva and Esther Hart (center and right) upon their return to England after the sinking of the Titanic.

Soon after arriving in America, Hart and her mother returned to England and her mother remarried. Hart was plagued with nightmares and upon the death of her mother in 1928 when Hart was 23, she confronted her fears head on by returning to the sea and locking herself in a cabin for four straight days until the nightmares went away.

Memories of Titanic

In April 2012 an audio walking guide to Titanic memorials in Southampton, Hampshire, was produced featuring audio clips of Hart talking about her experience. The guide takes the listener on a walking route around Southampton, where Titanic set sail on her maiden, and of course, final voyage.

Being seven years old at the time of the Titanic, Hart maintained several vivid memories.

"We went on the day on the boat train. I was 7, I had never seen a ship before. It looked very big. Everybody was very excited, we went down to the cabin and that's when my mother said to my father that she had made up her mind quite firmly that she would not go to bed in that ship, she would sit up at night. She decided that she wouldn't go to bed at night, and she didn't!"

"I saw that ship sink," she said in a 1993 interview. "I never closed my eyes. I didn't sleep at all. I saw it, I heard it, and nobody could possibly forget it." "I can remember the colors, the sounds, everything," she said. "The worst thing I can remember are the screams." "It seemed as if once everybody had gone, drowned, finished, the whole world was standing still. There was nothing, just this deathly, terrible silence in the dark night with the stars overhead." "The band played one version of 'Nearer My God to Thee' of which there are three and the one they played was the one that was played in church." "I never closed my eyes at all – I saw that ship sink. And I saw that ship break in half."

Career

Hart worked several jobs throughout her life. She was a professional singer in Australia and a Conservative Party organizer, and also served as a magistrate.

Outspoken criticism

Hart was one of the most outspoken survivors concerning the Titanic's lack of sufficient lifeboats and of any salvage attempts of the Titanic after its discovery in 1985 by Robert Ballard. She also stated in Titanic: The Complete Story, I hope severely that they will never attempt to raise part of it. I do hope they will remember this is a grave - a grave of 1,500 people who should never have died, and I don't think you should go down there and rob graves and I'm very much opposed to it.

She commonly criticised the White Star Line for failing to provide enough lifeboats for all aboard Titanic. "If a ship is torpedoed, that's war," she once said. "If it strikes a rock in a storm, that's nature. But just to die because there weren't enough lifeboats, that's ridiculous."

Hart was largely vocal in numerous interviews about the ship having broken in half, a hotly debated rumor that was later proven to be true after the discovery of the wreck site. She was also adamant regarding the controversy surrounding the SS Californian, a ship that was only a few miles from the Titanic which failed to respond to distress rockets and calls for help. Hart claimed the vessel was less than ten miles from Titanic, not nineteen as was previously believed.

"I saw that ship (the Californian). It was terribly close... I didn't see a ship nineteen miles away. I saw a ship that was so close; and they said at the time it was less than nine miles away, [and yet] now they're trying to say it was nineteen... I saw it you know, and it wasn't just 'lights on the horizon' – you could see it was a ship. And I saw our rockets being fired, which that ship must have seen. Well this inquiry says that they did see it but they didn't think it was a portent of danger. I would have thought in the middle of the Atlantic in the middle of the night that rockets must mean trouble."

When salvaging efforts began in 1987, Hart was quick to note that the Titanic is a gravesite and should be treated as such. She often decried the "insensitivity and greed" and labelled the salvors "fortune hunters, vultures, pirates, and grave robbers."

Later life

Hart remained active in Titanic-related activities well into her 80s. In 1982, she returned to the United States and joined several other survivors at a Titanic Historical Society convention commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Titanic sinking. She participated in three more conventions in 1987, 1988, and in 1992. In 1994, Hart wrote an autobiography, Shadow of the Titanic – A Survivor's Story, in which she described her experiences aboard the ship and the lasting implications of its sinking. On 15 April 1995, the 83rd anniversary of the disaster, Hart and fellow second-class Titanic survivor Edith Brown dedicated a memorial garden plaque on the grounds of the National Maritime Museum in London.

Death

Hart died on 14 February 1996 at her home in Chadwell Heath, two weeks after her 91st birthday. Her death left eight remaining survivors. In her memory, a Wetherspoon's Pub in Chadwell Heath is named 'The Eva Hart'.

Popular culture

Letter written by Eva and her mother Esther, to Eva's grandmother, on the night of the Titanic sinking. It was auctioned in April 2014.

Eva Hart's connection to the Titanic and her active involvement in later years made her popular in numerous forms of media, including mentions in non-nonfiction books, museums and exhibitions.

• Several Titanic documentaries, including Titanica (1995), feature interviews with Eva Hart.
• Shadow of the Titanic, published by Chadwell Publishers in 1994, is the biography of Miss Eva Miriam Hart written by Professor Ronald C. Denney in collaboration with Eva Hart. Various republications have been released since its first publication, with minor changes.
• Eva and Little Kitty on the Titanic, is a children's book published by Sidsel Media in 2012, based on Eva Hart's account of the Titanic disaster.
• James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic, features a scene where a father says to his daughter "you hold mommy's hand and be a good little girl"; this is a reference to Eva Hart's father, Benjamin Hart, who spoke the same words the night of the disaster, when Eva was put into a lifeboat. An interview with Eva Hart was also included in a behind-the-scenes documentary about the 1997 film.

External links

• Eva Hart at Encyclopedia Titanica
• Eva Hart at Find A Grave
• Eva Hart at Citysteps audio guides