The Dogs On The Titanic

Mr & Mrs Astor and their Airedale terrier

• Lady, a Pomeranian that had recently been purchased in Paris by Margaret Bechstein Hays. The 24-year-old New Yorker was returning home on the Titanic from travels in Europe with friends. When passengers were evacuated, Miss Hays wrapped Lady in a blanket. Crew members allowed her to get in lifeboat 7 with the puppy because they assumed it was a baby.
• Another Pomeranian, whose name isn't known, owned by New York clothing magnate Martin Rothschild and his wife, Elizabeth Jane Anne Rothschild. While Martin Rothschild didn't survive the shipwreck, his wife made it to lifeboat 6 with her dog, which she kept hidden. No one else on the lifeboat remembered seeing the dog until the next morning, and rescuers on the Carpathia initially refused to take it on board. But Mrs Rothschild insisted, and both made it back to New York. Not long after his salvage, the Pom died after a fight with another dog.
•  
• Sun Yat-Sen, a Pekingese owned by Henry S. Harper, heir to New York's Harper & Row publishing firm, and his wife Myra Harper. The Harpers were returning from a tour of Europe and Asia, joined by an interpreter they had picked up in Egypt. All three, plus Sun Yat-Sen, entered lifeboat 3 on the Titanic's starboard side. When asked later about saving the dog, Henry Harper explained that there seemed to be lots of room, and nobody made any objection. The Pekingese died half a year later.
  

• Frou-Frou, a toy poodle belonging to Helen Walton Bishop.
• A Fox terrier named Dog, owned by William Dulles, an attorney from Philadelphia.
• Millionaire John Jacob Astor's Airedale named Kitty. He led his pregnant wife Madeleine to the lifeboat but was not allowed to follow her. Women and children first! He went off to let Kitty out of her kennel and perhaps also the other dogs. Madeleine Astor said later that she saw Kitty running to and fro on the deck.
• Robert Daniel's French bulldog Gamin de Pycombe. When the ship began to sink Mr Daniel collected his dog from the kennel but had to leave him behind when he went to save himself. So it could also have been him who released the other dogs. Later, Richard Norris Williams, another passenger who was swimming for his life in the cold water, suddenly found himself face to face with Gamin. When he was pulled on board a lifeboat he was convinced that he had been subject to a hallucination.
• Two dogs belonging to American coal magnate William Carter, who reassured his worried children that their pets were safe as they clambered into the lifeboats. His daughter Lucy was later compensated $100 by Lloyds of London for her King Charles spaniel, while his son Billy received $200 for his Airedale.

The photo showing the ship's captain Edward Smith with a Borzoi was taken on board the Titanic the day before sailing. The dog was a gift from Benjamin Guggenheim who did a lot of travelling, often on ships skippered by Capt. Smith, so he knew him and his family well. Guggenheim, although originally scheduled to sail on another vessel, ended up on the Titanic, and brought a large Russian wolfhound as a gift for the captain's daughter. The dog remained overnight, but was taken home to his daughter the next morning, so he was not on board when the ship got underway.

www.welshcorgi-news.ch