Growing up, Julie Cook heard family tales about the bravery of her great-grandfather William Edward Bessant, a stoker on the Titanic who, so the story went, had given up his place on a lifeboat for a passenger. It was only as she began to look into the story as an adult that she began to question how these facts could have been known, and the result is The Titanic and the City of Widows. For whether or not the story of her great-grandfather could ever be verified, what was not in dispute is that Julie’s great-grandmother like hundreds of other women, was forced to survive as the sole breadwinner with dependent children in the years following the sinking of the ship.
Sometimes lauded as the wives of heroes, these ordinary women, as Julie explains, had to carry on with life, perhaps having to find a job and juggle this with housework and caring for traumatised children. And although financial help was available in the form of compensation funds, this was distributed in a seemingly random way, with some families receiving money for ‘extras’ such as a sewing machine whilst others struggled to afford their next meal.
With orginal archive sources, the accounts of survivors, and family stories from descendants, this is a valuable addition to our collective knowledge of the Titanic.
Pen & Sword Publishing, paperback, £19.99 ISBN 9781526757166