EDWINA “WINNIE” TROUTT
Maid, Age 27
~ Survived ~
Edwina “Winnie” Troutt was born in Bath, Sommerset, England on July 8, 1884; and she was one truly blessed woman. She not only survived the sinking of the Titanic, she also outlived three husbands, endured a near-deadly bout of pneumonia and then went on to continue living a long productive life, despite having the use of only one lung.
She lived to be 100, dying on December 3, 1984.
Edwina Troutt was twenty-seven years old the year the Titanic sank, an unmarried young woman on her way to live in America. She was one among the 706 survivors who had booked passage aboard the R.M.S. Titanic. Anytime that people would ask her what she remembered most clearly about that night on the sinking passenger liner, she was—more often than not—hard put to choose. “And yet,” she reflectively wrote, “sometimes I think it just might be the stillness—the stillness and the hymn we sang to blot it out.”
It had always struck Troutt as ironic that on the night the iceberg ripped that long gash in the Titanic’s starboard hull—April 14, 1912—the sea itself was serene. “The air was frosty cold,” she revealed, “but there was no wind and the sky was crowded with stars, all brazenly large.”
In all, it took three hours for the Titanic to die. That last hour, according to Troutt’s eyewitness account, was a time of mounting terror as she and others on lifeboat sixteen watched what they could not believe—the ship’s stern rising out of the water, hundreds and hundreds of men and women still aboard, an orchestra playing soulful tunes, lights flashing.
When at last the Titanic stood straight up in the water, tall and slender as a skyscraper, the master of arms in charge of the lifeboat—his name was Bailey—suddenly stood up.
“Scream!” Bailey shouted at Edwina and her fellow passengers. “Scream!” as though their noise would mask and nullify what was about to happen. There was no help they could give to those still aboard the huge sinking ship; screaming, at least, was something they could do.
And so it was that as the Titanic slid roaring and rumbling into the water, all there on lifeboat sixteen were yelling. In the midst of death they were filling their lungs with screams of life, like babies out of the womb.
Then the stillness. That unforgettable silence. The oars of their boat trailed lifeless as its rowers slumped forward. All living seemed to simultaneously sink within themselves, unable to speak, think or feel.
Once again Master of Arms Bailey rose to his feet. His eyes flashed in the starlight; his walrus mustache quivered as he said in the stillness, “Please. I want you to sing with me. Sing now, all of you. Please.” Then his deep, resonant voice rolled out with, “Pull for the shore, sailors, pull for the shore . . .”
The men at the oars straightened. Here and there a faint voice picked up the words. Cracked and trembling at first, the voices seemed to draw strength from the old church hymn that so many of them had learned growing up in England.
“Pull for the shore, sailors, pull for the shore!/Heed not the rolling waves, but bend to the oar,/Safe in the lifeboat, sailor, cling to self no more!/Leave the poor old stranded wreck, and pull for the shore.”
With that hymn, those on lifeboat sixteen were God’s people again, each bending to his or her task, trying to make others comfortable, soothing the children, consoling the bereaved, doing whatever was deemed necessary to do throughout the remainder of the night.
When morning came, so also arrived the rescue ship R.M.S. Carpathia, and soon they were safe on her decks.
Edwina Troutt in her retelling of the events which took place in the cold stillness and darkness of that night concluded:
“I learned that night to concentrate on living life. During those hours when death and life were suddenly so starkly delineated, I realized once and for all that there is no real certainty in man’s world. Unsinkable ships do sink.
“Yet I believed then, as I believe now, that there is certainty in God’s universe. When we sang that old, very familiar hymn I was reminded that we in that lifeboat were among the living, and when one is alive there is work to be done—oars to be pulled, shores to be reached.”
—Ron Metheny
Bible Verse: “For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.” —Hebrews 10:36 ESV
Quotable Quote: “If you look in your dictionary you will find: Titans—A race of people vainly striving to overcome the forces of nature. Could anything be more unfortunate than such a name, anything more significant?” —Arthur Rostron, Captain of the rescue ship R.M.S. Carpathia
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