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Full Description
Among those onboard the RMS Titanic when it collided with an iceberg on the night of 14/15 April 1912, and sank in less than three hours with a terrible loss of life, were at least thirty people with connections to various sports. Between them, these individuals had been involved in twenty-two major spectator sports, including the Olympic Games, and several national championships of Great Britain and the United States. Many of them perished in the disaster.
Some of those among the members of the aristocracy, businessmen and ordinary folk onboard the ship had already made their names in the world of sports, in disciplines such as boxing, swimming, motor-racing, baseball and American Football. There were people such as Karl Howell Behr. A lawn tennis player, he had been a member of the United States Davis Cup squad and was a Wimbledon finalist. Among the female passengers was Lucile Carter, who was the first woman to play polo while riding astride the horse instead of side-saddle; she also raced coach-and-four teams.
Others who survived the disaster went on to have successful careers in sports like golf, lawn tennis and equestrianism. There is, for example, the story of a young boy whose father had to fight for his place in a lifeboat before he went on to a successful career in golf, and is mentioned in Ripley's Believe it or Not for playing on over 1,000 golf courses during his career, or a lawn tennis player who was threatened with amputation of his legs because of frostbite, but worked hard to bring the feelings back to his limbs and went on to gain an Olympic gold medal.
In Sportspeople on Titanic, James Bancroft explores the lives of these sporting individuals before they boarded the doomed ship, what they did as the vessel was sinking and how they miraculously escaped or lost their lives.
