Captain Edward J. Smith

Born

27 January 1850, Hanley, Staffordshire

Age in 1912

62

Aboard

Master, RMS Titanic

Fate

Lost

Body

Never recovered or identified

Memorial

Beacon Park, Lichfield

Before the voyage

He was a potter's son from Hanley who left school at thirteen to work a steam hammer at Etruria Forge. At seventeen he went to sea as an apprentice out of Liverpool. He joined White Star in 1880 as a fourth officer and had his first command seven years later.

By 1911 he was the senior commander of the line, the man they gave the maiden voyages to. He took Olympic out on hers. He took command of Titanic at Belfast on 1 April 1912, two weeks before she sailed.

That night

At about five minutes to nine he came onto the bridge and talked with Second Officer Lightoller about the ice. Lightoller swore to the time under oath. The two men discussed how they would see a berg without wind to break water at its base. Smith left the bridge at about twenty past.

The ship struck at twenty minutes to midnight. He ordered the engines stopped, sent for Thomas Andrews, and was told the ship had less than two hours. He ordered the boats uncovered and swung out.

The last man to swear to seeing him was the lamp trimmer, Samuel Hemming, who came down off the officers' house and found the captain alone by the collapsible boat, calling everyone over to the starboard side to hold the ship up as long as she would go. About a quarter of an hour later Hemming was in the water.

What is said, and what is known

He is supposed to have cried "Be British" as the ship went down. Not one member of the crew ever reported hearing it. The line is carved into his memorial in Lichfield and into the plaque that hung in Hanley Town Hall, and the monument is where the quotation comes from, not a witness.

The newspapers of 1912 also had him shooting himself on the bridge, shooting steerage passengers, and turning up alive in Baltimore that July. None of it is true.

What is true is quieter and harder. The British inquiry found his speed excessive and his lookout insufficient, and then declined to blame him. Lord Mersey wrote that Smith had made "a very grievous mistake," but that in the absence of negligence it was impossible to fix him with blame, adding that the same conduct in any future case would without doubt be negligence. He was cleared, and the practice he died following was condemned in the same breath.

Afterward

His body was never recovered. There is no grave.

The memorial statue in Beacon Park, Lichfield, was unveiled in 1914. It was sculpted by Kathleen Scott, the widow of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who had died in the Antarctic the year before. One widow of a famous disaster made the likeness of the man at the centre of another.

The painting

Artist

Dirk Strangely

Year

2025

The panel

16 x 20 inches, wood

The paper

Pages from a 1912 edition of The Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters, published months after the ship went down

The paint

Winsor & Newton acrylic

The artifact

Authenticated coal recovered from the wreck of RMS Titanic, ground into pigment and applied to the pupils and the signature. This is the Artifactism™ element of the work.

The gold

24k leaf on the crest of his cap, his buttons, the decor on his shirt, the bars on his shoulders, and his wedding ring

Status

Original, reserved for exhibition

The squared pattern across the painting is the 1912 pages beneath the paint.

The coal in his eyes was lifted from the wreck of the ship he commanded, recovered from the sea floor in 1994.

Sources: Encyclopedia Titanica · Lightoller, British Inquiry · Hemming, US Senate Inquiry · Mersey Report