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TITANIC: The Channel Island Connections

The story of the Titanic may be very well known, but not so well-known is that there were 29 people on board with a close connection to the Channel Islands. There were a higher number of passengers from Guernsey because a dozen Islanders had decided to travel together in a companionable grouping. They were either related or friends and they were mostly young. Some of them were emigrating, others, who had emigrated some years previously, had returned to Guernsey on a home visit and were now returning to their new homes in the New York area. Only three women passengers of the group survived. The passengers with a Jersey connection included the famous couturière Lucy Christiana, Lady Duff-Gordon, who had spent her childhood years in Jersey. She was travelling first class with her husband, Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon. Both of them survived, but scandal dogged them for years afterwards, because it was claimed that they bribed the crew of the lifeboat not to pick up people struggling in the water. Also on board was crew member Alfred Olliver, born in St Ouen, who was on the bridge at the moment of collision. He was one of the few survivors who actually saw the iceberg and described it afterwards. There are still relatives of Titanic living in Guernsey and Jersey today. The author, Alasdair Crosby, is a Jersey-based writer and journalist. He said: 'There have been innumerable books written about the Titanic, but this is the first one that tells the stories of all the Channel Islanders who were on board. Everybody knows about the rich and famous names that were caught up in the tragedy, such as the Astors, Ben Guggenheim, the Countess of Rothes and the rest, but this book tells the stories of some of those whose lives have never been chronicled; most of whom were travelling second class or working as crew. Their stories are no less powerful and no less tragic.'Read more

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