RMS Titanic's
Chief Radio Officer
John George
("Jack") Phillips
- an
interesting life,
cut short in its prime
John George
"Jack" Phillips was born
on
After
leaving
The "Red Lion" pub, Godalming - in 1906 it was the
The HSBC Bank, Goldaming - in 1906 it was the town post office, where Jack worked as a Telegraphist
Jack left Godalming in
March 1906 to attend the Marconi Company's Wireless Telegraphy training
school
at Seaforth Barracks in
After
finishing his training in August 1906, he
was posted as Junior Radio Officer on the White Star Line vessel
"Teutonic". For the next 2 years he served on a number of liners,
including
In 1908, he
was transferred to the Marconi Transatlantic
station at Clifden on
the Irish coast. Here he worked
as an operator transmitting and receiving messages to and from the
Marconi
sister station at
After
leaving Clifden
in 1911, Phillips returned to sea on the liner
He and Harold Bride installed the new wireless equipment.
The Death of
Jack Phillips
Much mystery
and not a little controversy
surrounds the death of Jack Phillips. What is certain is that he died
of
hypothermia either on or near collapsible lifeboat B.
At
Bride
climbed up and assisted in pushing B off,
which landed upside-down. Then, everyone scrambled for the boat deck
again.
Phillips ran aft toward the sounds of a ragtime tune and Bride thought
of
following but the group around Collapsible B needed more help. He
returned to
the upset raft and had a grip on one of the davits when a giant wave
caused by
the bow dipping under washed him and nearly everyone else working on
the Collapsibles
overboard.
Some very
interesting and well
researched observations on the end of Jack Phillips
by the
noted
Titanic historian George Behe
(from
the Titanic e-mail discussion list)
Bride's
official Marconi
report says, "Leaving the cabin, we climbed on top of the houses
comprising
the officers' quarters and our own, and here I saw the last of Mr.
Phillips,
for he disappeared walking aft." (Bride,
SR1053).
Bride does not
qualify his
statement by saying he last saw Phillips *alive* at that time, so I
take Bride
at his word that this was the *very last* time he saw Phillips (either
alive or
dead.)
Bride's report
to the
Marconi Company confirms that he did not actually *see* Phillips on the
overturned collapsible. It says: "I
called Phillips
several times, but got no response, but learned later from several
sources that
he was on this boat and expired even before we were picked off by the Titanic's boat."
Bride's
pertinent testimony
on page 162 of the US Senate Inquiry went as follows:
Smith:
You say there
were a number of people on the boat, on the bottom of the boat that was
bottom-up when you got there?
Bride:
Yes
Smith:
Do you
know any of them?
Bride:
Mr.
Phillips.
Smith:
Was on the
boat?
Bride:
Yes; I
heard so afterwards.
Smith:
He did not
survive, however?
Bride:
He did not
survive.
Smith:
Do you
know whether he died going from the Titanic to the Carpathia?
Bride:
He died on
the way, yes. He died on board the upturned boat.
Smith:
What became of
his body?
Bride:
As far as
I know, it was taken on board the Carpathia
and
buried from the Carpathia.
Smith:
Buried at
sea?
Bride:
Buried
from the Carpathia.
Smith:
Did any
one else die on that boat between the wreck and the Carpathia?
Bride:
There was
a man lying aft that they said was dead when they took him onto the
ship's
boat.
Smith:
What did
they do with his body?
Bride:
He was
taken on board the Carpathia
as far as I know.
As the above
testimony
makes clear, Bride reaffirms that he was merely *told* that Phillips
was on
board the collapsible and that he never saw Phillips there
himself.
On the other
hand, Lightoller's 1934
autobiographical account is very detailed
and -- on the surface -- sounds very authoritative about Phillip's
presence on
board the overturned collapsible. It
says: "Phillips,
the senior wireless operator, standing near me, told me the different
ships
that had answered our call........ poor old Phillips did not
live to
benefit by it. He hung on till daylight came in and we
sighted one of the
lifeboats in the distance........ he suddenly slipped down,
sitting in
the water, and though we held his head up he never recovered.
I insisted
on taking him into the lifeboat with us." (Lightoller,
pp.252-3.)
However, as
with so much of
Lightoller's 1934
information, his latter-day claims
about Phillips are contradicted elsewhere and must be taken with a huge
grain
of salt. Archibald Gracie's book (which, unlike Lightoller's
book, was written very shortly after the disaster when memories were
still
fresh) says:
"Among the
number, we
are told by Bride and Whiteley,
was the senior
Marconi operator, Phillips, but their statement that it was Phillips'
lifeless
body which we transferred first to a lifeboat and thence to the Carpathia is a mistake, for the
body referred to both Lightoller
and myself know to have been a member of the
crew, as described later....... "When the presence of the Marconi boy
at
the stern (i.e. Bride) was made known, Lightoller
called out, from his position at the bow, questions which all of us
heard, as
to the names of the steamships with which he had been in
communication
for assistance. We on the boat recall the names mentioned by
Bride.....
"When my turn
came [to
transfer from the collapsible to the lifeboat] I went
carefully...... Lightoller
remained to the last, lifting a lifeless body
into the boat beside me..... He was dressed like a member of
the
crew...... Lightoller
was uncertain as to which
one he was of two men he had in mind; but we both knew that
it was not
the body of Phillips, the senior Marconi operator." (Gracie,
pp.98-108).
Gracie also
refers to Lightoller's
1912 inquiry testimony and quotes it as
follows:
"I think there
were
three or four who died during the night aboard our boat. The
Marconi
junior operator told me that the senior operator was on this boat and
died,
presumably from the cold." (Gracie, p. 98).
It's clear
from Gracie's
account that the wireless operator who cheered up the occupants of the
upturned
collapsible by calling out the names of approaching ships was Harold
Bride, not
Jack Phillips (as Lightoller
thought in
1934.) It's also clear from the accounts of Gracie
and Lightoller that
only one body was transferred from the
collapsible onto boat #12. Bride stated that he
knew the body of
"the man lying aft" was transferred to #12, and this was the body of
the crewman mentioned by Gracie and which Lightoller
*agreed* (in 1912) was a crewman. Bride's
assumption that the body
of Phillips (which he never saw) was *also* taken on board
the Carpathia was just
that -- an assumption (since he
obviously did not see Phillips' body laying abandoned in #12 after that
boat
was emptied of living passengers).
So, in the
end, what we
have is this: in 1912 Lightoller
testified that Bride *told* him that Phillips was on the
collapsible. In
1912 Bride said *he* was told that Phillips had been on the
collapsible. In other words in 1912 *neither* Lightoller
nor Bride knew *first hand* that Phillips had been on the
collapsible. On the other hand, in 1912 Gracie said
that the dead
man on the collapsible was a crewman and that, at that time, Lightoller agreed with him.
By 1934,
though, Lightoller's
story had become much more
elaborate; by that time his conversation with
Harold Bride on board
the collapsible had changed into a conversation with Jack Phillips, and
the
body of the dead crewman had changed into the body of Phillips
himself.
When it comes
right down to
it, the only person we know of who supposedly claimed to have *seen*
Jack Phillips
on board the upturned collapsible was steward Thomas Whiteley.
In one newspaper interview Whiteley
was quoted as
saying that Phillips was on board the collapsible with him and spoke
about the
approaching rescue ships before losing consciousnesss
and dying according to Whiteley's
interview,
Phillips' body was supposedly taken on board the Carpathia.
(This information is so similar to the story Bride was told about
Phillips that
it's possible Whiteley
was Bride's source of
information about Phillips' death).
However,
another newspaper
interview with Whiteley
states that Phillips was in
one of the five lifeboats that were lashed together. Phillips
supposedly
sank down into the bottom of the boat and died despite efforts to
revive him,
and his body was "washed overboard" a little later.
Newspaper
interviews often
leave a great deal to be desired as far as accuracy
goes.
Nevertheless, we know (via Gracie) that Phillips' body was not taken on
board
the Carpathia from the
upturned collapsible, and
there's no evidence to suggest that Phillips was picked up by one of
the boats
that were lashed together, either. In short, the
information
provided by Thomas Whiteley
concerning the death of
Jack Phillips is uncorroborated and is therefore of unknown
reliability.
Perhaps Whiteley saw
Jack Phillips die on the
overturned collapsible, or perhaps he didn't. Even
so, we *do* know
that neither Harold Bride nor Charles Lightoller
*saw* Jack Phillips on board the upturned collapsible that night.
Jack Phillips had
celebrated his 25th birthday only 4 days before he lost his life in the
early
morning hours of April 15, 1912.
Vale Jack Phillips
The “Jack Phillips” pub and memorial garden,
Godalming, Surrey ,
UK
Your author
was fortunate to spend some time
in Godalming during a
business trip to the
(Click on the thumbnails for a larger view - use your browser's "back" button to return to this page.)
The “Jack Phillips”
pub
There is a
new pub in Godalming,
named in honour of Jack. The
main bar
area contains a painting of the famous photographic portrait of Jack
(see top of
this page), and some other pictures/paintings/drawings of the Titanic.
All things considered, I must say that I was disappointed with the display in the pub – it could have been done a lot better (perhaps they need me as a consultant..!).
Painting of Jack in the pub
The memorial
garden/cloister
The Jack Phillips memorial garden consists of a cloister, an open field, a field of wild flowers, and a walk beneath the shady trees along the River Wye, Godalming.
Entrance to the garden
Sign at the entrance to the garden
Memorial garden
Another view
Plaque in center of garden
Among the contributors to the memorial fund for the memorial was Harold Bride. He gave 1 pound, 5 pence in memory of his fallen friend.
Harold Cottam, who travelled with Bride
that day, gave 2 pounds.
Sincere
thanks to Nicole Dukes of
Thanks
also to George Behe,
Bill Wormstedt,
"Nefarious" Dave Billnitzer,
Bill Stauffer and "