The Martyr of the Titanic

Alive Publishing ^ | 4/14/12 | Joanna Moorhead

[marshmallow]

Among the unsung heros of the Titanic, which sank 100 years ago this month, was a parish priest from Essex. Joanna Moorhead finds out more.

There’s a moment in the movie Titanic, as Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio are desperately struggling across the deck in the final moments before the ship sinks, when the camera pans to a priest who is standing with a group of passengers reciting the Hail Mary. A few minutes later we see him again: this time, he’s quoting from the Book of the Apocalypse.

Which, according to historian Fr Stewart Foster, is ridiculous. ‘There’s no way a Catholic priest would be quoting from the Book of the Apocalypse as a ship was sinking,’ he says. ‘He’d be ministering to his flock, hearing confessions and giving a general absolution.’

And that, he says, is exactly what the Catholic priest the character is based on – Father Thomas Byles – was doing on the night of April 14-15 2012. ‘As the Titanic sank, Father Byles was seen consoling the steerage class passengers, talking to them and praying the Rosary with them,’ says Fr Foster. ‘Most of them were Italian or Irish, and since he’d studied in Rome, he spoke Italian.

‘Several eyewitness accounts mention, too, that Fr Byles refused a place in a lifeboat – and not just once, but on two separate occasions.’

All of which explains, says Fr Foster, why Pope Pius X later told William Byles that his brother had been ‘a martyr for the Church’. ‘The Pope gave him that accolade because he could have had his life saved but he refused – he wanted to remain with the people until the end,’ says Fr Foster.

At the time the Titanic struck the iceberg Fr Byles was reciting his office on the upper.......

[onedoug]

Thank God there is still baseball to coach.