Eleanor Shuman | |
|---|---|
 Johnson in 1997 | |
| Born | Eleanor Ileen Johnson August 23, 1910 |
| Died | March 7, 1998 (aged 87) |
| Spouse | Delbert Shuman |
| Parent(s) | Oskar Johnson and Alina Backberg |
| Relatives | Harold Johnson (brother) |
Eleanor Ileen Shuman ( née Johnson; August 23, 1910 – March 7, 1998) was an American telephone operator and one of the last remaining survivors of the sinking of RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912.
Eleanor Ileen Johnson was born in St. Charles, Illinois to newspaper editor Oscar Walter Johnson and his wife, Alina Vilhelmina Backberg (1885–1968). She had an older brother, Harold Theodore (1908–1968).
In early 1912, Alina and her two children had been in Finland visiting her dying father. When they arrived back in England, they were informed that due to a coal strike, the ship they were supposed to sail on had cancelled its trip. It was only at the last minute that they were informed that Titanic had space available. They bought third class tickets to go to New York to get jobs and visit relatives.
Eighteen-month-old Eleanor boarded Titanic along with her mother and brother as third class passengers on April 10, 1912, at Southampton, England. They shared a cabin with Elin Braf and Helmina Nilsson. Shortly after the ship struck the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14, Alina and a cabin mate went out on deck and kicked around pieces of ice that had fallen off the iceberg until an officer told them to get back in their cabins as the ship would be on its way soon. Not long after, a steward who had waited on the Johnsons in the dining room and took a liking to them, knocked on their door and, with a group of fellow Swedes, escorted them to the boat deck and to Collapsible D. Alina was helped into the boat with Eleanor in her arms and called up to Braf to get in with Harold. Braf remained frozen on deck, so a crewman took Harold from her arms and tossed him into the boat, leaving Braf behind, despite Alina's calls to her. She died in the sinking, although Nilsson did escape the ship, possibly in Lifeboat 13. [1] Alina and her children were picked up by the rescue ship RMS Carpathia and arrived in New York City on April 18.[ citation needed ]
Eleanor admitted that she remembered very little about the night the ship sank, but she insisted that she recalled the screams of passengers and the sight of hands reaching up to her from a lifeboat below. [2]
In 1958, Eleanor and Harold attended the New York City premiere of A Night to Remember .
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In 1934, Johnson married Delbert Shuman, an International Harvester engineer, and had a son, Earl. They moved to Elgin, Illinois and were married for forty-seven years before he died in 1981. Eleanor worked for the Elgin Watch Company, and later as a telephone operator until her retirement in 1962.
In 1994, Shuman visited her son in Florida, and it was the first time she had seen the Atlantic Ocean since 1912.[ citation needed ]
Into her 80s, Shuman remained active in Titanic-related activities. In August 1996, she joined fellow Titanic survivors Michel Navratil and Edith Brown on an expedition cruise to the site of Titanic's wreck. She was the only survivor that director James Cameron met while filming Titanic , and as such, received royal treatment. She saw the movie three times, including at a special screening with movie critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. She became an instant celebrity after the movie's release, and she had to change her telephone number to an unlisted one after receiving several phone calls every day from people hoping to speak with her.
Shuman died in Elgin, Illinois, at the age of 87. Her death left five remaining Titanic survivors. She was the penultimate remaining American-born survivor, as well as the penultimate remaining survivor who did not lose any relatives in the sinking.[ citation needed ]
Benjamin Guggenheim was an American businessman, who was a wealthy member of the Guggenheim family. He was among the most prominent American passengers aboard RMS Titanic and perished along with 1,495 others when the ship sank on her maiden voyage taking 1,496 of 2,208 on board with her.
Harold Sydney Bride was a British merchant seaman and the junior wireless operator on the ocean liner RMS Titanic during her ill-fated maiden voyage.
Violet Constance Jessop was an Irish-Argentine ocean liner stewardess and Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in the early 20th century. Jessop is best known for having survived the sinking of both RMS Titanic in 1912 and her sister ship HMHS Britannic in 1916, as well as having been aboard the eldest of the three sister ships, RMS Olympic, when it collided with the British warship HMS Hawke in 1911.
Robert Hichens was a British sailor who was part of the deck crew on board the RMS Titanic when she sank on her maiden voyage on 15 April 1912. He was one of seven quartermasters on board the vessel and was at the ship's wheel when the Titanic struck the iceberg. He was in charge of Lifeboat #6, where he refused to return to rescue people from the water due to fear of the boat being sucked into the ocean with the huge suction created by the Titanic, or swamped by other floating passengers. According to several accounts of those on the boat, including Margaret Brown, who argued with him throughout the early morning, Lifeboat 6 did not return to save other passengers from the waters. In 1906, he married Florence Mortimore in Devon, England; when he registered for duty aboard the Titanic, his listed address was in Southampton, where he lived with his wife and two children.
Commander Harold Godfrey Lowe, RD was a Welsh naval officer. He was also the fifth officer of the RMS Titanic, and was amongst the four of the ship's officers to survive the disaster.
Archibald Gracie IV was an American writer, soldier, amateur historian, real estate investor, and passenger aboard RMS Titanic. Gracie survived the sinking of the Titanic by climbing aboard an overturned collapsible lifeboat and wrote a popular book about the disaster. He never recovered from his ordeal and died less than eight months after the sinking, becoming the first adult survivor to die.
Michel Marcel Navratil Jr. was a French philosophy professor who was one of the last survivors of the sinking of Titanic on 15 April 1912. He, along with his brother, Edmond (1910–1953), were known as the "Titanic Orphans", having been the only children rescued without a parent or guardian. He was three years old at the time of the disaster.
Barbara Joyce Dainton was the penultimate remaining survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic on 14 April 1912 after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage. She was the last living survivor who travelled second-class on the ship.
Edith Eileen Haisman was a South African-British woman who was one of the last remaining and oldest survivors of the sinking of RMS Titanic in April 1912. She was the last survivor born in the 19th century, and therefore the last survivor who was a teenager at the time of the sinking, although seven younger survivors outlived her.
John Borland "Jack" Thayer III was a first-class passenger on RMS Titanic who survived the ship's sinking. Aged 17 at the time, he was one of only a handful of passengers to survive jumping into the frigid ocean. He later wrote and privately published his recollection of the sinking.
RMS Titanic sank on 15 April 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean. The largest ocean liner in service at the time, Titanic was four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, with an estimated 2,224 people on board when she struck an iceberg at 23:40 on 14 April. Her sinking two hours and forty minutes later at 02:20 ship's time on 15 April resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people, making it one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.
A total of 2,240 people sailed on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic, the second of the White Star Line's Olympic-class ocean liners, from Southampton, England, to New York City. Partway through the voyage, the ship struck an iceberg and sank in the early morning of 15 April 1912, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 passengers and crew.
RMS Carpathia was a Cunard Line transatlantic passenger steamship built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson in their shipyard in Wallsend, England.
Louise Gretchen Kink Pope, or Louise Kink, was a Swiss-American woman who was one of the last remaining survivors of the sinking of RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912.
Joseph Philippe Lemercier Laroche was a Haitian engineer. He was one of only three passengers of known Haitian ancestry on the ill-fated voyage of RMS Titanic.
Emily Maria Borie Ryerson was an American first-class passenger who survived the sinking of RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912.
Titanic is a four-part television serial and period drama written by Julian Fellowes. It is based on the passenger liner RMS Titanic, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in April 1912 following a collision with an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City.
Lifeboats played a crucial role during the sinking of the Titanic on 14–15 April 1912. The ship had 20 lifeboats that, in total, could accommodate 1,178 people, a little over half of the 2,209 on board the night it sank. 18 lifeboats were used, loading between 11:45 P.M. and 2:05 A.M., though Collapsible Boat A floated off the ship's partially submerged deck and Collapsible Boat B floated away upside down minutes before the ship upended and sank.
Rhoda "Rosa" Mary Abbott was a passenger on the RMS Titanic. She was the only female passenger who went down with the sinking of the ship and survived.
Agnes Charlotta Sandström was a Swedish woman who was one of the last remaining survivors of the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912. She was the last survivor who was born in Sweden.
