Laurence Sydney Brodribb Irving (21 December 1871 – 29 May 1914) [1] was an English dramatist and actor. He died along with his wife, Mabel, in the RMS Empress of Ireland disaster.
Laurence Sydney Brodribb Irving (21 December 1871 – 29 May 1914) [1] was an English dramatist and actor. He died along with his wife, Mabel, in the RMS Empress of Ireland disaster.
Born in London, Laurence Irving was a son of the great Victorian actor-manager, Sir Henry Irving and his wife Florence (née O'Callaghan), and brother to actor manager Harry Brodribb Irving. He was educated at Marlborough College and the College Rollin in Paris, following which he was in Russia for three years studying for the Foreign Office. However, instead he took up acting, making his first appearance in 1891 [2] as Snug in The Dream in F. R. Benson's theatrical company – not counting childhood performances. [3] In 1892 he appeared at Toole's Theatre in Daisy's Escape, and after a time toured as Svengali in Trilby . In 1898 he then joined his father's Company at the Lyceum Theatre taking minor roles or juvenile leads as in Peter the Great (1898), Robespierre (1899), as Courriol in The Lyons Mail (1900), Coriolanus (1900–01), Dante (1902–03), Much Ado About Nothing (1904–05), and as Nemours in Louis Xl. Robespierre was his own translation from the French of Victorien Sardou, as also was Dante, in which his father acted. [2] [4]
Soon after he became an actor-manager starring with his own Company, playing the title role in Hamlet . He adapted Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment into The Unwritten Law and just before sailing for the United States and Canada in 1912 he made a success in London with his own adaptation from the Hungarian of a Japanese subject entitled The Typhoon. A topical play set in the time of the Russo-Japanese War, with Irving playing a Japanese officer, it was first produced by him at the Haymarket Theatre in April 1912 before taking it on a tour of the provinces. [5] His talents as an actor were recognised in his portrayal of the crafty old Nikolas Arnesson, Bishop of Oslo in Ibsen's tragedy The Pretenders at the Haymarket. [2] He was Iago in a production of Othello at His Majesty's Theatre. [4]
Irving was also a dramatist, [6] his stage plays including Robespierre (1899), Richard Lovelace (1901), Dante (1903), The Fool Hath Said: There Is No God (1908), The Incubus (1909), The Affinity (1910), and The Three Daughters of Monsieur Dupont (1910). Due to the financial failure of his play Dante his father was forced to sell the Lyceum Theatre, London. Irving was married to a fellow performer, actress Mabel Lucy Hackney (1872–1914).
Laurence and Mabel were on a tour of first Australia and then North America from 1912 to 1914. Their biggest success on the tour was Laurence's own play The Typhoon.
At the end of the tour they were returning home when Laurence and Mabel Irving drowned in the RMS Empress of Ireland disaster on 29 May 1914 when in the early hours of the Empress of Ireland was rammed by the Storstad, a Norwegian collier, on her starboard bow. Storstad remained afloat, but Empress of Ireland was severely damaged. A gaping hole in her side caused the lower decks to flood at a rate alarming to the crew. Empress of Ireland lurched heavily to starboard. Most of the passengers and crew located in the lower decks drowned quickly and water entered through open portholes, some only a few feet above the water line, and inundated passageways and cabins. Those berthed in the upper decks were awakened by the collision, and immediately boarded lifeboats on the boat deck. Within a few minutes of the collision, the list was so severe that the port lifeboats could not be launched. Some passengers attempted to do so but the lifeboats just crashed into the side of the ship, spilling their occupants into the frigid water. Five starboard lifeboats were launched successfully, while a sixth capsized during lowering. [7]
Ten or eleven minutes after the collision, Empress of Ireland lurched violently onto her starboard side, allowing as many as 700 passengers and crew to crawl out of the portholes and decks onto her port side. The ship lay on her side for a minute or two, having seemingly run aground. A few minutes later at 02:10, about 14 minutes after the collision, the bow rose briefly out of the water and the ship finally sank. Hundreds of people were thrown into the near-freezing water. The disaster resulted in the deaths of 1,012 people.
Reports in the news accounts of the tragedy say that Laurence and Mabel Irving got separated and Irving was in a position of temporary safety but he knew Mabel could not swim and he jumped back into the St. Lawrence River to rescue her. Their bodies were never found.
HMHSBritannic was the third and final vessel of the White Star Line's Olympic class of steamships and the second White Star ship to bear the name Britannic. She was the youngest sister of the RMS Olympic and the RMS Titanic and was intended to enter service as a transatlantic passenger liner. She was operated as a hospital ship from 1915 until her sinking near the Greek island of Kea, in the Aegean Sea, in 1916. At the time she was the largest hospital ship in the world.
Sir Henry Irving, christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the West End’s Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as representative of English classical theatre. In 1895 he became the first actor to be awarded a knighthood, indicating full acceptance into the higher circles of British society.
SS Andrea Doriapronounced [anˈdrɛːa ˈdɔːrja], was an ocean liner for the Italian Line home-ported in Genoa, Italy, known for its sinking in 1956, where of the 1,706 passengers and crew, 1,660 were rescued, while 46 passengers and crew lost their lives.
RMS Empress of Ireland was a Scottish built ocean liner that sank near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River in Canada following a collision in thick fog with the Norwegian collier Storstad in the early hours of 29 May 1914. Although the ship was equipped with watertight compartments and, in the aftermath of the Titanic disaster two years earlier, carried more than enough lifeboats for all aboard, she foundered in only 14 minutes. Of the 1,477 people on board, 1,012 died, making it the worst peacetime marine disaster in Canadian history.
Thomas Andrews Jr. was a British businessman and shipbuilder. He was managing director and head of the drafting department of the shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff in Belfast, Ireland.
Henry George Kendall was a British sea captain who survived several shipwrecks, including the collision and sinking of the ocean liner Empress of Ireland in 1914 and an attack by a Kaiserliche Marine submarine during the First World War. He was also noted for his role in the capture of murderer Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen.
The sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912 shocked the world and attracted controversy resulting in a number of conspiracy theories have been put forward regarding the disaster.
CP Ships was a large Canadian shipping company established in the 19th century. From the late 1880s until after World War II, the company was Canada's largest operator of Atlantic and Pacific steamships. Many immigrants travelled on CP ships from Europe to Canada. The sinking of the steamship RMS Empress of Ireland just before World War I was the largest maritime disaster in Canadian history. The company provided Canadian Merchant Navy vessels in World Wars I and II. Twelve vessels were lost due to enemy action in World War II, including the RMS Empress of Britain, which was the largest ship ever sunk by a German U-boat.
Storstad was a steam cargo ship built in 1910 by Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd of Newcastle for A. F. Klaveness & Co of Sandefjord, Norway. The ship was primarily employed as an ore and coal carrier doing tramp trade during her career. In May 1914 she collided with the ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland; the liner sank, killing over 1,000 people.
Herbert John "Bert" Pitman MBE was an English Merchant Navy seaman, who was the Third Officer of RMS Titanic when it sank in the North Atlantic Ocean with heavy loss of life after striking an iceberg during the night of 14 April 1912 on its maiden voyage.
Harry Brodribb Irving, was a British stage actor and actor-manager; the eldest son of Sir Henry Irving and his wife Florence, and father of designer Laurence Irving and actress Elizabeth Irving.
The RMS Titanic sank in the early morning hours of 15 April 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean, four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. The largest ocean liner in service at the time, Titanic had an estimated 2,224 people on board when she struck an iceberg at around 23:40 on Sunday, 14 April 1912. Her sinking two hours and forty minutes later at 02:20 on Monday, 15 April, resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people, making it one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.
Charles John Joughin was a British-American chef, known as being the chief baker aboard the RMS Titanic. He survived the ship's sinking, and became notable for having survived in the frigid water for an exceptionally long time before being pulled onto the overturned Collapsible B lifeboat with virtually no ill effects.
The Olympic-class ocean liners were a trio of British ocean liners built by the Harland & Wolff shipyard for the White Star Line during the early 20th century. They were Olympic (1911), Titanic (1912) and Britannic (1915). All three were designed to be the largest and most luxurious passenger ships at that time, designed to give White Star an advantage in the transatlantic passenger trade.
William Lugg was an English actor and singer of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. He had a long stage career beginning with roles in several Gilbert and Sullivan operas and continuing for over four decades in drama, comedy and musical theatre. Later in his career, he appeared in nine silent films in the early years of British cinema.
The Irving Family are the descendants of Samuel Brodribb,, a salesman who collected orders for the tailoring department of a local store, and his wife Mary, née Behenna,, the daughter of a Cornish farming family.
Gerald Leslie Lawrence was a British actor and manager.
Grace Hanagan Martyn was the youngest and last survivor of the sinking of the Empress of Ireland on May 29, 1914. She was one of four children who survived the sinking.
Frederick William Barrett was a British stoker. After having served as a stoker on several ships, on 6 April 1912, he was hired on board the RMS Titanic as lead stoker. On April 15, 1912, while the ship was sinking, Barrett boarded lifeboat No. 13 and took command of it, thus surviving the disaster. He later testified before commissions of inquiry into the sinking of the ship and continued to work in the navy until the 1920s. In 1923, after losing his wife Mary Anne Jones, he remained in Liverpool and worked ashore as a logger.
Mabel Lucy Hackney was a British actress and the wife of the dramatist and actor Laurence Irving and daughter-in-law of the actor Henry Irving in whose company she acted before she joined that of her husband. She died along with her husband in the RMS Empress of Ireland disaster in 1914.
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