He claimed that they were telling a Titanic lie.
While Titanic Captain Edward John Smith’s official cause of death remains one of history’s enduring mysteries, author Dan E. Parkes has thrown cold water on theories that he took his own life, claiming these rumors unfairly tarnished his legacy.
He made these bombshell claims in the book “Titanic Legacy: The Captain, the Daughter and the Spy,” which details eyewitness accounts from shipwreck survivors, who discuss, among other things, how Captain Smith met his end, the Daily Mail reported.
Over 1,500 people died when the RMS Titanic sank on April 14-15, 1912, following its fateful collision with an iceberg in one of the most notorious maritime disasters in history.
Unfortunately, the British Naval Officer’s body was never recovered — only 337 ever were — spawning a wide range of explanations as to how he perished.
These ranged from accounts of him gallantly going down with the ship — as depicted in James Cameron’s 1997 epic “Titanic” — to conspiracy theories claiming that the legendary mariner was living in disguise in Maryland.
As author Wyn Craig Wade wrote in “The Titanic: End of a Dream,” Captain Smith — who was played by the late Bernard Hill in the film — “had at least five different deaths, from heroic to ignominious,” according to History.com.
The most heartbreaking forensic postulation came three days after the tragedy, when the Los Angeles Express proclaimed on its front page: “Captain E.J. Smith shot himself.”
A day later, the UK’s Daily Mirror declared on its front page: “Captain Smith Shoots Himself on the Bridge.”
During inquiries into the maritime tragedy held in New York and London, survivors claimed they’d also heard rumors of the 62-year-old commodore’s ignominious end.
Suicide was seen as a cowardly way to go out during a time when the captain was honor-bound to go down with the ship.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg: There were also controversial reports smearing Smith’s reputation when he was alive, alleging that he had an appetite for booze, was piloting the Titanic at an unsafe speed and also ignored warnings about the iceberg — throwing salt in the wound of his widow Eleanor and their 7-year-old daughter Mel.
However, Parkes labeled these rumors unfounded character assassinations and claimed that the venerated captain drowned or froze to death in the North Atlantic with the other casualties.
Despite the abundance of eyewitness accounts of an officer suicide, the author believes that the official in question wasn’t Smith as he wasn’t named.
Parkes instead claims that the gunshots had been fired to calm panicking passengers, and traumatized voyagers assumed, without proof, that they were hearing the captain’s self-inflicted gunshot wound.
He pointed out that many of these eyewitnesses who claimed the latter were unreliable as they were on lifeboats that disembarked long before the Titanic’s final descent.
Parkes, who also dismissed claims of the captain’s drunkeness, reckless steering and dismissal of warnings, added that perhaps the passengers needed a scapegoat for the calamity and settled on the seaman.
There are many eyewitness accounts that support Parkes’ version of his final moments, including one by, Robert Williams Daniel, a 27-year-old banker who said he “saw Captain Smith on the bridge” as the Titanic sank.
He had reportedly told the New York Herald at the time that he’d watched the water swallow the captain whole, declaring, “he died a hero.”
Isaac Maynard, a 31-year-old cook, testified in New York that he’d also seen Smith on the bridge as he himself was swept overboard, adding that he later saw the white-bearded mariner swimming in the water fully dressed with his captain’s hat atop his head.
“One of the men clinging to the raft tried to save him by reaching out a hand, but he would not let him, and called out ‘look after yourselves, boys,’” Maynard claimed. “I do not know what became of the captain, for I could not see him at the time, but I suppose he sank.”
Parkes cites other survivors who claimed that the captain even rescued a baby and handed it off to a lifeboat, but refused to board the vessel himself.
“Fifteen yards away was the body of an infant which attracted the struggling sailor,” George Brereton, a gambler and swindler who boarded the Titanic under a fake name to scam wealthy passengers, told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle “He caught hold of the child and then with his right arm made for a lifeboat. The little one was safely put aboard and the captain resumed his struggle for the sinking Titanic.”
Parkes labeled this heroic deed entirely in character for Smith, who was nicknamed the “Millionaire’s Captain” because of his popularity with upper-class voyagers.
Survivors even alleged that seafarers put on a courageous face despite knowing that doom was imminent, according to History.com.
“I saw Captain Smith getting excited; passengers would not have noticed, but I did,” May Sloan, a surviving Titanic stewardess, wrote in a letter shortly after the catastrophe. “I knew then we were soon going.”
