William Clark
| William Clark | |
|---|---|
| Born | 7 July 1869 Greenore, County Louth, Ireland |
| UnknownUnknown | |
| Other names | William Clarke |
| 💼 Occupation | Ship's fireman (stoker) |
| Known for | Surviving the sinkings of the RMS Titanic (1912) and the RMS Empress of Ireland (1914) |
William Clark (born 7 July 1869; date of death unknown) was an Irish merchant navy fireman who survived two of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters of the early twentieth century: the sinking of the RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912 and the sinking of the RMS Empress of Ireland on 29 May 1914. He worked in the stokehold of both ships, shovelling coal to feed the boiler furnaces, and escaped each wreck by lifeboat. His name appears on the surviving-crew records of both vessels, and his dual survival is treated as established fact by Encyclopedia Titanica and by historians of the Empress disaster.[1][2]
Clark is often confused with "Frank 'Lucky' Tower", a fictional or misidentified fireman of maritime folklore said to have survived the Titanic, the Empress of Ireland and the RMS Lusitania. Research by the historian Senan Molony found no such man on any of the three crew lists, and Clark's survival of two wrecks, both documented, is distinct from that legend.[3]
Early life
William Clark was born on 7 July 1869 in Greenore, a small port on Carlingford Lough in County Louth, Ireland. He was raised Roman Catholic in a labouring family, the son of Thomas Clark, a labourer, and his wife Anne (née Rafferty), and had nine known siblings. His father died in 1900 and his mother remained in Greenore until her death in 1917.[1] Some genealogical sources give his year of birth as about 1872, but the 1869 date rests on his birth registration and matches contemporary press reports that described him as forty-three years old in 1914.[1][2]
By the 1911 census Clark was living at 30 Paget Street, Southampton, and working as a labourer in an iron foundry.[1] According to a June 1914 profile in the Dundalk Democrat, he had left Ireland for Liverpool as a young man, gone to sea, served aboard a British warship from which he deserted, and later fought in the Second Boer War (1899–1902) with Brabant's Horse under Lord Methuen, being wounded in action and spending a long spell in a military hospital before returning to seafaring. These details come from a single newspaper account and are less firmly documented than his shipwreck record.[4]
RMS Titanic
Clark signed on to the Titanic at Southampton on 6 April 1912 as a fireman, giving his address as 30 Paget Street and his previous ship as the Avon. His wage was £6 a month.[1] He was aboard when the ship struck an iceberg late on 14 April 1912 and sank in the early hours of the following morning with the loss of about 1,500 lives.
Clark survived in lifeboat 15, which was lowered from the starboard side late in the evacuation. He recalled simply, "I was in No. 15 boat when the Titanic was lost, and I helped to save lives."[1] He was among the roughly 700 survivors picked up by the RMS Carpathia and landed in New York on 18 April 1912. He later collected the balance of his wages, his conduct recorded as "good".[1][2]
Reflecting on the two disasters in 1914, Clark considered the Titanic the worse experience because of how long it took to unfold. "The waiting was the terrible thing," he told a reporter. "There was no waiting with the Empress of Ireland." He described the liner going down slowly and steadily, "like a baby goes to sleep".[5]
RMS Empress of Ireland
Two years later Clark took work as a fireman on the Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Ireland. It was his first voyage on the ship; he had previously served on vessels including her sister RMS Empress of Britain.[1][2] Shortly after leaving Quebec City bound for Liverpool, the Empress of Ireland was struck in dense fog on the St. Lawrence River near Rimouski by the Norwegian collier SS Storstad in the early hours of 29 May 1914. She sank in about fourteen minutes with the loss of more than 1,000 lives, the worst peacetime marine disaster in Canadian history.
Clark was working in the stokehold when the collision occurred and made his way to his lifeboat station, No. 5. In his own account, the ship's list threw the boat away from the side as it was lowered, and he had to dive into the river to reach it before helping to pull others from the water. The survivors in his boat were taken aboard the Storstad.[1][5] He contrasted the ship's sudden capsize with the Titanic's slow foundering, saying the Empress "rolled over like a hog in a ditch".[5]
Clark returned to Britain aboard the Corsican, which left Canada on 31 May 1914, and went back to his lodgings on Derby Road, Bootle, near Liverpool. A reporter for the Northern Daily Mail who interviewed him there described him as dark-haired and blue-eyed, "a typical Liverpool Irishman, 43 years of age, unmarried".[6]
Later life and death
Interviewed within days of the Empress sinking, Clark spoke about the sailors' superstition that a third disaster would be fatal. Accounts of his intentions differ: the Northern Daily Mail quoted him as unbothered and planning to find another berth, while the Luton Times and Advertiser reported him swearing off the sea entirely, saying "I have done with the sea. It's me for the shore."[6][7]
Several newspapers reported that, when the First World War broke out in the summer of 1914, Clark rejoined the British Army. Nothing further is documented about his life after that point, and neither his date nor place of death is known. Encyclopedia Titanica lists him among "The Disappeared", survivors whose later lives and deaths cannot be traced.[1][8]
A claim that Clark died of a heart attack on 2 March 1925 circulates on amateur websites but has no source behind it. That date is the death date of the unrelated American mining magnate and senator William A. Clark, and the two men appear to have been conflated.[1]
The "Lucky Tower" legend
Clark's story is frequently mixed up with the legend of "Frank 'Lucky' Tower", a fireman said to have survived the Titanic, the Empress of Ireland and the Lusitania. Investigating the tale in 2004, Senan Molony found that no man named Tower appears on the crew agreement of any of the three ships. He concluded that "Tower" was most likely a garbling of Francis Toner, a genuine Lusitania stoker landed at Kinsale in 1915.[3]
Molony raised, but did not endorse, a speculative idea that Clark and Toner might have been the same man sailing under different names, noting only that a former army deserter might have had reason to change identity. He stressed that the suggestion had no supporting evidence.[3] Some websites also assert that Clark's name appears on a Lusitania crew or survivor list, but this is not confirmed by any authoritative source. The documented record is that Clark survived two disasters; a third is unproven.[1][3]
Legacy
Clark's survival of both sinkings has been recounted in coverage tied to the centenaries of the two disasters, including features by The Irish Times, CBC Radio and IrishCentral.[9] At the Site historique maritime de la Pointe-au-Père in Rimouski, Quebec, the museum devoted to the Empress of Ireland, a costumed interpreter has portrayed Clark for visitors.[10]
Historians have noted how unlikely his survival was. Firemen made up much of the death toll on both ships, with only a fraction of the Titanics stokehold crew living and the Empresss boiler-room watch almost entirely lost. Molony estimated the odds of surviving both sinkings, setting aside the chance of being aboard each, at roughly twenty to one against.[3]
See also
- Violet Jessop, stewardess who survived the Titanic and the HMHS Britannic
- Frank Tower, the associated maritime-survival legend
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 "William Clark". Encyclopedia Titanica. Retrieved 16 July 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Engberg-Klarström, Peter (13 February 2017). "Clark, William". Peter's Empress of Ireland page. Retrieved 16 July 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Molony, Senan (16 November 2004). "On the Trail of 'Lucky' Tower". Encyclopedia Titanica. Retrieved 16 July 2026.
- ↑ "William Clark: Flirting With Death". Dundalk Democrat. 27 June 1914. Reproduced in Encyclopedia Titanica.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "A Comparison with the Titanic". The Times. London. 10 June 1914. p. 7.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "In Titanic's Wreck". Northern Daily Mail. 10 June 1914.
- ↑ "Soldier's Lucky Escapes". Luton Times and Advertiser. 12 June 1914.
- ↑ "Titanic: The Disappeared". Encyclopedia Titanica. 20 October 2018. Retrieved 16 July 2026.
- ↑ "First Titanic, then Empress: an Irish man's lucky escapes". The Irish Times. 27 November 2018. Retrieved 16 July 2026.
- ↑ "Twice lucky: a survivor of the Titanic and the Empress of Ireland". CBC Radio. 15 April 2012.
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External links
- William Clark at Encyclopedia Titanica
- William Clark at Peter's Empress of Ireland page
Category:1869 births Category:Year of death unknown Category:People from County Louth Category:Irish sailors Category:British Merchant Navy personnel Category:Crew of the RMS Titanic Category:RMS Titanic survivors Category:Survivors of maritime incidents Category:People associated with the RMS Empress of Ireland
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