Frank Goldsmith, Jr. (born 1902) was a young third-class passenger of the RMS Titanic ... and one of the survivors. He wrote a photographic memoir documenting his experience.
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| Echoes In The Night: Memories of a Titanic Survivor by Frank Goldsmith Jr |
Nine-year-old Frank and his parents, Frank Sr and Emily, boarded the RMS Titanic in Southampton as third-class passengers, en route to Detroit, Michigan. They shared their cabin with Frank Sr's friend Thomas Theobold and a young 15-year-old boy in his charge named Albert Rush who would be celebrating his 16th birthday on April 14th.
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| Frankie and his mother |
Frank Jr spent his time on the ship playing with a group of English-speaking boys also from third-class who were about his age. They were: cabin buddy 16-year-old Albert Rush, new friends Willie Coutts, Harold Goodwin, William Johnston, George Rice, and brothers James and Walter van Billiard. They climbed the baggage cranes and wandered down to the boiler rooms to watch the stokers and firemen at work. Of these boys, only Frank Goldsmith Jr and Willie Coutts would survive.
When the ship struck the iceberg late in the evening of April 14, 1912, Frank Sr woke up his cabin companions. He took his wife and son to the forward end of the boat deck to board Collapsible Lifeboat C, but found that they were letting only women and children board the lifeboats. Since he was now 16 years old, Albert Rush fancied himself a grown man and stayed behind with Thomas Theobold and Frank Sr. When the women and children were boarding the lifeboats, Thomas Theobold gave Emily Goldsmith his wedding ring and asked her to give it to his wife if he did not survive.
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| Titanic's iceberg |
In his memoir, Frank Goldsmith Jr recalled: "My dad reached down and patted me on the shoulder and said, 'So long, Frankie, I’ll see you later.' I think at the time, he may have known that he wouldn’t."
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| Lifeboats with Titanic survivors |
Frank Goldsmith Sr., Thomas Theobold, and Albert Rush all died in the sinking. Of the three men, only Thomas Theobold's body was recovered and shipped to his wife for a funeral.
Frank Jr and his mother were rescued by the RMS Carpathia. Traveling to New York City, in order to get Frank's mind off the sinking, Mrs. Goldsmith entrusted him into the care of a surviving Titanic fireman named Samuel Collins who kept comforting the young lad by saying "Don’t worry Frankie, your dad will probably be in New York before you are."
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| Titanic's survivors floating in lifeboats |
Arriving in New York, Frank Jr and his mother were housed by the Salvation Army and given train fare to reach their relatives in Detroit. Their new home was near the newly opened Navin Field (later renamed Tiger Stadium), home of the Detroit Tigers baseball team. Every time the crowd cheered during a home run, Frank Jr said he could hear it at his house down the street. He said the sound reminded him of the screams of the dying crew and passengers as they were dying in the water just after the ship sank. As a result, when Frank Jr later married and had 3 sons of his own, he never took his children to baseball games.
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| Tiger Stadium |
Growing up, Frank Goldsmith still held on to the hope of his father's survival. It took him a long time to understand that his father was really dead. For years afterward, he used to tell himself, "I think another ship must have picked him up and one day he will come walking right through that door and say, 'Hello, Frankie.'" He never did.
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| Photograph of Frank J Goldsmith Jr. |
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| Frank's death certificate (1982) |
Frank Goldsmith wrote a photographic memoir titled Titanic Eyewitness: My Story which was published in 1991 after his death by the Titanic Historical Society. Many of the photographs were taken by Frank himself. His photographs were featured in the 1994 documentary, Titanic: The Legend Lives On.
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| Titanic Eyewitness, My Story by Frank J Goldsmith Jr |
To date, Frank Goldsmith's memoir is the only book about the sinking that was written by a third-class passenger.
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| About Frank J Goldsmith Jr. |
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