Godalming Museum Jack Phillips and the Titanic, KS 2+ Loan
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Godalming Museum Jack Phillips and the Titanic, KS 2+ loan box Suggestions for how to use the material in this box 1. Working and travelling on the Titanic (p 3 – 9) • Find out about five local people associated with the Titanic • Explore some of the ways in which life in 1912 was different from life today • Use the Titanic as a starting point to explore reasons for and the experience of, immigration 2. How do we know what happened in the past? Can we always rely on the evidence? (p 10 – 12) • Consider the nature and reliability of different types of evidence about the past • Research, and present the evidence for and against, statements often made about the Titanic • Debate ethical issues raised by the story of the Titanic 3. Creative Writing (p 13) • Write letters, postcards, telegrams, poems or play scripts inspired by the Titanic 4. SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea) (p14) • Find out about the SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea) Convention and how the lessons learned from the loss of the Titanic save lives today. • Find out about icebergs and about the International Ice Patrol • Design an effective life jacket 2 1. Working and travelling on the Titanic 1.1 Jack Phillips The Chief Wireless Operator on the Titanic, Jack Phillips, came from Farncombe and learned Morse code at Godalming Post Office. He stayed at his post as the ship sank, sending the SOS messages which brought the Carpathia to rescue the survivors of the tragedy. Jack’s last radio message was sent 3 minutes before the Titanic sank and he was lost with the ship. He was just 25 having had his birthday on board the Titanic. Jack Phillips is remembered in the beautiful Arts and Crafts Phillips Memorial in Godalming, on a plaque in Farncombe Church and in a specially commissioned portrait and framed photograph on display in the Museum. The Phillips family plot in Nightingale Cemetery in Farncombe features a memorial stone in the shape of an iceberg. Related items in the box: • Father Browne’s Titanic Album Includes the only known photograph of the Titanic’s radio shack and a photograph of Jack Phillips • Pack of 16 replica telegrams relating to the Titanic • Newspaper article “Thrilling Story by Titanic’s Surviving Wireless Man” from the New York Times, April 19th 1912 Report of an interview with Jack’s assistant, Harold Bride. The original article was illustrated by photographs of Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, and a dramatic drawing of the moment when a stoker tried to steal Phillip’s life belt. You can see a copy of this illustration on the back of the copy of the article. The stoker is drawn already wearing a life belt, although the article itself makes it clear that this was not in fact the case, and also that Bride was not certain that the man was a stoker. He was “somebody from below decks.” Like Jack Phillips, many of the stokers on the Titanic died bravely, sticking to their post. Down in the bottom of the ship with little hope of escape, they stoked the boilers to keep the lights on and power the radio. Their heroism was noted at the time (see items 2 & 7). • Titanic in Memoriam issue of the Daily Graphic, Saturday 20th April 1912 (replica no.14 in the file of replicas) Features a photograph of Jack, “the sender of the “S.O.S.” signal for help”, a photograph of “a wireless cabin on an Atlantic Liner” and columns headed “The Titanic’s Operators” and “Doomed Ship’s Farewell – Last Messages from the Titanic before she Sank” • Lost Voices from the Titanic, the Definitive Oral History, by Nick Barratt Includes Harold Bride’s written testimony to Marconi dated 27th April 1912 p. 139 – 144 (also look for Phillips in the index). Harold’s story changes over time and in different contexts. • Phillips Memorial Park, an Arts and Crafts Movement Tribute to a Hero of the Titanic, edited by Sarah Sullivan Describes the creation of the memorial, including fascinating detail about the formidable committee of women who created it, also discusses its context within the Arts and Crafts Movement and its development since 1914 3 • DVD – Phillips Memorial Cloister and Grounds, opening, April 1914 A copy of an original film in the museum’s collection. The ceremony was attended by Jack’s family, by his assistant Wireless Operator, Harold Bride, and by Architect Hugh Thackeray Turner and Garden Designer Gertrude Jekyll who had designed the cloister and memorial grounds. In the museum you can see a table napkin from the tea which followed the service. This short film was made by Mr Fudger to show in the Empire Cinema in Station Road in Godalming. • A Farncombe Lad by Mandy Le Boutillier Specially produced for the museum, to mark the centenary of the loss of the Titanic, this booklet was written by the acknowledged expert on Jack Phillips. Additional copies can be bought in the museum shop In the zip bag: 1. Titanic Radio Distress Traffic Compiled by Glen Dunstan www.hf.ro 2. Article from the Washington Post, Saturday 20th April 1912, “Titanic Wireless Chief Died on a Life raft” 3. Copy of Harold Bride’s testimony to the British Inquiry into the loss of the Titanic in May 1912 4. The fateful ice warnings that could have saved Titanic…?” Article by John Booth, originally published in the Winter 1997 edition of the “Titanic Signals News” 5. Photograph of the portrait of Jack Phillips by Ellis Martin Painted after Jack’s death, this was based on a photograph taken a few years earlier by Farncombe photographer Jennie Stedman. The original portrait is now in Godalming Museum. A plaque on the frame reads “Jack Phillips, Wireless Operator on “The Titanic” 1912. From past and present scholars of the Godalming Grammar School.” After Jack’s death Jennie sent the photograph she had taken to Marconi, who sold copies to raise money to help the widows and orphans of those lost on the Titanic. 6. Photograph of the framed photograph of Jack Phillips, created by Charles Elworthy Mr Elworthy had been Jack’s headmaster at the Godalming Grammar School (not the one which became the VI form college, but an earlier, private school). He created this beautiful copper frame for one of Jennie Stedman’s photographs. It is a fascinating object. The symbols Mr Elworthy chose for the frame tell us much about Jack’s life and about how people felt at the time about the way he died. Mr Elworthy made this tribute to Jack for Godalming Post Office, where it hung for many years. It was then given to Marconi and later came back to Godalming to hang in the Godalming Youth Centre (the Wilfrid Noyce Centre). In danger of being thrown out during some building work, it was rescued by someone who worked at the Centre and years later donated to the Godalming Museum, where you can see it hanging today. 7. Two poems by Edwin Drew “John Phillips” and “Down Below the Deck” taken from “The Chief Incidents of the “Titanic” Wreck treated in verse, together with the lessons of the disaster (with portraits)” published in May 1912. 8. Article from the Wireless World, 1914, “Commemorating a Deed of Courage” Report on the unveiling of Jack Phillips’ Memorial which includes the speech given by Mr J St Leo Strachey, High Sherriff of Surrey 4 1.2 Lucy and Margaret Snape Lucy Snape was a stewardess on the Titanic. She was born in Crooksbury in 1890 and married a ship’s captain, Edward Snape, in 1909. Her husband died young leaving her with a baby, Margaret. Lucy and Margaret then lived with Lucy’s parents in Well Lane in Sandhills, Witley. Faced with the need to earn her own living, Lucy enlisted the help of the local MP who used his influence to get her a posting as a stewardess on the Titanic. Although it was a challenging job, there was always a lot of competition for stewardess posts. Lucy was paid £3 a month, with additional tips from the passengers she looked after, if she was lucky. Her young daughter was able to travel with her. She must have felt very fortunate to have the job. Margaret survived the sinking but Lucy died. There were 23 female crew members on board the Titanic (20 stewardesses, one stewardess-matron and 2 cashiers). All but three of them survived. Only 60 of the 322 male stewards survived. Two of the surviving stewardesses, remembered “Another one who refused to move was a second-cabin stewardess, Mrs Snape, a widow, 21 years of age with a little girl. As she fastened the lifebelts on her passengers she wished them good-bye. Later she told some of the stewardesses that she did not expect to see them again.” Related items in the box: • Titanic Survivor, the Memoirs of Violet Jessop, Stewardess Violet Jessop, one of the other stewardesses on the Titanic describes her career at sea. In chapter 15 she writes about working for the White Star Line and in chapter 17 about the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic. Chapters 20 - 22 are Violet’s eyewitness account of sailing on the Titanic, escaping the sinking on a life boat and being rescued by the Carpathia. Violet survived a second shipwreck during the First World War when she served as a Red Cross nurse on the Britannic. In the zip bag: 9. Two Witley Victims Copy of an article in the Surrey Advertiser and County Times, Sat 20th April 1912 10.