The Dogs Who Survived the Titanic (and the Ones Who Didn’t)
When the Titanic sank on 15 April 1912, around 1,500 people lost their lives in the North Atlantic. But among the lesser-known stories of that night are the animals on the Titanic: dogs, birds and cats, and the passengers who refused to leave without them. There were at least twelve dogs on board, travelling in the ship’s kennel on F deck, with a handful more quietly smuggled into first-class cabins by their owners.
Did Any Dogs Survive the Titanic?
Three of those dogs survived. All three were small breeds, small enough to be tucked into a lifeboat without anyone noticing, or at least without anyone saying anything. Most of the dogs on board were not so fortunate.
Some accounts suggest a fourth dog may have survived, though the evidence is thin. With the Titanic, that’s not unusual. More than a century of research, mythology and competing testimony means that almost every aspect of the disaster has its own disputed version, and the animals are no exception. For every story that can be nailed down with a passenger manifest or a newspaper account, there’s another that exists somewhere in the grey area between fact and folklore.
Sun Yat Sen
Henry Sleeper Harper and his wife Myra were returning from an extended tour of Egypt and the Middle East when they boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg. They brought with them their Pekingese, a dog Henry had bought in Egypt and named after the Chinese president. When the ship began to sink, all three of them made it into Lifeboat 3. Harper, apparently untroubled by the situation, reportedly said there was “lots of room.” Sun Yat Sen survived along with his owners.
A bowler hat recovered from the wreck site in 2001 is thought to have belonged to Henry Harper.
Bebe
Margaret Bechstein Hays had been travelling in Europe with two friends and was returning to New York with a Pomeranian she had acquired on the trip. Bebe had been kept in her cabin rather than the kennel. When the order came to abandon ship, Margaret boarded the first lifeboat launched, Lifeboat 7. She had Bebe tucked under her arm. Nobody objected and both survived to board the rescue ship Carpathia.
Margaret’s Pomeranian was one of only three pets on the Titanic known to have survived. On board the Carpathia, Margaret also found herself responsible for something entirely unexpected. Two small French boys had been placed in her lifeboat: Michel and Edmond Navratil, aged two and four. Their father had taken them from their mother in France without permission and boarded the Titanic under a false name. He didn’t survive. The boys, known briefly as the “Titanic Orphans,” couldn’t explain who they were. Margaret cared for them until their mother, alerted by newspaper photographs, came forward and crossed the Atlantic to collect them.
Bebe apparently befriended the boys during the weeks before their mother arrived. What became of the dog after that is harder to trace. Bebe disappears from the record in June 1917.
Elizabeth Rothschild’s Pomeranian
Elizabeth Barrett Rothschild had a Pomeranian hidden with her when she got into Lifeboat 6. When the Carpathia came to take survivors on board, the crew refused to allow the dog. Elizabeth refused to board without her. Eventually she did board, with the dog, but she then learnt that her husband had perished as the Titanic sank.
Dogs that died on Titanic
Not every dog survived, of course. Robert Daniel had paid £150 for a French Bulldog named Gamin de Pycombe: a remarkable sum in 1912. The dog was spotted swimming in the freezing water after the sinking. Daniel survived and later married a widow he met on the Carpathia, going on to serve in the Virginia Senate. Gamin de Pycombe was never recovered.
John Jacob Astor IV, the wealthiest passenger on board, was travelling with his new eighteen-year-old wife Madeleine and their Airedale Terrier, Kitty. The dog had gone missing briefly in Egypt during the trip but was found in time to board at Cherbourg. Madeleine was five months pregnant. Astor helped her into a lifeboat, asked whether he might accompany her given her condition, was told he could not, and was last seen on deck. His body was recovered on 22 April. Madeleine’s son was born four months later. Kitty was not among the survivors.
Helen Bishop left her small dog, Frou-Frou, behind in the kennel when she boarded a lifeboat. She said afterwards that the dog had dragged at her clothes as she left, as if trying to stop her going. She never forgot it.
And then there is Ann Eliza Isham, one of only four first-class women who perished. She reportedly refused to leave without her Great Dane; the dog couldn’t fit in a lifeboat. Her story remains one of the most poignant involving animals on the Titanic. It has never been fully substantiated, but it has never been disproved either.
Animals on Ships: A Longer History
Animals on ships were nothing unusual in the early twentieth century, and the Titanic was far from unique in having a menagerie on board. What is perhaps surprising is how far back the tradition goes, and how seriously it was taken.
The Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s flagship, sank in the Solent in 1545. When she was raised in 1982, the remains of a dog were found on board, now known as Hatch. He was probably a rat catcher rather than a pet, but his bones were preserved alongside those of the crew who went down with the ship.
Ship’s cats were commonplace in both the merchant and Royal navies, kept to control vermin and, in many cases, genuinely adopted as mascots. Mrs Chippy, the tabby cat who sailed with Shackleton’s Endurance expedition in 1914, is one of the most famous. He belonged to the ship’s carpenter, Harry McNish, and was adored by the crew. When Shackleton made the decision to shoot the animals as the Endurance became trapped in ice, McNish never fully forgave him. A bronze cat now sits at McNish’s grave in Wellington, New Zealand.
Simon, the cat of HMS Amethyst, served during the Yangtze Incident in 1949, was wounded when the ship came under fire, recovered, and was awarded the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross. He died in quarantine shortly after the ship returned to Britain.
There are some dogs which have become famous over the years too. One of them was Judy, a pedigree pointer, served on HMS Gnat and later HMS Grasshopper during the Second World War. When Grasshopper was bombed and sunk, Judy survived and was eventually registered as an official prisoner of war, the only animal to hold that status. She too received the Dickin Medal.
Then there is Just Nuisance, a Great Dane who became so popular with the sailors at Simon’s Town in South Africa that he was officially enlisted in the Royal Navy as Able Seaman Just Nuisance, the only dog ever to be formally registered in that service. He had a habit of falling asleep on the gangways of ships, hence the name. He died in 1944 and was buried with full naval honours. His grave and a bronze statue can still be found at Simon’s Town.
I cover all of this, and a great deal more, in my one-hour illustrated talk “Fur, Feathers and Fate: Animals of the Titanic and Other Ships.” It takes in the dogs, cats, birds, bears, pigs and many other animals who went to sea on ships across the centuries. If you’re looking for a talk for your family history society, U3A group, conference or event, you can find more details on my talks page.
