Titanic Lifeboat No. 6

Boat No. 6 was one of fourteen clinker-built lifeboats and was located on the port side of the Titanic. These lifeboats on the ship had a capacity of 65. Boat No. 6 was the second lifeboat launched from the Titanic at 12:55 a.m., well over an hour and a half after the liner collided with an iceberg and began sinking on 14 April 1912. The lifeboat had a capacity of 65 people but was launched with about 24 aboard. Second Officer Charles Lightoller, in charge of the evacuation effort on the ship's port side, lowered the lifeboat with the assistance of Captain Edward Smith. The passengers included American socialite Margaret "Molly" Brown, as well as British lawyer Elsie Edith Bowerman and her mother Edith, American author Helen Churchill Candee, and Eloise Hughes Smith. Crewmen in charge of the lifeboat were quartermaster Robert Hichens (put in command of the vessel) and lookout Frederick Fleet, who was ordered on board by officer Lightoller, who put him in charge of the oars. Two crew members were also rescued on Boat 6: Ruth Harwood Bowker and Mabel Elvina Martin, the two female cashiers of the à la carte restaurant staff. As Boat 6 was lowered to the sea, the women in the boat expressed concern at having only two men (Hichens and Fleet) in charge. The women's pleas forced Lightoller to look for another oarsman. In the absence of any crew member nearby, Canadian first class passenger, Major Arthur Peuchen, who was a member of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club, volunteered to join the boat and assist with his sailing knowledge. Peuchen, who got to the lifeboat shinnying down the ropes, was the only male adult passenger whom Lightoller permitted to board a boat. The other man in the boat, Third Class passenger Philip Zenni, who was emigrating from Syria to the United States, managed to get to deck as soon as the evacuation began. He attempted to jump into a lifeboat, and was pushed back by a crew member, insisting that women and children would board first. Zenni was turned away a second time and, when the crew member turned his back to him, Zenni sneaked onto the boat and took refuge under a seat until the boat pulled away from the ship. both during the night and in the aftermath. Peuchen and American passenger Smith accused Hichens of being drunk. Hichens, who remained all night at the rudder, was also accused of constantly berating those in charge of the oars (Peuchen and Fleet). More tension ensued between Hichens and the rest of the occupants of the boat, with several of them later accusing him of refusing to go back to pick survivors from the water, who reported that Hichens said that there was no point in going back, expressing that they would only find "stiffs", a term which Hichens later denied having used. After the sinking and throughout the night, Hichens had strong arguments with Brown, while other two women, Martin and Belgian First-Class passenger Madame Mayné, kept demanding that they go back for survivors. According to Hichens, Brown began singing quiet melodies from her hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, urging the other women to do the same. He further stated that he wanted to know if anyone on the boat recognized the officer in charge of the bridge when the iceberg struck. As Hichens was ignored by the women, versions differ on what he did next. Some said that Hichens remained at the rudder, swearing at the boat's passengers until being rescued by the Carpathia, while Hichens himself testified that he sat at the boat's tiller and kept quiet until rescue at around 8:00 am, Lifeboat No. 6 being the last of the Titanic lifeboats to reach the Carpathia. ==Occupants==

The following list contains confirmed original occupants of Lifeboat 6. An unidentified stoker was later transferred from lifeboat #16, and some survivors indicated that there was an injured boy whom Captain Smith himself ordered to be let on board. The Titanic had three classes (First, Second, and Third), aside from the crew. No Second-Class passenger boarded Boat No. 6. First Class passenger (16 women and one man) Third Class passenger (one man) Crew member (two men and two women) Total: 22 occupants. == Consequences for the occupants and later life ==

Crew members Hichens' great-granddaughter Sally Nilsson wrote a book about Hichens, where she disputes the portrayal of her great-grandfather in depictions of the Titanic sinking. Following his wife's death in December 1964, Fleet fell into a downward spiral, killing himself two weeks later, in January 1965. Both female cashiers of the à la carte restaurant of the Titanic were rescued on board lifeboat 6. One of them, Mabel Martin, led a quiet life after the sinking. She died in March 1960, when a motorist struck and severely injured her. It was ruled to be an accident, and she died on the same day at Kingston Hospital in London. Passengers Canadian major Arthur Godfrey Peuchen was the only adult male passenger whom Lightoller permitted to board a boat. Peuchen never recovered from the event, and was a subject of a social quip in Toronto, which said that Peuchen had said "he was a yachtsman so he could get off the Titanic, and if there had been a fire, he would have said he was a fireman". Eloise Hughes Smith married fellow Titanic survivor Robert Williams Daniel in 1914, but they divorced in 1923, with Smith leading a quiet life until her premature death in 1940. Author Helen Churchill Candee worked as a nurse for the Italian Red Cross during World War I, taking care of an injured Ernest Hemingway, who was serving in the Italian front. Churchill Candee died in Maine in 1949. Elsie Bowerman and her mother stayed in the United States upon arrival in New York, travelling up north to British Columbia, Yukon, and Alaska. She returned later to the UK, where she became a suffragette, Philip Zenni became known as "Mr. Titanic" in his later years in the Dayton, Ohio area. == In popular culture ==

Boat 6 is featured in James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic during the early stages of the ship's evacuation. It includes Brown (Kathy Bates) as the newly made friend of Ruth DeWitt Bukater (Frances Fisher), a fictional character who is Rose's (Kate Winslet) mother. Rose is supposed to join her mother on Boat 6, but a classist comment made by her fiancée Cal Hockley (Billy Zane) makes her change her mind and remain on the ship to look for Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio). In another scene of the film, Brown says that there is "plenty of room for more" and appeals to the other women on the boat to return. An upset Hichens asks the boat's occupants whether they want to live or to die in the North Atlantic, then threatens and hushes Brown by telling her that "there will be one (seat) less on this boat, if you don't shut that hole in [your] face." In a deleted scene of the 1997 film, Hichens (Paul Brightwell) is shown seated at the rudder in Lifeboat No. 6 when Captain Smith (Bernard Hill), Chief Officer Henry Wilde (Mark Lindsay Chapman) and Thomas Andrews (Victor Garber) use a megaphone to call at Boat 6, ordering Hichens to return to the ship. Margaret Brown (Bates) attempts to convince the boat's occupants to return, but a hostile Hichens tells her that he is in charge of the lifeboat and that "It's our lives now, not theirs." == See also ==