Harold Bride was born January 11, 1890 in Hull, England. At age 14, he declared he wanted to be a wireless operator and in 1910, Bride scandalized his neighbors by building a aerial antanae in his garden to pratice Morse Code. He finished his Marconi Training Schooling in July 1911 and recieved his first sea assignment the same month. Bride was 22 when he boarded Titanic, and had only been in the telegraphy business for 9 months. At the time of the disaster, Bride had moved out of his parents' home in Bromley and was living at Bannister's Hotel in London.
| "He was a brave man. I learned to love him that night and I suddenly felt a great reverance to see him standing there sticking to his work while everybody else was raging about. I will never live to forget the work of Phillips during the last awful fifteen minutes." |
Bride was holding on to a oar lock of Collapsible B when a giant wave came and washed him off the sinking Titanic. He found himself underneath the now capsized boat--bumping his head on the seats and gasping for air when he could. After being trapped under there "for what seemed like forever," he dived down and swam clear, clammoring aboard, and being the last man they "invited" aboard.
| "There was just room for me to roll on the edge. I lay there not caring what happened. Somebody sat on my legs. They were wedged in between slats and were being wrenched. I had not the heart to ask the man to move. . . .I lay where I was, letting the man wrench my feet out of shape. Others came near. Nobody gave them a hand. The bottom-up boat already had more men than it would hold and it was sinking. As we floated around on our capsized boat, I kept straining my eyes for a ship's lights." |
Among the men (mostly crew) that climbed aboard Collapsible B were Second Officer Lightoller, Jack Thayer, and Col. Archibald Gracie. In Jack Thayer's 1940 account of the sinking--The Loss of the SS Titanic--he had this to say about the junior wireless operator aboard B:
| "The assistant wireless operator, Harold Bride, was lying across, in front of me with his legs in the water, and his feet jammed against the cork fender, which was about 2 feet underwater. . .He helped greatly to keep our hopes up. He told us repeatedly which ships had answered his CQD, and just how soon we might expect to sight them. He said time and time again, in answer to despairing doubters, 'The Carpathia is coming up as fast as she can. I gave her our position. There is no mistake. We should see her lights at about four or a little after.'. . . .We had to lift Harold Bride. He was in a bad way and, I think, would have slipped off the bottom of our over-turned boat, if several of us had not held onto him for the last half hour." |
To read a comprehensive biography on Harold Bride (also written by me), please visit:
Harold Bride~~The Little Timex
