Lawrence Beesley

Beesley was educated at Derby School, where he was a scholar, and afterwards at Caius College, Cambridge, again as a scholar. He took a First Class degree in the Natural Science tripos in 1903.[1]

Beginning as a schoolmaster at Wirksworth Grammar School in Derbyshire, he moved to Dulwich College in south London, where he was a science master. In 1957 he was still teaching as Principal of the Northwood School of Coaching, Northwood, Middlesex.

A second class passenger, Beesley is one of the survivors of the sinking of Titanic in April 1912, He wrote a successful book about his experience, The Loss of the SS Titanic (June 1912), published just nine weeks after the disaster.

Lifeboat No.13 was being launched on the Boat Deck, no women or children were in immediate sight, but it seemed there was room for more. As a result, Beesley was instructed to jump into the lifeboat just before it launched. He managed to survive a subsequent incident where Lifeboat No.15 nearly landed on top of No.13. The leading stoker of boiler room No.6, Fred Barrett, managed to cut the ropes connecting the boat to the falls at the last minute, and those in both boats emerged unharmed. Beesley and the rest of the survivors were picked up by RMS Carpathia in the early morning of 15 April.

During the filming of A Night to Remember in 1958, Beesley famously gatecrashed the set during the sinking scene, hoping to 'go down with the ship'. However, he was spotted by the director, Roy Ward Baker, who vetoed this unscheduled appearance due to actors' union rules. These events are parodied in Julian Barnes' novel A History of the World in 10.5 Chapters, where Beesley makes a brief appearance as a fictional character.

Beesley was portrayed by actor David Warner (who later played fictional character Spicer Lovejoy in James Cameron's 1997 Titanic film) in the 1979 dramatisation of the voyage and sinking, S.O.S. Titanic. Beesley was also portrayed by Lawrence Bennett in 1999 musical stage adaptation Titanic. His son Alec married the author Dodie Smith,[2] and he is the grandfather of New York Times science editor Nicholas Wade.[3]

• The Loss of The SS Titanic: Its Story and Its Lessons, by One of the Survivors (June 1912)
• The Loss of The SS Titanic (new edition, Mariner Books, 2000) ISBN 0-618-05531-2

• Lawrence Beesley at encyclopaedia-titanica.org
• Luck for Some - Titanic's Lifeboat 13 and its Passengers, pp 40-48, Lawrence Beesley. Archived 2 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine

• Works by Lawrence Beesley at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Lawrence Beesley at Internet Archive
• Works by Lawrence Beesley at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• The Loss of the S.S. Titanic
• The Loss of the S.S. Titanic in mobipocket format with images – bottom of page
• Lawrence Beesley Death Certificate on Titanic-Titanic.com Archived 2 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine
• Lawrence Beesley: Celebrated Titanic Survivor by Peter Seddon Archived 28 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine