majority Han Chinese since 1644. Pu Yi, as the last Emperor became known, was then six.
He had been chosen to succeed his uncle four years earlier and after his enforced abdication was permitted to continue living in the Forbidden City in Beijing with his eunuchs and other servants. Despite the best efforts of his tutor, the Scot Reginald Johnston, he grew up spoiled and erratic, with a taste for Western consumerism.
By the mid-1920s, China was riven by struggles between warlords. Pu Yi fell under the influence of the Japanese and, when they occupied Manchuria, became their puppet emperor. Captured by the Russians at the end of the war, he then spent 10 years in prison in China. He survived the Cultural Revolution, working as a gardener until his death in 1967.
16 April 1912
An ocean disaster, unprecedented in history, has happened in the Atlantic. The White Star liner Titanic on her maiden voyage, carrying nearly 2,400 people, has been lost near Cape Race, and according to the latest messages there is grave reason to fear that less than 700 of the passengers and crew have been saved.
Early yesterday evening the messages gave no indication of a catastrophe of such terrible magnitude, but later they became more and more serious.
As will be seen below, there is much that is conflicting in them, but the news of brighter import – of the possibility of more lives being saved by the vessels which hurried to the rescue – becomes more slender with each succeeding message.
The White Star liner Titanic (46,382 tons), which left Southampton on Wednesday on her maiden voyage to New York, came into collision with an iceberg at a point about 41.46 North and 50.14 West off the North American coast at 10.25 on Sunday night (American time). The vessel was badly damaged and wireless messages were sent out for help. A number of other liners in the neighbourhood hastened to her assistance, but she sank yesterday morning. The number on board the Titanic when she left Queenstown on her voyage, including the Cherbourg passengers, was:–
| First Class ………………… | 350 |
| Second Class……………… | 305 |
| Steerage………………… | 800 |
| Crew……………………… | 903 |
| Total ……………………… | 2,358 |
She had also on board 3,418 sacks of mails. The passengers included Colonel and Mrs. J.J. Astor, Major A.W. Butt, President Taft’s aide-de-camp, Mr. B. Guggenheim, of the well-known banking firm, Mr. C.M. Hays, President of the Grand Trunk Railway, Mr. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, Lady Rothes, Mr. W.T. Stead, Mr. Clarence Moore, Mr. Isidor Straus, Mr. George D. Widener, Mr. Thomas Andrews, jun., of Belfast, one of the managing directors of Messrs. Harland and Wolff, the builders of the Titanic, and Mr. Christopher Head, a former Mayor of Chelsea, director of Henry Head and Co. (Limited), insurance brokers and underwriters.
NEW YORK, APRIL 15.
The Titanic sank at 2.20 this morning. No lives were lost. – Reuter.
NEW YORK, April 15, 8.15 p.m.
It was stated officially at the White Star offices this evening that probably a number of lives had been lost in the Titanic disaster, but that no definite estimate could be made until it was known positively whether the Parisian and Virginian had any rescued passengers on board. – Reuter.
NEW YORK, APRIL 15, 8.20 P.M
The following statement has been given out by the White Star officials: “Captain Haddock, of the Olympic, sends a wireless message that the Titanic sank at 2.20 a.m. on Monday after all the passengers and crew had been lowered into lifeboats and transferred to the Virginian. The steamer Carpathia, with several hundred passengers from the Titanic, is now on her way to New York.” – Reuter.
NEW YORK, APRIL 15, 8.40 P.M
The White Star officials now admit that many lives have been lost. – Reuter.
NEW YORK, APRIL 15, 8.45 P.M.
The following despatch has been received here from Cape Race: “The steamer Olympic reports that the steamer Carpathia reached the Titanic’s position at daybreak, but found boats and wreckage only. She reported that the Titanic foundered about 2.20 a.m. in lat. 4ldeg. 16min., long. 50deg. 14min.”
The message adds: “All the Titanic’s boats are accounted for. About 675 souls have been saved of the crew and passengers. The latter are nearly all women and children.”
‘The disaster that has overtaken the Titanic,’ observed The Times in the wake of her sinking, ‘is a forcible reminder of the existence of natural forces which from time to time upset all our calculations and baffle our precautions’.
Titanic was the embodiment of Britain at the peak of its industrial might. Exactly 200 years before, the first steam engine had been built in the Black Country. In the year that she sank, British textile factories reached their maximum output of 8 billion yards of cloth.
No ship afloat was heavier or, at 882 feet (269 metres), longer. Nor did any have such concern not just for luxury but also for safety. Her new Marconi radio-telegraph equipment allowed Titanic to send distress calls by Morse code after striking the iceberg, while the number of lifeboats she carried – though only sufficient for half those aboard – was significantly greater than that specified by law.
Even so, more than 1,500 people perished because no-one wanted to believe that Titanic might sink. Observers, wrote her historian Walter Lord, mistook the appearance of safety for safety itself. To some of them at least, Titanic’s fate must have seemed a portent for Britain as well.
11 February 1913
News reached London last night that Captain Scott and four of his comrades in the expedition which set out for the Antarctic on board the Terra Nova in 1910 have lost their lives. The circumstances in which disaster has befallen the little party of British explorers will serve to intensify the national concern; for the same telegram from Christchurch, New Zealand, which tells of their fate announces also that they had reached the South Pole on January 18 of last year and were returning in triumph to the base. According to the message which we print in another column, signed by Commander Evans, who was second in command of the expedition, the members of the party were but 155 miles from the base in March when they were overtaken by a blizzard, and Captain Scott, Dr. E.A. Wilson, the surgeon, and Lieutenant Bowers died from exposure. Captain Oates had met a similar fate on March 17 – twelve days before the others perished – and Petty Officer Evans had died exactly a month earlier.
The search party who discovered the bodies found also a message from the leader of the expedition in which he gives the causes of the disaster and says:
I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardship, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks – we know we took them. Things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last.
CAPTAIN SCOTT’S PROGRAMME.
The British Antarctic Expedition in the Terra Nova reached its base of operations on the edge of the great ice barrier in December, 1910. Operations were at once begun to carry out the programme which Captain Scott had laid down. When the party had been landed at McMurdo Sound the ship