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In the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic sank in the freezing cold waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, having struck an iceberg at around 11:40PM on April 14.
The ship was just four days into its maiden voyage, from Southampton to New York City.
It’s estimated that it took around two hours and 40 minutes for the ship to sink completely, and more than 1 500 people lost their lives.
You probably know all of this already (although you might not know these 10 facts), but when you hear the events of the night described by somebody who lived to tell the tale, they take on a different meaning.
Frank Winnold Prentice is a born storyteller, and in 1979, he sat down for an interview with the BBC.
According to Encyclopedia Titanica, Frank signed up to work on the Titanic on April 4, just six days before it set sail, and his job as an assistant storekeeper paid a monthly wage of just over £3.
Yesterday marked 41 years since that interview, and it’s well worth taking the seven or so minutes to listen to Frank’s story, which comes full circle when he’s kept alive by somebody he helped save hours earlier:
#OnthisDay 1979: Frank Prentice, an assistant purser on the Titanic, described how he survived the sinking of the ship. For more archive on the Titanic, you can visit – https://t.co/fYwWoNhuBT pic.twitter.com/9Qi8zw5g0L
— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) October 27, 2020
Frank died in Bournemouth on May 19, 1982, at the age of 93, but thankfully his story lives on in interviews like the one above.
Frank’s death left Sidney Daniels as the sole surviving member of the Titanic’s crew.
Daniels died almost a year later, on May 25, 1983, at the age of 89.
The last surviving passenger aboard the Titanic, Millvina Dean, died on May 31, 2009. She was just two months old when the ship set sail, making her the youngest passenger aboard.
[source:encyclopediatitanica]
