Titanic survivor Last spring, a man from the mainland telephoned Oahu Cemetery to ask if a woman by the name of Lucinda Parrish was buried there. Superintendent Harold Lewis looked up her name and found that she was. Lewis found this interesting but did not get the caller's name or phone number.
in Oahu grave
The doomed luxury liner went
down 89 years ago today
By Nannette Napoleon Purnell
Special to the Star-BulletinA week or so later, I was at the graveyard giving one of my walking tours when Hal mentioned that a man had called in hopes of locating the remains of a Titanic survivor. As someone who has spent more than 10 years researching this particular graveyard and written a book about its history and the famous people buried there, I was intrigued.
Parrish's grave site is marked by a handsome granite stone, inscribed with her name, a birth year of 1842 and a death year of 1930. There was, however, no mention of White Star Line's R.M.S. Titanic or Parrish's survival of its ill-fated inaugural voyage.
Thoughts raced through my mind: "A Titanic survivor in this graveyard all this time ... How could I not have known?" "Who was this guy from the mainland, and how did he find out about her?" "How can I find him?"
I turned to the Internet, which directed me to dozens of Titanic sites. The best was Encyclopedia Titanica (www.encyclopedia-titanica.org). Facts and figures abounded, including a passenger list sorted alphabetically and by class. A "Mrs. Samuel E. Parrish" -- Lucinda's married name -- was on the list of second-class passengers. Bingo!
A few days later, after posting a query on the Encyclopedia Titanica message board, I received a note from a man named Phillip Gowan, who affirmed that he had indeed called the Oahu Cemetery recently to inquire about Lucinda Parrish. Gowan, who lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C., is a serious Titanic researcher who, since 1973, has tracked down the whereabouts of 652 of the ship's 712 survivors.After obtaining Parrish's death certificate, which indicated that she had died in "Haole, Ewa, Territory of Hawaii" and was buried in Nuuanu Cemetery, Gowan phoned the graveyard. Although the name was not among Nuuanu's list of deceased, the cemetery suggested that Gowan call Oahu Cemetery, just across Nuuanu Avenue. Gowan did, and his suspicions were confirmed. A Titanic survivor was indeed buried in Hawaii.
Subsequently, Gowan, with the help of Hermann Soldner, contributed a profile of Parrish to the Encyclopedia Titanica Web site. The following information about Lucinda's background and journey aboard the Titanic comes from Gowan's research. Information about the disaster itself comes from various books and Internet sites.
Lucinda Temple was born on July 16, 1852 in Lexington, Ky., the daughter of William and Margaret Temple. In 1870 she married Samuel Edward Parrish, also a native of Lexington.
Lucy apparently loved to travel, often doing so with her grown daughter, Imanita Shelley. Prior to boarding the Titanic on April 10, 1912, the pair had been on an extended sojourn in Europe. The maiden voyage aboard the luxurious White Star liner as second-class passengers was to be the crowning end of this memorable journey.
According to an affidavit taken during an investigation of the disaster by the U.S. Senate, upon boarding the ship, 63-year-old Parrish and her daughter were taken to a small cabin deep in the ship. Parrish was dissatisfied with these arrangements, expecting more, having paid for "the best second-class accommodation," as she put it. Parrish sent a stewardess to the purser with a letter demanding a better room. She also indicated that Shelley was ill, which was all the more reason their room should be changed.
The purser eventually sent four stewards to move the women to a different room. Following the transfer, the second-class physician, Dr. Simpson, checked in on Shelley, found her to be ill and ordered her to stay in bed for the remainder of the voyage.
The crossing was scheduled to take six days, with an arrival in New York on April 16. As everyone knows, however, on the evening of April 14, four days into the journey, the ship grazed an iceberg on its starboard side, causing the outer steel plates on five of the 16 "watertight" compartments to buckle below the water line, allowing the cold Atlantic sea to surge in. The time was 11:40 p.m. Despite White Star's claim that the ship was "unsinkable," it was designed to stay afloat only if the flooding was confined to two compartments.
Lucinda and Shelley were awakened by voices in the corridor shortly after the collision. They noticed that the ship's engines had stopped and went to investigate. A steward assured the excited passengers that everything was fine and that they should go back to bed. A short while later, he returned in a panic, issuing life belts and ordering everyone to assemble on the boat deck, several decks above.
As the forward compartments filled with water, causing the bow to sink slowly into the icy waters, the women made their way to the lifeboat area on the starboard side, where they waited with a throng of others until about 1:25 a.m., when lifeboat No. 12 began loading.
Parrish and Shelley were two of 1,316 passengers aboard the ship, 284 of whom were booked in second class. As the open lifeboat dangled from the davit several feet from the rail, Parrish was literally thrown aboard by a deckhand. Shelley jumped on board. As the boat was being lowered, an unidentified "Italian man" suddenly jumped in, landing on Parrish, inflicting a bruise on her side.
When the boat reached the lakelike water, the ropes would not release, forcing the crew to cut them. Immediately, crew and passengers rowed away from the ship as quickly as possible, to avoid being sucked under as the Titanic sank. Although lifeboat No. 12 had a capacity of 65, only 28 people found safety aboard this lifeline. The Titanic itself had only been fitted with 16 wooden lifeboats and four canvas collapsibles, capable of carrying only half its passengers and crew.
Parrish and Shelley, along with others in the lifeboats, watched in horror as the gigantic ship sank into the dark abyss, about 1,000 miles due east of Boston.
At approximately 2:30 a.m., lifeboats Nos. 4, 10, 12 and 14 were tied together. Survivors on collapsible boat D were then taken aboard boat 12, causing it to be dangerously overloaded.
The cold and frightened survivors spent the rest of the night huddled together against the 31-degree night air. At approximately 8:30 a.m. they were rescued by the trans-Atlanic liner Carpathia, which was 58 miles away at the time it received the Titanic's distress call.
The Carpathia landed in New York at 9 p.m. April 18, 1912. There were 10,000 people at the docks waiting for her arrival.
Not much is known about the lives of Parrish and Shelley after the disaster, except that Lucinda and Samuel moved to Hawaii sometime after World War I, residing in -- again, according to the death certificate -- a place called Haole in Ewa. (Perhaps the certificate was written in error. No such town or street appears to have existed.) Shelley, her husband William and a Jack Hall -- who may have been Parrish's nephew or foster son -- also moved to the islands. Apparently undaunted by their Titanic experience, the two women continued their world travels together for a time, leaving the men behind.
At the time of her death at the age of 78, Lucinda was a widow, but her husband's burial site is unknown. Imanita and William apparently moved back to the mainland at some point.
Lucinda Parrish's grave at Oahu Cemetery is perhaps Hawaii's only visible link to the infamous Titanic, yet the tomb itself is rather nondescript. Only a small metal plaque, installed by this author last spring, indicates that the courageous Lucinda Parrish was a "Titanic Survivor."
Nanette Napoleon Purnell is director of the
Cemetery Research Project and author of "O'ahu Cemetery,
Burial Ground & Historic Site." Anyone with information
about Lucinda Parrish is asked to call the author at 261-0705.
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