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  • Sister Monica Is One of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's Early Pioneers
  • A Love Story for St. Valentine's Day - Marie Antoinette and Count Axel von Fersen
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  • Margaret Fox Kane and her Victorian Love Story
  • Francoise Marie Jacquelin, Lioness of La Tour, Lioness of Acadia, Woman in Her Own Right
  • Mary Breckinridge, Circuit Riding Nurse and Founder of the Frontier Nursing Service
  • Women Bicyclists Break Their Glass Cages and Ride into Liberation
  • Maria Mitchell, America's First Woman Astronomer Demonstrated Female Scientific Aptitude
  • Queen Alexandra of Great Britain-Queen Victoria's Daughter-in-Law, Bertie's Patient Wife, and Her Own Person!
  • Chicagoan Kate Kellogg Meets a Ghost on a Train
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    • Ruth Becker's Faith Helps Her Survive the Titanic and Beyond
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    • Light and Radiance - Laurence Owen and Her Sabena Fellow Travelers
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Ruth Becker's Faith Helps Her Survive the Titanic and Beyond

Picture


Twelve year old Ruth Becker’s faith helped her survive the sinking of the Titanic and
she lived a full and joyful life before she returned to the Titanic.


For years when she taught at the Seely McCord School in Benton Harbor, Michigan,
and while she married and raised a family, Ruth Becker Blanchard didn’t talk
about her voyage on the Titanic. Her children didn’t even know that
their mother had been on the Titanic until they were young adults.


The Steward Said, "We’ve Had A Little Accident"

Self sufficiency had been a way of life for Ruth Becker for several of her twelve
years, but she never dreamed how much the voyage on the Titanic would
test her self reliance.


Just four of the 271 second class passengers on board the Titanic, Ruth and
her mother Nellie, her two year old brother Richard, and four-year-old sister Marion, occupied Second Class Cabin F4. Ruth’s father, Lutheran minister Reverend Allen O. Becker, worked as a missionary in charge of an orphanage in Guntur, India. Ruth and Marion were born in Guntur- Ruth on October 28, 1899, and Marion in December 1907. Richard was born in June 1910 in Kodaikana, India.


In early 1912, Ruth’s brother Richard developed a serious illness and the doctors
in India advised his parents that he needed treatment in the United States. Allen and Nellie Becker decided to seek treatment for their son in Benton Harbor, Michigan, Reverend Becker’s hometown. They decided that Nellie and the children would voyage to New York on the Titanic and Reverend Becker would join them later.


When the Beckers boarded the Titanic at Southampton England, on Wednesday,
April 10, 1912, Nellie Becker undoubtedly welcomed the fact that Ruth and Marion could visit the library which was open to second class children while she tended to Richard. If Ruth and Marion wanted to play running and skipping games on the deck, their second class ticket allowed them deck access as well.


On the night of April 14, 1912, Ruth Becker woke up to the sound of silence and then a knock at the door. She heard a steward tell her mother, "We’ve had a little accident. They’re going to fix it, and then we’ll be on our way."

The Beckers Survive The Sinking of the Titanic

Eventually Nellie Becker realized that the Titanic had suffered more than a little accident and she took her children up to the boat deck. Stewards loaded Nellie Becker and Richard and Marion in Lifeboat Eleven, but there was no room for Ruth.

Lifeboat Eleven descended to the smooth dark ocean below, carrying over seventy people,
the largest number of people of any Titanic lifeboat. Nellie screamed to Ruth to get into another boat. Ruth walked to Lifeboat Thirteen and asked the steward if she could get in. He told her she could and he pushed her into Lifeboat Thirteen.


Ruth Becker described the sinking of the Titanic in a memoir written many years later than April 14, 1912, but relived the event as vividly as the night it happened

."…Rowing away looking at the Titanic, it was a beautiful sight outlined against the starry sky, every port hole and saloon blazing with light. It was impossible to think anything could be wrong with such an enormous ship were it not for the tilt downward towards the bow."

Ruth remembered tearing up the blankets her mother had sent her back to their cabin
to fetch and giving pieces of them to the stokers in Lifeboat Thirteen, who
wore only a sleeveless shirts and shorts because they had been working in the
coal bunkers. Now they shivered in the chilly North Atlantic air.


At daybreak on Monday, April 15, 1912, the Carpathia reached the lifeboats from the Titanic and picked up survivors, including the Becker family. In a 1960 interview in the Benton Harbor News-Palladium, Ruth said "although my boat was one of the last to
leave the Titanic, it was one of the first to be picked up by the Carpathia."


It took Ruth hours to find her mother and brother and sister on the Carpathia, but she finally did. "I never doubted that we would be rescued," she said.

When the Carpathia reached New York, Nellie Becker and her children disembarked. An overwrought Nellie held sick two year old Richard tightly wrapped in her arms, but Ruth still looked bright and capable. Nellie Becker told the reporters gathered at Pier 54, "Don’t’ ask me anything. Ask Ruth, she’ll tell you everything."

The Beckers spent a complimentary night in one of the New York hotels and then boarded a westbound train. As they were climbing aboard, Nellie leaned down to speak to Ruth. "Don’t you dare tell anyone we were on the Titanic," she said.

Ruth Becker Builds A Life After the Titanic

Reverend Allen O. Becker returned to Benton Harbor eight months to the day the Titanic sank. He pastored churches in Illinois and Ohio until he retired in 1946. Ruth took her mother’s admonition seriously. She built a life that did not include talking about her Titanic experience. She graduated from high school and college in Ohio and married Daniel Blanchard, a former classmate. They moved to Kansas where she taught high school for eighteen years. They divorced after twenty years of marriage and she resumed her teaching career in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

When Ruth retired and moved to Santa Barbara, California, she began talking more about the Titanic than she had in her Benton Harbor News-Palladium interview. She granted interviews about the Titanic and attended conventions of the Titanic Historical Society. In March 1990, she made her first sea voyage since 1912 when she took a cruise to Mexico.

Ruth Becker Blanchard died on Friday, July 6, 1990, at the age of 90. Her family scattered her ashes at Latitude 41degrees 41 feet North, Longitude 50 degrees, 14 feet West, directly above the Titanic.

References

Lord, Walter. A Night To Remember. Henry Holt and Company, 1955
Wade, Wyn Craig. The Titanic-End Of A Dream. Penguin Books, 1986
Benton Harbor News-Palladium


Santa Barbara News-Press

 

 


Copyright Notice
All of the material on this website is copyrighted.  You are free to link to any of the articles and to download any of the PDF books to read and use as long as you credit me as the author.       kathywarnes@gmail.com
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  • Home
  • Women's Rooms
    • Womens Rooms-Anne
    • Womens Rooms-Abigail
    • The Dead Baby in a Blue Blanket: The
    • Rena Rides the Raindrops
  • Women at Work-Blog
  • E Books and Print Books for Sale
  • Women of Historical Complexion
  • Rachel and Elizabeth Knaggs
  • Elizabeth Stiles, President Lincoln's Spy
  • Loyalist Lucy Flucker Meets Patriot Henry Knox at a Boston Parade
  • Queen Maria Amelia, the Last Queen of Portugal, Stood Her Ground
  • The Lady and the Patriot: Theodosia Burr Alston's Fateful Voyage
  • Margaret Agnew Blennerhassett - More Character Than Riches
  • Florence Nightingale- Nurse, Feminist, Statistician, Author
  • Mary Todd Lincoln Considered April Her "Season of Sadness"
  • Mrs. Santa Claus - A Strong and Supportive Woman for All Seasons
  • Elizabeth Turner McCormick, Woman Voyager
  • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Fought for Human Rights
  • Mary Fields, Stage Coach Mail Driver, Sharp Shooter, Faithful Friend
  • Lucy Parsons, "More Dangerous Than A Thousand Rioters"
  • Lydia Maria Francis Child Travels 'Over the River and Through the Wood'
  • Anti-Suffragists Believed Women Didn't Need the Right to Vote
  • Finland's Alexandra Gripenberg Sought Universal Women's Rights
  • From Frances Slocum to Little Bear Woman and Back Again
  • Madame Elisabeth Thible is the First Woman to Ride in a Free Floating Balloon
  • Veronica Kerler Frank Pined for Germany, But Made Milwaukee Her Home
  • Mary Humphreys Stamps, Undefeated Rebel with An Educational Cause
  • Sister Monica Is One of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's Early Pioneers
  • A Love Story for St. Valentine's Day - Marie Antoinette and Count Axel von Fersen
  • Three Wisconsin Women of the Waves
  • Margaret Fox Kane and her Victorian Love Story
  • Francoise Marie Jacquelin, Lioness of La Tour, Lioness of Acadia, Woman in Her Own Right
  • Mary Breckinridge, Circuit Riding Nurse and Founder of the Frontier Nursing Service
  • Women Bicyclists Break Their Glass Cages and Ride into Liberation
  • Maria Mitchell, America's First Woman Astronomer Demonstrated Female Scientific Aptitude
  • Queen Alexandra of Great Britain-Queen Victoria's Daughter-in-Law, Bertie's Patient Wife, and Her Own Person!
  • Chicagoan Kate Kellogg Meets a Ghost on a Train
  • Isobel Lillian Steele Went to a Party and Ended Up in a Nazi Jail
  • Madam Sophie Blanchard - "Official Aeronaut of the Restoration"
  • Women of Their Time and Place
    • Nadine Turchin Fights Alongside Her Husband in the Civil War
    • War Stories Along Lake Erie: Ordinary Women Experience the War of 1812
    • Katie Walker Tends Robbins Reef Light Near the Statue of Liberty
    • Maria Gulovich Joined the Czech Resistance
    • Pirate Fanny Campbell Freed Her Fiance and Fought the British
    • SOE Agent Andree Borrel Lived Several Lifetimes in Her 24 Years
    • Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt and the First Mississippi River Steamboat
    • Sophie Kwiatkowski Served as a New Guinea Nurse in World War II
    • Clara Zetkin Spoke Against Hitler in the German Reichstag
    • Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, Female Fuhrer, Breathed Her Nazi Beliefs
    • Nancy Leo , the Only Woman Buried in Luxembourg American Cemetery
    • Dickey Chapelle, Journalist and War Correspondent
    • Lucena Brockway Adapts to Life in the Keweenaw Copper Mining Country of Lake Superior
    • Does Mary Surrat's Ghost Haunt the Senate Chambers Seeking Justice?
    • The Ghostly Cyclist in Brooklyn's Prospect Park
  • Women of Contemporary 20th and 21st Century Complexion
    • Clara Ward Chimay, Gilded Age Princess
    • Ruth Becker's Faith Helps Her Survive the Titanic and Beyond
    • Mildred Beltmann , Wartime Wife
    • The Courage of their Cultural Convictions - Women Missionaries in China
    • Light and Radiance - Laurence Owen and Her Sabena Fellow Travelers
    • Edna St. Vincent Millay, Passionate Poet, Candle-Lit Feminist
    • Fascinating Footnote: The Goose Down Divorce
    • Olive Higgins Prouty Juggles to Balance Home and Career
    • Mother and Daughter Journalists Agnes Meyer and Katharine Graham Shaped Journalism
    • Rose Friedman and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
    • Katharine Meyer Graham Leaves Her Mark on the Washington Post
    • Ida M. Tarbell, "Bachelor Soul," Transitional Woman, or Both?
    • Nurse Edith Cavell, the Courage to Die for Her Country
    • Sigrid Schultz Outsmarted Hermann Goering
    • Martha Dickie Sharp Saves Jewish Refugees from the Nazi Death Machine
    • Virginia Graham Pioneered in Early Television and Survived Cancer
    • Rose Conway, President Harry Truman's Secret Weapon
    • Nancy Green, Talented Entrepreneur, Transitional Symbol
    • "Surrender on Demand:" The Friendship of Mary Jayne Gold and Miriam Ebel
    • Julia K. Tibbitts - Closet Environmentalist
    • Lee Lawrence Ansberry Reconquers the World and Reshapes Her Life
  • Christmas Cheer