A Titanic Connection

I first heard about Alice from our former neighbour, Miss Phyllis Meisner - still a pretty woman in her 80's, who often came out and talked to me when I went to the back of the property(clearing out years of overgrowth). She told me stories of earlier Chester days and of the former occupants of our home -- one being a survivor of the Titanic.

I went on a search for this Titanic connection but was getting nowhere searching for a young girl and her aunt from Montreal. Getting exasperated I just started browsing when I spotted the surname Fortune on the first class passenger list. I looked only because I have a colleague of that name. It was a stroke of luck that I found the story of the Fortune family of Winnipeg -- and of Alice.

Alice Fortune was 24, living at home with her parents, Mark and Mary Fortune (a very wealthy land developer) when she was invited on the Grand Tour. Her sisters, Ethel Flora (28), Mabel (23) and Charles (12) would also be going. Two older siblings would stay in Winnipeg. Alice was engaged to Charles Holden Allen and Ethel Flora postponed her wedding so that she could shop for her trousseau in Europe and serve as chaperon to her younger siblings.

Alice was a very pretty girl and an excellent dancing partner according to William Sloper, another Titanic survivor. In his retelling of the event he had met the Fortunes as fellow passengers on a steamer to Egypt in January. He was so charmed by Alice that he requested the Cunard line to refund his money for the stateroom he had just booked on the Maurentania and found first class accommodation on the Titanic. Alice had told him that at least 20 others from the January steamer would be aboard -- the trip home would be entertaining!

The Fortunes occupied first class cabins C-23-25-27. According to a story in the New York Times in 1912, Mrs. Fortune is quoted as saying that she and her daughters were asleep when the collision occured. Young Charles woke them with the news. The sisters ascended to the deck and were put aboard lifeboat #10. Ethel narrowly missed survival as she initially thought it was a waste of time and returned to the comforts of her cabin. When a stewart informed her that her mother had gone on deck she was escorted back up where she had to jump into a lowering lifeboat.

Mark Fortune supposedly never travelled anywhere without his heavy, motheaten Winnipeg Buffalo fur coat. His wife had tried to convince him to not to pack such a useless garment on a trip to Egypt but he considered it a talisman. The night the Titantic sank there is the story that he came up on deck wearing it, joking that it had indeed come in handy for such a cold night. Mark Fortune and young Charles were lost in the disaster and their bodies never recovered. The women were picked up by the Carpathia and taken to New York.

Alice and Charles Allen were married in June, 1912. Charles gained prominence in business and governmental affairs and practiced law in Fredericton for some years. He also worked for the National Surety Co. in Montreal. Alice and Charles purchased 100 Union St in the late 1920s as a summer home. They had one daughter, Mary. Renovations were made to convert the former cooper's house for entertaining. The Hackmatack Inn, around the corner on Prince St, was in full swing and Chester was a social whirl.

The Allens retired in Chester and Alice passed away in April 1961 at age 73, a widow. She was buried in Chester.

I often imagine Alice looking over the waters of Mahone Bay and hope that she didn't always relive that horrific April night in 1912. And -- I like to think that she kept in touch with William Sloper. Many men were vilified for surviving the disaster and he was no exception. He was playing bridge when the ship struck the iceberg and he joined his friends in one of the early lifeboats when men were freely allowed to board. He credits Dorothy Gibson, an actress and one of the bridge party, for insisting that he get in the lifeboat. However, he was later accused by a NY reporter as having donned women's clothing to board the boat. He spent the rest of his life refuting the charge.