On this day in Alabama history: Archibald Gracie was aboard Titanic when it struck iceberg

April 14, 1912

Archibald Gracie was a colonel, military historian, wealthy real estate investor and author. The Mobile native is best known, however, for his heroic efforts to load fellow passengers aboard lifeboats on the iceberg-stricken RMS Titanic and for surviving the sinking. Gracie would later write a book about his account of the disaster that is considered one of the most accurate firsthand accounts of the incident. He is credited with saving numerous lives and in the months after the disaster testified at official inquiries into the ship’s sinking and wrote a detailed account of the disaster. He suffered from hypothermia and died Dec. 4, 1912 after a prolonged illness. Gracie’s last words, according to The New York Times, were “We must get them into the boats, we must get them all into the boats.”

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

RMS Titanic departing Southampton on April 10, 1912. (Wikipedia)

The great Titanic disaster, 1912. (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Grave marker for Archibald Gracie IV, Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York. (Sarnold17, Wikipedia)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.