Making of ‘The Last Photo of the Titanic Afloat’ (by Francis Browne, 1912), 2014

The story behind the photograph…

RMS Titanic – the supposedly ‘unsinkable’ British passenger liner – collided with an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York and sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912. More than 1,500 passengers and crew perished. All trace of life on board would have gone down with the ship but for an act of providence that saved the Irish Jesuit priest Francis Browne (1880–1960). Having been given a ticket by his uncle Robert, Bishop of Cloyne, Browne sailed on the ship’s first leg from Southampton to Queenstown in Ireland. He would have continued, having been offered an onward ticket by a wealthy American couple he befriended in the dining saloon. However, on sending a telegraph requesting permission from his superior, he received an unequivocal order to disembark. He took with him his camera, which contained the only surviving photographs of the Titanic at sea, including the last known picture of the captain, Edward J. Smith. Images appeared in publications all around the world. Browne’s photographs were lost after his death but rediscovered by another priest, Edward O’Donnell, 25 years later. Browne’s lifetime hoard – stored in a trunk, mainly on combustible nitrate-based film – consisted of an astonishing 42,000 negatives.