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Forgotten Titanic hero who saved his family
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DISASTER: The Titanic sunk in 1912
THE LAST known survivor of the Titanic,
Millvina Dean, received a great deal of media attention when she died recently, but how many know about the only black family that sailed on the ill-fated liner?
Haitian Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche is not mentioned among the 1912 press descriptions of the Titanic disaster, but he is the only black man who was aboard the luxury ship when it hit an iceberg and went down on April 15, 1912, killing 1,500 passengers.
Laroche’s existence on the Titanic was re-discovered in 2000.
Researchers also show that Laroche‘s intriguing life story reveals he died on board the Titanic after saving his pregnant white French wife, Juliette, and two mixed-race daughters - a loving sacrifice which reminds of the heroism of the character played by Leonardo di Caprio in the hit film, Titanic.
Joseph Laroche was born in Cap Haiten, Haiti, on May 26, 1889, into a powerful family with Haitian presidential connections.
He left Haiti for France to study engineering, where he met and married a white French woman, Juliette, with whom he had two daughters.
The family had been returning to Haiti, where Laroche’s family resided, because Laroche, a trained engineer, could not find work in France, an article in Ebony magazine said.
Racism left him unemployed and he did not feel comfortable having his father-in-law, a French wine seller, support his family.
Laroche and Juliette reportedly booked the second most luxurious accommodations available and boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg in France on April 10, for what should have been a five-day journey to New York.
When the ship struck an iceberg, Joseph helped get his wife and children into a lifeboat, but sank he with the ship, news reports said.
His body was never recovered, but Juliette Laroche, who went back to France, later had a baby boy, whom she named after his father.
Published: 15 June 2009
Issue: 1376
