Titanic Survivor Helen Churchill Candee: From Tragedy to Fearless Explorer

Titanic Survivor Helen Churchill Candee: From Tragedy to Fearless Explorer

As many if you know, I have been finding out about some of the people who were on board Titanic. So today let me tell you about Helen Churchill Candee.

She was born on the 5th of October 1858 in New York City, but spent a lot of time in Connecticut as a child. She grew up in a comfortable but traditional environment. Like many women of her era, her path very much seemed to be planned out for her. She married Edward Candee and they had two children together, Edith and Harold. But the marriage so became unhappy and even abusive, and when her husband abandoned the family, she was faced with a very different reality. Supporting herself and two children would have been frightening, but she turned to writing. She began with articles about etiquette and household life, but she slowly expanded into much broader topics like education and women’s independence.

By the late nineteenth century she had gained recognition, publishing books including How Women May Earn a Living and later fiction inspired by Oklahoma, where she lived for a while. She then went to Washington, D.C., where she became one of the first professional interior decorators. She advised political figures, including President Theodore Roosevelt, and became involved in civic life and the women’s suffrage movement. Her career showed a woman who was determined not only to survive, but to influence.

In the spring of 1912, while researching in Europe, she received news that her son had been injured, so she quickly booked passage  on board the Titanic. Tragically, as we all know, disaster struck, but thankfully, unlike too many others, she managed to reach Lifeboat 6. She did though fracture her ankle while she was boarding the lifeboat. Despite the pain, she helped row the boat through the freezing night. The fear, confusion, and uncertainty must have been huge, but she later wrote one of the earliest detailed eyewitness accounts of the Titanic sinking. She was left walking with a cane for months, but that did not stop her from joining the women’s suffrage parade in 1913, riding at the front.

During the First World War, she volunteered as a nurse in Italy, caring for wounded soldiers. After the war, she began travelling and enjoyed exploring,  she journeyed through Japan, China, Indonesia, and Cambodia. Trekked through jungles and visited Angkor Wat, often riding on an elephant that she named Effie. She continued her adventures well into her later life. Her travel books brought her recognition, and she actually became a lecturer and founding member of the Society of Woman Geographers. Even in her late seventies, she was still travelling and writing.

She died in 1949 at the age of ninety. A truly remarkable woman.

Do you think surviving a tragedy like the Titanic changes someone’s purpose in life, or simply reveals the strength they already had?