Name
Lifeboat from Titanic
Lifeboat to Carpathia
Confidence Level
Ryan, Mr Edward
14  (7 votes)
13 (5 votes)
14 (1 votes)
10 (7 votes)
13 (5 votes)
14 (1 votes)
3.00
3.30
3.00


Irish Independent April 13, 1969:
    “When I heard some shouting around the stern of the ship, I made my way there to see what was happening. There were very few people on this part of the ship. There was a woman looking over the side at a boat… There was a rope hanging over the side… We went down the rope gently- our hands bled- and landed right in the centre of the boat.”

After arriving in New York, Mr. Ryan wrote the following to his parents (printed in On Board RMS Titanic by George Behe, page 381):
    “The last boat was about being rowed away… I had a towel round my neck. I just threw this over my head and left it hang at the back. I wore my waterproof overcoat. I then walked very stiff past the officers, who had declared they’d shoot the first man that dare pass out. They didn’t notice me. They thought I was a woman. I grasped a girl who was standing by in despair and jumped with her thirty feet into the boat. An Italian and myself rowed away as fast as we could…”

Speculation was that this could indicate #13, based on accounts by Mary Glynn, Julia Smyth, Agnes Sandstrom, and Anna Nysten.

From the New York Sun, April 21, 1912:
    " 'The lifeboat', said Mrs. Fortune, 'was greatly overcrowded.  Four of the crew were in her and the rest were supposed to be women, with the exception of one stoker and a Chinaman.  There was a figure forward dressed in a brown macintosh with a shawl like a steerage passenger over its head.  The face was completely hidden.  Miss Alice Fortune sat beside the supposed woman.
    Soon after the boat had left the ship the four sailors were transferred to another boat and at this time it was discovered that the figure was that of a man.' "

We are positive that the three Fortune women left the Titanic in #10.  The description given exactly matches what Ryan said he was wearing in his letter to his parents.

Our discussions centered on whether Ryan was in boat 13 or boat 14, or even #10.  People in all these boats recalled a man who jumped in and had something that made him appear to be a woman wearing a shawl or a towel.  Other points introduced were that the man with the shawl could have been Daniel Buckley, though we believe Buckley could also have been in Collapsible C.  But
why would Ryan have to do this at all because male passengers were allowed in boat 13?

We were very conflicted as to which boat Ryan may have escaped in.  Though most of us felt that Mrs. Fortune description of the shawled 'woman' in her boat (#10) fit Mr. Ryan, and were in favor of Ryan leaving Titanic in #14, and being discovered in the transfer of people from #14 to #10.