Long-Buried Story Of Only Black Man & His Family Aboard Ill-Fated Titanic Ship (Entertainment)
That, there was only one black passenger on board the Titanic , the famous luxury ship that hit an iceberg and sank in 1914. His name was Joseph Philippe Lemercier Laroche.
Joseph, born into a prosperous and powerful family in Cap-Haitien, Haiti on May 26, 1886, was the nephew of Haitian president Dessalines M. Cincinnatus Leconte.
When he was 15, he travelled to France to study engineering in Beauvais, France. A n intellectual, Joseph spoke French, Creole and English fluently. Shortly after graduating with a degree in engineering, Joseph was visiting a small French village when he met a French woman named Juliette Lafargue, who he married and had two daughters, Simone and Louise, with.
With mounting medical bills for sickly Louise and his unemployment Sidue to racism, Joseph decided to relocate with his family back to Haiti within a year.
However, the couple discovered that Juliette was pregnant with their third child, so they decided to leave earlier before she gets too heavy to travel.
Louise’s poor health led to their fate. Originally, Joseph bought first-class tickets to board LaFrance, but due to a strict policy separating children and parents, the couple couldn't bear not being near Louise to watch over her wellbeing. So, Joseph later transferred to second-class tickets on the RMS Titanic, so that they could stay with their daughters.
From New York which was Titanic’s destination, they planned to take another ship to Haiti where Joseph had accepted a professorship of mathematics at a university.
On April 10, 1912, the family boarded the RMS Titanic at Cherbourg. Over the next three days, they enjoyed several of the amenities afforded to the second-class passengers. Juliette even wrote a letter to her father and posted it from Titanic’s final stop of Queenstown, Juliette Laroche wrote about the luxurious ship and the friendly travelers they had met.
On the night of April 14, 1912, their journey across the North Atlantic met a tragic end. According to Juliette, a steward woke the family and rushed them above decks to the lifeboats. Juliette spoke no English and was generally confused about what was happening but obedienti followed her husband to the boat deck. Sometime after midnight, crew members were given the order to load women and children first.
Juliette and one of her daughters, Simone, managed to get into a lifeboat. Joseph Laroche was last seen rushing to make sure his second daughter Louise, was placed safely in the same Lifeboat 14, as her mother and sister.
A levelheaded Joseph had the presence of mind to stuff the pockets of his coat with money and jewels before heading up on deck. He wrapped this coat around his wife and his last words to her were: “Here, take this. You are going to need it. I’ll get another boat. God be with you. I’ll see you in New York.”
This was not to be. On the night of April 15, 1912, Joseph was one of the many passengers who did not survive the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Joseph Larouvche’s body was never discovered. He was 25.
Juliette was now a widow, pregnant, and with her two young daughters at her side, totally grief stricken yet in a foreign land far from her native country Worse, she spoke no English. She felt all alone in New York after the RMS Carpathia picked up the Titanic survivors and transported them there. The next three weeks were extremely difficult for Juliette. In the end, she she was finally able to board another ship and make it back home safely to her native France. A few months later on December 17, 1912, she gave birth to a son, who she named Joseph, after her late husband.
She never healed from the trauma. She even disliked talking about her story of survival and even forbade her children from speaking about the event.
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