Titanic key to a postman’s bravery

[NEWS]

The band played on, engineers fought to maintain power and the captain remained at his post as the Titanic went down on the night of April 14, 1912.

To these stubborn acts of courage can be be added those of the ship’s five postmen.

This month the keys and chain of the postmaster of the Titanic mail room, prised from his frozen body, emerged for auction, and with them a bewildering story of postal heroism.

In an age when the Royal Mail was staggeringly efficient, postmaster Oscar Woody and his team were regarded as the best of the best, entrusted with sorting 400,000 letters during the six-day voyage from Southampton to New York.

He had no intention of letting the holing of the vessel by a giant iceberg stand in the way of their safe delivery.
Mr Woody, from Clifton, Virginia, had been a railroad mail clerk for 15 years before boarding the Titanic, a Royal Mail steamer, on April 9, 1912. With him in the post room were Wil-liam Gwinn, from New York, John Marsh, from New Jersey, John “Jagoâ€