CWU Solent Branch secretary Gary Williams joined centenary commemorations of the sinking of the Titanic on Sunday, laying a wreath in memory of five postal workers at a memorial service in Southampton.
The wreath, which was paid for with donations from Solent, Wessex South Central, Devon & Somerset and Western Counties branches, honoured the sacrifices of British postal workers James Bertram Williamson and John Richard Jago Smith, and Oscar Scott Woody, John Starr March, and William Logan Gwinn from the US, who all went down with the ship.
Gary explained: "One thing that is often forgotten or overlooked is that RMS (Titanic) stands for Royal Mail Steamer. It was a mail boat.
"When the iceberg hit the first thing the postal workers did was to go down to the mail room on the bottom deck and began to haul mail sacks, along with steward Albert Theissinger, who survived the disaster.
"Mr Theissinger was the last person to see the postal workers alive," Gary continued, and, in his own words, he later told of how he 'urged them to leave their work. They shook their heads and continued at their work. It might have been an inrush of water later that cut off their escape, or it may have been the explosion. I saw them no more'.
"They died doing their duty," said Gary, who added that a memorial to the five was erected in Southampton, which reads: 'Steadfast in peril'.
