REVIEW: FATEFUL END OF HEROIC LIFE-SAVER

Hugh Roberts, the recipient of this CQD Life-Saving Medal which sold at Noonans on April 20 for £1,700, was extraordinarily ill-fated. A First Class Bedroom Steward on the S.S. Republic, he had charge of the four cabins occupying the point of impact when the Italian liner SS Florida’s bow crashed through the ship’s superstructure off Nantucket in January 1909.

As the New York Times of 27 January, 1909 reported, “As soon as some semblance of order was obtained he [Roberts] had gone from room to room, looking to the safety of the passengers in his immediate charge. He helped Mr Lynch out of Cabin 34 and Mrs Mooney to gain the deck from Cabin 32. He found, too, that Mrs Lynch’s body had been terribly mangled and carried some distance aft by the collision. Mr Mooney had apparently been sleeping on one of the settees, his wife being in a lower berth. His body carried some distance, and the head was terribly crushed.”

Roberts’ selfless actions won him the CQD Medal, while more than 1,700 lives were saved between the two ships.

Within three years, Roberts found himself aboard the Titanic for her delivery trip from the Belfast shipyard where she was built to Southampton, from where she was to undertake her maiden voyage.

Fatefully, he decided to sign on for that voyage in Southampton on 4 April 1912 and died in the sinking on the night of 14-15 April after the ship struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

The rescue ship CS Mackay-Bennett, a transatlantic cable-layer, was berthed at Halifax Nova Scotia at the time and recovered more bodies from the disaster than any other vessel. One of those recovered and buried at sea on 23 April was Roberts, who was then thought to be aged 40. He had been identified through a letter addressed to him, found in his pocket.

*CQD is understood by wireless operators to mean All stations: distress and predates the Morse code of SOS.