More Ice, Sir?

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Jack gets over the line in time, for a change – –

My cousin Donald is the family historian and posted this today – So I had an ancestor who survived the sinking of the Titanic!

This post is for my Beck cousins in the main, and anyone who is interested in the sinking of the Titanic and the Battle of Jutland.

My great great grandfather was William Beck or Back, born in Musselburgh in 1843. He was one of eight, and was the second youngest with a younger brother Andrew who was born in 1845. The family appears to have changed the spelling to Beck in the 1860’s. Thus William was married in 1864 under the name of Back to Janet Sutherland but from the census of 1871 onwards he used Beck as his name.

William and Andrew appear to have been close as they both trained as House Painters in Edinburgh before converting to Ship’s Painters. They are resident together in Dumbarton in the 1871 census where I believe they worked in the Denny shipyard. They both took painting contracts in the Hampshire shipyards and one of William’s daughters married on the Isle of Wight, whilst I now know that both of Andrew’s daughters, Janet and Mary Beck, lived in Southhampton.

Janet Sutherland Beck (named in honour of her aunt) was born in Musselburgh in 1869 whilst Mary Beck was born in Dumbarton in 1871. Janet married Southampton man, Henry William Candy in Southhampton in 1887, and they had ten children before he died in 1915. She re-married Charles West in 1919 and died in Hampshire in 1929. Mary married Frederick Griffiths in 1891and had five children.

The eldest daughter of Henry Candy and Janet Sutherland Beck was Henrietta Janette Candy. She married Albert Charles Edward Self in May 1912, just a month or so after the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Albert Charles Edward Self was a stoker or ‘fireman’ on the Titanic.

Details of A C E Self are found here https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/…/edward-self.html

Who knew that each Titanic survivor has his or her own web-page!

The eldest son of Henry Candy and Janet Sutherland Beck was Andrew William Charles Candy. He joined the Royal Navy in 1911. from 1912 to 1918 he was a stoker on HMS King George V which was a super dreadnought and flag ship of the first battle squadron at the Battle of Jutland in 1916 (which was not heavily engaged in the battle it has to be said).

I’ve got photos of Janet Sutherland Beck and her second husband Charles West. I’ve also got a photo of Albert Self. I think I can see Charles and Janet, and other English relatives in a photograph of my great grandparents John and Georgina Beck, taken in Hampshire in the early 1920s. Always wondered who they were.

I believe I am named after John Beck of Hampshire although I’ve always been known as Jack.

The Monday Book: A CHANCE IN THE WORLD by Steve Pemberton

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Janelle Bailey comes through once again, folks, as yours truly wrests with an index and a deadline for final edits to the latest book. Look for MASKS MISINFORMATION AND MAKING DO out from Ohio University press next month. Meanwhile, please enjoy Janelle’s review of the non-fiction work A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home by Steve Pemberton.

This is a wonderfully written and TRUE story of hope and love and family as told by one who had to work so much of his life to find those basic needs met in his own life. Steve Klakowicz was orphaned at a very young age and sent into the foster care system to two families–one short-term and then one very long-term–who did not truly “care” for him as they were charged or as he needed.

Thank goodness for others in his life–teachers, neighbors, kind strangers–he never stopped believing in the value of his own life or believed those families’ assertions that his life mattered not at all. Of course I am especially pleased with Mrs. Levin giving him early on the gift of books and the love of reading, of seeing him and believing in him all along, while not even knowing until much, much–years and years–later (after this book was written and published) how significant her impact on Steve Pemberton’s life.

Pemberton’s quest throughout much of the book to put together his own life story, fill in the gaps of his parents and family is heart-wrenching but completely heart-warming at the same time, as he truly had built a life for himself despite what others who should have never did for him. Somehow he gained faith and hope and love and compassion while never having had it modeled well for him. He could have become angry, bitter, distant…and instead became the best father his three children could have ever hoped for. At age 6, his eldest son asks him, “When you were a little boy, did you have a daddy?” And it seems that that might be the start of THIS story, rather than its end, for while Pemberton did not, ever, have a daddy as a young boy, he became a tremendous one. And while none of the men who stepped in when Pemberton needed them to were his “daddy” but moreso “fathers” when he absolutely needed one, Pemberton figured out what a good daddy would do and be…and has been that for his children.

This is just my first read of this book, and I am very excited to be taking the reading of it “on the road” with a community book study, as it is our high school’s “one book, one school” read these next couple of months, and I am excited to bring Pemberton’s story into the hearts and minds of others who will gain from learning about him.