Titanic's secret saviour - the Countess of Rothes

On the night that the Titanic sank, one woman, the Countess of Rothes, put the welfare of others before her own, working tirelessly to row them to safety. Angela Young tells her great-grandmother’s incredible story:
My great- grandmother Noël, Countess of Rothes, was born on Christmas Day 1878. She was christened Lucy Noël Martha but was always known as Noël after the day she was born. She lived until she was 76 – a long life for those times – but she might easily have died at sea at the age of 33 when, in 1912, she sailed from Southampton on board RMS Titanic.

Noël boarded Titanic with her parents, Thomas and Clementina Dyer-Edwardes, her husband’s cousin Gladys Cherry and her maid Roberta Maioni. Her parents disembarked at Cherbourg on the evening of 10 April. If they hadn’t, her father would surely have died just a few days later.

When Titanic hit the iceberg just after midnight on 15 April, Noël was ordered into the lifeboats, as were all the women and children, while the men were held back.
But the sailor in charge of her lifeboat, Able Seaman Thomas Jones, didn’t think her a woman at all: ‘When I saw the way she was carrying herself and heard the quiet, determined way she spoke to the others,’ he said later, ‘I knew she was more of a man than any we had on board.’

Noël had become châtelaine of Leslie House in Fife when, in 1900, she married my great-grandfather, Norman Evelyn, the 19th Earl of Rothes. She oversaw a large household of staff, so she knew about encouraging, managing and gently persuading people to do as she asked. And my great-grandfather owned a yacht, so she also knew how to row and to take a tiller – unusual skills for a woman in those days. But Able Seaman Jones knew nothing of this, he only saw that the other two men who had boarded his lifeboat in the confusion weren’t seamen (one was a steward, the other a cook) so, when he saw the calming effect Noël had on the terrified female passengers, he put her in charge of them. And when he realised that she knew about boats he put her at the tiller.
Noël boarded lifeboat number eight at one in the morning and for the entirety of that long, cold and frightening night, while she helmed the boat, or rowed, or taught others to row, or comforted the distraught women, she thought about her two young sons safely at home, and prayed she would see them again.

It wasn’t until much later that she learned that, at exactly one in the morning, far away in Scotland, her eldest son, ten-year-old Malcolm, had woken up, shivering and terrified, calling out, ‘Mama’s in danger! Mama’s very cold!’ He knew in his heart that something terrible had happened, despite being thousands of miles from her.

But on the night Titanic hit the iceberg, even Noël, who understood the sea and boats well, didn’t imagine anything too serious had happened.
She left her cabin on C-deck and went up three decks to the boat deck just to see what an iceberg looked like. She and all the other passengers had absolute faith in Titanic’s unsinkability.

Afterwards Noël wrote to her parents, ‘The order came to be dressed and have life belts on in ten minutes. I just had time to pour out some brandy, give Maioni some and Gladys and myself, and hurriedly dress. Then no one seemed to know where the life belts were kept, and a strange man found ours for us – we tied on his for him – and all shook hands and told each other it would not be long before we met again, as we all thought there were plenty of boats, little knowing there were only 16.’
The women were relatively lucky: 75 per cent of them were rescued safely, while only 19 per cent of the men survived. And as we all now know, many more men would have been saved if there had been more lifeboats, or if the existing lifeboats had left Titanic at full capacity.

On lifeboat number eight a terrible argument broke out when the passengers saw Titanic’s lights go out and the ship begin sinking. As the ship tipped up vertically, all the heavy machinery, the engines and the boilers came loose and the noise as they fell was deafening. ‘It was as if,’ wrote Lawrence Beesley in The Loss of SS Titanic, ‘all the heavy things one could think of were being thrown downstairs from the top floor of a house and smashing themselves and everything on their way to bits.’
Those in lifeboat number eight argued bitterly about whether to go back to pick up more of the people who had been thrown into the icy water.
However, many were afraid that their boat would be overturned when stricken people struggled to board it, or that Titanic’s suction would drag the lifeboat under.
Noël, Able Seaman Jones and one or two other passengers tried to persuade the rest that they must return to pick up as many from the water as they could because their own boat was only half full. But when the majority wouldn’t be persuaded, Able Seaman Jones said, in despair, ‘Ladies, if any of us are saved, remember I wanted to go back. I would rather drown with them than leave them.’ But those who didn’t want to return outnumbered those who did, so lifeboat number eight didn’t turn back.



Noël was haunted by the terrible screams of those drowning people for years to come. She wrote later that the voices would never leave her head. But while their cries filled her heart, she still managed to comfort and calm the passengers in her own lifeboat. She spoke in French to a young Spanish woman, Josefa de Satode Peñasco, who was only 17 and had chosen Titanic for her honeymoon. Her 18-year-old husband Victor had tearfully entrusted his wife to Noël when they boarded the lifeboat. He bravely reassured Josefa that they’d see one another again very soon, but this was never to happen, and Noël, who was almost old enough to be Josefa’s mother, did her very best to comfort the frightened young woman: she told her there would be more boats, even though she knew there wouldn’t.

Noël showed Gladys Cherry how to take the tiller and, when they weren’t consoling their fellow passengers, they took turns at the helm and at the oars throughout that long, cold night. They rowed past icebergs that looked uncannily like huge ships beneath the silent, tar-filled sky and wondered if this would be their very last night on earth. When many of the passengers were close to giving up hope altogether, Gladys suggested they should sing to raise their spirits. She and Noël led the singing and, as Able Seaman Jones related, ‘We sang as we rowed, starting out with “Pull for the Shore”.’
Finally, just before dawn, when even Noël had all but given up hope, she saw above the horizon a single light, then a second light below it, and then, when the two were aligned above the horizon, she knew that she was looking at a ship’s lights. They were the lights of RMS Carpathia, the ship that came to their rescue and, as they rowed for all they were worth towards her, the singing stopped and they began to pray.

The crew of RMS Carpathia dubbed Noël the ‘Plucky Little Countess’ for her courage in the lifeboat and for all the help she gave the exhausted passengers when they boarded Carpathia. She sewed clothes from blankets; she translated; she found food and medicine for them without a thought for herself.
When she had a chance, she wrote to her parents, ‘There is plenty to do now helping the doctor with the tiny children – feeding them and letting the mothers rest. This morning the doctor sent for me to be with a French woman who was quite frantic and we were afraid to leave her. It took two hours to calm her as she declared she would kill herself. She is quiet now, but must not be left. The little Spanish lady is quite dazed but clings to me like a baby. She knows no one at all in America except one man in Washington.’

When, three long days afterwards, Carpathia sailed past the Statue of Liberty into New York, many of her passengers wept with relief and sorrow. They longed only for two things: to stand on dry land, and to hear news of their beloved menfolk. But they knew in their hearts, by then, that the news they would eventually be given was unlikely to be happy.
Several weeks after their safe arrival in New York, when Noël (with Roberta, who survived with her, as did Gladys) had returned home to Scotland, she bought a silver fob watch and had it engraved with the words ‘April 15th 1912, from the Countess of Rothes’. She sent it to Able Seaman Jones to thank him for all he’d done in their lifeboat. A few days later, she received this letter:


My Lady,
I have only today received your very gracious present, and I appreciate, very much, the honour extended to me by your Grace in acknowledging any service rendered by me at the time of the disaster – which was my duty to those of whom I was in charge. May I say how much service you rendered myself and others by your example and courage under so heart-rending circumstances.

I shall always treasure your kind gift as my priceless possession. I have the honour to be Your Grace’s obedient servant, T Jones
A little while after that, Noël received a letter and parcel containing a wooden plaque that Able Seaman Jones had made for her. He’d taken one of the bronze figure eights from the prow of their lifeboat and set it into the middle of the plaque, and then, in gilt lettering, he’d written the date Titanic sank along with his name, and dedicated it to Noël. The letter read:

My Lady,
I beg to ask your acceptance of the number of my boat from which you were taken on board SS Carpathia.
This number is the original taken from the boat by myself. In asking you to accept the same I do so in respect for your courage under so terrifying circumstances.

Trusting you are now fully recovered to health, I am, Your obedient servant, Tom Jones AB Late SS Titanic
Noël and Able Seaman Jones corresponded until she died in 1956 (he died in 1967, aged 87). Several days after Noël received the parcel from Able Seaman Jones she received another parcel from Josefa, who’d sent an amethyst ring – the stone some people believe protects travellers – and a letter of heartfelt thanks. The two women also kept in touch until Noël died.

When my aunt and my grandfather (the ten-year-old Malcolm who knew his mother was in danger on that terrible night) cleared out Noël’s house following her death, they found a cardboard box with the letters above, along with the round wooden plaque. One of the letters, from Josefa, had been received just ten days before Noël died.

It’s hard to believe now, but my great-grandmother never talked about the Titanic disaster after she arrived home. It wasn’t until she died that we discovered these testaments to her courage and selflessness on that terrible night.