James Paul Moody,
21st August, 1887.
James Paul Moody was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England on the 21st of August, 1887, the last of four children born to a solicitor, John, and his wife Evelyn. His childhood was a comfortable one and he attended a good school, Rosebery House, before the sea called to him. To be fair, Scarborough is on one of England’s most beautiful coasts and the sea is never more than a stone’s throw away. James was probably always going to end up a sailor. He joined the navy training vessel HMS Conway in 1902 and began to work on his certification as a Second Mate.
In 1910, he attended the King Edward VII Nautical School where he gained an Ordinary Master’s Certificate and then in 1911, he joined White Star Line, serving aboard the Oceanic as her sixth officer.
You see where this story is going now, right?
In 1912 he applied for leave, having spent a hard winter on the Atlantic and was looking forward to a genteel summer on Oceanic. But in March of 1912, his leave was denied and instead he was given a new post as Sixth Officer on White Star Line’s brand-new flagship.
RMS Titanic.
Moody and the other junior officers were ordered to report to White Star Line’s Liverpool offices on March the 26th and from there, he travelled across to Belfast’s Harland & Wolff shipyard and reported for duty, reporting to William McMaster Murdoch. Moody was ordered to inspect the port lifeboats and then Titanic set sail for Southampton to pick up passengers.
Moody had his own tiny cabin and he earned $37 a month.
On the 10th of April, 1912, departure day, Moody was a busy man. The first thing he had to do was lower two of the lifeboats to ensure the ship met the Board of Trade’s safety standards. Moody was in charge of lowering lifeboat number 13.
Moments before she set sail, Moody was in charge of the last gangway connecting the ship to shore. Astern on E deck. With the ship straining to leave and Moody ushering the last few crew aboard, two men scampered up the gangway to their destiny and Moody ordered it withdrawn.
With the gangway slowly cranking back, suddenly a man, R.C. Lawrence appeared at Moody’s side. He’d just delivered typewriters to the purser’s office and had been wandering around the luxurious surroundings, taking a quick tour. The rumble of the ship’s engines and the sudden realisation that they were leaving sent him barrelling towards the shore. Lawrence was due back for dinner that night and a trip across the Atlantic was bound to see his dinner cooling off in the dog when, if, he ever got back.
Amid a lot of cursing and gesticulating, Moody ordered the gangway to be swung back and Lawrence bounded to safety.
At the same moment, six more crew came pounding up the quayside. Late, as some sailors always seem to be, they were horrified to see the gangway slipping away from Titanic. Tom Slade, his three brothers, a trimmer named Penney and a fellow by the name of Bessley all shouted for Moody to wait. Just swing the gangway back, we’ll be on in thirty seconds and it’s off to America, adventure and, critically, $37 a month.
Moody refused. Late was late and he had a ship to get off. They begged. They shouted. They swore and shook their fists. But Moody said no.
And with that, RMS Titanic and James Moody sailed one way into infamy and Tom Slade, his three brothers, Bessley and Penney all went home.
Moody stood the 4-5PM and both 8-12 watches which meant that at 11:40PM on the 14th of April, 1912, he was on the bridge alongside Murdoch and Fourth officer Joseph Boxhall when Titanic struck the iceberg.
Earlier in his watch, he had noticed that the position of several ice sightings had been marked on the charts and he was ordered to call up to the crow’s nest to “Keep a sharp lookout for ice, particularly small ice and growlers” and to keep passing that message on until daylight. Growlers are the smallest classified icebergs.
Moody picked up the phone and called up “Keep a sharp lookout for ice, particularly small ice” he said. He was ordered to call again. Mention the growlers. Moody rang back and gave the right message.
Suddenly, from the crow’s nest, the warning bell rang three times. Moody and Murdoch heard the bell and the phone began to ring. Moody picked it up.
”Is anyone there?” asked an anxious Frederick Fleet, from the lookout.
”Yes”, Moody replied. “What did you see?”
”Iceberg, right ahead!”
Moody paused, said “Thank you”, turned to Murdoch and repeated “Iceberg right ahead”
The bridge sprang into action, turning the helm hard to starboard. The ship ripped into the iceberg. “Hard to port!” bellowed Murdoch and Moody reached across, helped grasp the helm and turned as hard as he could.
Twenty minutes later, Moody told Quartermaster Olliver to go and prepare the muster lists for the lifeboats and set off to start preparing the boats he had tested only a few days before, aft port. A Pitman came across Moody and crew preparing boats on the port side Boat Deck and when Pitman asked him what was happening, Moody said he didn’t know, but there was ice all over boat forward of the Well Deck. Pitman went to look and Moody stayed with the lifeboats.
Colonel Gracie was down on the port side of A deck, near boat 4. Moody was there, with other crewmen, preventing any male passengers from getting near the boat.
”No man beyond this line”
Moody helped in the loading of lifeboats 9,12, 13, 14 and 16. While loading 16, he ordered Violet Jessop into the boat. Violet had the dubious distinction of not only surviving the sinking of Titanic, but also of her sister ship Britannic when, as a hospital ship in 1916, it struck a mine in the Agean Sea. Not only that, she was aboard the other of the three sister ships, Olympic, when she collided with HMS Hawke in 1911. You might think Violet was unlucky, but she died in 1971, aged 83.
Violet remembers Moody looking tired, but he gave them a cheery wave, smiled and called out “Good luck!”. Moody then suddenly hailed her and handed her a baby, saying “Look after this, will you?”
While loading 14, Fifth Officer Lowe and Moody discussed the convention that an officer should command each lifeboat. Moody insisted that, as the senior officer, Lowe should go. “You go. I’ll get another boat”
Moody went starboard and helped load 13 alongside Fleet’s fellow lookout, Reginald Lee, before ordering him to man it.
12-year-old 2nd class passenger Ruth Becker had been unable to get onto 11 with her mother and father and was lost and scared. Moody picked her up, put her in 13 with Lee and cast them off.
He found another young girl, Lilly May Peel, led her, ignoring her protests, to boat 9 and put her aboard. He stayed to load 9, and then ordered Saloon Steward Littlejohn and other crewmen to get in and row the boat.
Lamp trimmer Samuel Hemming saw Moody standing on top of the officer’s quarters, trying to launch Collapsible A, a temporary lifeboat, just before the ship began to rise out of the water, snap in two and begin its final plummet into the Atlantic.
Hemming helped untangle the tackle and block to lower the boat into the water. Moody had other ideas and called down to him. “We don’t want the block! We will leave the boat on deck!”
Moody’s idea, rather than lowering the boat over the side, was simply to let it wash over the side when the ship went down. And as Titanic went down, the waves crashed over the deck, took Collapsible A and Collapsible B and James Paul Moody into the freezing waters of the North Atlantic.
He was 24 years old.
His body was never recovered.
James Moody’s final resting place is the Atlantic Ocean, but tucked away in a corner of Manor Road Cemetery in his hometown, on the beautiful east coast of North Yorkshire, under the cries of the gulls and the hammers of the wind and the salt sea air that took him away, is a memorial to his sacrifice.
It quotes John 15:13:
”Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”
I almost thought you were going to write about James Moody the jazz musician, but it's obviously not HIS birthday...