Ethal Flora Fortune
Ethel Flora Fortune was a First Class passenger and a survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. She was born in Winnipeg, Canada on 22 September 1883 and was the third child of 6 children born to Mark Fortune and Mary Fortune McDougald. Her three younger siblings were Alice Elizabeth, Mabel Helen and Charles Alexander. Her older siblings were Robert W.H. Fortune and Clara Alma Fortune.
In 1912, after announcing her engagement to marry a Toronto banker, Crawford Gordon, her parents invited her to join a major tour of Europe with three of her siblings: Alice, Mabel and Charles. She thought it was a good idea as it would be a good opportunity to spend time with her family before getting married.
To return to Manitoba, Ethel, her parents Mark and Mary Fortune and siblings, Alice, Mabel and Charles Fortune decided to board the Titanic on 10 April 1912 in Southampton as First Class passengers together with her parents and siblings. They occupied cabins C-23, C-25, and C-27.
Alice, Robert, Mabel, Charles, Mary, Mark, Clara and Ethel Fortune
On the night of April 14, the ship had struck an iceberg, and started sinking. After it became clear that evacuation was neeed, Ethel was wary of leaving the ship. At first she thought getting on a lifeboat was a waste of time and returned to her cabin, leaving his two sisters Alice and Mabel on deck. However, a butler entered her cabin and informed her that her mother, Mary, had climbed the stairs to get on deck and escorted her to lifeboat 10, just as it was being taken down. The people in the boat caught her. Her mother and two sisters were on the boat with her but her brother Charles and father Mark remained on Titanic. By the time Titanic went down completely, lifeboat 10 was a mile away from the scene.
Ethel, her mother and two sisters survived the sinking but both her father and brother perished in the disaster.
As she watched the Titanic sink, Ethel recalls a vision of her brother Charles in the water, wearing a life jacket, struggling to stay afloat. This vision and the thought of Charles crying for someone to save him accompanied Ethel all her life.
After the sinking
Crawford Gordon
A year after the disaster where her father Mark Fortune and brother Charles Alexander Fortune lost their lives, Ethel married Crawford Gordon. In 1914, the couple had their first son, Crawford Gordon Jr., who would later become a leader of wartime defence production in Canada under Minister of Munitions and Supplies D.C. Howe during World War II. Two years later, in 1918, Ethel and Crawford had their second son, William Gordon.
In 1920, Ethel and her children moved to Jamaica and then to London, when her husband Crawford was appointed manager of the Bank of Commerce in the United Kingdom.
Ethel Flora Fortune died in Toronto in 1961, aged 77, the same age at which her mother, Mary Fortune, died.