The Third-Class General Room was a gathering place for the multitude of steerage passengers. Located on the starboard side of the ship's stern section, it served as a lounge and a recreational area. The Third Class Smoke Room was on the port side of the ship and it served as the smoking domain for the men. It was located on C-Deck underneath the Poop Deck. It was forward of the Steering Gear Room.
The General Room was fairly small, but a popular recreation space for both sexes to interact, usually under the careful watch of their chaperones. There was a piano in the room and passengers with their own instruments could form bands to accompany parties. A party was held in this room the evening of April 14 until the lights were extinguished at 10:00 P.M.
The General Room was finished in white enameled pine and fitted with slat-seated benches and teak chairs. In the interests of hygiene, there were no upholstered surfaces. However, the walls were brightened with posters advertising White Star’s vessels and ports of call.
Titanic disaster[]
During the sinking, Third Class passengers faced numerous obstacles between them and survival. While there were little to no gates physically barring Third Class passengers from ascending to the lifeboats as is often portrayed, many Third Class passengers felt that they had to wait for proper instructions from the ship's crew before they could take any action to save themselves. Sadly, the crew found themselves so preoccupied in doing their part in preparing the boats that Third Class passengers were, in large part, forgotten in the greater scheme of the evacuation. When at last the order for them to get up top did come, there were even more obstacles to overcome: being a very diversified population with only a handful of translators on board, there was a serious language barrier that kept many from understanding any instructions they were given.
For most, they would simply sit around in public rooms such as the Third Class General Room and wait, never quite understanding what was going on. Eventually, some began to realize how serious the situation was and decided to proceed toward the upper decks of their own accord. Survivors who did so reported many sorrowful sightings late in the sinking as passengers in the Third Class General Room awaited the end, including a Swedish man who refused a lifebelt as he claimed to be "too old to fight the Atlantic's waves" and an English lady sitting and playing the piano with her child on her knee, no visible intention of trying to save herself and her child.
Wreck[]
There is no trace on the decks of the pillars or benches. Only a small pile of floor tiles remains on the lower starboard corner. The forward wall overhangs to fore over the bend D-deck. The brackets connecting the ribs at right to the ceiling beams clung to the peeled-up Poop Deck and resemble teeth in the wreckage. A few floor tiles lie in the lower starboard side of the General Room on the wreck. The forward end of this room has collapsed onto D-Deck.
| It is panelled and framed in pine and finished enamel white, with furniture of teak. This will be the general rendezvous of the third-class passengers – men, women and children – and will doubtless prove one of the liveliest rooms on the ship... The new field of endeavour is looked forward to with hope and confidence… the interval between the old life and the new is spent under the happiest possible conditions". |
Gallery[]
.png "The Third Class General Room in Kraft Televisión Theatre -A Night To Remember- (1956).png (717 KB)")
