William Edward Hine was a Baker on the Titanic.
Background[]
William Edward Hine originated in Winslow, Buckinghimshire. He spent his childhood here since January 6, 1876. His was father was a fettler for the train tracks. They lived close to the railway where his father would work. There was a train station. He went by the name of Henry Hine and had conjugated to Mary Ann Lambourne. Henry had grown up in Marsh Gibbon in Buckinghamshire, also Mary’s region as she came to earth in Charndon.
The first life that had sprung from the loved between Henry and Mary came in the form of Rose Louisa, in 1874. Also a daughter of them was Emily Elizabeth, another elder sister to William, who emerged in 1875. William would therefore be the youngest.
In 1881, they were still in Winslow close to the passageways. The next year, Mary went to the great beyond. Within some years, a new woman came in Henry’s life. She was Sarah Ann Bunce, who was also a neighbour of Henry in Winslow, her native town. She had no home of herself but paid rent in those times.
In 1877, she had received a daughter that she had named Lizzie, but it was officially described as a bastard child, a status that would be dropped later when she had been adopted by her stepfather and gained his name. With Henry, she promised him eternal faith in 1884, at the Baptist Tabernacle. His second wife gave him two additional sons: Frederick made his appearence first in 1886.
In 1889, the family had moved to Brackley, Northamptonshire A christian minister taught Williams at the local school. Henry and Sarah begot Frank in 1890. William was a seafood seller by 1891, when the Hines were in Goose Green, also part of Brackey.
In 1901, William was in the baking business.
His parents still abided in the same place by 1911, when William must have traded the mainland for the brine.
Titanic[]
The year 1912 saw the White Star Line, an highly esteemed ocean steam company, place a new liner on the fiercly competed shipping lanes. Titanic was quite a prestitious ship. On April 4, William was positioned as Third Baker. He made the affidavit in Southampton, where Titanic had only been for a day.
It could be that he saw a familiar face onboard, as his sister Emily, back in 1897, had made the bond for life with Frederick Charles Godwin, a Fireman from the pastorial areas of Hampshire. For this voyage, Frederick would be one of Titanic’s Greasers.
Very few people could have been unimpressed with Titanic, which stood out on the cloudy day of April 10, when she made her way down the river. William should have found Titanic to be recognizable as he had just been on her sistership, the Olympic, just prior. His age would be 36 as the vessel departed. They could be told apart, but still looked very much like eachother.
After Southampton was left behind, Titanic exchanged more passengers and crew between her and the land in France and Ireland, where some tenders awaited her. Since then, it was the large Atlantic Ocean that needed to be crossed, to reach America.
On April 14, Titanic was going at a fair clip with her propellers in full swing. Her director strived to get to New York fast and wanted to try out her speed. While Williams must have been molding bread, Titanic rushed at 22,5 knots through an icefield at night. Looking back, this seemed reckless and not sensible, but it was standard practice.
Titanic was engineered to be as close to unsinkable as she could be, but it was not taken into account that she would chafe an iceberg in a tragic, dramatic and bizarre way.
That night, the captain relied on his watchmen, among which were two officers and two lookouts, high up in the crow’s nest, to peer into the distance. They believed there would be enough time to make out any object, but this wasn’t the case.
At 11:39 P.M, the one iceberg that made history, showed itself. It was just a black mass before, but now, the lookouts could tell it was white from how fast they closed in on it. One of them made the ship’s bell reverberate three times before he seeked contact with the bridge via telephone. When the telephone was answered, First Officer Murdoch attempted to port his way around the iceberg, but to no avail. Even the engines were turned to opposite but it only hampered Titanic’s veering capabilities. Perhaps this is why the ship moments later had her starboard hull scracthed, which little chinks proving to be lethal.
Within a minute, the captain was on the bridge. He soon learnt what happened. His main Officer had already close the watertight doors. Through a series of surveilllances, made by various crewmen and the captain himself, as well as the chief designer. The worrying disclosure by a Post Clerk that had to wade through water on the Orlop Deck to get the mailbags to safety, changed things quickly.
The flooding was significant and enough to bring Titanic down. That was how the situation was sketched by Thomas Andrews, the man who helped built her with his genius. Captain Smith couldn’t wait around. He had to get people off the ship by persuading them into the lifeboats. The order to allign them to deck height came at 12:05 A.M.
The ship had most of her forward interior inundated by the time that 18 boats had left. There were 2 remaining, which were very tricky to get in place. The ship’s time was up and she heaved netherwards, with her entire bridge engulfed and deluge that ensured caught many people off guard who were in the last boats. It was 7 minutes past two when this event occured.
The sinking progressed ever faster and it was another 7 minutes later that her backside came loose from the water, with her first two funnel bases dipped under and the first smockestack undone as well. The ship rented itself apart through sheer phsyics playing with her, with both water and weight of her engines playing a sort of tug-of-war. Thus her decks were splintered when her posterior crunched off the rest of the ship. Within two minutes all of it was gone.
Of the bakery team, only the Chief Baker and two other Bakers escaped with their life. The rest were soon in a state of insensation, as lives were claimed by the water mostly, through either drowning or freezing. The total cost of life went into the 1500s.
There is no description about William’s time onboard and how it abruptly came to an end. What we do know is that some bakers had to prepare bread for providing the lifeboats. Perhaps he took a part in this too, but it’s impossible to tell.
His sister Emily would have two men to moarn about. Apart from her brother, her husband would be lost too.
Legacy[]
A baker's hat belonged to William Hine was found near the wreck of Titanic, many decades later. It was pulled from the wreckage and seemed to have stayed somewhat in tact. His name is embroidered on the brim of the hat.