with tears, men’s as well as women’s. All around us we heard shouts and cheers.”
—Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor
Survivors of the Titanic aboard the Carpathia, April 1912. Many were grieving widows mourning their husbands who’d gone down with the ship.
“When day broke, I saw the ice I had steamed through during the night. I shuddered, and could only think that some other hand than mine was on that helm during the night.”
—Captain Arthur H. Rostron, Commander of Carpathia
Survivors of the sinking of the Titanic,
Michel and Edmond Navratil, of Nice (France) sit on their mother’s lap in 1912.
Michel Navratil Jr.
At three-and-a-half years old, Michel Navratil Jr. (1908-2001) was on board the Titanic after he and his brother Edmond were kidnapped by their father. According to Encyclopedia Titanica, on the night of the sinking, when their father brought Michel and Edmond to the deck, Second Officer Charles Lightoller had ordered a locked-arms circle of crew members around Collapsible D (the last and ninth lifeboat lowered on the port side) so that only women and children could get through. Navratil Sr. handed the boys through the ring of men, and reportedly gave Michel Jr. a final message: “My child, when your mother comes for you, as she surely will, tell her that I loved her dearly and still do. Tell her I expected her to follow us, so that we might all live happily together in the peace and freedom of the New World.” When the boys were rescued, the international media was enraptured by the mystery surrounding them. Finally, their mother, who lived in Nice, recognized them from the papers and embarked from Cherbourg-Octeville to bring them back home. Six years after the Cherbourg tribute, the Navratil boys and Louise Laroche met again in Paris with another survivor, an English nonagenarian named Millvina Dean.
That day, Louise boarded the Nomadic once again. It was still in service, still in good shape. It was anchored at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Under the glare of the cameras and photographers invited for the event, she spent a long time on the ferry that had carried her to the Titanic with her family. All together, the attendees toured the Nomadic, traveling from one deck to another, and everyone took a souvenir shot on the very well-kept lower deck. Louise and Millvina posed together on one of the benches of the Nomadic, and the emotion was almost palpable. Olivier Mendez, who attended the memorial, was filled with emotion as the three children of the Titanic shared their experience. The reporters interviewed Louise for two hours, and Millvina granted them the same time, bringing back memories and high points in her life. Michel and Louise held hands the entire time.
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For a long time, Louise stayed away from tributes and commemorative events, to the point that others humorously nicknamed her “Mrs. Nyet,” borrowing the Russian word for “no,” because she categorically rejected any invitation to an event related to the Titanic. But, over the years, Louise had eventually come to accept her status as the ultimate survivor, and she finally took her role to heart, participating in this ceremony in Cherbourg and the unveiling of this headstone that commemorates Joseph Laroche, her father the hero, among the victims of the sinking.
“It is important for the memory of my family and all those who lost a loved one aboard the Titanic,” Louise acknowledges in a soft voice, after placing bouquets of flowers at the foot of the headstone. Her face is solemn. Her features are drawn. She reminds everyone once again that her family had simply been “at the wrong place, at the wrong time.” One can feel her emotion. She is lost, alone in the crowd, in a painful face-off with herself, with her life story, with the heavy burden no one has been able to relieve for all those years.
Louise will say no more. She takes a deep breath and stares one last time at the message written on the plaque that she just unveiled in honor of the 281 passengers who had boarded in Cherbourg, just like her family, the Laroches, eighty-four years ago. It reads: “RMS Titanic: During its maiden voyage, the liner Titanic made its only stopover in Cherbourg on April 10, 1912. It would go down in the night of April 14 to April 15 off the coast of Newfoundland. The Titanic Historical Society of Indian Orchard (Massachusetts, USA) and the city of Cherbourg commemorated this tragic event on April 19, 1996.”
Louise remembers her father. She keeps a picture of him in her purse. A purse that she is holding even closer to her body, realizing again how cruel fate was to this wonderful man who loved his wife and adored his children.
Joseph Laroche was going back to his country. He never had a chance to see his homeland again.
Joseph Laroche’s story began far away from Cherbourg, across the ocean—again—on a former French colony, a Caribbean island already much talked about at the time: Haiti.
He was born on May 26, 1886, in the city of Cap-Haïtien32, in the far north of the island.
For a long time, Cap-Haïtien was the country’s most important city. During colonial times and after Independence, it served as the capital of “Saint-Domingue,” bustling with activities. Port-au-Prince, its great rival in the west, would later prevail, relegating Cap-Haïtien to second place. In 1886, however, with its thirteen thousand inhabitants and its active commercial port, Le Cap was still playing an important role in exchanges with Europe and North America. Ships brought flour, soap, shoes, clothes, linen, hardware, and wine. They left loaded with coffee, cocoa, wood, cotton, sugar, tortoise shells, and roots of vetiver, a plant that produces an essence sought after by perfume-makers.
Trade was the specialty of Joseph Laroche’s mother, Euzélie Laroche33, who’d built a fortune. At twenty-four, the single mother had enough money to raise her son on her own. She gave Joseph her last name because the father refused to acknowledge him.
“From what we know of her, she was a dynamic and hard-working woman. She was a speculator in sugarcane, cotton, and, above all, coffee,34” jurist Christina Schutt35, a family descendant, explains with pride. “Euzélie is the sister of the great-grandfather of my ancestor,” she says.
In Haiti, a speculator is a merchant who practices general business. However, if one wants to acquire agricultural commodities, one must first buy a special government license. Euzélie Laroche had this valuable permit, the key to her success; it allowed her to purchase the planters’ harvest. From the coffee producers, for instance, she bought large bags.
Old map of the Antilles, created by Vuillemin and Erhard, published in Le Tour du Monde, Paris, 1860
When rocks, dirt, and rotten fava beans slipped through, Euzélie separated the good from the bad and then reconditioned the merchandise, which she sold at her Kay-Kafé on Rue 8. The store was patronized by a specialized client base.
“There was a huge scale inside the store to weigh the bags. She sold her coffee to big local enterprises and to exporters,” historian Georges Michel
