Date of birth: 11th September 1876 Place of birth: Gosport, Hampshire Marital status: Married Age: 35 (in 1912) Spouse: Eliza Jean Glendenning Steele Children: Herbert John Dean(1908–1973), Elizabeth P Dean (1921–1983) Date of death: 6th February 1943 (age 66)
In 1839, Samuel Cunard was awarded the first British transatlantic steamship mail contract, and the next year formed the British and North American Royal Mail Steam-Packet Company in Glasgow with shipowner Sir George Burns together with Robert Napier, the famous Scottish steamship engine designer and builder, to operate the line's four pioneer paddle steamers on the Liverpool–Halifax–Boston route. For most of the next 30 years, Cunard held the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic voyage. However, in the 1870s Cunard fell behind its rivals, the White Star Line and the Inman Line. To meet this competition, in 1879 the firm was reorganised as the Cunard Steamship Company Ltd, to raise capital. In 1919, Cunard relocated its British homeport from Liverpool to Southampton, to better cater for travellers from London.
Notes: Dean's description does not change - they are exactly the same for the years 1900, and three Board of Trade documents of 1902.
Summary
His grave remained for decades as an unmarked plot of land, and his photograph misidentified for decades more. And yet Horace John Dean was no ordinary man. In the early hours of the 15th of April 1912 he was Officer of the Watch aboard the Carpathia when the wireless operator received the news the Titanic was sinking, reporting directly to him. On Captain Rostron's orders he turned the ship around, and later that morning welcomed aboard the senior surviving officer of the Titanic and an old shipmate, Lightoller.
He was aboard the Franconia as First Officer a year later when it stopped on the site where the Titanic sank and wreath was layed in memory of W.T.Stead. But his image was lost in time - he was for some reason absent from what became the most famous of images of the Carpathia crew.
Cinematic portrayals initially showed him as thinking that the news the Titanic was sinking as an April Fool's joke. But did he really not take the news seriously, and even laugh? And who was he and what happened to him in the wake of the disaster? Discover how he first worked with the White Star Line but after switching to Cunard climbed the ranks to become an officer aboard the iconic Mauretania and Lusitania - before he was placed on the just as legendary Carpathia.
