George Terrill Thresher

http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-survivor/george-terril...

Mr George Terrill Thresher

• Titanic Survivor
• Born: Tuesday 1st June 1886 in Hampshire England
• Age: 25 years 10 months and 14 days. (Male)
• Nationality: English
• Last Residence: at 28 Mount Pleasant Road, Northam Southampton Hampshire England
• Occupation: Fireman / Stoker
• Last Ship: "Oceanic"
• Engineering crew
• First Embarked: Southampton on Saturday 6th April 1912
• Rescued (boat 9)
• Disembarked Carpathia: New York City on Thursday 18th April 1912
• Died: Friday 17th November 1939 in the North Sea
• Cause of Death: Killed in action as a merchant seaman
• Reference: https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-deckplans/ deck plans of R.M.S. Titanic
• Reference: https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-lifeboat-9/ Life Boat No. 9

Mr George Thresher, 25, was born in Southampton, Hampshire on 1 June 1886. Son of George Samuel and Catherine Thresher; husband of Jane Thresher of Felling, Co. Durham.

A Southampton native born in 1886, George was one of at least ten children born to George and Catherine Thresher. His father was an engine fitter and the large family lived in Mount Pleasant Road. In the final decade of the nineteenth century the family moved from number 50 Mount Pleasant Road to number 36 and, by 1901, young George was working as an errand boy. A decade later George was working at sea for White Star. He was unmarried and still living with his, now widowed, mother at 36 Mount Pleasant Road.

CJ and I left the cutway with high hopes of finding at least one of the houses George had called home. Unfortunately, although we walked all the way to the railway crossing, we had no luck. The house numbers were more than a little erratic, mainly because many of the houses seem to have disappeared and been replaced by a row of ramshackle garages. Whether this is the result of war time bombing or something else we couldn’t tell. In the end, all we could do was take photographs of the houses that were still standing and try to imagine them as they had been back in 1912.

When Titanic hit the iceberg luck was on George’s side. Due to the terrific heat in the boiler rooms and the physically exhausting job of shovelling tons of coal, the firemen worked four hour shifts with eight hours off duty to recover. George must have been off duty when the collision happened. Exactly how he managed to get on a lifeboat and which one isn’t clear but the chances are his muscles were what got him a place. Each boat needed strong men to row and an officer or able seaman to take command and navigate. In all probability, George was just in the right place at the right time and he survived.

Despite his narrow escape, George continued to work at sea. At some time in the 1930’s he relocated to Gateshead and it was there, in 1937, that he finally married. He was 51 and had his wife, Jane Fawcett, was just two years his junior. Marriage didn’t change him. He carried on working at sea in the Merchant Navy. On 18 November 1939 his luck finally ran out. He was working as a fireman aboard the cargo ship SS Parkhill when she was torpedoed off the coast of Aberdeen. The U-boat, U-18, had already fired one torpedo but the Parkhill had managed to avoid it and steamed on. Less than an hour later they were hit by the second attack and George was one of nine seamen killed. Poor Jane, who had waited so long to become a wife, was widowed within two years. She never remarried and remained in Gateshead until her death in 1964.

When he signed-on to the Titanic, on 6 April 1912, he gave his address as 36 Mount Pleasant Road, (Southampton). He had transferred from the Oceanic. As a fireman he received monthly wages of £6.

Thresher survived the sinking. It is not known which lifeboat he was rescued in.

• Reference: Story of the S.S. Parkhill George Terrill Thresher, Fireman

Information about George Terrill Thresher, Fireman on Titanic, who died November 18, 1939 when his ship, the 500-ton Parkhill, was torpedoed by the German U-18. All hands, nine in total, were lost.

Data about the Parkhill and its sinking Crew List for the Parkhill Crew page for George Thresher

The Parkhill left Blyth, England (near Sunderland) on November 17 with a cargo of 449 tons of coal, headed to Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands. At 8:45 PM on November 18th, the U-18 fired a first torpedo which missed the ship. At 9:16 PM, he fired a second torpedo which impacted the Parkhill. The British steamer sank immediately after a large explosion.

Thresher, age 52, was serving as trimmer and fireman aboard the Parkhill, the same job he performed aboard Titanic. He was the oldest of the 9 men aboard the Parkhill; the chief engineer, James Leworthy, was 50 and the master, Eric Charles Middleton, was 31.

The U-18 was a Type IIB boat under the command of Kapitanleutnant Max-Hermann Bauer, born 1912, who had held command of U-18 since November 1937. (The Type IIB was a small 'coastal' boat with 5 torpedoes and 24 men aboard.) It had left Kiel, Germany, on November 15, 1939, on its fourth war patrol. The Parkhill was the first ship it sank. The G7e (also known as T2) torpedoes used were electrically powered and left no wake.

On his return to Kiel, Nov. 23, Bauer was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class and the 1939 U-Boat War Medal. He was put in command of U-50, a larger Type VIIB boat. He died, along with all 44 of the U-50's crew, on April 6, 1940 when the U-50 struck a British mine in the North Sea. The U-50 sank four ships, claiming 53 lives and 16,000 GRT of shipping. The U-18 continued in service and was eventually scuttled at the port of Constanza on the Black Sea in 1944.

During WW2, the Orkneys were strategically important because of the naval base at Scapa Flow. The town of Kirkwall, the largest town, was Parkhill's destination. Because of the small amount of coal it had on board (500 tons) and because naval vessels were mostly oil-powered, it seems most likely (but this is just speculation) that Parkhill's cargo was meant to be domestic coal for heating and cooking in the first winter of the war.

All this information is from U-Boat.Net.

- J

Parkhill

British steam merchant

This is a listing of people associated with this ship. We also have a detailed page on the British steam merchant Parkhill.

Aboard Parkhill when hit on 18 Nov 1939

• Gall, Ian James Ogg, Merchant Navy 34 Cook Parkhill +
• Gardner, Thomas, Merchant Navy 26 Second Engineer Officer Parkhill +
• Johnson, James Robert, Merchant Navy 30 Boatswain (Bosun) Parkhill +
• Leworthy, James, Merchant Navy 50 Chief Engineer Officer Parkhill +
• Marshall, Norman, Merchant Navy 19 Fireman and Trimmer Parkhill +
• McLean, Thomas, Merchant Navy 27 Able Seaman Parkhill +
• Middleton, Eric Charles, Merchant Navy 31 Master Parkhill +
• Thresher, George Terrill, Merchant Navy 53 Fireman and Trimmer Parkhill +
• Watson, Michael Hooks, Merchant Navy 39 Chief Officer Parkhill +

9 persons found.

Documents Crew Particulars of Engagement

Contributors Brian Ticehurst, UK Bill Wormstedt, USA

• Reference: Full text- https://archive.org/details/truthabouttitani00grac/page/n6 "The Truth About the Titanic" by Colonel Archibald Gracie, IV 1913 pp. 279-284

BOAT NO. 9*

fifth boat lowered on starboard side, 1.20 (Br. Rpt., p. 38),

Brice, A. B. (Am. Inq., p. 648) and Wheate, Ass't. 2nd Steward (Br. Inq.), say No. 9 was filled from A Deck with women and children only.

No disorder when this boat was loaded and lowered.

Passengers: Mesdames Aubert and maid (Mile Segesser), Futrelle (Mrs. Lily May Futrelle is listed in Englehardt Boat D. Col. Gracie may have been in error.), Lines; Miss Lines, and second and third-class.

Men: Two or three.

Said good-bye to wife and sank with ship: Mr. Futrelle.

Crew: Seamen: Haines (in charge), Wynne, Q. M., McGough, Peters; Stewards Ward, Widgery and others.

Total: 56.

INCIDENTS

A. Haines, boatswain's mate (Am. Inq., 755) :

Officer Murdoch and witness filled boat 9 with ladies. None of the men passengers tried to get into the boats. Officer Murdoch told them to Stand back. There was one woman who refused to get in because she was afraid. When there were no more women forthcoming the boat was full, when two or three men jumped into the bow. There were two sailors, three or four stewards, three or four firemen and two or three men passengers. No. 9 was lowered from the Boat Deck with sixty-three people in the boat and lowered all right. Officer Murdoch put the witness In charge and ordered him to row off and keep clear of the ship. When we saw it going down by the head he pulled further away for the safety of the people In the boat: about lOO yards away at first. Cries were heard after the ship went down. He consulted with the sailors about going back and concluded with so many in the boat it was unsafe to do so. There was no compass in the boat, but he had a little pocket lamp. On Monday morning he saw from thirty to fifty icebergs and a big field of ice miles long and large bergs and "growlers, the largest from eighty to one hundred feet high.

W. Wynne, Q. M. (Br. Inq.) :

Officer Murdoch ordered witness Into boat No. 9. He assisted the ladles and took an oar. He says there were fifty-six all told in the boat, forty- two of whom were women. He saw the light of a steamer — a red light first, and then a white one — about seven or eight miles away. After an interval both lights disappeared. Ten or fifteen minutes afterwards he saw a white light again in the same direction. There was no lamp or compass in the boat.

W. Ward, steward (Am. Inq., 595) :

Witness assisted in taking the canvas cover off of boat No. 9 and lowered it to the level of the Boat Deck.*

Officer Murdoch, Purser McElroy and Mr. Ismay were near this boat when being loaded. A sailor came along with a bag and threw it into the boat. He said he had been sent to take charge of it by the captain. The boatswain's mate, Haines, was there and ordered him out. He got out. Either Purser McElroy or Officer Murdoch said: "Pass the women and children that are here into that boat." There were several men standing around and they fell back. There were quite a quantity of women but he could not say how many were helped into the boat. There were no children. One old lady made a great fuss and absolutely refused to enter the boat. She went back to the companionway and forced her way in and would not get into the boat. One woman, a French lady, fell and hurt herself a little. Purser McElroy ordered two more men into the boat to assist the women. When No. 9 was being lowered the first listing of the ship was noticeable.

From the rail to the boat was quite a distance to step down to the bottom of it, and in the dark the women could not see where they were stepping. Purser McElroy told witness to get into the boat to assist the women. Women were called for, but none came along and none were seen on deck at the time. Three or four men were then taken into the boat until the officers thought there were sufficient to lower away with safety.

No. 9 was lowered into the water before No. II. There was some difficulty in unlashing the oars because for some time no one had a knife. There were four men who rowed all night, but there were some of them in the boat who had never been to sea before and did not know the first thing about an oar, or the bow from the stern. Haines gave orders to pull away. When 200 yards off, rowing was stopped for about an hour. Haines was afraid of suction and we pulled away to about a quarter of a mile from the ship. The ship went down very gradually for a while by the head. We could just see the ports as she dipped. She gave a kind of a sudden lurch forward. He heard a couple of reports like a volley of musketry; not like an explosion at all. His boat was too full and it would have been madness to have gone back. He thinks No. 9 was the fourth or fifth boat picked up by the Carpathia. There was quite a big lot of field ice and several large icebergs in amongst the field; also two or three separated from the main body of the field.

J. Widgery, bath steward (Am. Inq., 602) : Witness says that all passengers were out of their cabins on deck before he went up.

When he got to the Boat Deck No. 7 was about to be lowered, but the purser sent him to No. 9. The canvas had been taken off and he helped lower the boat. Purser McElroy ordered him into the boat to help the boatswain's mate pass in women. Women were called for. An elderly lady came along. She was frightened. The boatswain's mate and himself assisted her, but she pulled away and went back to the door (of the companionway) and downstairs. Just before they left the ship the officer gave the order to Haines to keep about 100 yards off. The boat was full as it started to lower away. When they got to the water he was the only one that had a knife to cut loose the oars. He says that the balance of his testimony would be the same as that of Mr. Ward, the previous witness.

• Residence: St Mary, Hampshire, England - 1891
• Residence: Southampton, Hampshire, England - 1901
• Residence: Southampton Portswood, Hampshire, England - Apr 2 1911
• Residence: Southampton, Hampshire - Apr 6 1912
  • Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Jun 23 2019, 19:37:48 UTC