Arthur John Priest – The Unsinkable Stoker

Time stranded: less than 7 days over numerous incidents

Distance traveled: Unknown

Terrain types: Sea

Deaths: Approximately 2000

Situation ended: Retired

Location: Atlantic and Pacific oceans

Born in 1877 to working-class parents in one of the poorer districts in Southampton was a man called Arthur Priest. As one of twelve children their household was always crowded, and they lacked many things growing up, so as soon as he was old enough Arthur began to look for work. At the age of 25, he found a steady job working in the engine room of a steamship as one of its stokers, a member of the team responsible for shoveling tons of coal into its giant engines.

The work was backbreaking and the job paid very little, but it was a welcome break to get away from life back home and during the early 1900s anyone who had a job was considered lucky. In the year of 1911, Arthur was busy shoveling coal into the engine of the RMS Olympic, an ocean liner that was built similarly to the Titanic when a loud crumpling metal sound echoed throughout the entire ship. The ship he was on had collided with the side of the HMS Hawk and ripped a huge hole in its hull, killing numerous people on impact. The crash with the HMS Hawk saw almost 600 people die that day, mostly from drowning as the Hawk went down so fast and trapped many inside, with a few people on the Olympic dying in the collision but fortunately for Arthur, he wasn’t one of them.

Before this incident, Arthur had been in a ship collision before when working as a stoker on the Asturias. It collided with another ship on its very first voyage and even though no one died, Arthur’s ship only just made it back to port and came close to sinking in the middle of the Atlantic. Neither of these incidents put him off working on ships, or maybe there wasn’t any other work and he didn’t have a choice, but whatever the reason his experience as a stoker got him a job working in the engine room of a very special ship on its maiden voyage, the RMS Titanic.

The story of it being unsinkable along with the bonus of a little extra pay made it an attractive opportunity for Arthur, even though it meant 600 tons of coal would have to be shoveled every single day to keep the engines running. On April 14, 1912, in the early hours of the morning, the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg floating in the ocean south of Newfoundland and freezing water began to rush into the hull. The engine room was probably the worst place on the ship you could possibly be because not only did the water fill this area first, but it was also the furthest away from the lifeboats on the top deck.

Working just a few feet from a furnace that eats 600 tons of coal a day is very very hot work, which is why Arthur was wearing nothing more than shorts and a thin cotton shirt. The water rushed into the engine room too quickly for Arthur to get out in time, and he was forced to swim through freezing water in little more than his underwear to get higher up the ship. He managed to climb through every level and get to the surface to find all the lifeboats had already gone, and by now the ship was close to going under. Not having any other choice, Arthur jumped into the sea and began splashing around and shouting for help, even though he was one of hundreds of people panicking in the sea and waiting for rescue that was nowhere to be seen. Luckily for Arthur, he was in the right place at the right time and managed to get picked up by one of the lifeboats sent to find survivors, of which he was one of a handful of engine room workers who got out alive.

The next time Arthur found himself in trouble on a ship was during the First World War in 1916 when he worked onboard the Battleship Alcantara. He was busy shoveling coal into the furnace when load bangs started to echo from outside and the whole ship began to shake. It turns out his ship had run into a German battleship called Grief that had disguised itself as a friendly vessel and opened fire at close range. The Alcantara fired back but both ships were destroyed and had to be abandoned, leaving Arthur to once again float around in cold water before rescue came.

Later on that same year, Arthur found more work on another ship called the Britannic which was a bigger version of the Titanic. It had been repurposed as a hospital ship for the war and was carrying wounded soldiers through the Mediterranean when on the 21st of November, 1916 the ship hit a sea mine. There were hundreds of people on board but no more than 30 died, probably due to the much warmer waters and lack of being attacked during the sinking.

Early the next year in April 1917, Arthur started his new job on another hospital ship called the Donegal that was used to move wounded troops back from France. When crossing the English Channel the Donegal was torpedoed by a German U-boat and quickly sank, killing around 40 people but yet again, Arthur wasn’t amongst them.

During the sinking of the Donegal, Arthur received a head wound and had to sit out the rest of the war, and fearing his luck had run out decided to stay away from ships for good. After surviving so many tragedies he finally passed away in his sleep in 1937 after spending his last years raising his three children with his wife. The most amazing thing about his story is that each time the ship he was on sank, he was always in a place first to flood and farthest from safety, yet he always survived. The media at the time loved his story, and he was given the nickname “The Unsinkable Stoker”.