The Case of the Drunk Baker, or, the Man Who Lived When 1,500 Others Died, Part Two ©

 

 

For more on Charles John Joughin, the Chief Baker of the Titanic, who survived floating in his lifebelt for more than three hours, while 1,500 people around him died of the cold, go HERE.

 

 

But first, we need and understanding how your body will reacts to cold water exposure and what you should do to help your body delay the damaging effects of cold,  This will help keep you alive, and it will also help us solve the mystery of how Charles Joughin survived, when some many others died. 

 

Experts say, if you need to abandon ship you  should:

 Put on as many layers of warm clothing as possible.  Make sure to cover your head, neck, hands and feet.  Your outer layer should be as waterproof as possible.  Zip, button or tie clothing shut to improve the insulation and to reduce cold water from flushing in and out through your clothing.

 Put on a properly sized life jacket and fasten it securely, before entering the water, because once you are in the water you will quickly lose full use of your fingers.  A good life jacket will help to keep your head and airway above the water, even when your strength and mental capacity begins to wane.  It also reduces the need to move your arms and legs to keep your head and airway clear.

 If there is time, drink a lot of water or warm sweet drinks.  Take anti-seasickness medicine before leaving the sinking ship.

 Stay on the sinking ship as long as safely possible, “the ship is the best survival craft”.

 Avoid going into cold water at all, if possible.  If you can, enter survival or rescue craft directly, without first entering the water.  If you must go into the water, don’t jump in, lower yourself or climb down slowly into water.

 Don’t PANIC, stay CALM and maintain a positive mental attitude.  “Stay warm, stay alive” should be your motto.  Your will to live makes all the difference as to whether you live or die!

 Keep still, don’t thrash or move around unless you must.

 Don’t attempt to swim, unless it is to reach another nearby survivor, a nearby shore, or a nearby floating object that you can climb into or onto. 

 If you decide to swim, swim on your back, using only your legs, if possible.  Keep your arms folded over your torso to help with insulation.

 Remember, because you lose body heat 20 to 30 times faster in water than in air, you are ALWAYS better off out of the water than in it, and if you cannot get all the way out of it, you are better off partially out of the water.

 

So how did Charles Joughin survive?

Charles Joughin did almost everything right on the night of April 15th, 1912, and is a textbook example of how to survive a shipwreck, and that is why he survived when so many others died.  But, what did he do right?

 He put on a properly sized life belt and fastened it securely, before entering the water.  Charles Joughin recalled “I had tightened my belt...I was just wondering what next to do when she went”¹.

 He stayed on the Titanic as long as possible, in fact he was literally the last person off the Titanic, standing on the outside of the ship, as it sank out from under him².

 Once he found himself in the water, he stayed calm, saying “It is only a matter of keeping your head with one of those lifebelts”.  Because the lifebelt required only a little “...paddling and you keep afloat...”³ and because he didn’t panic and thrash about, he was able to minimize heat loss.  Also, he didn’t attempt to swim until “Just as it was breaking daylight I saw what I thought was some wreckage and started to swim towards it slowly”⁴, the wreckage turned out to be the overturned Collapsible B Lifeboat.

 Once he reached Collapsible B, and realized there was no room on top to climb all the way out of the water, he “held on the side of the boat”, so that just his legs and feet were in the water for the next 30 minutes⁵.

But, did he do anything wrong?

 Charles Joughin never said that he put on extra layers, so it will have to be assumed that he didn’t.  Gordon Giesbrecht, a Canadian hypothermia expert, said that the only important step that Joughin missed was to put on extra clothes, this is an important step because extra layers, even when wet, slow down the loss of body heat⁶.

 While he admitted going to the “A” deck pantry for a drink of water right before the Titanic broke into two, which is something that is approved of by the hypothermia experts, he also admitted that he had more than a “drop of liqueur” that night, before ending up in the cold North Atlantic.  Did his drinking liqueur help or hurt his chances of survival during those three long, cold hours in the freezing North Atlantic?

 

“...a tumbler half full”

 

It cannot be argued that at three hours and twenty minutes, Charles John Joughin, survived far longer than anyone else who was floating in the North Atlantic that night, since all other survivors, bobbing in the ocean, died within just forty-five to sixty minutes, which hypothermia experts consider to be the average survival time.  So, what allowed him to survive more than three times longer than anyone else that night, was it the “drop of liqueur” that he had enjoyed as the Titanic was sinking?

 

Between 12:15 and 12:30 am, Mr. Joughin reported that he had returned to his cabin for a drink.  And later between 1:20 and 1:45am, he again returned to his room and had “a tumbler half full” of a distilled spirit⁷, likely either gin, rum, or whiskey.  Common tumblers of the time held half a pint, or 8 ounces (237 ml).  It is likely that between the two trips to his cabin, if he drank half a tumbler on each visit, that he probably drank a full pint of spirits in just over an hour.  This is more than five shots, and likely he would have had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of between .08 and .10 when the Titanic went down, which would have been considered legally intoxicated in most of the United States.  Interestingly, it would have taken four to five hours for his BAC to reach zero, so he would likely still been slightly intoxicated at first daylight⁸.

 

Most experts will tell you, and to be sure it is a good rule of thumb, that a drunk man will freeze to death faster than a sober man, since vasodilation will move all the warm blood to the skin’s surface, and away from the body’s core.  However, Giesbrecht, the Canadian hypothermia expert thinks that the 28° F (-2° C) waters of the North Atlantic was cold enough to counteract the effects of the alcohol, and quickly tighten Joughin’s blood vessels.  In fact, Giesbrecht continued saying “The average adult is a big chunk of meat and it takes a lot of energy to cool it off”, and that cold shock usually ends after about 90 seconds, and the average sized adult has about ten minutes before going numb, and can survive at least an hour before their heart stops⁹.  Another Canadian hypothermia expert, Stephen Cheung, who is not an advocate of drinking your way out of a shipwreck, said however that the effect of alcohol on Joughin would have been to “increase or bolster his courage”.  He continued by saying that “It would also decrease his feeling of cold, so that he may have indeed been more fearless and not feeling as cold and therefore as panicked”¹⁰.  This is echoed by the research of C. M. Franks, et. al., which suggests that moderate amounts of alcohol will make those immersed in cold water feel more comfortable and will lessen the effect of “cold shock”¹¹.

 

So, Charles Joughin’s “drop of liqueur”, probably helped him to survive the initial “cold shock” and helped to keep him calm.  However, as Stephen Cheung pointed out “It’s impossible for scientists to predict who will perform and respond well to extreme situations...Some people give up very quickly, others you just cannot kill”¹².  And in the end, even though scholars and experts have obsessed for the last 112 years over whether the Titanic’s Chief Baker, Charles Joughin’s, drinking as the ship went down helped or hindered his chances of survival, perhaps Charles John Joughin was simply a man unwilling to die. 

 

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

 

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

 

 

Notes

 

¹ “From the British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry, Day 6: Testimony of Charles Joughin”, questions asked by The Commissioner and The Solicitor-General, items 6074

 

² Ibid., items 6072 to 6076

 

³ Ibid., items 6149-6150 and 6081

 

⁴ Ibid., items 6085

 

⁵ Ibid., item 6085 to 6106

 

⁶ “ ‘There was no great shock or anything’: How a baker survived the Titanic disaster by getting really drunk”, by Tristin Hopper

 

⁷ “From the British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry, Day 6: Testimony of Charles Joughin”, questions asked by Mr. Cotter, items 5978, 6020,6247 to 6250

 

⁸ “How long does it take for alcohol to leave your system”, University of Arizona

 

⁹ “ ‘There was no great shock or anything’: How a baker survived the Titanic disaster by getting really drunk”, by Tristin Hopper

 

¹⁰ “ ‘There was no great shock or anything’: How a baker survived the Titanic disaster by getting really drunk”, by Tristin Hopper

 

¹¹ “The Effect Of Alcohol On The Initial Responses to Cold Water Immersion”, by C. M. Franks, et. al.

 

¹² “ ‘There was no great shock or anything’: How a baker survived the Titanic disaster by getting really drunk”, by Tristin Hopper

 

 

Sources

 

Encyclopedia Titanica; “ Lifeboats, Launch Times, List and Trim: Part 1” ( #716), published March 19, 2023, [© 1996-2024 Encyclopedia Titanica], https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/lifeboats-launch-times-list-and-trim-1.html, accessed May 24, 2024

 

Franks, C. M., et. al.; “The Effect Of Alcohol On The Initial Responses to Cold Water Immersion”, [European Journal of Applied Occupational Physiology, 1997, 75, 3, pages 279-281] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mike-Tipton/publication/14127064_The_effect_of_blood_alcohol_on_the_initial_responses_to_cold_water_immersion_in_humans/links/54780e770cf2a961e4848ebf/The-effect-of-blood-alcohol-on-the-initial-responses-to-cold-water-immersion-in-humans.pdf, accessed May 25, 2023

 

Hopper, Tristin; “ ‘There was no great shock or anything’: How a baker survived the Titanic disaster by getting really drunk”, February 22, 2017, [© 2024 National Post], https://nationalpost.com/news/there-was-no-great-shock-or-anything-how-a-baker-survived-the-titanic-disaster-by-getting-really-drunk, accessed April 26, 2024

 

International Maritime Organization; “Guide For Water Survival”, [London, 2012], https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223852765_Alcohol_ingestion_and_temperature_regulation_during_cold_exposure, accessed May 25, 2024

 

The Maritime Executive, LLC; “Carpathia's Role in Titanic's Rescue”, [© 2024 The Maritime Executive, LLC], https://maritime-executive.com/article/carpathias-role-in-titanic-rescue#:~:text=Carpathia%20was%2058%20miles%20from,used%20to%20drive%20the%20engines, accessed May 24, 2024

 

Titanic Inquiry Project; “British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry

Day 6: Testimony of Charles Joughin”, [© 1998-2017: Titanic Inquiry Project], https://www.titanicinquiry.org/BOTInq/BOTInq06Joughin01.php, accessed April 25, 2024

 

University of Arizona; “How long does it take for alcohol to leave your system”, https://health.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/How%20long%20does%20it%20take%20for%20alcohol%20to%20leave%20your%20system.pdf, accessed May 25 2024

 

U.S. Navy, Astronomical Applications Department; “Table of Sunrise/Sunset, Moonrise/Moonset, or Twilight Times for an Entire Year”, https://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/RS_OneYear, accessed May 23, 2024

 

Wikimedia; “Plan of the Boat Deck of the RMS Titanic showing location of lifeboats”, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Titanic_Boat_Deck_plan_with_lifeboats.png, accessed May 25, 2024

 

Wikimedia; “RMS Titanic”, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Titanic_plans.jpg, accessed May 25, 2024