Titanic look-out takes his own life

At 10pm on Sunday 14 April 1912, 24 year old Frederick Fleet and his companion Reginald Lee climbed the fifty feet to the crow’s nest half way up RMS Titanic’s foremast. It was, in his own words, ‘the beautifullest night I had ever seen. The stars were like lamps’. Four hundred miles off the Newfoundland coastline though, it was especially cold and he had been instructed by the officer of the watch to keep a careful lookout for ice.

At some point in the next 2 hours – witnesses would later give different testimonies as to the exact time – Fleet saw ‘a black object, high above the water, right ahead’ and fearing it was an iceberg he rang the crow’s nest bell and telephoned the bridge but to his amazement, he claimed no-one answered. The iceberg was about 10 miles away with Titanic steaming directly towards it at a speed of 22 knots – less than 25 minutes away.

Fleet repeatedly telephoned the bridge before his calls were answered and when he finally managed to pass his message, it was too late. It is estimated that within a minute of Fleet’s message, Titanic struck the iceberg and within 3 hours it had sunk. Almost one thousand five hundred people perished but over seven hundred survived.

One of those was Frederick Fleet, the man who first saw the fatal obstacle. As he rowed one of the lifeboats away from the sinking vessel he earnestly related his experience and expressed a fear that he would be blamed for the disaster. A later inquiry would cast doubt on the timing of events he provided.

Fleet later served on the Cunard and Union Castle lines until he finally retired when he took up selling the Daily Echo newspapers on the streets of Southampton.

Fred married Eva, would later have a daughter, and became a devoted family man. Fifty three years after that fateful night in the Atlantic, Fred started to appear depressed as his wife’s health deteriorated and said to his daughter, ‘When your mother goes, I will not be far behind’. Eva eventually died on 28 December 1964 and in January 1965 the local police found Fred in a very distressed condition. He told his daughter, ‘Don’t be surprised if I get run down because I don’t know what I’m doing.’

On 10 January 1965, Fred was found hanging by a piece of string from a clothes’ post in a back garden in Norman Road, Southampton. He died as a result of asphyxiation and had left a suicide note. Police Constable Peter Beasley attended the scene and dealt with the incident but afterwards retained the piece of string which Fleet used as a noose to take his own life. For 55 years, the piece of string lay untouched in his personal possessions at home and only came to light upon Peter’s own death in December 2019. It is now in the possession of the Hampshire Constabulary History Society.

Fleet was buried in an unmarked grave in Hollybrook Cemetery, Southampton but in 1993 the Titanic Historical Society (USA) and British Titanic Society held a ceremony to dedicate a headstone to identify his final resting place.

A very sad tale and one in which perhaps we will never fully appreciate the emotions to which Fred Fleet was subjected since that famous night in 1912.