The ashes of a South African man considered to be the ”last hero of the Titanic” will be scattered off the country’s east coast after his death last month at age 104, a relative said on Thursday.
Herbert ”Pops” Johnston, who was a 15-year-old apprentice on the Carpathia, the first ship to reach the Titanic after it struck an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912, died of pneumonia at a Port Shepstone hospital on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast.
His daughter Ruth Price (81) said his ashes would be scattered at sea on Saturday.
”They will be taken out by air and then scattered in his honour, because even as a young boy he loved the sea,” she said.
The Carpathia responded to a distress call by the giant liner after it hit an iceberg before plunging to the bottom of the North Atlantic on the fateful night.
”He used to tell a lot of stories about how he helped rescue people on that night,” Price said, including a vivid description of the hundreds of bodies of those who had drowned.
Interviewed in 2000 by the SABC, Johnston recalled plucking screaming passengers from lifeboats on the icy waters and settling them in the Carpathia’s three lounges, which became makeshift hospitals.
The London-born Johnston later jumped the Carpathia when it berthed in South Africa, making the country his home and serving in World War I as a dispatch rider and World War II as a navy diver repairing damaged ships.
He retired as dockmaster of Durban harbour on the east coast in 1957.
Price said her father asked in his will that his ashes be scattered over the annual ”sardine run”, when thousands of the small fish migrate in a giant school up the KwaZulu-Natal coast, a sight clearly visible from the air.
More than 1 500 people were drowned when the Titanic, hailed as unsinkable, went down. Only 705 survived. – Sapa-AFP