Youngest Survivor's Nurse Tells Story

Alice Catherine Cleaver

First-class passenger

View Bio

The youngest survivor of the Titanic, Travers Allison, eleven months old, was taken to the Hotel Manhattan last night by his nurse and the two maid, who were saved with him in a party of six. The baby was the youngest of two children of H. J. Allison, of the banking firm of Johnson, McConnell & Allison, of Montreal, Canada, and Mrs. Bessie Allison, both of whom were drowned with their older child, Loraine, a girl of three and one-half years.

Mr. Allison was connected with several corporations in Montreal, including the Montreal Street Railway Company and the Canada Light and Power Company. The baby, cooing and laughing, apparently none the worse physically for the terrible experience he had been through, was met with the nurse and maids by J. Wesley Allison, a cousin of the dead banker, who is a director of the New York Central Railroad.

George B. Allison and Percy W. Allison, brothers of the Montreal banker who lost his life, were also at the Hotel Manhattan, but they were in no condition to go to the pier to meet their nephew, the only survivor of the family.

The nurse to the child said that it was the hurried launching of the lifeboat in which they were cast adrift that was responsible for the death of Mrs. Allison and the child Loraine.

Mrs. Allison stood at the rail waiting to be taken on the lifeboat, when, without notice, it was lowered and she was left standing with her elder child and husband. It was the last lifeboat on which she had a possible chance to leave the sinking ship.

"We were all in bed when the Titanic struck," said the nurse, "but we did not get up, for we never for a moment thought there was any danger. Then a little later we were told we had better get up, and I hurriedly dressed the baby. We went up on deck, and there were not one-quarter enough lifeboats. We got into the lifeboat just like the others, and we thought it was just a precaution, not because there was any danger. In about an hour there was a tremendous explosion, and the steamship seemed just to fall apart. We were in the lifeboat five and a half hours before we were picked up."