Father Thomas Byles, the Titanic’s Hero Priest

April 15th, 2022 marks the 110th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. More than a century later, this story still captivates imaginations around the world, inspiring prolific fiction and nonfiction, movies and musicals. Maybe it’s because, in the words of James Cameron, director of the 1997 Titanic film, “It was like a great novel that really happened.” The sinking of the Titanic was a “lifeboat ethics” scenario involving actual lifeboats. Looking back on the disaster allows people to ask themselves, “Why did this passenger or crew member do what they did? What would I have done?”

Many of us have a passing familiarity with the list of famous passengers aboard the ship: John Jacob Astor, one of the richest men in the world; Isador and Ida Strauss, the owners of Macy’s department store; Benjamin Guggenheim, the namesake of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. But few have heard the story of Father Thomas Byles, the 42-year-old Catholic priest whose heroic actions during the sinking put him on the path to sainthood.

Father Byles was born Roussel Byles in Yorkshire, the oldest son of a Protestant minister. While studying theology at Oxford, Byles decided to convert to Catholicism. He was ordained in Rome in 1902, took the first name Thomas, and devoted his life to the priesthood.

Ten years later, Byles’ brother William, who had also converted to Catholicism, asked him to officiate at his wedding in New York. Byles boarded the Titanic in Southampton on April 10th, 1912.

In letters to his mother, Byles described a quiet and uneventful voyage aboard the Titanic. On the morning of April 14th, Byles said mass for the Catholic immigrants in third class, many of whom were leaving Ireland, Continental Europe, and even the Middle East for a new life in America. Byles’ homily that morning was about the need for a “spiritual lifeboat” in times of danger. No one knew that the danger would arrive in the form of an iceberg later that night.

According to witnesses, Father Byles was out on deck praying his breviary shortly before midnight, when the ship struck an iceberg. When the captain ordered the launching of the lifeboats, Byles — a second class passenger — made his way to steerage, where members of his flock were either lost trying to navigate the stairwells to the upper deck, or found themselves trapped behind locked iron gates. Many did not speak English and couldn’t understand the crew’s orders. Byles calmly led the third-class passengers to the Boat Deck.

“When the crash came, we were thrown from our berths,” Helen Mocklare, an Irish immigrant in third class, said after the sinking. “We saw before us, coming down the passageway, with his hand uplifted, Father Byles… ‘Be calm, my good people,’ he said, and then he went about the steerage giving absolution and blessings.”

Mocklare said she overheard a crewman trying to convince Byles to get into a boat, but Byles refused.

“Father Byles could have been saved, but he would not leave,” Mocklare said. “After I got in the boat, which was the last one to leave, and we were slowly going further away from the ship, I could hear distinctly the voice of the priest and the responses to his prayers.”

Byles’ actions set him apart from other prominent men aboard the ship, some of whom attempted to bribe their way into lifeboats. A British couple with the title of “Lord” hogged Lifeboat №1 for themselves, their servants, and their dogs. Meanwhile, entire families of British people in third class died. The owner of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, made the notorious decision to step aboard one of the last lifeboats, which was otherwise packed with third class women and children who had escaped from steerage at the last minute. Byles, on the other hand, prayed the rosary with his flock and granted absolution until the very end.

“When the Titanic went to the bottom Father Thomas B. Byles stood on the deck with Catholics, Protestants and Jews kneeling around him,” Agnes McCoy, another Irish immigrant, told the New York Telegram after the sinking. “Father Byles was saying the rosary and praying for the repose of the souls of those about to perish. To many he administered the last rites of the Church.”

Byles may have perished in the sinking, but like the theme song to the Titanic movie says, his heart goes on. In 2015, Father Graham Smith, a British priest who now heads Byles’ former parish, said he was sponsoring Byles for beatification. Smith described Byles to the BBC as “an extraordinary man who gave his life for others.”

Father Thomas Byles lived his message that some things are more important than mere self-preservation, and sometimes spiritual lifeboats offer more lasting salvation than physical ones.