Andrew Cunningham, colorized
Andrew Cunningham was one of the First Class Stewards on Titanic. He was responsible for a group of First Class cabins.
Andrew Orr Cunningham was of Scottish decent, born in a town called Shotts, in Lanarkshire, on 3 July 1873. The town was placed somewhere inbetween Glasgow and Edinburgh.
His parents were David Cunningham and his wife Jeanie Thomson . His father was a Glaswegian by birth and worked as a joiner. Andrew had two sisters, Elizabeth and Jessie.
While working as a steward on sea, he was married in Camden, London, at St Luke's Church on Augstu 1901. Camden, London on 21 August 1901. His wife was Emily Susan Jane Jones, a dressmaker. They stayed in St Pancras, at Emily's parents' home for a while. Two children who be born from this marriage: Sidney Andrew and Gloria. Eventually they would live in Southampton, where, in 1911 he didn't spend a lot of time, as he was working at sea as a bedroom steward on the Oceanic.
On April 4, he was enlisted on Titanic, and took care of a First Class section on the aft C-Deck, which included nine staterooms. Among the passengers that used his services were John Bradley Cummings and his wife Florence, the famous writer and philosopher William Thomas Stead, Edith and Margaret Graham, their governess Elizabeth Shutes, and lastly Walter Clark and his wife Virginia.
Sunday, April 14[]
He and his buddy Sidney Siebert made sure that their passengers had moved up to the Boat Deck first, before looking at their own situation and deciding what to do next. Andrew took care of the their stewards cabin, and then put a lifebelt on. He closed the door after putting the lights out. He went to the Boat Deck, and arrived at the davits where boat 7 was already lowered away from. Instead of saving himself, he waited untill most boats were gone.
To his own account he dived off into the water around 2:00 A.M and swam as far as he could, fearing the suction that the ship would cause as she would make her final plunge. He and Sidney saw Titanic go down before their own eyes but they were so long in the water that the severe cold really started to hurt him badly. He claimed to have been in the water for at last half and hour, and heard a boat, and called for it. It turned out to be lifeboat 4, but they didn't come. He swam towards it and he was hauled in by the occupants. Among them were two of the passengers that had been under his care during the voyage.
After that he saw 5 more people being picked from the water. Sadly, his comrade Sidney, when reaching the lifeboat, had suffered too much and he perished. He aided in the rowing after a request from Mrs. Florence Cummings who wanted him to identify the other passengers in the boat.
Later life[]
After the whole disaster affairs, he picked up on his usual job as a Bedroom Steward on other ships, and made it safely through World War I, where U-boats were lurking at every crossing. He had continued to do this at least into the 1930s, meanwhile he and his family at some point had moved to Nursling, Hampshire where he would live for the remainder of his life.
He was only 58 when he died in the Royal South Hampshire Hospital on 1 September 1932.