The Remarkable Engagement of Helen Newsom Behr
How a Harrowing Night Aboard a Lifeboat Led to the Titanic's First Wedding Proposal and Marriage
“There is one thing that I shall not forget until I die and that is the cry of the 1,300 who went to their death,” Richard L. Beckwith told a reporter outside his limousine in front of the Waldorf.
It had only been four days since Beckwith had watched from his lifeboat as the R.M.S. Titanic slipped beneath the icy waters of the North Atlantic.
Now he stood outside the hotel relating the events of that terrible night.
Beckwith’s brother-in-law - Albert St. Clair Cook - had emerged from the hotel only a short time earlier trailing a reporter from The Hartford Courant.
In one of the hallways Cook had run smack into the reporter who was still signing a note to be sent to Cook’s room requesting an interview with Beckwith. Upon seeing him Cook forced a polite smile.
“Mr. Beckwith cannot be disturbed. This is no time to bother him. The Beckwiths have decided to give out no interviews,” Cook told the reporter.
After some gentle prodding however Cook was convinced to let Beckwith decide.
So Cook, the reporter and a bellboy from the Waldorf proceeded down the elevator to the hotel’s packed lobby. At the cashier’s desk Cook produced a wad of bank notes and paid the bill. They then made their way outside to the street.
“There standing at the door of the limousine stood Richard L. Beckwith debonair and complaisant, his almost perpetual smile carving his cheeks into such a vision of happiness that it seemed almost impossible to consider him a survivor of such a shocking disaster,” the Courant later reported.
With Beckwith were his wife and his stepdaughter Miss Helen Newsom waiting inside their limo to drive to their suite at the Wendolyn – a swanky apartment building on Riverside Drive and 100th Street.
After being reminded by his brother-in-law that the Courant was the first newspaper to break the news of his survival, Beckwith agreed to a brief interview.
Recalling those terrible moments after the ship sank, Beckwith tried to explain the “dreadful cry” – that “one continued horrible shriek” – that lasted for nearly an hour as the passengers struggled in the icy waters.
“Like a nightmare perhaps for years to come,” Beckwith told the reporter, those cries would “haunt” his dreams.
As he recounted the events of that awful night Beckwith intentionally failed to mention one important detail however.
His stepdaughter Helen – who survived the sinking alongside her stepfather and mother in one of Titanic’s lifeboats – had become engaged.
Like a scene out of a James Cameron movie – freezing and cold on their lifeboat soon after the Carpathia came into view – American tennis pro Karl Howell Behr (who had joined the Beckwiths on the trip back to America in France) had proposed to Helen.
The young American couple had met years before while Newsom was a student and friend of Behr’s sister at Briarcliff College in New York.
A graduate of Yale University himself, Behr was considered one of Yale’s best tennis players to ever compete in the sport.
The same year as his graduation in 1905, Behr ranked third in American tennis and played on the international team that competed in England.
After graduation Behr was admitted to the New York Bar. His law office was located at 40 Wall Street.
A “fair tennis player” in her own right, Newsom was tall, athletic and came from wealth. Her mother Sally was the daughter of William Moneypenny – a wealthy distiller, banker and businessman from Columbus, Ohio. Helen’s biological father Logan was a rich banker who grew his cooperage for the Ohio state penitentiary system into a public works contracting business – later expanding into banking and electricity.
Richard Beckwith (who had married her mother nine years before the sinking) was a prominent real estate agent whose father Charles had been a successful stockbroker with a summer home in Niantic, Connecticut and a thirty ton yacht The Concord.
Richard spent his summers with his family on Squam Lake and often visited with the Cooks - who had a home opposite the Hartford Golf Club.
In the winters Beckwith and his family traveled abroad.
In 1901 Beckwith had journeyed across the world on a trip that would take him to Hawaii, Japan, India and Russia.
This year however the Beckwiths decided to stay in New York – where they obtained a suite at the Wendolyn – the luxurious, 12 story apartment building at Riverside and 100th Street.
Costing between $2,800 and $3,500 each, the Wendolyn’s nine, ten and eleven room suites (with three suites on each floor) were designed like exclusive private houses – with their large closets, grand foyers, well stocked libraries, maids’ rooms and pantries.
While they initially had decided not to travel, at the last minute the Beckwiths agreed to take a short trip that March through the Canary Islands, Madeira, Gibraltar and the Italian Riviera.
Beatrice Cook – Albert’s daughter who had been a classmate of Helen’s at Briarcliff – was supposed to join them but canceled at the last minute.
At the end of their trip across southern Europe the Beckwiths arrived in Great Britain, where – at Southampton – Richard, Sally and Helen boarded the Titanic. Later at Cherbourg they were joined by Behr – who had been in Berlin on business.
“It had been a very pleasant trip and everybody was delighted with the new ship. We were making good time and Sunday was a marvelously clear day,” Beckwith later recalled.
Danger however lurked in the form of ice.
“We were in the ice fields but it seemed to strike us that the captain was trying to make a record for speed and therefore did not take the precautions that he should have,” Beckwith explained. “It was commonly thought in the smoking room that day that we were near icebergs, the weather was so cold. It was also common talk that we were going damn fast, too damn fast for that kind of sea.”
The night of the sinking Beckwith left the ship’s smoking room at 11:40 p.m. and returned to his room on D Deck.
“I was in the lavatory when I felt a scraping and a dull sullen sound that lasted about four seconds. It was no crash,” he remembered.
The grinding was so slight - almost imperceptible - that bottles on a nearby dressing table remained upright.
“I felt that we must have scraped an iceberg so I went outside to see what it actually was. There was no confusion and nothing seemed to matter so I went back,” he said.
When Beckwith returned to his room Helen and his wife wanted to know what had caused the stir.
“So I went upstairs again and began the investigation. A few people came out of their rooms but there was little curiosity and no confusion and many went back again, their fears reassured by the officers,” Beckwith later told the reporter from the Courant.
“Then the rumor spread like lightning that there was water filling the bow and that the ship was fast filling. Even at that time there was no suspicion of danger. Everybody was certain the boat was unsinkable. There are twenty-two water tight compartments one officer told me and the ship cannot sink. People met me and asked me what was the matter ‘Any danger’ they asked. ‘No.’ I answered. ‘Simply a little leak, the boat cannot possibly sink.’”
Behr recalled things a little differently.
According to the tennis pro he and Beckwith had left the smoking room just before it closed for the night and returned to their staterooms. Behr’s was on C Deck. Once there the young athlete began to get undressed when it happened.
“I felt a distinct jar, followed by a quivering of the boat. It was distinct enough to know we had hit something. I dressed and immediately went after my party,” Behr later told a reporter.
In the passage Behr ran into Helen who had been awakened by the commotion.
“We went together to the very upper deck and found it bitterly cold. The ship noticeably listed to starboard, the side which had been hit. I knew the boat was dangerously injured, although I could not then believe she was doomed. Together we went to the cabin of the Beckwiths telling them to dress. Everybody put on warm clothing.”
Dressed in a tuxedo style smoking jacket -with an overcoat thrown over it - Beckwith, his wife, Helen and Behr headed out into the passage.
“Even then I was so sure that there was no danger that I asked the steward to lock up the staterooms so that there would be no thefts while we [were] up above,” Beckwith later told the reporter.
While making their way through the ship the Beckwiths and Behr were told to put on their life belts.
“We met Captain Smith on [one of] the main stairways and he was telling everyone to put life belts on,” Behr recalled.
Knowing where the lifeboats were Behr led the group up three flights of stairs where they were then ordered to the ship’s uppermost deck.
“Hardly had we got there when we were ordered to the boats,” recalled Behr.
On deck were approximately 65 other passengers when the Beckwiths and Behr arrived. The first lifeboat was then swung into position and began to be boarded. Sally Beckwith wanted to climb inside. “I said there was no need and we waited,” recalled Behr.
From there the Beckwiths and Behr headed to the second lifeboat, which already had approximately 40 passengers and crew inside.
“Mr. Ismay himself directed the launching,” Beckwith later recalled. “Before getting in Mrs. Beckwith turned to him and asked if the men folk could come to and he said ‘Why certainly.’ We got into the boat and then Mr. Ismay asked if there was anybody else to get in and there was no one at all left around there.” The boat was then lowered toward the water.
Once on the ocean surface, Beckwith was forced to use a small gold knife in his “evening clothes” to cut the ropes to free the lifeboat from the ship.
Now freed from the ropes, the passengers and crew members on board the lifeboat, rowed until they were about a quarter of a mile away from the Titanic.
“We could only work four oars at a time on account of the somewhat cramped positions,” Behr explained. “We made good progress however and were soon a safe distance from the ship, which we still did not believe was going to sink.”
Adrift on the open ocean, some passengers from their lifeboat were moved to another boat and they waited. The sinking of the Titanic took hours but Behr said it seemed like only minutes.
“The lights of the ship were burning but it seemed as if the boat were filling gradually,” recalled Beckwith. “Suddenly the craft listed turned up on end with great rapidity and went down…so straight there was little suction just a long, loud hissing followed by an explosion and I remember rightly a second one.”
As the remaining passengers left behind screamed from the icy waters of the North Atlantic, the officer in charge of their lifeboat refused to row back according to Behr.
“I guess he was right for he claimed we surely would have been swamped by the hundreds in the water,” Behr later tried to explain. “What happened actually on board of course I saw little of.”
Passengers and crew took turns through the remainder of that blustery, cold April morning rowing away from the ship.
“About daylight we saw a black smudge [on] the horizon. We watched it grow and soon made out the ship’s superstructure,” recalled Beckwith.
Seeing the lights of the Carpathia coming to their rescue, the group aboard their lifeboat, began to row toward the ship.
It was while rowing toward the Carpathia that later accounts claimed Behr proposed to Helen on their lifeboat.
Soaking wet and huddled together to keep from freezing as the Carpathia approached – according to an account that appeared in the San Francisco Examiner – Behr asked for Helen’s hand in marriage.
“If we are saved Helen, as I am sure we shall be now, will you let me row by your side through life,” Behr reportedly said – in language a little too soppy to believe.
“I have known you a long while. I have known all along that you were big and strong and able, good and worthy, all that a girl could ask in a husband. I didn’t know until this dreadful night that you were also a hero. I would sail by your side through eternity,” she reportedly replied.
On board the Carpathia – with only the clothes on his back – Beckwith was forced to borrow a shirt and black and white striped handkerchief from the ship’s barber as they sailed toward New York.
Meanwhile on shore – as word began to spread about the disaster – no one was sure if the Beckwiths and Behr had survived.
The Monneypennys and Albert Cook traveled to New York to find out their fate.
Initial reports claimed that Behr had perished in the sinking. Then the White Star Line reported that Behr was among those saved but there was some confusion that the “Karl B.” they were referring to was another passenger “Karl Barrett.”
Back on shore and alive news of Behr and Helen’s engagement was kept secret for months. Only close friends of the families knew. It wasn’t until that autumn that news of their engagement was announced.
Following the announcement and ensuing publicity the couple tried to downplay how large of a role the Titanic sinking played in their engagement.
“We might have been married anyways,” Behr told reporters. Helen agreed. “Perhaps our joint experience on the ill-fated Titanic expedited matters and yet we might have been married anyways. Who can tell?” she said.
According to the newspapers Helen and Behr’s engagement was the first to result from the sinking. The press had a field day. The story was printed across the country.
On March 1, 1913 in New York City - at the Church of Transfiguration on East 29th Street – the couple were married.
The wedding was small and unpretentious. 200 guests attended the ceremony which began at 3 p.m. that afternoon. The church itself, was decorated in Easter lilies, while the bridesmaids – including Behr’s sister Gertrude – wore chiffon frocks, white lace hats with pink bows and carried bunches of spring flowers.
In a gown of white satin charmeuse, with a long veil, carrying lilies of the valley and white orchards, Helen was given away by her stepfather.
After the wedding there was no reception and the couple left a few days later for a honeymoon through the American West.
SOURCES
The Journal March 1, 1913 “Judge F.S. Fay to Take Southern Trip”
The San Francisco Examiner December 1, 1912 “The First Wedding From the Titanic Tragedy
Hartford Courant “Social and Personal” February 26, 1913
Muskogee Daily Pheonix and Times Democrat March 2, 1912 “Couple Saved from Titanic Disaster Weds”
Hartford Courant March 5, 1913 “Social and Personal”
The Journal March 1, 1913 “Judge F.S. Fay to Take Southern Trip”
The Boston Globe October 29, 1912 “Karl H. Behr Engaged”
The Evening Sun April 16, 1912 “Karl Behr Was One of the Leading Tennis Players”
The Wichita Eagle November 3, 1912 “Titanic Lifeboat Couple Will Sail on Cupid’s Boat”
Hartford Courant April 16, 1912 “People Thereabouts on the Titanic”
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle April 17, 1912 “Survivors Roster Is Not Lengthened”
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle April 13, 1912 “Karl Behr Lauds Work of Ismay”
Hartford Courant April 19, 1912 “RL Beckwith Say ‘Twas Only a Jar”
Chillicothe Gazette April 19, 1912 “Mr. and Mrs. Beckwith of Columbus Telegraph Their Experiences on the Titanic.”
Hartford Courant April 20, 1912 “How News First Came to Hartford”
The Hartford Courant April 18, 1912 “Will Welcome Wreck Survivors”
The Evening Sun April 16, 1912 “Karl Behr Was One of the Leading Tennis Players”
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle April 17, 1912 “Survivors Roster Is Not Lengthened”
Architecture and Building January 1912 Vol. 44 NO. 1 William Comstock Company NY pg. 80-81
New York Times “The Real Estate Field” January 15, 1913
NY Times September 28 1911 an Ad
The Sun July 30, 1911 Ad
The Real Estate Record and Builder’s Guide October 13, 1923 pg. 460
Hartford Courant March 12, 1901 “Welcome Relief”
Hartford Courant April 18 “Will Welcome Wreck Survivors”
The Yale Banner Vol. LIV John Q Tilson 1895 pg. 63
Triennial Record Yale 1898 Henry B. Wright The Dorman Lithographing Inc. 1902 New Haven
The Boston Globe October 29, 1912 “Karl H. Behr Engaged”
A Centenial History of the City of Columbus and Biographical Franklin County Ohio, Chicago, Lewis Publishing Company 1901 Chicago pgs 994-995
Xenia Daily Gazette September 13, 1899
Hartford Courant July 3, 1880 “At Niantic”
www.encyclopedia-titanica.org /titanic-survivor/Richard-leonard-beckwith