On May 13, 1912, crewmen on the ocean liner RMS Oceanic spotted something unexpected: a vague shape bobbing through the waves of the North Atlantic.

A cutter was launched to investigate. As the floating shape was towed closer to the Oceanic, the crew and passengers’ curiosity turned to revulsion. It was a lifeboat containing three corpses and a mysterious wedding ring.

Documents found on one of the bodies identified him as Thomas Beattie. Based on their clothing, the other two seemed to be stokers, ship crewmen designated to fuel the furnaces of engine boilers.

The ring found in the lifeboat bore the inscription: "Edward to Gerda."

The passengers and crew of the Oceanic were baffled. How did a lifeboat holding three dead bodies end up in the middle of the ocean, and why was a wedding ring placed inside?

A month earlier and 200 miles away, the RMS Titanic had sunk after striking an iceberg. As the ship descended beneath the waves, a handful of people scrambled for the last remaining lifeboat: Collapsible A.

This Engelhardt-style lifeboat, made of kapok and cork, was a raft with heavy canvas sides that could be collapsed for storage and raised to form a boat in an emergency.

Still wearing his dinner jacket, first-class passenger Thomas Beattie navigated the rapidly sloping deck and managed to crawl onto the barely assembled lifeboat. He was soon joined by roughly twenty others.

Collapsible A, unable to be launched, sat on the deck of the Titanic with its passengers awaiting the inevitable approach of the rising water.

As the waves reached the boat, three final passengers slid down the deck of the doomed ship in a last desperate bid for survival. August Wennerstrom, Edward Lindell, and Gerda Lindell slammed into the lifeboat, grasping desperately at its sides.

Only August and Edward had the strength to climb on; Gerda slipped beneath the icy waves, adding her life to the devastating body count of the disaster.

Separated from the other boats which had moved away from the sinking ship, the survivors in Collapsible A slowly succumbed to exposure. To lighten the load on the partially swamped boat, the bodies of those who perished were thrown over the side.

Edward’s grief from losing his wife sapped his will to live, and he died early in the night. Her wedding ring, which he had gripped in his hand, fell into the bottom of the boat as his body was given to the waves.

As the sun rose the following morning, the dozen remaining survivors were rescued by Collapsible D—all except Thomas Beattie and two unknown stokers.

They had perished shortly before the other lifeboat had arrived. Their bodies, along with Gerda’s ring, remained floating on the boat for a month until they were discovered by the Oceanic, a final reminder of the horrors that faced the unfortunate souls aboard the Titanic on that fateful night.

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