page_title: Passengers of the Titanic
section_title: Second class
hierarchical_section_title: Passengers of the Titanic / Passengers / Second class
caption_attribution_description: English: Photographs of Titanic's musicians published by the Amalgated Musicians Union after the sinking. Français&#160;: Photographies des musiciens du Titanic publiées par le principal syndicat de la profession peu après le naufrage. Figurent de gauche à droite et de haut en bas&#160;: George Krins, Wallace Hartley, Roger Bricoux, Theodore Brailey, Percy Taylor, Wes Woodward, John Clarke et John Hume.
context_page_description: A total of 2,208 people sailed on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic, the second of the White Star Line's Olympic-class ocean liners, from Southampton, England, to New York City. Partway through the voyage, the ship struck an iceberg and sank in the early morning of 15 April 1912, resulting in the deaths of 1,503 people.
  The ship's passengers were divided into three separate classes determined by the price of their ticket: those travelling in first class, most of them the wealthiest passengers on board, included prominent members of the upper class, businessmen, politicians, high-ranking military personnel, industrialists, bankers, entertainers, socialites, and professional athletes. Second-class passengers were predominantly middle-class travellers and included professors, authors, clergymen, and tourists. Third-class or steerage passengers were primarily immigrants moving to the United States and Canada.
context_section_description: Second-class passengers were leisure tourists, academics, members of the clergy, and middle-class English, Scottish and American families. The ship's musicians travelled in second-class accommodations; they were not counted as members of the crew, but were employed by an agency under contract to the White Star Line. The average ticket price for an adult second-class passenger was £13, the equivalent of £1,123 today. and for many of these passengers, their travel experience on the Titanic was akin to travelling first class on smaller liners. Second-class passengers had their own library and the men had access to a private smoking room. Second-class children could read the children's books provided in the library or play deck quoits and shuffleboard on the second-class promenade. Twelve-year-old Ruth Becker passed the time by pushing her two-year-old brother Richard around the enclosed promenade in a stroller provided by the White Star Line.
  Two Roman Catholic priests on board, Father Thomas Byles and Father Joseph Peruschitz, celebrated mass every day for second- and third-class passengers during the voyage. Father Byles gave his homilies in English, Irish, and French and Father Peruschitz gave his in German and Hungarian.
  On the ship, a Lithuanian priest, Father Juozas Montvila, also perished during the sinking.
  Rev. John Harper, a well-known Baptist pastor from Scotland, was travelling to America with his daughter and niece  to preach at the Moody Church in Chicago.
  Schoolteacher Lawrence Beesley, a science master at Dulwich College, spent much of his time aboard the ship in the library. Two months after the sinking, he wrote and published The Loss of the SS Titanic, the first eyewitness account of the disaster.
  The Laroche family, father Joseph and daughters Simonne and Louise, were the only known passengers of black ancestry on board the ship. They, along with Joseph's pregnant wife Juliette, were travelling to Joseph's native island of Haiti. Joseph hoped that a move from their former home in Paris back to Haiti, where his uncle Cincinnatus Leconte was president, would take his family away from racial discrimination.
  Another French family travelling in second class was the Navratils, travelling under the assumed name Hoffman. Michel Navratil, a Slovak-born French tailor, had kidnapped his two young sons, Michel Jr. and Edmond from his estranged wife, assumed the name Louis M. Hoffman, and boarded the ship in Southampton, intent on taking his children to the United States. Michel Sr. died in the sinking and photographs of the boys were circulated throughout the world in the hopes that their mother or another relative could identify the French toddlers, who became known as the "Titanic Orphans".
   After arriving in New York, the children were cared for by Titanic survivor Margaret Hays until their mother, Marcelle Navratil travelled from Nice, France, to claim them. The last living second-class survivor was Barbara West; she was 10 months old at the time of sinking and died in 2007 at the age of 96.
caption: The Titanic's musicians, led by Wallace Hartley, were employed as crew, but given second-class accommodations.
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