Anna Sofia Turja

Anna Sophia Turja (1893-1982) was one of the last 30 survivors of the *Titanic* tragedy, which occurred on April 15, 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean.

## Biography

Anna Sophia was born on June 20, 1893, and spent her childhood in Oulainen, Oulu, Finland. She was the daughter of Heikki Turja and Hakala Sanna. Heikki had 21 children in total, several others from another marriage as well.

Anna felt encouraged to emigrate to America. After a visit to Finland, her brother-in-law John Lundi, husband of her half-sister Maria, offered her a job working alongside him in his store in Ashtabula, Ohio. His brother, Matt Turja, lived in Conneaut, Ohio. Anna sent a letter to her sister on April 3, 1912 (which she would receive on April 18) from the southern Finnish port city of Hangö. In said letter, she informed her sister that she and 100 other Finns were preparing to travel in the direction of the English port of Southampton to board the *Titanic*, bound for America.

## *Titanic* voyage

Anna, aged 18, boarded the *Titanic* in the port of Southampton as a Third Class passenger on Wednesday, April 10, 1912. Her one-way ticket, costing $50, had been paid for by her brother-in-law John Lundi. She stayed in an aft cabin that had two double berths, one on each side. Sheshared lodging with Maija Panula (1870-1912), her children and neighbor Sanni Riihivuori (1889-1912).

To Anna the *Titanic* seemed like a beautiful ocean liner, like a floating city; like a city, it lacked for nothing. She found the Third Class accommodations to be magnificent. She described her temporary enviroment as very lively, it was easy for her to start conversations, she enjoyed singing and listening to the songs and made friends.

## The Sinking

The women were in the room when the *Titanic* collided sideways with an iceberg at 11:40 P.M. on Sunday, April 14. Anna, awakened by the collision, felt it as a shudder. She thought it was a problem with the engines. She got up and dressed slowly. The rest of the women did the same. The brother of one of the women came to their cabin and informed them that something was out of control, to bundle up properly and put on life jackets; Get up or soon you'll be at the bottom of the ocean. Anna was not frightened, but others fainted. No one had rushed to dress and go out on deck. He returned to his lodging and found Maria Panula sleepily dressing and the children crying desperately and in panic; We will never get out of here alive, will we all have to die in the water? A teenage son of Maria's had recently drowned in Finland.

As Anna and a group of people made their way towards the Boat Deck, a sailor tried to block their course. However, Anna and her group disobeyed him. The sailor stopped dissuading them. However, she remembered that the metal doors were closed and chained behind them to prevent access to the upper decks to a greater number of people. Because they didn't tell he passengers what had happened, so she thought she had to do what they were told.

Anna would testify that, by pure chance, they managed to reach the upper deck. They heard the melodies played by the musician Wallace Hartley's orchestra, although she could not identify the pieces of music that were playing. Since Anna was not an English speaker, the situation she was experiencing was further aggravated by this circumstance. He claimed that for the most part the Finns on board did not panic and that many of them had gathered on the Third Class Promenade to listen to it. Until 12:30 A.M., Anna had been listening to the music. He also remembered seeing the lights of another distant ship on the horizon.

Finally, Anna abandoned ship after being loaded onto a fully loaded lifeboat, probably number 15, at around 1:45 A.M.

More than half an hour later, the boat had taken a small distance from the ship, and she heard loud explosions as the dying liner's lights went out and it sank for good. Once the *Titanic* sank, she heard the horrible screams of the more than 1,000 poor souls who floated in the icy waters where the ship had just disappeared under the sea surface. finally. It was almost like a hymn, from what she could hear. She estimated that the anguished cries of the victims were pitifully audible for about half an hour.

   In her boat, it was decided not to return to the sector where the remaining 1,500 dying passengers were floating because the boat was overloaded with people; "They were in the water and we couldn't help them. Some occupants of his boat burned hats and other items for other boats to see in order to stay together."

## After the rescue

Once rescued aboard the Carpathia, she spoke to a Finnish man who she told that she had been on the boat for about 6 hours. He claimed that there had been some shots fired as the *Titanic* was taking on water. He added, that he had escaped being shot for trying to get into a half-empty lifeboat that was being lowered. He tried to locate his fellow passengers with whom he had shared a cabin. Unfortunately, he did not manage to meet them. Although, apparently, one of them had been rescued. Mrs. Panula and her 5 children had not managed to escape.

On Tuesday, April 18, after a 3-day journey to the United States, the *Carpathia* arrived in the port of New York with the 706 survivors rescued from the Titanic catastrophe. Anna, along with the rest of the migrants, were taken directly to the city's St. Vincent Hospital. He would then resume his final destination. Anna had lost all of her baggage she had packed on the sunken ship. The shipping company that owned the *Titanic*, the White Star Line, paid for her hospital stay and her train ticket to Ashtabula, Ohio.

Eventually, she reached Ashtabula on the Nickel Plate train. She was received by her brother Matti Turja, who took her to her half-sister's house at 81 Oak Street. Many residents of that city showed special interest in Anna's odyssey, as if she were a celebrity of the moment. Anna had been on the list of missing passengers from the shipwreck. It would be about 6 weeks later for her family to sigh in relief to learn the news that she had left Finland to the United States and that she had survived the sinking. She never returned to her native country.

## Later life

Ultimately, Anna did not get to work for her brother-in-law John Lundi in his store. She would soon meet her future husband; Emil Lundi, brother of his brother-in-law, with whom he would form a family of 7 children. Anna never learned the English language properly, the language of the country that welcomed her for life.

In the 1950s, when she was widowed by her husband Emil in 1952, she attended the screening of two of the films that had been made about the catastrophe as a special guest: 'Titanic' (1953) and 'A Night to Remember' (1958). At the end of one of those movies that she watched, she said excitedly to her son; If they are so close to take photos, why didn't they help us? An anecdote of her statements, indirectly related to the shipwreck, tells that when the man landed on the lunar surface in 1969, she did not believe that such a feat was real. She stated: "No, no. If you've been able to recreate the *Titanic*, you can recreate that (man landing on the Moon) here as well."

For a few years, she was interviewed by the local press on the anniversary of the catastrophe. However, he did not want to participate in the 'I have a secret or the Ed Sullivan Show'. Partly due to her advanced age, physical condition and her lack of understanding English, she didn't feel the need to profit by telling her story as a survivor of the legendary *Titanic*. Every year, on the anniversary of the tragedy, she told her 7 children about her memories of the ship. She repeated many times; "I'll never understand why God saved one poor Finn while all those rich people drowned."

She died in Long Beach, California, on December 20, 1982, aged 89. She was buried in Edgewater Cemetery, Ashtabula, Ohio.