No time to turn the other cheek or throw in the towel, it’s time to duke it out with some bits of trivia and solve some mysteries involving the great ship, Titanic, and Boxing.

I’m taking liberty and starting with my pet peeve, that the word boxing, when referring to the sport or a famous boxer, isn’t capitalized. Because boxing can refer to many other things and therefore not capitalizing, it seems to render the sport obscure. To those who love the sport, Boxing, with a capital B, should never be obscure. So I say, “overboard” and “walk the plank,”  to that grammar rule. I’m using it from here on in so everyone knows I’m not referring to “boxing things up,” or working for a moving company.  There, ’nuff’ said on the Boxing capital B situation. Onward.  

When Eamo Clyne and I decided that we would go “In Search Of” Boxing where others wouldn’t typically think to look, we didn’t expect to find Boxers on Titanic. And if we weren’t complete Titanic fans, watching every documentary and joining every Titanic group on Facebook, then we are not worth our weight in Boxing gloves, and therefore, we simply wouldn’t have found the Boxers on  Titanic. And, if we didn’t find them then we’re not worthy of being known as The Boxing Detectives.

What started us off on this foray of discovering the connection between Titanic and Boxing happened one Tuesday night while watching one of our weekly Titanic documentaries. Eamo and I simultaneously caught sight of a photograph, and if Boxing wasn’t in our veins, we would have missed it. It was the singular photo of the speed-bag. Unfortunately, no one was beating up on it at the time  the photo was taken, which is unfortunate because it may have offered another clue.

The Titanic Gym: 

The first mystery we encounter is that only a couple of photos exist of the Titanic gym, even though it was one of the most up-to-the-minute gyms ever to be created, having equipment that most of everyday people in the Edwardian age would never experience. Today’s gyms, although up to the minute in the tech department, still don’t have the odd assortment of exercise equipment on the Titanic. The gym was practically a museum of Edwardian exercise contraptions! We know from records that Titanic’s gym had 2 heavy bags installed. Heavy bags are body-length bags that hang from the ceiling or a special stand, for Boxers to punch. They were made of canvas and filled with corn in those days. A real delight to hit as they are the closest stand-in for what it feels like to hit an opponent. More so than the vinyl bags of today.  The singular photo of the speed-bag is the only thing that alludes to any Boxing equipment on board the Titanic. Being made of canvas they would not have survived at the wreck site.  This begs the question, were they installed for the convenience of the two Boxing Champions on board who were on their way to fight in NY City, or were they installed just to complete the up to date gym EQ on the Titanic? I’ll get to the Boxers who were on board, and even those that weren’t but who were headed to Titanic and didn’t make it, later. There is also no mention of Boxing gloves. Were there any? They would have been in glorious brown leather and being “tanned” they would have probably survived like many other leather items. Of course, access to the entire wreck site is not possible so we’ll never know.  In all of the hundreds of hours of Titanic footage, exhibits I’ve attended, and realistic tours, I’ve never seen any items from the Titanic gym, sadly.

Jack Johnson The Galveston Giant and the Giant Boxer’s Titanic Myth:

Never on Titanic, but famous for it anyway thanks to a folk song composed by another legend, Leadbelly.  Huddie William Ledbetter wrote the old folk song as a tribute to Jack Johnson by crafting a fabricated ditty, which he used to sing with another legend named Blind Lemon Jefferson. The famous but fictional song has a line that suggests that Captain Edward Smith was barring Jack from boarding Titanic because he was the color of coal.  “I ain’t haulin’ no coal,” Captain Smith declares in the song Titanic. Titanic was loaded to the brim with 5,892 tons of coal and there was a Haitian engineer on board with his wife and children discounting the “haulin’ no coal” statement.  Leadbelly did not do his homework when he was writing Titanic, the lyrics being pure fiction. In fact, Leadbelly really took poetic license with the lyrics and was the first to start this type of false premise regarding Jack Johnson, by others such as in the patent Johnson held for making improvements on the Moncky wrench invented by Charles Moncky.  Leadbelly has to be forgiven, however, because it made Jack more famous and well, it’s hard to stay angry with the likes of Leadbelly and Blind Lemon Jefferson two historical figures at the very core of southern folk songs. In reality, Jack Johnson wasn’t even in England or Ireland or Cherbourg at the times that Titanic would have been at those ports. Unlike Leadbelly, I do my homework!  You can find the entire set of lyrics to Titanic, by putting it in a search engine, as well as the original Moncky wrench by Charles Moncky 1858 and the Jack Johnson upgrade to it a decade or so afterwards.

Boxers Who Were On Titanic Who Didn’t Survive The Sinking:

There were two Boxers, “Prizefighters,” from Wales who boarded Titanic for New York. Collier Dai Bowen was a lightweight champion and Les Williams, a bantamweight. Each had won important contracts to fight in the US. Neither would ever get there to fight.

On April 11, 1912,  Dai wrote to his mother saying that the Titanic was a lovely boat. “She is very near so big as Treherbert.”

Neither Dai Bowen or Les Williams survived the sinking. Dai’s body was never found and Les’ body was picked up by the Mackay Bennet days later. He was buried at sea on April 22, 1912. A sad ending for two promising and hopeful Boxers who would never get to try out those two big beautiful canvas bags in the pristine gym. You can see their official Boxing stats on Boxrec.com

Boxer Who “Missed The Boat” And Never Boarded Titanic

Eddie Morgan, another champion Boxer and legend from Wales. It is reported in records that Eddie missed the boat for love. It seems that Eddie and his wife spent the night in a swirl of passion in a London hotel causing Eddie to miss the boat even though, according to his uncle, he rushed like the wind to get there.

Eddie Morgan was the forgotten Welsh Boxing legend fated to always miss the boat and therefore never becoming the world champion that he could have been. So he missed the boat, and missed the championship, but had plenty of love. That’s not too bad, given the alternative. I wonder if  his wife’s name was “Lucky!” It seems they got to Southampton almost in time to watch Titanic swan into the water along the slipway. Talk about it being the ship of dreams. The fight in the US was his big chance at the top, but better he and his wife returned to Wales and more nights of passion, a better alternative to drowning at sea. Here’s to Eddie Morgan, the Boxer who missed the Titanic, for love.

Boxers Who were Not On Titanic But Who Had A Connection To It Anyway

Former US middleweight Boxing champion Stanton Abbott was married to Rhoda Mary Hunt and they had two sons. The marriage was not a happy one and ended in a very stressful divorce. Suffering after the divorce, Rhoda boarded Titanic with her two sons. She survived the sinking being the only woman who did not die in the cold waters of the Atlantic that night. The stress of the divorce and the loss of her two sons in the drowning waters, who did not survive the sinking, plagued Rhoda for her whole life. Her husband was yet another lucky Boxer, like Eddie Morgan, who was never on Titanic. In this case, it was due to a lack of love.

It’s impossible not to ask the question in one’s own mind, “If Eddie Morgan and  Stanton Abbot had been on Titanic, would they have survived? Were they both saved by some force of luck?

In Closing

One night while watching one of many Titanic documentaries, a front-page newspaper flashed on the screen just long enough for me to catch an article about another champion Boxer in the UK who was hung for murdering his wife. The page vanished from all future attempts to find it later. It seems to have gone down with the ship, and vanished! We all dream of having our story or photo of us winning an award or some other great event, but think about the fame of being a “prize fighter” and making the headlines not for winning an important bout, but for such a horrendous deed. What are the odds of fame coming to one, on the front page of the Titanic disaster, for murder. We never know what we’re going to find when we go In Search Of: Boxing on Titanic.