Naming Edgar Andrew in the Calamuchita Valley of Córdoba is to refer to a personality who was recognized postmortem because he was the only Argentine who died in the sinking of the Titanic, in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean on the night of April 14 to 15, 1912 on her maiden voyage.
The thing is Andrew lived on a ranch near Río Cuarto, but his family settled in Villa General Belgranowhere a great-niece recounts the experiences that her ancestors told her, with great emotion, remembering every step of her great-uncle in the days before the sinking of the then largest ship in the world.
Violet Jessop is the other Argentine who was aboard the Titanic, although the luck for the Bahian was different. She was one of 23 stewardesses and one of 712 surviving people saved by boarding one of the lifeboats.
In dialogue with Télam, Marianne Dick told about Edgar: “My grandmother, Ethel, was his sister, two brothers who got along very well and loved each other very much.”
“She got up from her nap, she told us all those family stories, of which there are many, and she was very sad about the little brother who had died on the Titanic, she lived in front of us and we always chatted. As a good descendant of the English, she was quite sparing, but we got these interesting stories out of him,” Dick recalled about his grandmother who died in 1990 at age 101.
Marianne’s brother, Enrique Dick, was the one who with her listened to the stories that Ethel told, and he is the one who wrote the book ‘A suitcase from the Titanic’, based on the story by Edgar Andrew.
Dick commented that Andrew’s family was of English descent, so the eight brothers were opportunely sent to England to study, since it was a family tradition, with the peculiarity that at the time, Edgar did not agree with going to Europe, since he felt comfortable “working in the field”.
The Andrews lived in Estancia El Durazno, owned by the former governor of Córdoba Ambrossio Olmos and about 25 kilometers from Río Cuarto.until Edgar, at the age of 16, traveled to England to study, as his seven brothers had done opportunely.
While in England, his older brother, Silvano Alfredo, a naval engineer who lived in the United States, told his mother that he was going to marry an American and that he would invite Edgar to the celebration and then, if he did not want to study, they would put him in work in the company of his future wife.
Edgar originally bought a ticket to travel at the end of April of that 1912 on the Oceanic, although his destiny was changed forever by a matter beyond his control. It is that prior to the inaugural voyage of the Titanic, a strike of workers who did not want to load coal generated a series of situations that led to Edgar finally being a passenger on the famous ship.
It was decided to transfer the coal from the Oceanic to the Titanic, since they were from the same company, and they offered passengers to embark on the ocean liner that eventually became one of the best known in history.
That’s how it was “without putting a weight”Dick commented, Edgar changed his ticket and without being entirely convinced he got on the Titanicwhich left a few days before the other ship was scheduled to leave.
It is that a friend of hers, Josey Cowan, would travel to England with her family and Edgar had planned to meet her for at least a few days, but the premature departure of the Titanic prevented that meeting, and that adolescent’s feeling for her still marks a record for the a premonitory letter that he left for her before leaving for the United States, on a trip that was never completed.
“Imagine Josey that I embark on the largest steamer in the worldbut I am not at all proud, because right now I wish the Titanic was submerged at the bottom of the ocean,” Edgar wrote to his friend, as if anticipating what he would experience a few days later.
The movie starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet, in 1997, put the story of the Titanic on everyone’s lips, about which Dick says: “I took a while to see the movie, the truth is that the first time I cried all over, especially since it gives us the impression that he may have jumped into the water too”.
“Being a boy who had just turned 17, I reckon it could have been something like that. It was very hard to know all this misfortune of so many people who lost their lives because the problem is that the water was so cold, “he said, remembering the film.
There are many stories that are replicated around the fateful trip in which Edgar participated, and his great-niece highlighted: “This story was kept for a long time, only the family knew itonly those nearby, until later the Titanic becomes important again because they find it in 1985. Then one expedition happens after the other and in 2000, aboard a Russian ship, an American, David Concannon, goes down.
And he continued: “He’s a lawyer and he’s coming down for a trial issue, and At the bottom of the sea they find a suitcase in perfect condition, they take it out, it opens and a lot of things fall out, they pick them up again, and when all those things emerge they are taken to a conservation institute, no one knew whose content it was“.
In the same year 2000 an exhibition arrives in Buenos Aires at La Rural de Palermo, where Marianne Dick’s brother and cousin go, they get in touch with these people, and there they find out, both parties, that the contents of the suitcase belonged to Edgar.
“It is incredible how everything was preserved, even the paper, because there was a letter from the mother, there were postcards from Río Cuartotowels with her monogram that my grandmother had embroidered for her, shoes, slippers, a hat, inkwell, altogether 51 objects“recalled the deceased’s great-niece.
In the south of Córdoba, even schools talk about the story of Edgar Andrew, and so it was that an English teacher a couple of years ago told her students that the only Argentine who died on the Titanic had been in the area.
The interest of the students led to a virtual interview with David Concannon, who graciously agreed and in which Marianne Dick also participated.
The English teacher, Analía Gozzarino, decided to investigate more on the subject and that is how the elaboration of a virtual museum in which everything related to the life of Edgar Andrew, the Argentine who died in the Titanic tragedy, is shown.
