与泰坦尼克号擦肩而过的七位名人

The sinking of the Titanic claimed some 1,500 lives, among them a gallery of early 20th-century A-list celebrities.1 Captains of industry John Jacob Astor IV and Benjamin Guggenheim both went down with the ship, as did Macys co-owner Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida, who refused to leave his side.2 The popular American mystery writer Jacques Futrelle, the American painter and sculptor Francis Millet, and Maj. Archibald Butt, friend and aide to then-President William Howard Taft, were lost as well.3 But for all the boldface names among the Titanics victims, many more might have been aboard, but for the vagaries of fate.4 Among them were:

Theodore Dreiser5

The novelist, then 40, considered returning from his first European holiday aboard the Titanic; an English publisher talked him out of the plan, persuading the writer that taking another ship would be less expensive.

Dreiser was at sea aboard the liner6 Kroonland when he heard the news. He recalled his reaction the following year in his memoir, A Traveler at Forty: “To think of a ship as immense as the Titanic, new and bright, sinking in endless fathoms of water.7 And the two thousand passengers routed like rats from their berths8 only to float helplessly in miles of water, praying and crying!”

Guglielmo Marconi9

The Italian inventor, wireless telegraphy10 pioneer and winner of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics was offered free passage on Titanic but had taken the Lusitania three days earlier. As his daughter Degna later explained, he had paperwork to do and preferred the public stenographer aboard that vessel.11

Three years later, Marconi would narrowly escape another famous maritime disaster.12 He was on board the Lusitania in April 1915 on the voyage immediately before it was sunk by a German U-boat in May.13

Milton Snavely Hershey14

The man behind the Hersheys Milk Chocolate Bar, Hersheys Kisses, Hersheys Syrup had spent the winter in France and planned to sail home on the Titanic. Fortunately for Hershey, business back home apparently intervened15, and he and his wife instead caught a ship that was sailing earlier, the German liner Amerika. The Amerika would earn its own footnote16 in the disaster, as one of several ships to send the Titanic warnings of ice in its path.

J. Pierpont Morgan

The legendary 74-year-old financier, nicknamed the “Napoleon of Wall Street,” had helped create General Electric and U.S. Steel.17

Among his varied business interests was the International Mercantile Marine, the shipping combine that controlled Britains White Star Line, owner of the Titanic. Morgan attended the ships launching in 1911 and had a personal suite on board with his own private promenade deck and a bath equipped with specially designed cigar holders.18 He was reportedly booked on the maiden voyage but instead remained at the French resort of Aix to enjoy his morning massages and sulfur baths.19

“Monetary losses amount to nothing in life,”20 he told a visiting New York Times reporter days after the sinking. “It is the loss of life that counts. It is that frightful death.”

Henry Clay Frick

The Pittsburgh steel baron was a business associate of fellow non-passenger J.P. Morgan.21 He canceled his passage on the Titanic when his wife sprained her ankle and had to be hospitalized in Italy.22

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt

The 34-year-old multimillionaire sportsman, an heir to the Vanderbilt shipping and railroad empire, was returning from a trip to Europe and canceled his passage on the Titanic so late that some early newspaper accounts listed him as being on board.23 Vanderbilt lived on to become one of the most celebrated casualties24 of the Lusitania sinking three years later.

John R. Mott

Though perhaps less well known today than the others on the list, Mott was an influential evangelist25, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946. He and a colleague were supposedly offered free passage on the Titanic by a White Star Line official interested in their work but declined and instead took the more humble26 liner Lapland. According to a biography27, when they reached New York and heard about the disaster, “It is said that the two men looked at each other and one voiced their common thought: ‘The Good Lord must have more work for us to do. ”

1. claim:（战争、事故等）夺取（生命）；A-list:一流人物。

2. 工业巨头约翰·雅各布·阿斯特四世和本杰明·古根海姆都与船俱殒，同遭不幸的还有梅西百货公司的共同所有人伊西多·施特劳斯及其妻子,她拒绝离开他（独自逃生）。Macys: 梅西百货公司，美国的著名连锁百货公司。

3. 深受欢迎的美国推理作家杰克·福翠尔、美国画家和雕塑家弗朗西斯·米勒以及时任总统威廉·霍华德·塔夫脱的朋友兼助手阿奇博尔德·布特少校也同时罹难。

4. boldface: 黑体字，此处指遇难者的名字用黑体字突出；vagaries:［复数］（局面、行为等）不可捉摸（异常）的变化，变化莫测。

5. Theodore Dreiser: 西奥多·德莱赛（1871—1945），美国著名小说家，代表作有《嘉莉妹妹》等。

6. liner: 邮轮，大客轮。

7. memoir: 回忆录；immense: 巨大的；fathom:英寻（测量水深的单位，等于6英尺或约1.8米）。

8. berth:（船或火车上的）铺位，舱位。

9. Guglielmo Marconi: 古列尔莫·马可尼(1874—1937)，意大利电气工程师，无线电之父。

10. wireless telegraphy: 无线电报。

11.paperwork: 文书工作；stenographer:速记员；vessel: 船。

12. 三年之后，马可尼又侥幸躲过另一起著名海难。

13. voyage: 航行；U-boat:（尤指用于第二次世界大战的）德国潜艇, U潜艇。

14. Milton Snavely Hershey: 弥尔顿·斯内夫利·赫尔希，美国最大的巧克力生产商——赫尔希食品公司的创始人，下文提到的Bar、Kisses和Syrup都是该公司生产的食品。

15. intervene: 干预。

16. footnote: 脚注。

17. 这位74岁的传奇金融家，绰号“华尔街的拿破仑”，曾协助创立了通用电气和美国钢铁。

18. suite: 套间；promenade deck:散步甲板。

19. maiden: 首次的；resort: 度假胜地；massage: 按摩；sulfur:硫磺。

20. monetary: 货币的，金钱的；amount to: 意味着。

21. 这位匹兹堡的钢铁大亨是（上文提到的）J.P. Morgan 的商业合作伙伴。Pittsburgh: 匹兹堡（美国宾西法尼亚州西南部城市，是美国的钢铁工业中心）；baron:大亨。

22. sprain: 扭伤（关节）；hospitalize:送……住院。

23. multimillionaire: 大富豪，巨富；heir: 继承人；Vanderbilt shipping and railroad empire: （美国）范德比尔特航运铁路帝国。

24. casualty:（事故或战争中的）伤者，死者。

25. evangelist: 巡回布道者。

26. humble: 简陋的。

27. biography: 传记。

28. descendant: 后代。

29. villain: 恶棍，坏人。

30. Goodyear Tire and Rubber:（美国）固特异轮胎橡胶公司，始建于1898年，是世界上规模最大的轮胎生产公司。

Famous Passengers Booked for the Ships Next Voyage

The Titanics return trip to England was scheduled to begin on April 20. Among the more famous names who had apparently booked passage:

Henry Adams, descendant28 of two presidents and author of The Education of Henry Adams.

John Alden Dix, then governor of New York.

J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line. A survivor of the Titanic disaster, Ismay was portrayed as a villain29 in many accounts in part for the ships shortage of lifeboats and for getting himself safely into one.

Guglielmo Marconi. Having skipped the maiden voyage, Marconi had apparently made arrangements to take the second.

Frank Seiberling, founder of Goodyear Tire and Rubber30.