Laura Wright 
Titanic
Imagine surviving the sinking of the Titanic.
For most people, escaping one of history’s most famous maritime disasters would be enough adventure for several lifetimes. According to an enduring legend, however, one crewman went back to sea and promptly survived another catastrophic sinking.
Then he did it again.
His name was supposedly Frank “Lucky” Tower, a ship’s fireman or stoker who survived the Titanic, the Empress of Ireland, and the Lusitania.
After the third disaster, Tower reportedly decided he had tested his luck quite enough. He abandoned the sea and chose the considerably safer occupation of farming.
It’s a wonderful story.
There’s only one problem.
Frank Tower, at least as the legend describes him, apparently never existed.
The Legend of Frank “Lucky” Tower
Frank Tower was supposedly a fireman by trade.
Despite the modern meaning of the word, a ship’s fireman wasn’t responsible primarily for extinguishing fires. Also known as a stoker, he worked below deck tending the furnaces that generated steam for the ship’s engines.
It was brutally demanding work.
According to the legend, Tower was serving aboard the Titanic when the great liner began its maiden voyage in 1912.
Then came the iceberg.
Tower survived.
Nearly two years later, he found work aboard another passenger liner, the Empress of Ireland.
That ship sank too.
Once again, Tower survived.
One might reasonably have taken the hint.
Tower apparently didn’t.
The Titanic
RMS Titanic was the largest passenger ship afloat when it departed Southampton on its maiden voyage to New York.
More than 2,200 passengers and crew were aboard.
Late on April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic. During the early hours of April 15, the supposedly magnificent and exceptionally safe liner disappeared beneath the water.
More than 1,500 people died.
According to the Frank Tower legend, the stoker was among the survivors.
If the story ended there, there would be nothing particularly mysterious about him. Hundreds of people survived the Titanic disaster.
But Tower’s supposed relationship with sinking ships had only begun.
The Empress of Ireland
In May 1914, RMS Empress of Ireland was traveling along the St. Lawrence River when it collided with the Norwegian collier Storstad.
The Empress sank with horrifying speed.
More than 1,000 people died in what became one of Canada’s worst maritime disasters.
And according to the legend, who happened to be aboard?
Frank Tower.
Once again, he survived.
Two major shipwrecks in slightly more than two years would seem like a perfectly reasonable reason to reconsider one’s career.
Instead, Tower supposedly found employment aboard another famous ocean liner.
RMS Lusitania.
The Lusitania
The Lusitania had entered service in 1907 and had operated successfully for years.
Then Europe went to war.
On May 7, 1915, the German submarine U-20 torpedoed the liner off the coast of Ireland.
The Lusitania sank rapidly.
Nearly 1,200 people died.
And there, according to the legend, was Frank Tower.
Again.
Tower survived his third great maritime disaster in three years.
At that point, the legendary sailor apparently decided that the universe was trying to tell him something.
He left his seafaring career behind and supposedly retired to the quiet life of a farmer.
There were, presumably, considerably fewer icebergs and German submarines in the fields.
Did Frank Tower Really Exist?
Surviving one sinking would have been extraordinary.
Surviving all three would have made Frank Tower one of the most remarkable maritime survivors in history.
But examinations of the surviving passenger and crew records created a problem.
No Frank Tower can be established as having sailed aboard all three vessels. In fact, the legendary Tower does not appear in the Titanic crew records at all.
The legend, however, may not have appeared entirely from nowhere.
There really were men whose experiences resembled portions of the Tower story.
The Real Frank Tower
A man named Frank Tower really was connected with the Lusitania.
That fact may have helped give the legendary survivor his name.
But the existence of a Frank Tower aboard one vessel does not establish that he had previously survived the Titanic and Empress of Ireland.
Another real survivor provides an even more intriguing piece of the puzzle.
His name was William Clark.
William Clark Survived Two Disasters
William Clark really did survive two of the three maritime disasters attributed to Lucky Tower.
Clark survived the sinking of the Titanic.
Two years later, he survived the sinking of the Empress of Ireland.
That is remarkable enough without embellishment.
Somewhere along the way, however, stories about genuine maritime survivors may have become confused, combined, or exaggerated until one extraordinarily lucky sailor emerged from all three disasters.
Frank Tower.
There are even theories that the name itself may have arisen from confusion involving another surname, Toner, although attempts to reconstruct the legend’s precise development remain uncertain.
Violet Jessop: The Real “Unsinkable” Woman
Frank Tower may be legendary, but there really was someone whose maritime career sounds almost equally improbable.
Violet Jessop worked aboard several famous White Star Line vessels.
In 1911, she was aboard RMS Olympic when the liner collided with HMS Hawke.
The Olympic survived.
Jessop later served aboard the Titanic and survived its sinking in 1912.
During World War I, she served aboard HMHS Britannic, the third of the Olympic-class liners.
In 1916, Britannic struck a mine and sank in the Aegean Sea.
Jessop survived that disaster as well.
Unlike Frank Tower, Violet Jessop was very real.
But the idea of one seemingly indestructible survivor repeatedly emerging from doomed ships is older still.
The Strange Legend of Hugh Williams
Long before Frank Tower supposedly began terrorizing shipping companies merely by accepting employment, stories circulated about another extraordinarily lucky sailor.
His name was Hugh Williams.
According to the legend, a ship carrying 81 passengers was wrecked on December 5, 1664.
Only one man survived.
Hugh Williams.
Then, on December 5, 1785, another vessel carrying 60 people was lost.
Fifty-nine died.
Again, the survivor was supposedly named Hugh Williams.
Obviously, this could not have been the same man.
The story becomes stranger.
Another ship was wrecked in 1820. This time only 26 people were aboard.
Once again, the sole survivor was said to be Hugh Williams.
The implication was irresistible.
For some inexplicable reason, men named Hugh Williams simply refused to drown.
A Hugh Williams Really Was Aboard the Titanic
There is a particularly grim coincidence involving the name.
A passenger named Hugh Williams really was aboard the Titanic.
He boarded at Southampton.
This Hugh Williams was not blessed with the legendary luck associated with the name.
He died in the sinking.
His body was never recovered.
The much older Hugh Williams stories are difficult to verify because of their age and the variations that accumulated around them. But they demonstrate that the idea behind Lucky Tower was already familiar long before the Titanic sailed.
Frank Tower may simply represent a twentieth-century version of a much older type of maritime folklore.
Then There Was Casimir Polemus
Another nineteenth-century story concerns a Frenchman named Casimir Polemus.
Polemus was said to have survived the sinking of the Jeanne Catherine on July 11, 1875.
Then he survived the wreck of the Trois Frères on September 4, 1880.
Finally, he survived the wreck of L’Odeon on January 1, 1882.
According to the story, Polemus wasn’t merely fortunate enough to survive all three disasters.
He was the sole survivor each time.
Like the Hugh Williams stories, claims surrounding Polemus deserve careful historical scrutiny.
But together they demonstrate how persistent the “unsinkable survivor” has been in maritime lore.
How Legends Become People
Frank Tower may be a particularly good example of the way folklore can assemble a fictional person from pieces of reality.
The three disasters were real.
There really was a Frank Tower associated with the Lusitania.
William Clark really survived both the Titanic and the Empress of Ireland.
Other people, such as Violet Jessop, genuinely survived multiple famous maritime accidents.
Older stories already existed about people such as Hugh Williams miraculously surviving repeated shipwrecks.
The ingredients were all there.
Folklore merely needed to combine them.
Eventually, one man emerged who had apparently looked at three of the twentieth century’s most infamous doomed liners and said, in effect, That one looks fine.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not
The Frank Tower legend gained additional legitimacy when it appeared in places readers regarded as collections of extraordinary facts.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! repeated the story as though Tower were an actual historical figure. Author Clive Cussler also mentioned him in The Sea Hunters.
Once a legend appears in print, it acquires something oral folklore lacks.
A source.
Later writers find the printed account and repeat it. Those repetitions become sources for still more writers.
Eventually, an invented or distorted story can become remarkably difficult to separate from genuine history.
Frank Tower and Night Gallery
The legend also has an interesting connection with popular culture.
Rod Serling’s Night Gallery included an episode titled “Lone Survivor.”
Its story involves a mysterious survivor discovered aboard a lifeboat from the Titanic. His strange journey through maritime disasters bears an obvious resemblance to the mythology surrounding the unsinkable sailor.
Whether every element came directly from the Frank Tower legend is difficult to establish, but the similarity demonstrates how easily the story lends itself to supernatural fiction.
After all, three survivals begin to sound less like luck and more like something else entirely.
Was Frank Tower the Luckiest Man Alive?
Probably not.
The historical Frank “Lucky” Tower who survived the Titanic, Empress of Ireland, and Lusitania appears to belong to folklore rather than documented maritime history. No evidence establishes one Frank Tower aboard all three ships.
But dismissing him as fictional doesn’t make the story less interesting.
In some ways, it makes it more interesting.
The legend appears to have taken genuine disasters, real survivors, extraordinary coincidences, older maritime tales, and perhaps simple mistakes of identity and transformed them into one unforgettable character.
A fireman survives the Titanic.
Then the Empress of Ireland.
Then the Lusitania.
Finally, after three encounters with disaster, he decides he’s had enough of the sea.
It’s probably not history.
But after surviving three doomed ships, even a legendary man deserves his farm.
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