How a Titanic survivor became a tennis champ

Richard Norris Williams won the US Open for the first time 110 years ago. However, his greatest victory came two years earlier – in the ice-cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

The gray, full certainty comes around two in the morning. For more than an hour on April 15, 1912, Richard Norris Williams II and his father Charles Duane have not been thinking about themselves, but about women, children and the elderly. There is empty chaos on the Titanic, the supposedly unsinkable luxury liner that hit an iceberg in the Atlantic shortly before midnight and whose bow has already disappeared under the water. People are screaming, metal is breaking and help is nowhere in sight. Nevertheless, Richard, 21 years old, a prospective Harvard student and talented tennis player, and Duane Williams, a lawyer from Philadelphia, have helped numerous passengers into the lifeboats, selflessly and as a matter of course. But now they realize that there is no boat left for them and that they must swim for their lives.

Before they jump into the ice-cold water, Duane Williams is killed by a collapsing chimney. Richard Williams takes off, but he has no time to mourn. Everything has to happen very quickly now. He climbed onto a parapet and jumped five meters into the ice-cold water. Many people had the same fate as him, says George Behe, who has written several books on the Titanic disaster. “Most made it into the water – either by jumping just before the ship sank or by being washed away when the ship plunged into the Atlantic,” says Behe. The majority of the approximately 1,500 people who later died floated to the surface after the Titanic sank, the author emphasizes.

Richard Williams swims through the darkness “with all his strength”. The fur coat over his life jacket makes it difficult for him to escape. From a distance he finally sees the steel colossus sink at 2:20 a.m. – “without noise, completely silently”. Williams reaches a foldable emergency lifeboat that is floating overturned in the water. Around 30 other people cling to its wooden hull with him – only 13 survive the next few hours in the ice-cold Atlantic water.

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topicnews · September 1, 2024

How a Titanic survivor became a tennis champ – US Open

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