The Truth About What Happened To The Titanic Orphans

Posted by Martina Birk on Thursday, May 9, 2024

Michel Navratil, a tailor born in Slovakia in 1880, was living in Nice, France when he decided to take his two young boys to America without telling his estranged wife of his plans, per Titanic Cherbourg. She had custody but had allowed them to visit him over Easter. On board the ship, he and the boys, Michel Jr. and Edmond, were sleeping when the ship struck an iceberg near Newfoundland, Canada. "I was woken up by my father," Michel Jr. recalled years later in a letter (via the New Zealand Herald). "He carried me in his arms to the deck of the Titanic. My brother and I were put in a boat. That was already almost full of passengers."

It was the last lifeboat to escape. A first-class passenger, Margaret Hays, her dog wrapped in her cloak, heard someone yelling as the boat was being lowered, according to a 1912 article in The Day Book. A man called out and tossed his two children to a sailor. "My father charged me to give my mother his affection and he left us," Michel Jr. recalled. Hays took the children under her wing. When they were rescued by the Carpathia, the authorities had a heck of a time figuring out who they really were. The two young survivors spoke no English — only French — and even when authorities were able to find a translator, the boys just answered "Oui" to everything they were asked, per Encyclopedia Titanica. No one knew how to figure out who these kids were.

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