Question of the Day - 15 April 2023

We saved this question for today.

In the wee hours of April 15, 1912, 111 years ago to the day, the RMS Titanic, the largest ship afloat in its (short) time, sank after striking an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City. The 1,500 people who died in the disaster, nearly 70% of the total number of passengers and crew, made it the deadliest ship to sink up until that time and it's still the deadliest sinking of an ocean liner in peacetime.

To put the Notice you refer to in context, the Titanic's owner-operator, the British White Star Line, was well aware that like on the Mississippi riverboats of yore, professional gamblers booked passage on trans-Atlantic passenger ships to try to fleece the first-class travelers in all the spare time onboard. The Notice in the exhibit is believed to be an internal memo that accompanied the passenger manifest identifying the three "apparent scofflaws." 

The cross-Atlantic crossroaders hung around the Smoking Lounge on the ship, which was open only to men in the evening, where a lot of card games were played to pass the time and redistribute the wealth. 

George Brereton was an American, having been born in Minnesota in 1874, making him 38 when he boarded the Titanic, traveling under the alias George Arthur Brayton. Little is known about him from before the fateful voyage, but he was apparently in the Smoking Lounge trying to hustle up a crooked card game when the Titanic hit the iceberg. He managed to survive the sinking, was rescued by the RMS Carpathia, and shortly after offloading in New York tried to involve another of the first-class rescuees in a horse-racing scam. In 1915, he was convicted, fined, and sentenced to two years in jail for his participation in another horse-racing fleecing and was arrested again, for yet another horse fraud, in 1933. For the rest of his life, he continued traveling back and forth to Europe on ocean liners, probably to ply his trade with unsuspecting card players. He shot himself to death in Los Angeles in 1942 at the age of 68. Brereton had traveled on the Titanic with a complete list of the first-class passengers and it survived in "surprisingly good condition," with the names of the wealthiest passengers circled. It was auctioned off in 2022 for 60,000 pounds. 

Charles Romaine was also American, born in Kentucky in 1866, putting him at 46 at the time of sailing. He too hung around the Smoking Lounge playing cards on the voyage; we could find no evidence that he was a card mechanic or con man, but he did employ at least two aliases. Like Brereton, he made his way onto a lifeboat and was rescued. He returned to England where, in 1915, he was managing director of a trust company, then returned to the States where he managed a hotel in Indiana before settling in New York to promote oil stocks. Romaine was hit by a taxicab in 1922 a block from his home in Manhattan and died at the age of 56.

Finally, we come to Harry Haven Homer, the third of the three Americans on the White Star's Notice. Homer was born in Indiana in 1871 (41 at sailing) and had built up a reputation as a "notorious crook" and had a fairly extensive police record for everything from loitering and "being a dangerous and suspicious character" to grand larceny from Buffalo, New York, to Hot Springs, Arkansas, by his early 30s. By the time he got to New Orleans in 1908, he was picked up immediately by police, but insisted he was merely passing through on his way to Texas. Claiming to be a representative of a Texas land company, Homer boarded the Titanic under the alias of E. Haven. Like the other two names on the Notice, Homer survived the sinking, but continued his life of crime, lengthening the list of his run-ins with the law, mostly from various confidence hustles. Arrested in Cleveland, the report mentioned that "the police are thinking of something to charge him with." Vagrancy, bookmaking, even ripping off his banker father-in-law, the slippery eel continued his wanton ways into his 60s. He died in Manhattan in 1939 at the age of 67. 

It's interesting that, despite the famous rallying cry of "Women and children first!," all three of these cads managed to secure precious seats in the very few lifeboats aboard the doomed vessel. The ultimate advantage play. 

There is no evidence that any of the three spent any time in Las Vegas. However, Brereton and Homer did include southern California in their travels. Whether or not they stopped in southern Nevada and attempted to pull off any shenanigans here is unknown.