Sea Fights and Shipwrecks by Hanson W. Baldwin

A friend informed him that Belford’s landlady tossed out his Titanic keepsakes. Walter Belford lived alone in a small flat in New York. In 1963, one of Titanic’s kitchen personnel that Kamuda had been corresponding with passed away he saw his obituary in The New York Times. They were touched by the young man’s thoughtfulness and sincerity and many became lifelong friends.Įdward Kamuda searched for other people who were interested in Titanic by placing ads in newspapers and maritime magazines. The majority were elderly living on Social Security or pensions so Kamuda used his modest allowance enclosing a few dollars for postage for their reply. They were thrilled that someone was interested in their personal story of a long ago disaster and he asked if they would write down their recollections. Kamuda wrote to all eighty-seven and seventy-five responded.

The pages had names and addresses of dozens of Titanic survivors in Great Britain, Canada and the United States for theater owners to contact since there were no big Hollywood stars to attract an American audience. Arthur Rank’s version of Lord’s bestseller played in movie houses in 1958, Rank sent a promotional book to theater owners to attract audiences. In 1955, he read Walter Lord’s, A Night to Remember and corresponded regularly with the author. Kamuda studied everything he could find about the ship – there were only a few books available. The 1953 movie about the great maritime disaster made a tremendous impact on the young man – this was to be the theme of his life. Soon after 20th Century Fox’s Titanic, starring Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck played at his grandfather’s theater, The Grand, on Main Street in Indian Orchard, where he worked after school. His lifelong journey with Titanic began in junior high school when he read a short story, A Great Ship Goes Down in a book, Sea Fights and Shipwrecks by Hanson W. He was raised in the Indian Orchard neighborhood of Springfield where he lived until he married. Life was fairly ordinary in the early years, Edward Stephen Kamuda was born in Ludlow, Massachusetts on November 10, 1939, son of Henry J. A Titanic survivor’s death and a movie in the family’s theater was the catalyst that began a life’s work of preserving the ship’s history. If it weren’t for Edward Kamuda, much of the information we have today on Titanic wouldn’t exist it would have been lost through time and neglect which, unfortunately, happens too frequently because many people do not value history.

Sea Fights and Shipwrecks by Hanson W. Baldwin