How six Chinese men survived the Titanic disaster, and the racist US federal law that ensured their obscurity – a story told only now
Eight Chinese men were among the 2,200 people on board the RMS Titanic. Six survived its sinking and were rescued, but disappeared soon afterwards. A new documentary looks at their lives and what happened when they reached the US
In the early hours of April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic – the “unsinkable” British passenger ship – hit an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York, taking more than 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers and crew down with it.
Eight Chinese passengers were on board, a fact little known until now. British documentary maker Arthur Jones thought it odd that little was known of their stories, and set about making a film about the lives of the Chinese passengers, six of whom survived before vanishing from history books.
His film, The Six, was due for release on April 4, 2020, but was delayed because of the coronavirus outbreak (a trailer for the documentary came out in June 2017 and went viral on Chinese social networking site Weibo).
“Of the 700 survivors of the Titanic disaster, the six Chinese men never told their stories. Why were they ignored?” Jones asks from Shanghai, where his production company LP Films is based.
“The global press loved and continues to love the Titanic story, chronicling every little detail, right down to the size of the ashtrays in second class. But nothing was reported about the Chinese passengers,” he says. The Chinese were the largest group of non-European or North American passengers on the luxury ship.