By Daniel Payne
CNA Staff, Dec 1, 2024 / 06:43 am
More than a century after it sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, the Titanic remains the most studied and discussed ship in history.
Even the biggest Titanic buffs, however, may be unaware that what was likely the very last photo ever taken of the ship on the surface was captured by a Jesuit priest who was himself a prolific photographer.
Father Francis Browne was born in Ireland in 1880. He studied at the Jesuit-run Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy and was ordained in 1915 by Cloyne Bishop Robert Browne, his uncle, by whom he had been raised since childhood after the early deaths of both his mother and father.
Bishop Browne provided the younger Browne with his first camera who would go on to become a celebrated photographer, with a portfolio that included a collection of photographs of World War I in which he served as a chaplain. During that conflict Browne suffered severe injuries from a gas attack and received the Military Cross for his efforts.
Yet arguably his most famous contributions to world photography are his photographs of the Titanic, among the scant few that captured life aboard the brief oceanliner prior to its sinking.
In his book “Father Browne's Titanic Album: A Passenger's Photographs and Personal Memoir,” Jesuit Father E.E. O’Donnell writes that Browne ended up on the Titanic after Bishop Browne gave his nephew “the trip of a lifetime” in the form of a two-day cruise on the Titanic.
The Jesuit priest sailed from Southampton in England to Queenstown in Ireland, where he fortuitously disembarked prior to the rest of the ship’s fateful voyage.
However, Browne’s brush with death was even closer than it appeared: While on the ship he befriended a wealthy American couple who offered to buy him a ticket for the rest of the journey to America.
The priest sent a telegram to his Jesuit superior asking for permission. At Queenstown the priest received a reply that read: “GET OFF THAT SHIP.” Browne reportedly kept the message for the rest of his life.
It was upon deboarding at Queenstown that the priest captured what were likely the last photos of the ship on the surface of the water. (Another passenger and fellow photographer, Kate Odell, also deboarded at the same time and snapped similar photos of the ship as it steamed away.)
In addition to the haunting final images of the Titanic, Browne snapped numerous photos of life aboard the ill-fated liner, including the last known pictures of many of the crew, such as Captain Edward Smith.
The priest also captured the only known photograph of the Titanic’s wireless room, from which the ship’s wireless operators would transmit desperate SOS messages on the night of Apr. 14-15 until just minutes before the vessel sank.
In his history, O’Donnell argued that the “most newsworthy fact” about Browne is not his presence on the historic ocean liner but that he is now recognized as “one of the world’s greatest photographs of all time,” with a lifetime portfolio of nearly 42,000 pictures.
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His collection of Titanic photographs, O’Donnell noted, are not merely of interest for their historic rarity but also because they represent “early works from the hand of a man who went on to become a master of the art of photography.”
Upon his death in 1960, Browne was hailed as a “brave and lovable man” who “had a great influence for good,” beloved by Catholic and Protestant friends alike.
Reflecting on the Titanic tragedy, Browne himself wrote of learning about the catastrophic sinking — the news of which was “whispered at first, then contradicted, but finally shouted aloud in all its horror of detail by the myriad-throated press.”
In Ireland, meanwhile, “we did not forget those whom we had seen deprecating in all the joy of hope and confidence,” he wrote, “for we gathered in the great Cathedral to pray for those who had departed, and for those on whom the hand of sorrow had fallen so heavily.”
