The Backstory: Tiny kidnap victims survive the Titanic disaster

The 113th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic is just weeks away, but the disaster still resonates. Two of the 710 survivors were tiny little boys, traveling with their father under an assumed name...after he kidnapped them from his ex-wife. They were the only children to survive without a parent or guardian that night. The older son, just 4 at the time, lived until 2001 when he was 92. He shared their amazing story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
In a few weeks it's going to be the one
hundred and thirteenth anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Now,
the thing is, people are still fascinated with the story
and still intrigued by the backstories of the ship, the
seven hundred and ten people who managed to survive, and
the more than sixteen hundred who were lost in the
twenty six degree water of the North Atlantic. There are

(00:22):
so many stories, but one of the most interesting is
the tale of two tiny boys who were the only
children to survive without their parents. I'm Patty Steele, kidnapped
by their own father, only to lose him on that
frigid April night. That's next on the backstory. We're back

(00:42):
with the backstory. In the early part of the nineteen hundreds,
the divorce rate in the United States was point seven
out of one thousand marriages and point two out of
one thousand in France. Today in the US it's four
times as high. In France, ten times higher teen twelve.
Divorce was incredibly rare and considered socially unacceptable. That brings

(01:06):
us to the story of two very small French boys
who had just survived their parents' divorce. Michelle Junior and
Edmund Navtil were only four and two years old. Their father,
Michelle Senior, was looking for a better life as a
divorced man. His reputation had taken a hit, Plus he
missed his little guys terribly. His ex wife, Marcel, had

(01:28):
custody of the children, but she agreed to let her
husband take them to spend time with him over Easter.
This was his chance. Like a lot of European immigrants,
he wanted to search for a better life in America.
He decides to book passage on a ship under false
names so the French police won't catch up with him.
His plan probably would have worked. It was easy to

(01:50):
disappear to a new place in those days. But the
problem is he booked second class tickets on the RMS Titanic.
Seemed daring and pretty excite to launch into a new
life aboard the maiden voyage of the most talked about
ship in the world until four days into that trip. Again,
Michelle Junior was only four, but he later remembered the

(02:12):
first few days as being a wonderful journey. Said Michel.
I remember looking down the length of the hull. The
ship looked splendid. My little brother and I played on
the forward deck and were thrilled to be there. But
on April fourteenth, just before midnight, the ship hit an
enormous iceberg. One survivor said it looked like a mountain

(02:33):
above water, even though seven eighths of the iceberg is
actually below the water line. It took two hours and
forty minutes for the ship to fully slip beneath the
ocean and plunge more than twelve thousand feet to the bottom.
In the meantime, people were scrambling to survive. Michelle Junior
remembers his dad coming back into the cabin with another man.

(02:56):
They bundled up the tiny boys and carried them down
to the life boats. All the intrigue of the kidnapping
of Michelle's Senior's sons was nothing compared to what they
were about to face. The little guys got a last
glimpse of their father as he dropped them into the lifeboat.
Years later, Michele Junior said, the last thing their father

(03:16):
said to him as a lifeboat was about to be
lowered into the icy water, was my child, when your
mother comes for you, as she surely will tell her
that I loved her dearly and still do tell her.
I expected her to follow us so that we might
all live happily together in the peace and freedom of
the new world. Nice words, But he had changed all

(03:37):
their names to travel across the ocean. So Michele Navertiel
Senor perished in the frigid ocean at the age of
thirty one. His little boys were the only children to
survive the disaster without their parents or a guardian by
their side. They suddenly became media darlings as much as
you could in the days before radio or television. No

(03:59):
one knew who they were, since they traveled under the
false names their dad had given them. Oddly, four year
old Michelle Junior was ticketed under the name Lewis and
two year old Edmund was booked as Lola. The press
called them the Titanic orphans. Reports said they answered any
question from the French consul with a simple WII that

(04:21):
means yes, because they were very distracted by the new
toy boats. They had been given brilliant toy boats for
kids who had just survived a shipping disaster. Okay, while
authorites tried to track down any family, the boys stayed
at the home of another survivor on New York City's
Upper West Side. She came from a wealthy family, and

(04:42):
her father spoke with reporters. They asked if the boys
could be identified by tracking their tickets. Her father snottily replied,
I have never traveled second cabin or steerage. I only
traveled first class, so I don't know anything about such matters.
That comment really showed the class divide in those days.

(05:02):
Their survival rates aboard the Titanic also really highlight the
difference of the three hundred twenty four first class travelers
two hundred one survived, but only one hundred eighty one
of the seven hundred and eight third class travelers made
it off the ship alive. Even Michelle Junior realized that fact,
saying later, there were vast differences of people's wealth on

(05:25):
the ship, and I knew later that if we hadn't
been in at least second class, we'd have died. Meanwhile,
back in France, Marcel was frantically searching for her sons.
She realized that Michelle Senior had disappeared with their little boys,
but she had no idea where they were or that
they had been on the Titanic newspaper articles about the

(05:46):
boys in the United States had photographs of them. Finally,
as those stories got published in Europe about a month later,
marcell spotted one of the articles with a photograph of
her little boys. She confirmed their identities with the authorities,
and she immediately climbed aboard a ship That's Brave and
made her way to America to fetch Michelle, Junior and

(06:08):
Edmund in New York City. The families sailed back to France,
where the so called Titanic Orphans would spend the rest
of their lives. Michelle lived to be the oldest surviving
male of the infamous shipwreck, passing on in two thousand
and one at the age of ninety two. Little brother
Edmund had died back in nineteen fifty three, not the

(06:29):
new life their father had hoped for. Hope you're enjoying
the backstory with Patty Steele, Follow or subscribe for free
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(06:52):
and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The
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Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes
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(07:12):
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for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces
of history you didn't know you needed to know.