Just doing some research for the boys' family tree project for school, and looking for a picture of Charles Valentine Clarke that they could copy. I found some new info on Encyclopedia Titanic1, a telegram Charles sent to his parents:
April 10, 1912; On board R. M. S. Titanic.
Dear father and mother,
Just a line to let you know we are both well and are doing justice to what we have paid for. I hope everything in the business is going on all right. What sort of time did you have at Easter – plenty to do, as you had the races extra?
We are well on the way to Queenstown, which we expect to reach about noon tomorrow. We spent quite a long time at Cherbourg. A tender brought all the passengers to our ship. We nearly had a collision on leaving Southampton, which I will tell you about in my next letter if we reach New York. We had a roll before we got into Cherbourg. We are just going to bed now, as the time is getting on.
Kind regards from us both, I remain your loving son, Charl.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN IF WE REACH NEW YORK???
Also some info from the census I had not seen before about where Charles was living in 1901:
Charles was listed elsewhere as a boarder at 2 Hill Side, New Haven, Sussex, the home of a Mr and Mrs John Gay who were seamen missionaries with Charles apparently their clerk. Charles later followed in his father's footsteps and became a dairy vendor.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in Hythe in Kent. Married + father to two, I am a full-stack web engineer, and I do mostly js / nodejs, some ruby, python, php ect ect. I like pubbing, running, eating, home automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.