Arthur Godfrey Peuchen

Arthur Godfrey Peuchen ( born April 18, 1859 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, † December 7, 1929 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) was a Canadian businessman, military and yacht athletes. He founded in 1897 the Chemie Group Standard Chemical, Iron & Lumber Company, of which he was president until 1914.

Life

Peuchen came in 1859 in Montreal, son of the coming of the Prussian province of Westphalia railway undertaking Godfrey E. Peuchen and its derived from Hull in England wife Eliza Eleanor Clarke to the world. He had two younger sisters, Alice and Nora, and a younger brother, Stanley Cooper Peuchen. He was educated in private schools in Montreal until the family moved to Toronto in 1871. There began his military career when he joined The Queen 's Own Rifles of Canada, a regiment of the Canadian Forces. In 1888 he became a Lieutenant, was appointed in 1894 to captain and in 1904 Major and 1911 he was Marshal at the coronation of George V of the United Kingdom.

On April 26, 1893, he married Margaret Thompson, daughter of John Thompson of Orillia, Ontario. With her he had a daughter, Jessie (* 1894) and a son, Alan Godfrey (* 1897). Peuchens maternal grandfather was a manager of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. His father worked as a railway entrepreneur in South America until he emigrated to Canada in 1850 to work for the Grand Trunk Railway. Although Peuchen lived with his family in Toronto ( 599 Jarvis Street), however, felt particularly on his property " Woodlands " on the shores of Lake Simcoe at home, which had a marina, a golf course and a tennis court.

He was interested in chemistry and perfected until 1897 a method to gain from hard wood and undergrowth useful chemical compounds, including acetic acid, acetone, methanol and formaldehyde. The products were used in Canada by the textile industry and by farmers during the acetone was used to produce Kordit. As a result, he founded in the same year, the Standard Chemical, Iron & Lumber Company, whose president he became. He possessed great woods at Hinton, Alberta, and also supervised the operations of the McLaren Lumber Company.

Peuchen was also an avid yachtsman and yacht owner, who crossed the Atlantic with his 20 - meter yacht Vreda and repeatedly won trophies for racing on the Great Lakes. At times, he was Vice Commodore and Rear Commodore of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club. He also belonged to several sporting associations like the National Club, the Hunt Club, the Ontario Jockey and the Military Institute at (all in Toronto ).

Titanic

His company gradually opened several locations and refineries in Canada, but also in London, Paris and Germany. For this reason Peuchen traveled a lot to Europe by ship. On the way back from one of those business trips he went on 10 April 1912 in Southampton as a passenger aboard the RMS Titanic, which took off on its maiden voyage to New York. It was his 40th Atlantic crossing. He finished the first class cabin C- 104. About the fact that Captain Edward Smith had command of the ship, Peuchen was not pleased because he thought it was inappropriate and too old.

When the Titanic sank on the night of April 15, 1912, Peuchen was informed by a steward that she had collided with an iceberg. He then went back to his cabin and took three oranges and a lapel pin with. However, U.S. $ 200,000 in stocks and securities he left because he did not believe that the ship would sink. As the lifeboat No. 6 was allowed to water on the port side of the boat deck, notice Peuchen that it was very weakly manned. Only two male crew members, Robert Hichens and Frederick Fleet, sat in it, otherwise only women and children from the first class, including Molly Brown, Helen Candee, Alice Cleaver and Leila Meyer, the daughter of Saks Fifth Avenue 's founder Andrew Saks. He spoke to the responsible officer, Charles Lightoller, and offered himself as an experienced yacht sailor in support for the boat crew. The standing near Captain Smith heard it and suggested to him to go to the underlying promenade deck, there to open a window and so to get into the boat. Instead, let Peuchen on a rope slide down into the already several decks deeper boat. This was an exception, as could board on the port side during the evacuation of women and children only.

For his conduct in lifeboat No. 6, he was later criticized sharply. He supported the helmsman, Robert Hichens in its setting, to ignore the demands of women, backtrack to the sinking site to accommodate swimmers. He also tolerated Hichens ' verbal attack on Molly Brown. It was also reported that he complained of fatigue and reached only to a rowing after he had been asked by Molly Brown so. On the other occupants, it seemed as if overestimated Peuchen and held as a professional sailor for a better commander than the helmsman, Robert Hichens. After the fall he made public the captain and crew of the Titanic disaster for the responsible.

Follow

For his salvation and for his attitude and statements after the sinking Peuchen in Toronto was largely viewed as a coward. There were increasing rumors that his forthcoming appointment as Lieutenant - Colonel of the Queen 's Own Rifles of Canada would not take place. Despite this, the appointment took place on May 21, 1912. In addition, he was awarded the Officer 's Long Service Decoration for his long-standing army belonging.

After the outbreak of the First World War, Peuchen withdrew from the Standard Chemical Company, to take over command of the Home Battalion The Queen 's Own Rifles often. Through bad investments he lost in the 1920s, a large part of its assets. Arthur Peuchen died in Toronto in 1929 and was buried at the local Mount Pleasant Cemetery. In the same film adaptation of Walter Lord's book about the sinking of the Titanic, A Night to Remember (1958), he was portrayed by actor Robert Ayres. 1987 Peuchens wallet including tram tickets, traveler's checks and business cards was found in the wreck of the Titanic.

Swell

• Biography of Arthur Peuchen in Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
• Combined career of Major Arthur Peuchen
• Arthur Peuchen and the Titanic
• Walter Lord. A Night to Remember. R. & W. Holt ( nonfiction, first edition 1955)

• Entrepreneurs ( Canada )
• Military person (Canada)
• Passengers and crew of the Titanic
• Canadian
• Born in 1859
• Died in 1929
• Man