Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, 5th Baronet

Sir Cosmo Edmund Duff Gordon ( born July 22, 1862 in London, † April 20, 1931 in South Kensington) was a British fencers and landowners, who won the silver medal at the 1906 Summer Olympics with the epee team and in April 1912 the sinking of the RMS Titanic survived.

Biography

Cosmo Edmund Duff Gordon, was born in 1862 as son of Cosmo Lewis Duff Gordon and his wife, the former Anna Maria Antrobus.

In 1896 he received the title of 5th Baronet of the British nobility. In the same year he met the British fashion designer and designer Lucy Christiana Sutherland, sister of the novelist and screenwriter Elinor Glyn, whom he married in 1900.

In 1906 he participated in the Summer Olympics in Athens and took the sword team the silver medal. At the Olympic Summer Games 1908 in London, he was a member of the organizing committee of the fencing events.

1912 Duff Gordon and his wife and her secretary Laura Mabel Francatelli passenger on the Titanic, the clock collided at 23:40 on April 14th on the North Atlantic with an iceberg and sank on April 15 at 2:20 clock. He brought his wife and her secretary around 1:00 clock to lifeboat No. 1 and had the good fortune to get to the first officer William M. Murdoch, of the so-called Birkenhead principle of " women and children first " is not quite as strict as some of his colleagues interpreted and let him also embarking on demand. He later came on board the RMS Carpathia, hurrying to the rescue. There he paid the crew members of the Titanic, which had been in his boat, each previously promised five pounds as a reward and compensation for the loss of their belongings and their loss of earnings ( with the sinking of the ship and the claim ended on their wages for the time after ).

After his return to England Duff Gordon was summoned before the British Committee of Inquiry into disaster. There he had to confront the rumors that he had the crew of the non- crowded lifeboat bribed so they do not return rows after the sinking of the ship to the scene to accommodate possible survivors that may a feared capsizing could bring the boat. In the final report of the Committee, he was acquitted of every accusation.

Sir Cosmo Edmund Duff Gordon died in 1931 at the age of 68 years.

In the Titanic film version of 1997, he was portrayed by Martin Jarvis.