Last year, I posted an article about our family’s move to the U.S. from England. In that article, I mentioned that I did not know why the family, originally planning to travel on the Titanic, took and earlier ship, the Baltic, instead. My brother, who clearly paid much better attention to our grandfather when we were younger, has an explanation: the National Coal Strike of 1912. This was a strike by Britain’s coal miners with the goal of setting a minimum wage for their work, and it was the cause for many shipping cancellations.

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There is a family story that the Baker family, headed by my great-grandfather William Henry Baker, had originally planned to come to the United States on the Titanic, but had changed their plans and come on different ship. While I don’t have any documentation of that, I believe it to be true, since my grandfather, Idris Baker, told me about it several times. He should have known whether it happened or not, because he was there; he was about 8 years old when the family made the trip.

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