NMH Magazine : Fall 2003

The Missionary and the Titanic

Annie Funk hadn’t planned to be a passenger on the Titanic. She was supposed to travel home to the United States on the SS Haverford, a ship sailing out of Southampton, England. But when she arrived in Southampton—having made the long, land-and-sea journey from Janjgir, India—she learned that the Haverford would be delayed by a coal strike.

And so, at her travel agent’s suggestion, she booked a second-class berth on the Titanic, which was making its maiden voyage. The world’s largest and most luxurious ocean liner, it was slated to reach New York in record time. Funk, 37, was an unlikely traveler on the ship—other than being American, she had little in common with such millionaire passengers as the John Jacob Astors, the Isidor Strauses, and Benjamin Guggenheim.

Funk had just one objective in mind: to reach her home in Bally, Pennsylvania, as quickly as possible. Her mother’s pastor had recently sent a telegram to India asking Annie to come home because Mrs. Funk was seriously ill. Thoughts of her mother filled Annie’s mind as the Titanic steamed out of Southampton on April 10, 1912.

Annie Clemmer Funk was born to piety and service. She came from a staunchly Mennonite family descended from German immigrants who’d settled in Pennsylvania in the 1700s. Her father was a deacon at the Hereford Mennonite Church, at which Annie worshipped and taught Sunday school.

As a young woman, she attended the State Normal School in West Chester, Pennsylvania, where she studied to be a teacher. She then came to Northfield to study at the Northfield Bible Training School, started by NMH founder Dwight L. Moody.

In a letter dated September 12, 1898, Hereford church elder Irvin Bechtel recommended Annie Funk to the Northfield Bible school: “She has a kind word and smile for all with whom she comes in contact and proves by her Christian influence that she delights to be in His service.”

At Northfield, Funk tackled such subjects as Bible study, Bible-teaching methods, song-leading, and domestic science. Like many of the students, she dreamed of becoming a missionary, even though mission work was new to the Mennonite church.

After attending Northfield from 1898 to 1901, she worked with immigrants in the slums of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and in Patterson, New Jersey. She found the work intensely rewarding, but her sights were set further. She waited eagerly for an assignment overseas; in 1906, at 30 years old, she was posted to India—making her the first female Mennonite missionary there.

Funk left for India in November 1906. The woman who was supposed to accompany her fell ill, so Funk made the long, hazardous journey alone. She settled in Janjgir, where her mission was to found and run a school for girls. In less than two years, she accomplished her charge, founding the Girls’ School at Janjgir in 1908.

The children of the Quakertown and Philadelphia Mennonite congregations raised money so Funk could purchase a bicycle. She used the bicycle extensively in India, carrying along her Bible and a portable organ. Funk wrote enthusiastic letters home, writing about her work with lepers and the teaching she did at the girls’ school.

Then, in spring 1912, she received the telegram that altered the course of her life: Come home at once. Mother very ill. Have purchased on two ships, Pater Shelly.

Two days into the Titanic’s voyage, Funk celebrated her 38th birthday. She’d never expected to spend her birthday in such luxurious circumstances. As a second-class passenger—her berth had cost £13—she had accommodations that were the equivalent of first class on other liners of the era. The second-class public rooms included a carpeted lounge paneled in sycamore and an oak-paneled dining room with linen-draped tables.

On the fourth day out, the ship was nearing Newfoundland. It was traveling at more than 22 knots in an attempt to better the maiden-voyage time of a rival liner, the Olympic. A 1:40 pm wireless message from the steamer Baltic reported icebergs and field ice in the area. Six hours later, another ice warning came across the wireless. The captain kept the ship steaming ahead, instructing the crew to look out for small ice.

As darkness fell, the weather was clear and the sea was preternaturally calm. Following dinner, nearly 100 passengers gathered in the second-class dining saloon for a hymn sing led by Reverend Ernest Carter. Many of the hymns dealt with dangers at sea, and when the passengers sang “Eternal Father, Strong to Save”—commonly known as “For Those in Peril on the Sea”—their tone was unusually hushed. Afterward Funk retired for the night, tucking herself into her stateroom bunk.

By eleven o’clock, the Titanic’s public rooms had nearly emptied, and most passengers and off-duty crew members were in bed. Only the smoking rooms in first and second class remained open. The Titanic hurtled forward at more than 22 1/2 knots.

At 11:30 pm, a lookout in the crow’s nest spotted an iceberg in the ship’s path. The warning went out, and Quartermaster Robert Hichens, who was at the helm of the ship, spun the wheel hard to starboard. The nose of the ship slowly began to turn. At first it looked like it would clear the iceberg, but then a terrible scraping noise sounded from the starboard bow. The Titanic had collided with the iceberg ten minutes after it was sighted.

Passengers who looked out their windows had no idea what the black mass sliding past was. Many who’d been sleeping were jarred awake by the ship hitting the iceberg. Some headed for the promenade deck to see what had happened. Without the sound of the ship’s engines, an uncanny silence hung over the Titanic.

The ship had been called a marvel that “God himself couldn’t sink.” Watertight doors between the boiler and engine rooms, closed moments after the collision, were supposed to make the ship unsinkable. But the Titanic began taking on water immediately. On G-deck, the mail hold rapidly filled with water, sending bags of mail floating to the top of the stairs. The iceberg had ruptured the first six watertight compartments, opening more than 200 feet of the Titanic to the sea. It was only a matter of time before the ship sank.

Captain Edward Smith began to organize an evacuation of the ship. He told the crew to prepare the lifeboats and ordered stewards to rouse passengers.

Funk was asleep when a steward banged on her cabin door, shouting, “Put on your lifebelt and come up to the boat deck!”

She pulled warmer clothes over her nightdress and strapped her lifebelt over her bulky costume. Funk followed other second-class passengers as they trooped up to the boat deck, where officers and crew were preparing lifeboats for launching. People in various stages of dress and undress mixed together on the deck; many women clung to their husbands. Most passengers took refuge from the freezing air in the first-class lounge and the gymnasium. The ship’s band struck up a ragtime tune, adding a weirdly festive note to the confusion.

At 12:25 am, the first lifeboat was lowered into the Atlantic. The water was glassy smooth. More lifeboats followed: Nos. 5, 7, 6, 3, each loaded with women, children, and crewmen who could man the boat. Every five or six minutes, crew members set off rockets from the bridge as a desperate plea for help. By around 1:20 am, six lifeboats had left the Titanic, none of them full.

Funk stood quietly, letting others push past her as they hurried toward the lifeboats. When panic began to rise in her, she silently repeated her favorite Bible verses. She had a premonition that she would see her mother soon.

The lifeboats were filling quickly now; as passengers saw the desperateness of the situation, they filled the boats to overflowing. Where early lifeboats had held as few as a dozen occupants, they now held 60 and 70.

A crew member grabbed Funk’s arm and steered her toward a lifeboat. The Titanic had sunk dramatically at the bow, and the forepeak was almost entirely submerged. Looking at the sea, Funk saw deck chairs, casks, and doors bobbing in the water. As she took her seat on the lifeboat, she turned back and saw a mother and her two children waiting to board the already full boat. What she had to do came to her as clearly as light. Too many families had been separated that night; how could she save herself—a single woman—at the expense of a mother and her children?

Annie Funk gave up her seat and returned to the sinking Titanic.

Just before 2:20 am on April 15, 1912, the foundering liner split in two. Its bow slid into the water, while the stern settled back until it was almost on an even keel. Then the stern began to sink, its aft section rising nearly perpendicular to the water. The people on board clung to benches, railings, ventilators—anything that would hold them. Many fell into the ocean.

The stern of the Titanic stayed vertical and motionless for anywhere between a half second and several minutes, then plunged forever into the sea. 

Annie Funk was one of more than 1,500 people who died in the Titanic’s sinking. Her name appears on the missionary plaque in Sage Chapel on the Northfield campus. The school she founded in Janjgir was renamed the Annie C. Funk Memorial School.

When a friend expressed trepidation at Funk’s first transatlantic voyage in 1906, she replied, “Our heavenly Father is as near to us on sea as on land. My trust is in Him. I have no fear.”