Five postal clerks were assigned to Titanic’s mail room.
The Sea Post Office on G Deck handled mail carried under contracts with both the British Royal Mail and the United States Post Office Department. The five clerks—three Americans and two Britons—sorted incoming and outgoing letters and parcels, reportedly working about 13 hours a day and processing as many as 60,000 items daily.
When Titanic struck the iceberg on 14 April 1912, the clerks tried to save roughly 200 registered mail sacks by moving them toward the upper decks. Their work continued even as the mail room was being threatened by rising water. All five clerks died in the sinking; only John Starr March and Oscar Woody’s bodies were recovered.
A common mix-up is confusing these postal clerks with Titanic’s Marconi radio operators, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride. The radio operators handled wireless messages, while the postal clerks supervised the ship’s physical mail.