Thomas Byles in ministry and his final hours on board the RMS Titanic. Thomas Byles Thomas Roussel Davids Byles (26 February 1870 – 15 April 1912) was an English Catholic priest who was a passenger aboard the "RMS Titanic" on its maiden voyage when it sank after striking an iceberg during the night of 15 April 1912. He was reported as being amidst the throng of trapped passengers on the ship's rear deck in its final moments of descent, audibly praying. Thomas Byles was born Roussel Davids Byles in Leeds, Yorkshire, the eldest of seven children of the Reverend Alfred Holden Byles,
RMS Titanic in popular culture Convergence of the Twain" (1912), his "Lines on the Loss of the "Titanic"", was a considerably more substantial work. His poem sets "Titanic" in a pessimistic post-Darwinian contrast between the achievements and arrogance of man and the humbling power of nature. The building of "Titanic" in its unprecedented scale is contrasted with the origins of its nemesis, following a familiar nineteenth-century notion of the double or "doppelgänger" (a theme most famously realised in "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"): <poem> And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace and hue, In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg