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 wherein the world, as Western man has known and shaped it, is undermined from within, not overcome from without; and ends not in holocaust but with a quiet slip into oblivion.” Don Lynch's "Inside the Titanic" (1997) presents an overview of the ship and the disaster, illustrated by the artist Ken Marschall, whose pictures of "Titanic" and other lost ships have become famous. Susan Wels' book "Titanic: Legacy of the World's Greatest Ocean Liner" (1997) documents the salvage work of RMS "Titanic" Inc, while Daniel Allen Butler provides a scholarly examination of the "Titanic" story in his 1998 book "Unsinkable: