On November 1, we celebrate all of the saints that are "unknown" to us.  It is probably a huge number and if we are blessed enough to make it to heaven will spend a portion of eternity getting to know and love these saints.  I found this story in my inbox several months ago and saved it for "another day".  I've always been fascinated with the Titanic and so this story really caught my eye.  I'll post it in 3 sections because it is fairly lengthy but hopefully you will enjoy it and be blessed by it.

Fr. Byles and the “Ship of Dreams”

By Mark Fellows

    There was no doubt any more that the ship was going to sink to the

bottom of the ocean. A deck hand urged the priest to get on a lifeboat but

he refused. In the last minutes of his life he ministered to dozens of

frightened people, hearing confessions and giving absolution. Gathering

perhaps one hundred people around him, the priest led them in the Rosary.

Everyone, Catholic, Protestant, and Jew, recited with fervor: "Holy Mary

Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death...."

    Then waves swamped the boat deck and washed them all into darkness.

Although the body of the priest, Fr. Thomas Byles, was never found, many

survivors remembered his courage and selflessness on that fatal night. How

he came to be a Catholic, then a Catholic priest, and finally a casualty at

sea, is an interesting story.

Conversion and Priesthood 

    He was born Roussel David Byles, in England in 1870, the year of

Vatican Council I and the seizure of Rome by the Italian Republic. His

father, Dr. Alfred Holden Byles, was a well-known Protestant minister. The

Byleses would have seven children in all, and at least three, including

Roussel (who took the name Thomas when ordained), converted to Catholicism.

    Roussel studied mathematics and theology at Oxford. Dissatisfied with

the theological shortcomings of his Congregationalist upbringing, he

converted to the Church of England. He soon became dissatisfied with

Anglicanism, and wrote his brother William: "The fact is I find myself

unable to recognize the Anglican position. I do not, however, feel myself

anymore satisfied with the Roman position. I have given up going to

Anglican communion, and have postponed my ordination as a deacon."

    William had already converted to Catholicism, and the two brothers had

a lively religious correspondence. Roussel converted in 1894, an event of

which The Table wrote:  

      Probably no one on earth knows all he went through-all the prayers he

offered, all the works of              mortification which he

practiced…. About Trinity Sunday arrived a letter which seemed to breathe

a note of despair that he was ever going to get the grace he was looking

for, but on Corpus Christi the last letter came. Two days, before, whilst

making his meditation, the fog had cleared away.

    There had been a short visit to the Jesuits at St. Aloysius and he was

to be received into Holy Mother Church and to make his first Communion on

the feast day of Corpus Christi, surely an appropriate festival for one who

had been led perhaps more by his devotion to the Eucharist than by anything

else to the altar where alone the Eucharist has its dwelling.

    After converting, Byles tutored a German prince, then worked as a

professor at a seminary. In 1899 he went to Rome to study for the

priesthood, and was ordained in 1902 as Fr. Thomas Byles. An intellectual

of slight build and frail health, he was eventually assigned to St. Helens,

a small, rough, rural parish in Essex, England. Many of the parishioners

lived miles away from church, and Fr. Byles would bicycle through the

country in search of Catholic houses. The efforts took a toll on him, but

Mass attendance at St. Helens increased dramatically.

    Although Byles also taught local boys how to box in a barn behind the

Church, he was more of an intellectual athlete, a thinker and a writer. He

had a somewhat nervous disposition, and a tendency to be argumentative. A

nearby priest who knew Byles found him so, anyway, yet nevertheless

admitted:

    But all his work was good, in the judgment of all, whether conference

papers, or the ensuing debates, or public controversy. A thorough grasp of

facts, exact reasoning, and clear enunciation of conclusions characterized

his writing. In a word, he was just what one would expect a scholar of

Balliol to be.

    No one knew if Fr. Byles experienced internal rebellion at being

placed in the rural outback. The objective evidence is that he was deeply

committed to St. Helens and his parishioners, and expended all his energies

for their spiritual welfare. In a letter to another brother, Byles wrote:

    I wish I could impart to you something of the bliss of knowing with

certainty what God has revealed for our support and help. It is a happiness

that grows more and more every day and which affords a truly marvelous and

altogether supernatural support in all temptation, and against all evil. It

is however beyond my power to impart this -- the most I can do is to pray

God to give to all I love this wonderfully great Gift which I have

received....

    Fr. Byles's brother William studied with the Jesuits until he realized

he did not have a religious vocation. He relocated to America and became

president of a business. In 1912 William wrote his brother to ask him to

celebrate a wedding Mass in New York for William and his fiancee. Fr. Byles

agreed, and booked ship transport to New York through White Star Line, a

major British shipping firm. When he received his ticket he saw he was

booked for the maiden voyage of the sensational new ship, the RMS Titanic.

The "Ship of Dreams"

    At the time, transporting people across the ocean had become a

lucrative business: there were growing numbers of wealthy travelers, and

even more immigrants wishing to come to America. There was fierce

competition for passengers between shipping lines in England and Germany.

The idea for Titanic grew out of this competition.

    Originally, White Star Line intended Titanic (and sister ship Olympic]

as a response to arch rival Cunard's introduction of the Lusitania, the

fastest, most elegant ocean liner in the world at that time. Bankrolled by

American millionaire J.R Morgan, White Star Line created plans for a ship

whose size, luxury, and modern conveniences would be on a hitherto

unimagined scale. In the shipyards of Belfast, Ireland, 15,000 men began

building Titanic.

    Three years later, the largest moving object ever constructed was near

completion. An observer described Titanic as a ship "so monstrous and

unthinkable that it towered over the buildings and dwarfed the very

mountains by the water....A rudder as big as a giant elm tree, propellers

the size of windmills-everything was on a nightmare scale."

    The ship was the length of three football fields, and weighed over

46,000 tons. Three anchors, each weighing 15 tons, were required to slow

it. Each link in the anchor chain weighed 175 pounds. The rudder weighed

over 20,000 pounds. Twenty-nine boilers, each large enough to house a

double-decker bus, were daily fed the 5,000 pounds of coal required to move

the ship. Dubbed "the monster of the sea," when fully completed Titanic was

as elegant as she was powerful. The architect, Thomas Andrews, spared no

expense to ensure the comfort of the ship's wealthy customers. A Turkish

bath, a squash court, gymnasium, and a special dining room for maids and

valets were some of the features. Expansive, winding staircases, ornate

imported wood paneling, luxurious carpeting, glass-domed ceilings, a

telephone system, world class cuisine, and other detailed amenities made

first class accommodations on Titanic equal to that of luxury hotels.

    The Titanic's captain, E.J. Smith, declared: "I cannot imagine any

condition which would cause the ship to flounder....Modern ship-building

has gone beyond that." Noting the ship's watertight design, an engineering

magazine declared that Titanic "embodied all that judgment and knowledge

could devise to make her immune from all disaster." A seaman spoke for many

when he said, "God Himself could not sink this ship."

    Some called Titanic "a monstrous floating Babylon." More commonly she

was called "the ship of dreams," for the undreamed of luxury afforded its

first class passengers, and the chances for a new life offered to its third

class passengers, mostly immigrants seeking their fortunes in America. The

maiden voyage of Titanic included a cross-section of humanity: millionaires

like John Jacob Astor, celebrities, politicians, and hungry immigrants from

Ireland, France, Germany, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Croatia, and Syria.

They all knew they were part of an historic event.

    Fr. Byles boarded in Southampton. Upon finding his second-class

lodgings, he wrote a letter to his parish housekeeper, Miss Field. After

complaining about losing his umbrella, Fr. Byles described the ship,

concluding:

    That makes eight decks above the water line. When you look down at the

water from the top deck it is like looking from the roof of a very high

building. The English Channel was decidedly rough to look at, but we felt

it not more than when we were in Southampton water. I do not much like the

throbbing of the screws (the ship's engine), but that is the only motion we

feel. I shall not be able to say Mass tomorrow morning, as we shall be just

arriving at Queenstown and there will consequently be some confusion, but

after that there will be no difficulty about it....I will write as soon as

I get to New York....