Thomas Andrews
Andrews was only thirty-nine at the time of the disaster. Some survivors reported that they’d seen him throwing deck chairs into the water for people to cling to, but they may have confused him with another man. It was a confusing scene.
I should add, apropos of the last panel, that I don’t know to what extent if any Andrews was responsible for the fate of the Titanic. I don’t think he’d told anyone, “You can definitely crash this thing right into an iceberg no problem,” and he may not have been responsible for the horrible discrepancy between the number of passengers and the number of lifeboats. He certainly wasn’t responsible for the fact that the law didn’t dictate an adequate number of lifeboats because no boat that big had ever been made before, nor for the panic that caused crewmen to shove off in lifeboats that could have held many more people.
Imagine how proud he must have felt to be aboard his creation on her maiden voyage.
Wow, and the actor was 48 at the time, in the movie. This has no bearing on how you feel about him. It’s just the opposite of how I think of aging and casting typically working together!
Maybe they didn’t think people would buy a guy that young in such an important role. A hundred years ago people didn’t linger in protracted adolescence the way they do today, but I bet it was impressive even then that a man not even forty was chosen to design this new wonder of the world.