Crew member Thomas Jubilee Mayzes, left, tended furnaces on the ship
A mum whose great-great-granddad survived the Titanic will finally be able to mark his grave after a ten-year search.
Maya Tipper, from Southampton, knew that the story of Thomas Jubilee Mayzes was a big part of her family history.
Her great-grandmother had a telegram framed on the wall that simply read ‘SAFE’, as it was all he could afford to send home as notification he managed to escape when the ship hit an iceberg.
Thomas Jubilee was a stoker or fireman, responsible for tending the furnaces on board. He is thought to have spent some time in the freezing water and never fully recovered from the ordeal.
His descendent Maya, 49, is part of a Facebook group of people whose relatives were on Titanic, where members share stories and help each other with ancestry searches.
But the key piece of information about where he was buried was missing – until a man got in touch who has made it his mission to track down the graves of people on board the ill-fated ship.
His death notice written for a newspaper in 1928 proved the ‘final piece of the puzzle’
Maya’s twin sons holding a placard commemorating their great-great-great grandad at the opening of Southampton’s SeaCity Museum (Picture: Supplied)
The unmarked grave was found in Morden Cemetery, London (Picture: Supplied)
Maya is now in the process of having his unmarked grave legally transferred to her, in order to give him a headstone and commemorate his life.
The development came after Trevor Baxter, graves coordinator of the British Titanic Society, saw her post in the group and sent her a message asking if she knew where Thomas Jubilee was buried.
He had been searching for over a decade, so he could add the information to a map showing graves of anyone on board the ship.
She told him she didn’t know – and in fact, she assumed he would have been cremated, as the family were not well off.
But soon afterwards, she found a key document that meant the mystery could be solved.
‘My nan’s recently gone into a care home and she’s got a few bits,’ Maya told Metro.co.uk.
‘In February I was with my mum and we were looking through them. We found his death notice written for a paper, and it said he was buried in Morden.’
She sent Trevor a message to let him know, and it was the ‘final piece of the jigsaw’ for him, allowing him to find the unmarked patch of grass in London where Thomas lies.
Finding the grave there was a surprise, as although he was from Battersea originally, he lived in Southampton for years including at the time of his death from typhoid aged 40.
Thomas Jubilee Mayzes never recovered from the sinking and died aged 40
Maya Tipper now plans to mark his grave and commemorate his life
Mary Ann Mayzes, widow of Thomas, with their grandson Thomas George (Picture: Supplied)
The notice in the paper in 1928 read: ‘Clothed only in his dungaree working suit, Mr Mayzes jumped into one of the last lifeboats.
‘When rescued 12 hours later by the “Carpathia” he was unconscious. His health was permanently impaired, though he did one or two more Atlantic voyages afterwards.
‘During the war he volunteered for the Navy, but after three months was invalided out of the service.
‘For the past seven years he was a confirmed invalid and bedridden for three years.’
Although Thomas survived the sinking, he was never able to move on from such horrific events, and he died the same year his only child was born.
His widow Mary Ann Turner did not remarry, and remained in the family home where she died on December 16, 1960.
Today is the 112th anniversary of the disaster, but its hold on the public’s interest remains as strong as ever.
NHS data analyst Maya is pleased that she now has more information about her family tree, with the Titanic connection especially important as she lives in Southampton, where the ship sailed from the day before it sank on April 15, 1912.
Her twin sons, now grown up, were even part of a procession when the SeaCity Museum opened in the city, holding a placard with the photo of their great-great-great grandfather alongside other descendants of those on board.
Maya’s grandad Thomas George Mayzes, who was named after his grandfather (Picture: Supplied)
Thomas Jubilee’s widow Mary Ann Mayzes, who never remarried after his death (Picture: Supplied)
Although Maya’s family often talked about their Titanic connection, some of the details were lost until now.
‘The fact that the grave is unmarked does make me a bit sad,’ she said.
She has already paid a fee to the cemetery to get paperwork to take over the grave and give it some recognition, and all that remains is to sign a declaration in the presence of a witness.
Trevor Baxter, 70, who tracked it down, told Metro.co.uk that the information in the death notice was the final clue he needed to find the grave.
As soon as he found out, he emailed Morden Crematorium ‘and by luck they found it straight away. It’s unbelievable, because he died in Southampton – and that’s why I couldn’t find it.’
The retired coal miner and glass foundry worker, from Wakefield in Yorkshire, has now dedicated his life to Titanic and estimates he has discovered specific locations of between 400 and 500 graves previously lost to memory.
‘More often than not I’m on the computer from 9am until 11pm, seven days a week,’ he said. ‘Researching these sorts of things is not very easy either. There are some I’ll never find.’
Explaining why he is so dedicated to finding the graves, he said: ‘The ship was the biggest that had been built at the time, and mainly by hand.
‘It’s a big part of history and I believe they should be remembered.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.