Lester.J Mitcham author page

Lester J. Mitcham biography

Lester J. Mitcham is a Titanic scholar whose research has focused particularly on the passengers and crew of RMS Titanic, including the number of people aboard the ship and the survival statistics associated with the disaster.

Mitcham was one of eleven researchers who contributed to Report Into the Loss of the SS Titanic: A Centennial Reappraisal, alongside Samuel Halpern, George Behe, Bruce Beveridge, Mark Chirnside, Cathy Akers-Jordan, Steve Hall, Tad Fitch, Charles Weeks, Dave Gittins and Bill Wormstedt. Published by The History Press in 2011, the book re-examines the sinking using evidence and research accumulated since the original American and British investigations of 1912.

For the book, Mitcham compiled the chapter examining Titanic’s passengers and crew, including detailed figures for the numbers aboard, their passenger classes or crew departments, and the numbers lost and saved. His research concluded that Titanic left Queenstown with 1,317 passengers and 891 crew, giving a total of 2,208 people aboard.

Mitcham has also contributed research to the Titanic community through Encyclopedia Titanica, where his work has addressed passenger lists, ticketing, cabins, crew records and differing historical calculations of the number of people aboard the ship. His research article RMS Titanic Passenger Numbers: The Statistics of the Disaster has been cited in later work on the disaster.

Report Into the Loss of the SS Titanic: A Centennial Reappraisal was reissued by The History Press in 2016.