On the night of April 14-15, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg and slowly began to sink. And most people may know in every detail the story of the fictional passengers of the Titanic Jack and Rose, as imagined by the screenwriters and "captured" by James Cameron, but few know that there were also Greeks in the most famous shipwreck in the world passengers.
The reason for four men who came from the village of Agios Sostis in Messinia. All four drowned in the icy waters... The young men had started their journey to the USA, hoping to build a better life for themselves and their families. They believed that the "American dream" was waiting for them...
30-year-old Panagiotis Lymberopoulos was the oldest of the Greek passengers on the Titanic and the only one with ties to the US. According to everything that has become known, Panagiotis Lymberopoulos was the owner of a small factory in New York and had returned to Greece to witness his son's baptism. Despite his wife's pleas, a few days later he decided to return again to the "Promised Land".
His two other fellow citizens, the Chronopoulos brothers, decided to travel with him. The older brother, 26-year-old Apostolos Chronopoulos was a worker. The young man boarded the Titanic from Cherbourg together with his 19-year-old brother Dimitris. As both brothers were third class passengers, their bodies were never found. On the contrary, the lifeless body of Panagiotis Lymberopoulos was located by the sailors of the ship "Mackay Bennett" and identified.
Panagiotis Lymberopoulos was the only one who managed to board one of the lifeboats, and that's because he spoke English and managed to reach the deck. This lifeboat, however, was spotted too late and the passengers had already died. The last Greek passenger on the Titanic was 19-year-old Vasilios Katavelis. His hope was to make it to Milwaukee, USA.
His body was found by rescue crews and found on it was a train ticket from New York to Milwaukee, a small mirror, two notebooks, a comb and a key. In fact, his personal belongings were handed over to his brothers Petros, Panagiotis and Lambrini at the port of Piraeus some time later. The tragic irony is that both Lymberopoulos and Katavelis changed their tickets to be able to travel with the two brothers.
In the mountain village of Agios Sostis in Messinia, there is a small memorial to the four male victims of the Titanic. "In memory of the four Greek victims of the Titanic in the year 1912 who sought a better fortune in the USA for themselves and their families. Vassiliou G. Katavelos - Panagiotou K. Lymberopoulos - Apostolos M. Chronopoulos - Dimitriou M. Chronopoulos" reads the monument, which was created in 2001.
SOURCE:CNN.gr