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Galloway, NJ – For several years, Kneeland Whiting contemplated donating one of his late grandfather’s pen and ink drawings to The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Earlier this year, on the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, he knew the time was right.

Whiting’s grandfather Samuel Ward Stanton was a steamboat builder’s son who, along with 1,513 others, lost his life in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, after the "unsinkable" Titanic struck an iceberg and sunk to the bottom of the frigid North Atlantic. Before his tragic passing on the doomed passenger liner’s maiden voyage, Stanton was prolific in his documentation of American steam vessels through his detailed pen and ink drawings. At the age of 18 his drawings were being published and he was “producing (the drawings) of American steamers with dedicated industry,” according to Seaboard magazine. One such work depicts a Delaware River steamboat named “Richard Stockton,” and the drawing is dated 1851.

“Many of the original drawings are displayed on walls in my home,” said Whiting, a resident of Beach Haven, NJ. “For a long time, I thought it would be a good idea to present this particular drawing to the College.”

“I thought a lot about my grandfather’s fate every year on the anniversary,” Whiting said. Stanton’s name appears as a second class passenger, age 42, from New York, NY, on the list of victims. An accomplished artist, writer and publisher at the time of his death, Whiting said Stanton was in Europe to conduct research for murals he was preparing to paint on the Hudson River Dayline ship the “Robert Fulton” when he wrote home to Whiting’s’s grandmother that he was “fortunate to have obtained passage aboard a new steamship…that was one of the greatest ships ever built and was unsinkable.”

Later, a female survivor told Whiting’s grandmother that Stanton had given the woman his life preserver shortly before he went down with the ship.

“I knew that on the 100th anniversary of the most famous maritime disaster in history, I wanted to make this presentation to the College,” Whiting said.

During a recent visit with Stockton President Herman J. Saatkamp, he did just that.
Whiting, a retired professor at Middlesex County College and his wife Suzette presented the newly-framed original work and a booklet, Steam Vessels of the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays and Rivers published in the early 1960s, which includes a reproduction of the “Richard Stockton” drawing.

“This drawing is a remarkable piece of history,” Dr. Saatkamp said, “and I am delighted to gratefully receive it on behalf of the College.”

Dr. Saatkamp said he was still considering locations where the drawing would be displayed.
 

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