The Lebanese on the Titanic: Dancing at the edge of tragedy

When the Titanic went down on April 15, 1912, it took 1,514 souls into the freezing Atlantic. Among them, more than 120 passengers were from Lebanon. Only 29 survived.

They weren’t aristocrats or businessmen. Most were villagers: farmers, tailors, mothers, and children who had left their mountain towns in search of a better life in America. They came from Hardine, Tibnine, Kfar Michki, Zgharta, El Shweir, and Serhel, carrying their dreams in small suitcases and their faith in survival. But as the unsinkable ship struck the iceberg and chaos unfolded, something remarkable happened. Witnesses say that several Lebanese passengers realizing their fate formed a circle and began to dance the dabke. It wasn’t madness. It was mourning. In Lebanese tradition, dancing can be part of a funeral rite a defiant way to honor the dead, especially those taken too soon. On that icy night, far from home, the Lebanese on the Titanic performed their own farewell, dancing not to celebrate, but to grieve together.

A grandmother who survived

One of the few survivors was Anna Thomas (Touma) from a small Lebanese village. She boarded the ship with her young son Georges, leaving behind a dozen families from her hometown, all of whom drowned in steerage, locked below deck. Her grandson, Joseph Thomas, would later write “Grandma Survived the Titanic”, where Anna recalled that when two Lebanese men asked her to pray, she replied: “I will, but I better find out what I have to pray about.” She survived, but never forgot the cries from below, the sound of her village sinking with the ship.

The woman who went white overnight

Another survivor, Shawnee (Shaaninee) Abi Saab Wahbee from Thoum, boarded the Titanic in Cherbourg. She had lost her husband in America and was returning to Lebanon after her son’s death. She was a mother trying to start again, one of thousands of women shaped by migration and loss. That night, she was thrown into a lifeboat dressed only in her nightgown and life jacket. She later told the Sharon Herald in 1937: “A scared young man leaped into the boat. Women shielded him with their gowns so the sailors wouldn’t see him, they would have shot him.” By morning, several around her were frozen to death. Shawnee reached New York alive, cared for by the Hebrew Sheltering Society, her belongings compensated at $150. Witnesses said that when she left Lebanon, her hair was black. A year after the Titanic, it had turned completely white.

Dancing between death and dignity

The story of the Lebanese aboard the Titanic is not just one of loss. It’s one of dignity, of people who, even in the face of disaster, held on to who they were. Their final dance in the cold Atlantic was not just a funeral rite. It was a symbol, of a people who have always met tragedy with resilience, who turn grief into rhythm, and who somehow, even at the edge of death, refuse to sink quietly.

Source: Ray Hanania, Arabs on Titanic: We Share the Pain but Not the Glory, Mediaoasis, originally published on April 1998,8, updated Dec. 2009.19.