In June 1912 there was a reception for him back in Wales, at the Barmouth Picture Pavilion, and over 1000 people attended. Here he was presented with gifts of nautical equipment from grateful survivors. They were inscribed:To Harold Godfrey Lowe, 5th Officer RMS Titanic. The real hero of the Titanic. With deepest gratitude.Harold Lowe had found a place in history and he was born and died in Wales He ran away to sea when he was perhaps as young as 14. An impetuous decision perhaps, but it was one which set him on the path of fate.Harold Lowe was born in November 1882 in Llandrillo yn Rhos and spent his childhood in Barmouth, learning to sail on the Mawddach estuary. When the time came, he objected to his fathers suggestion that he should take up an apprenticeship. I was not going to work for anybody for nothing. So off he went. He ended up spending five years working along the west coast of Africa before he joined the White Star Line. He worked his way up the ranks. He served as Third Officer on a couple of their liners before he was assigned to the Titanic in March 1912. The largest, safest and most luxurious ship in the world. A great honour that promised to be the start of a glittering career. To be sure, he would make his mark, but not in the way he anticipated.Lowe was one of the officers who tested two lifeboats to fulfil Board of Trade requirements before the Titanic left Southampton. But because this ship was truly unsinkable, lifeboat provision was hardly important. In fact Captain Smith decided not to hold a lifeboat drill to familiarise passengers and crew with procedures. It was the last time such a thing was allowed to happen.To begin with everything was entirely routine and Lowe got on with his watches.On Sunday 14 April 1912 he was relieved at 8.15 pm and went straight to bed. This would explain why, when the ship hit the fateful iceberg at 11.40 pm, he was fast asleep. Contact with a large solitary iceberg popped rivets and buckled hull plates below the waterline. From that moment the great ship was doomed.When Lowe responded to the commotion and made it up on to the deck, there were passengers wearing lifebelts and the boats were being made ready for lowering. It was at this time that they started to realise that there were insufficient berths in the boats for the number of passengers they carried. But then, why should there have been? The Titanic was unsinkable, an idea offering little comfort as the great ship began to settle and tilt in the water. Harold could feel it under his feet, the bow moving downwards and, anticipating the imminent chaos around him, he returned to his cabin to collect his revolver.He started to help passengers into boats, though he was particularly concerned that some were being over-filled and that the boats would thus collapse. He had experience of boats from his childhood, but many of the other seamen had not, and they had to man and lower 20 boats without even having practised the necessary procedure.It was for this reason that he had an encounter with Bruce Ismay, the managing director of the White Star Line, who was travelling on this auspicious voyage. He told Ismay to get out of his way, for he had work to do. In fact he told him to get the hell out of the way. He knew what he was doing, he knew experienced crew had to take control and because of this they lowered Boat 5 with 39 people on it. His outburst would later endear Lowe to the press, since Ismay was vilified for surviving when so many others who put their faith in his company did not. Thus Harold became a spokesman for so many others in that moment.To us, Lowes use of excitable language to his boss is understandable in such circumstances, but it was a shocking transgression to his contemporaries. It became a notorious moment, a key element in the mythology of the sinking, but it was not half as notorious as when Lowe fired his revolver to establish a sense of order when he crossed over to the other side of the ship to supervise the lowering of Boat 14.These were completely unexpected circumstances and Lowe rose to the occasion, taking control and bringing an order that would allow a lucky few to survive. He took responsibility, seeing that duty transcended status. The scene on the decks was peculiar. People were having to deal with the one thing they never felt would happen, and in the early stages of the sinking many of them thought it would all be sorted out. It was impossible to think that the cold open sea was safer than the huge illuminated liner. It was nothing more than a ghastly mistake.The instruction that it was women and children first meant that some couples refused to be separated and watched the drama in an almost detached way, arm in arm. With insufficient boats and no ordered way of allocating places, such a random approach to survival was perhaps inevitable.Some boats were lowered with insufficient passengers. In other areas of the ship there were scenes of chaos, with men disguising themselves as women to get themselves a precious place in a lifeboat. These boats were in danger of being overloaded, particularly Boat 14, where passengers tried to force themselves on board as it was being lowered. Lowe forced out a young man hiding beneath a seat, and fired his revolver into the night sky to stop the boat being swamped by desperate men. He was the officer with responsibility for the boat. I saw a lot of Italians, Latin people, all along the ships rails and they were all glaring, more or less like wild beasts, ready to spring.Lowe later apologised to the Italian Ambassador for such unnecessary comments.The tackle for lowering the boat had become jammed and it stopped about 5 feet from the surface. Lowe ordered the ropes to be cut and the lifeboat slapped down into the sea. Whilst they baled out the boat with their hats, Lowe took them all away from the Titanic.He assembled other lifeboats into a small fleet , tying some of them together for safety. He was completely the man in charge, squashing more survivors into the boats under his control. Whilst the survivors felt they were overcrowded, Lowe knew there was still room.From the comparative safety of their vantage point, Lowes passengers saw the Titanic sink. The stern rose high into the air, the lights went off, came on again and then went out forever. She slid beneath the calm sea. It was 2.20 am, a little over three hours since the collision with the iceberg. In the silence that followed, those in the lifeboats could hear the terrible cries of people struggling in the freezing water.When he decided it was safe he took his boat back into the wreckage to see if he could rescue anyone - the only person to do so. Even so it was a hard choice. He knew that he could not go back in too soon or he would be swamped by desperate people clinging to the boat in huge numbers. He had to wait for their numbers to diminish.When they eventually went back they were confronted by a terrible scene. There were hundreds of bodies, dead from hypothermia, floating in the sea, supported by their lifebelts. They could not row because of the number of corpses. They had to push their way through. They rescued four men, one of whom died quite soon afterwards. As they retreated from the awful wreckage they all burst into tears.As dawn broke he sailed the lifeboat back to the others and they waited, ready to be rescued by the Carpathia.His job was done. At the Board of Enquiry he was asked what he did next. He replied, There was nothing to do. All they could do was wait and stare at the huge expanse of water under which the Titanic had disappeared so quickly. It was an unlikely scene, for the Atlantic had been flat calm throughout the night.Of course many of the passengers were grateful for what he had done. But he refused any money that was offered him. I will never take money for doing my duty.The Titanic was his place in the sun, though in later life he rarely spoke about it at all and he willingly settled back into a more welcome obscurity. He married Ellen Whitehouse in 1913 and had two children. They were the future; the Titanic was behind him.But Lowe never lost his connection with the sea and spent the rest of his working life on it in some capacity or other. The First World War he spent in the Royal Naval Reserve and the second as an air raid warden. He died of a stroke on 12 May 1944. He was 61.Much later he would be played by the Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd in the famous film which acknowledges his role in recuing survivors when he rescues the fictional lead Rose from the icy sea. In reality it was a Chinese man called Fang Lang who Lowe found and rescued from a floating door, not a love-lorn heroine.I cannot imagine that he would have enjoyed all the fuss and attention of a film.If you wish to pay your respects to Harold, you must leave the A55 in North Wales and take the B5115 to Llandudno. As you reach Rhos the road takes a sharp turn to the right and there, at the top of the rise on the right hand side, you will find the church. Harold is close up against the boundary wall of the ancient Llandrillo Church, next to the road.As befits a modest man of principal, his grave is understated and discreet. It carries no hint at all of the part that he played in one of the events of the century.Devoted HusbandHarold Godfrey LoweCom.R.D. R.N.R.I Thank my God uponEvery RemembranceOf You.