acism towards Asians from the western world isn’t a new thing, but we need to be glad that people are finally fighting against the racism presented in the West against all races. By now, the sinking of the Titanic has become a very popular story where besides all the various conspiracies or theories as to why the ship actually sunk all details have been settled, at least we thought…

Recently a lesser-known story from the Titanic has been brought to light and upon my research, there are still many unexplained pieces of information because someone was trying to delete this from history, to be more exact the existence of six Chinese survivors that were denied entrance despite just being saved from the disaster.

Information coming to light

QC Media made a documentary about this story entitled The Six which came out in 2020. James Cameron, the executive producer of this documentary was surprised by the information he found out as well as how difficult it was to find the information. This is because the border authorities tried to hide this incident.

After many months of deep research, it was found out that eight young men of Chinese descent were aboard the Titanic. Their records as survivors were deleted from history whilst many accused them of “traveling illegally” as if they sneaked onto the ship to migrate to a different country but as records from White Star Line (the company that owned the Titanic) show the tickets were purchased by the eight individuals.

On the 14th of April 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg causing it to sink over a period of two hours. Of the 2,200 passengers and crew members, 1,517 died during the sinking, and within that number were also two of the eight Chinese passengers.

Four of them were seen in the same boat as Joseph Bruce Ismay, the chairman of White Star Line who owned the Titanic. Ismay testified that “four Chinamen were in the boat” although many people over time kept saying that no men of Asian descent were inside any lifeboat.

One of the six boarded a different lifeboat as he was looking for his friends and the last sunk with the ship but managed to float on a piece of wood until he was found by a lifeboat that decided to turn back in search of other survivors after the ship fully submerged.

Apart from the information given in Ismay’s testimony, there are very few pieces of evidence to indicate their existence and this is sure because someone didn’t want this story to reach a national or international level.

One other piece of information about these survivors was a mention of Chinese passengers rescued on the 19th of April 1912 copy of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle where the Chinese passengers are described to be less human or less worthy to be saved than passengers of other ethnicities or races.

Mistreated in inhumane ways for being a minority

Once they had reached the shore of New York on the 18th of April, the six Chinese men were pulled apart from the other survivors and detained based on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This act was implemented back in the late 19th century due to the United States wanting to maintain white “racial purity” despite Chinese people within America making up only 0.002% of the whole American population at the time.

Although this particular law was passed due to other small problems between China and America, it restricted the immigration of Chinese people into the United States.

Something else that is unfair is that all other survivors managed to pass a screening at Ellis Island in order to receive medical aid based on the experience they had, whilst the Chinese men were taken into custody without receiving any medical help.

In the following 24 hours, the Chinese survivors were boarded on the next ship to be sent back to British soil where they had come from. Those who had seen them upon their arrival in New York disgraced them by saying they were cowards for not giving their lives to other people. These sorts of comments implied that due to them being a minority they were not worth as much as white people.

As they were kept in custody there was nothing that they were able to do and no one to contact for help. Besides being treated in such inhumane ways, those at the border who took them into custody tried to get rid of their traces, as if they had never been saved from the Titanic.

Special thanks must be given to Arthur Jones, James Cameron, and Steven Schwankert who for the past three years have been doing extensive research in finding the fate of these six survivors, and now that they have gathered all of this data, they were able to film the documentary and pay the proper respects to these survivors.

Interestingly enough, James Cameron who is the producer of the film Titanic said that his inspiration for the final scene in the Titanic movie came from the rescue of Fang Lang, the Chinese man who was rescued by the returning lifeboat.

If you want to see more detailed information on this story I recommend watching the documentary The Six which is quite good and sadly underrated.

All of this goes to show that racism is very predominant within the United States and that it is not a new thing, but something minorities have been faced with for hundreds of years and no one knows. Today we have social media, a powerful technology that gives people the ability to have a voice in this argumentative world.

I am writing this article in the hopes to spread the truth about these six survivors as well as their existence despite others trying to get rid of it in the past. This is why I ask that you share this story with others so that they hear the truth, and so that they hear the story others tried to erase from history.