“Titanic Orphans” Michel and Edmond Navratil - 1912

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They were dubbed “Titanic Orphans” when they turned out to be the only children who remained unclaimed by an adult after being rescued from the Titanic disaster.

Via Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Titanica:

Michel and Edmond were born in Nice, France to parents Michel Navratil, a tailor and Slovak immigrant to France, and Marcella Caretto, an Italian.

The marriage was troubled, and in early 1912, his parents separated. The boys were put into temporary care, while judges decided who would get custody. They spent Easter Monday with their father, who did not return them at the end of the day. Mr. Michel, who was about to be served with a bankruptcy notice, decided to emigrate to the United States before the notice was served, taking the boys with him, stealing them away from their mother. After buying White Star Line tickets in Monte Carlo, they travelled to England where they boarded the RMS Titanic.

Michel, Edmond, and their father boarded the Titanic at Southampton, England on 10 April 1912, as second-class passengers. For the journey, using a stolen passport, Navratil assumed the alias "Louis M. Hoffman", and the boys were booked as "two children". On board the ship, he led passengers to believe that he was a widower. He let the boys out of his sight only once, when he allowed a French-speaking woman, Bertha Lehmann, to watch them for a few hours while he played cards.

After the collision with the iceberg at 11:40 pm on 14 April 1912, Navratil and another man went into the cabin to wake his two sons up. Michel Sr. placed Michel and Edmond in Collapsible D, the last lifeboat successfully launched from the ship. Michel, although not quite four years old at the time, later claimed to remember his father telling him, ”My child, when your mother comes for you, as she surely will, tell her that I loved her dearly and still do. Tell her I expected her to follow us, so that we might all live happily together in the peace and freedom of the New World."

Their father died in the sinking, and his body was recovered by the rescue ship, Mackay-Bennett. In his pocket was a revolver. Because of his assumed Jewish surname, he was buried in Baron de Hirsch Cemetery, Halifax, a Jewish cemetery in Nova Scotia.

While in Collapsible D, Michel was fed biscuits by first-class passenger Hugh Woolner. When the rescue ship Carpathia arrived at the scene, he and Edmond were hoisted to its deck in burlap sacks.

Since they were toddlers and spoke no English, they could not identify themselves and were soon referred to as the "Titanic Orphans". French-speaking first-class passenger Margaret Hays cared for them at her house until their mother could be located, which occurred as a result of newspaper articles which included their nicknames Lolo and Momon. She sailed to New York City and was reunited with them on 16 May 1912. She took them back to France aboard the Oceanic.

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