Karl Harbeck, at the grave of his great-great-uncle cinematographer William Harbeck, has been researching his uncle's doomed movie contract with the Titanic.
William Harbeck was a leading filmmaker at the turn of the century, an ardent traveler whose images of cowboys and rodeos were shown as far away as Paris and Moscow.He was the first cinematographer to arrive at the San Francisco earthquake in 1906. And he was the first to shoot scenes of the vast Alaskan wilderness.
But what few people know is the roaming cameraman undertook another one of the great assignments of this century: the filming of the Titanic's maiden voyage.
And whatever footage he took of the doomed event 87 years ago lies in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
"His body was found, but his films were never recovered," says George Behe, a past vice president of the Titanic Historic Society. "It's one of those untold stories."
The discovery of the 44-year-old man's role on the ocean liner is another chapter in the never-ending saga of the Titanic and the people who perished when it sank on April 15, 1912.
The giant of a ship -- three football fields long -- struck an iceberg four days after it left England and slipped under the icy waters off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Of the 2,200 people who booked passage, 1,513 died.
Though there has always been information about Harbeck, researchers say it became lost over time. It wasn't until last year when Behe began digging into the backgrounds of several passengers that he uncovered Harbeck's fated assignment.
While browsing through newspaper clippings, Behe found a story in the San Francisco Examiner that was published two weeks after the Titanic sank. The article said Harbeck was engaged by the White Star Line, which operated the majestic liner, to film the Titanic from the time it left the dock at Southhampton, England, to its arrival a week later in New York.
The plan called for Harbeck to get off the
ocean liner at Sandy Hook in New Jersey and jump into a tugboat, allowing him to film the liner as it entered the New York harbor, the article said.
"As far as we can tell, he was the man who was supposed to record this event through motion pictures," says Behe, who has been researching the event for 30 years.
Since the disaster, many entertainment movies have been made of the Titanic, but "the real movie will never be seen," says Behe. "It went down with the ship."
Another person who has been researching the cameraman's role on the vessel is Karl Harbeck, 46, a great-great-nephew of the noted cinematographer.
The distant relative has spent the past three years examining the life of his uncle. "But it wasn't until six months ago that I learned that he was actually onboard to film the Titanic," he said. "If his movies had been saved, it would have offered a whole new dimension to the Titanic."
After reading about Behe's recent discovery on a Web site, Harbeck said he began to find information corroborating the story.
In a book that was written after the disaster, Lawrence Beesley, an English passenger who escaped on one of the 20 lifeboats, described an "American kinematograph photographer," on board busily taking motion pictures of the activities.
He described a "French woman" who was with the cameraman as he filmed.
In fact, Harbeck was accompanied on the Titanic by a Parisian woman whose name was Henriette Yvoys, records show.
In one incident, as the Titanic was leaving the dock at Southampton, Beesley told an amusing story about how the cameraman was furiously cranking his boxy camera.
At the time, the Titanic came within a few feet of colliding with another steamship, the New York.
Beesley said the cameraman "followed the whole scene with eager eyes, turning the handle of his camera with the most evident pleasure as he recorded the unexpected event on his films."
"It was obviously quite a windfall for him to have been onboard at such a time," said Mr. Beesley, who has since died.
Indeed, several days before the maiden voyage, Harbeck even discussed his upcoming assignment. In a letter that he wrote to a friend in Seattle, he described the plans to film the voyage and to transfer to a tug just before the Titanic plied through the New York harbor.
Titanic records show he checked two motion picture cameras into steerage, along with 110,000 feet of film.
Experts who have studied the Titanic say there is probably no way of verifying whether a contract existed between Harbeck and the White Star Line.
In most cases, any work agreements were struck through handshakes, said Philip Roderick, chairman of the Marine Museum at Fall River, Mass., which displays more than 200 artifacts of the Titanic.
He said he was surprised to learn that the White Star Line hired Harbeck to film the voyage. "It's just not that well-known," he said.
What is known about Harbeck is that he was one of the foremost outdoor cinematographers, according to published accounts in the early 1900s. Described by early motion picture magazines as a "risk taker," he once jumped into a bull ring in Mexico to get closer shots of a charging bull.
And he took chances by wading through dangerously rapid waters and around jagged rocks to take pictures in the great Pacific Northwest.
"The more I look into his life, the more I realize he really took a lot of chances to get good pictures," says his nephew, who lives in Blissfield, Mich.
Harbeck was born in Toledo, Ohio, around 1864. He married Katherine Stetter in 1888 and founded several businesses in Toledo and dabbled in inventions.
"He was a very creative person," says his nephew.
Harbeck became interested in the newly unfolding technologies, especially motion pictures, and he later traveled west. He shot scenes of rodeos and was one of the first cinematographers to capture the breathtaking scenes of the Pacific Northwest.
He was the official photographer for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, where he took films of unexplored Alaska. In early 1912, he showed his films of the glaciers and seals to a group of Wall Street investors who were interested in mining in the territory.
Later in the year, he was to show the same films to President William Howard Taft and his Cabinet, according to Moving Picture magazine.
In February, 1912, Harbeck sailed for Europe to show his films in London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin and Moscow.
During the exhibition, he wrote a letter to his wife on April 1, saying he would be setting sail on the Titanic and to forward his mail to the Hotel Cadillac in New York.
"It was the last his family heard from him," said Karl Harbeck.
Eight days after the Titanic sank, the cameraman's body, wrapped in a lifevest, was found floating in the icy waters. In his pockets: money, jewelry, false teeth and a motion picture union card.
His body was sent to Toledo and buried with a simple inscription on the gravestone: "Victim of Titanic."
"Unfortunately, his films were never found," said his nephew. "Imagine if at least one of these reels were saved or thrown on a lifeboat. . . . That would have been a movie."
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