The Extraordinary Life of Titanic's Richest Passenger

The man who embodied the excess of the American Gilded Age, yet so too the nobility it aspired to...

Colonel John Jacob Astor IV, Bain News Service, c. 1900

NO. 124 – MALE – ESTIMATED AGE 50 – LIGHT HAIR & MOUSTACHE.

CLOTHING – Blue serge suit; blue handkerchief with "A.V."; belt with gold buckle; brown boots with red rubber soles; brown flannel shirt; "J.J.A." on back of collar.

EFFECTS – Gold watch; cuff links, gold with diamond; diamond ring with three stones; £225 in English notes; $2440 in notes; £5 in gold; 7s. in silver; 5 ten franc pieces; gold pencil; pocketbook.

FIRST CLASS. NAME- J.J. ASTOR IV

It might be said that only in his final moments does a man reveal the truth of his soul. To be selfish, or selfless, in the face of death is indeed the ultimate test of character — one that eclipses all other deeds of your life.

It is a test many faced on the night of the 14th April, 1912, as RMS Titanic sank into the freezing embrace of the North Atlantic. Few, however, would have so stark a choice as the stricken liner’s wealthiest passenger — John Jacob Astor IV, the most eccentric and scandal-ridden heir of the Gilded Age.

With a net-worth of roughly $87 million in 1912 dollars¹ (equivalent to about $67 billion today²), Astor was among the wealthiest men in the world, and culturally akin to an Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos figure today. The comparison is particularly apt in the case of the former, as Astor financed the research of none other than Nikola Tesla.

Yet for a figure as towering as he was, today little heed is given to the grander story of ‘Colonel Astor’, as the press called him, and astonishingly less to that of his family’s rise — which is perhaps history’s most striking example of the ‘American dream’. For Astor’s great-grandfather, though born the son of a humble German butcher in the Holy Roman Empire, died the wealthiest man in the United States, and was the nation’s first multimillionaire.

By the time John Jacob Astor IV boarded the Titanic for its maiden and final voyage, he had made his name not simply as a businessman, but as a traveller, author, inventor, and even as a soldier too. Yet he had also been embroiled in scandal, and perhaps would have been remembered much differently by history were it not for his heroic end on that fateful night in the North Atlantic.

Today, we recount the story of the Astor family’s rise to power, the tumultuous life of its most famous member, and the night that forever defined his legacy. For Astor’s sacrifice and stoic embrace of his earthly end is emblematic of the nobility that walks hand in hand with the tragedy of Titanic — where human error and human honour battle for prominence in our collective memory of the disaster…