Titanic survivor from China beat the odds and faced racism to land in Wisconsin

Growing up, Tom Fong didn’t know much about the early life of his father, Fong Wing Sun. There were vague stories about Wing Sun having survived a shipwreck when he was a young man, grasping onto a piece of wood — possibly even a corpse — to stay afloat. But Tom assumed that it had happened near China, where his father immigrated from. 

It came as a shock to Tom in 2003, almost two decades after his father had passed, when a relative told him his father had survived the most famous shipwreck ever: the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912. 

Wing Sun was one of eight Chinese men onboard the ship. He did not make it on to any of the ship’s lifeboats while they were launching, and instead he ended up in the frigid waters. He miraculously survived when he came across a piece of wood — perhaps a table or a door — that he was able to hoist himself up onto and tie himself to with his belt. A lifeboat later rescued him. 

Tom, who owns the Cozy Inn Chinese restaurant in Janesville, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that learning about what his father endured as a young man has helped him better understand his father. 

“There are certain things about his nature that I couldn’t understand,” Tom said. “He didn’t like large crowds, and he didn’t really care for a lot of noise. I remember when we went to family gatherings and things like that, he could only sit so long, and then would leave early because I don’t think he cared for all the large crowd noise. I think that’s because of his experience on the Titanic that night, of hearing the screams. So looking back, it sort of makes sense.”

His father’s story is featured in the 2020 documentary “The Six,” and now a book, “The Six: The Untold Story of the Titanic’s Chinese Survivors,” by Steven Schwankert, who also worked on the film. Schwankert and Tom joined “Wisconsin Today” to talk about the Chinese survivors of the shipwreck and Wing Sun’s life. 

According to the book, there were 2,208 passengers and crew on board the Titanic, where 712 survived. There were only eight Chinese men onboard, but six survived. By comparison, only 104 of 327 British passengers survived. The high survival rate of the Chinese fueled a lot of misinformation and resentment among families of other passengers, Schwankert said. 

Newspapers published articles about how the men were stowaways, had forced their way onto lifeboats or pretended to be women — none of which were true. 

The men were third-class passengers being sent by their employers to the United States, where they would have transferred to other ships to work in the engine room or as cooks.

“Strangely enough, their voyage on Titanic was probably one of the first real pleasure cruises that they ever had,” Schwankert said. 

The Chinese Exclusion Act was in effect at the time and none of the Chinese survivors were allowed into the United States when they arrived in New York — they went on to other ships to work. 

“In the wake of the Titanic sinking, there [were] so many people trying to make sense of it, and the Chinese were just such easy targets. You had women who had lost their husbands, you had children who had lost their fathers, and they’re wondering, ‘My father isn’t here, but these men are here. Why are they here?’” Schwankert said of the backlash. “A lot of that anguish was directed toward them, and they never had a chance to defend themselves. They were maligned before they ever even reached New York. And then they passed through New York very quickly and went on to their work ship. There was no one around to speak for them, and no one interested in doing so.”

Wing Sun worked for another eight years on ships before settling in Chicago and Milwaukee. He passed away in 1986.

Wing Sun never talked to his son about being the target of the vitriol after the Titanic sank, but Tom once witnessed his father reacting to racism. Tom was about 4 or 5 years old, and his father took him to look at an apartment that was for rent in Milwaukee. When the owner opened the door, he told Wing Sun, “‘I would never rent to someone like you,’ and called my father a ‘yellow dog,’” Tom said. “My father [punched] him right there in front of me.”

Schwankert believes that so many of the Chinese passengers survived because they were experienced seamen who knew the layout of ships. They also knew to go toward the part of the ship that was closest to the water — not the stern, which was rising up as the ship slowly sank. 

Four of the Chinese men made it into one of the last lifeboats launched from the sinking ship. Wing Sun was not so lucky and wound up in the icy water, until he came across that piece of wood and used his belt to fasten himself to it. 

Schwankert and other researchers were able to trace much of Wing Sun’s sea years by checking ship manifests, both before and after the Titanic. They also found evidence of his rescue from testimony and interviews given after the shipwreck. Charlotte Collyer, a second-class passenger, recalled being in a lifeboat that went back to look for survivors. 

“We saw a floating door that must have been torn loose when the ship went down. Lying upon it, face downwards, was a small Japanese,” Collyer reported. “He had lashed himself with a rope to his frail raft, using the broken hinges to make knots secure. As far as we could see, he was dead.”

There was only one Japanese man on the Titanic, who survived in a different lifeboat. The researchers are certain that the man floating in the water was Wing Sun. Despite some hesitation over saving who they thought was a Japanese man, the people in the lifeboat nevertheless pulled Wing Sun into the boat. 

Schwankert took part in an experiment at the University of Portsmouth in England to get an idea of what this would have been like. He was immersed in 54-degree water to see how well he would perform doing what Wing Sun did that night. (The water temperature the night the Titanic sank would have been about 32 degrees, but researchers believed it unethical to put him in water that cold.)

“We really wanted to understand — someone immersed in the freezing water that night, how long would they be functional?” Schwankert said. 

At the beginning of the experiment, he tied a knot on a stick, and he did so again after being in the cold water for 35 minutes. The first attempt took him four seconds; the second took 18 seconds. 

After the second attempt, Schwankert said, “I remember clearly my brain sending the message to my hands and to my fingers to tie the knot, and just not being able to do it as quickly as I would have liked to. The message didn’t get through. So you can imagine swimming through the water on that cold and very dark night, with lots of other people in the water, thrashing around and the noise and trying to, in Tom’s father’s case, trying to find his two companions, and then ultimately, you know, just trying to save his own life. And luckily, he was successful, but he was one of the very few who was picked up in the aftermath of the sinking.”

To learn more

Steven Schwankert and Tom Fong will be speaking at three upcoming events in Wisconsin.

• Thursday, May 29 at 6:30 p.m. at the Boswell Book Company, 2559 N Downer Ave., Milwaukee.
• Saturday, May 31 at 11 a.m. at the Cozy Inn, 214 W Milwaukee St., Janesville.
• Sunday, June 1, 2 p.m. at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, 75 Maritime Drive, Manitowoc.