The story of "Titanic" hides many personal dramas, one of which is connected with Belgian artist Berta Mayne – a woman whose fate was marked by love and tragedy on the memorable night of April 15, 1912.
Born in Brussels in 1887, Berta worked as a popular cabaret performer among the elite circles. During the fateful winter of 1911, she met Quig Edmund Baxter – a young hockey player from Montreal, whose sports career had ended due to an eye injury.
Their love affair developed rapidly. When Quig shared his plans to travel with his relatives to Montreal, Berta immediately decided to accompany him. Registering under the pseudonym "Miss de Villiers", she boarded the first-class of the luxurious ship.
The fatal night of the collision with the iceberg changed everything. Quig learned from the captain about the inevitable catastrophe and managed to place his mother and sister in lifeboat number 6. Berta, however, initially refused to leave the ship without him.
In the critical moment, the famous passenger Molly Brown managed to convince Berta to stay safe. Quig remained on the doomed ship and perished – his body was never found.
After the tragedy, Berta spent several months with her beloved's relatives in Montreal, before returning to Europe and continuing her singing career in Paris. She remained unmarried for the rest of her life.
Paradoxically, no one believed her stories about the experience. Neither her nieces nor her acquaintances accepted the story as true. Only after her death in 1962 did her personal documents confirm all the details.
The preserved letters, photos, and personal belongings definitively prove the authenticity of her account of that unforgettable night when "Titanic" sank in the cold waters of the Atlantic, taking the lives of over 1,500 people.
The story of Berta Mayne remains one of the many human stories of love, loss, and survival – a testimony to the individual drama amid the massive tragedy of "Titanic".