By Kristaq Laka
Memorie.al / It passed over a century of superhuman horror, since 100 years ago, it took 1517 human lives, and today it is taking on more and more legendary proportions. The sinking of the Titanic that WIHTE STAR LINE constructors called unsinkable sank, the unsinkable sank, but its legend hovers and does not sink. The mystery of the drowning in that dark midnight, between April 14-15, 1912, will never “speak”. It will hover and trouble the heads of many researchers, scientists, writers, journalists, directors and it will wander around the bottom of the ocean, struggling. The enigma will remain a mystery and will live on from immortality. The hour of death of the “Titanic” became the hour of birth of its tragic history, its legend.
No piece of the Titanic, not even the whole thing if it is brought up from the bottom of the ocean, will ever “speak” more than the 700 survivors have spoken. At most, it will be a museum of sighs, pains and curiosities, tourists and visitors. In that tragic midnight, the voices of Albanians were also heard. But no one, no Albanian government, asked for 100 years in a row: Were there Albanians on the Titanic? Frozen interest like the tears of the “Lawn of Tears”!
Tullga Caravans
On a page of one of the old registers of the Office of Civil Status of the city of Korça, the trunk of the Tullga family is found, among others the names of three brothers: Vangjeli, Kristaq and Thanasi. You are impressed by the detailed information about each, the languages they spoke, and the profession – caravanners and finally: Left on the curves in America, in 1912.
As Vangjoja tells me, who has entered into a detailed study of the family tree, and especially the Titanic event, which for ten decades in a row, has been present in the family and his tribe, the surname Tullga, had remained from their nickname ” brick”, (“tulkë” in the Korcar dialect, (tulgë), because the men of this tribe were bald.
They lived in Malaveci e Outerwear, above Dishnica, a village that no longer exists, except for Murishte, which time has flattened and hidden underground. The men of this tribe practiced the profession of caravanner, served people with horse-drawn carts and carts, to transport them from one place to another, but also in Macedonia, Greece and Bulgaria. It was the time when America aroused interest for the whole world, but also for Albanians.
The Tullga family also decided to send their three sons, Vangjeli (Gelan) 30 years old, Kristaq (Kicen) 27 years old and Thanas (Naskë) 25 years old, to America. All three married, all three powerful, learned with difficulty and eating their hands for work.
After taking out the “navllot” – (visas), they left from Korça, from “The Lawn of Tears”, to Greece.
The guide was Visari or Viska, as he was fondly called, who was from the Tullga tribe and lived in Athens and dealt with guides for emigrants. After they had spent a few days in Piraeus, he escorted the three Tullga brothers, on a Greek steamer, to England. Word had gotten out that a very large, very luxurious, never seen, new brand and very safe “pamporr” was going to leave England for America. The pride of the seas, they said.
The three Tullga brothers could not miss the chance to travel with this giant. The family, when they found out that the boys were going to travel with her, were overjoyed, because they were assured that they would arrive safely, because the ship was sinking.
Weeks and months passed…! The Tullga family anxiously awaited news of the boys’ arrival in America. The wait turned into a nightmare, as the black news about the sinking of the Titanic had also invaded Albania. In Tullga’s house, there was a feeling of worry: “Did the boys escape?”?!
After a long time, a letter arrived from Boston. The envelope was not surrounded by black bands on the sides, which meant that it did not carry a ghost. It was written by the older brother, Gela. More or less, it said: We are alive. We were saved with the help of the great God. We have seen death with our eyes. We are busy. Me and Kicja, in an enamel factory, Naska, barber has entered Boston. Don’t worry about us.
Thanasi had left his wife, Sofina, and a little girl in Albania. They send news that the girl was not well…! He sensed something and returns. Upon his arrival home, the lamentations resumed. Both his servant and his wife, Sofia, who was from the Beçka tribe, the sister of Nasi Beçka from Çifligu, had died. Pain upon pain! Wound upon wound. The daughter-in-law of the middle brother, Kristaq, who had left a son…!
Thanas’s story: “How we rode an iron mountain”
The confessions of Thanas, for the midnight of April 14-15, 1912, became events of the day in the Tullgave house. Anyone who came to meet him, to greet him or to welcome him, would definitely ask him about the tragedy of the Titanic. Those stories were passed down from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation and have reached our days, that Vangjoja, he tells me with such emotion and correctness, as if he had experienced that event himself, although his grandfather died when he was a high school graduate in Korça.
“My grandfather, Thanas Tullga,” says Vangjoja, “had a phenomenal memory and was very curious.” He remembered in detail, every detail of the trip. It was Wednesday, April 10, 1912, when they boarded the Titanic in Southampton harbor and were left speechless when they saw it.
It was not for nothing that the rumors had spread that, until then, no such magnificent steamer had crossed the seas and oceans. It was unsinkable. It was like an “iron mountain, the size of Morava, a city of its own, floating in the sea and the sea glittering with lights and luxury, so much so that the eyes darkened and the breath was taken,” said Naska.
Viska had cut them cheap tickets, in Class III, where all of them were emigrants, poor people going to the new world for work. During the trip, they started chatting with some Greeks, that we got along, since they knew Greek, while some Greeks knew English, because they had been in America, and they also acted as translators for them.
“It was like in a madhouse where people weren’t mad, but they passed them”!
Sunday, April 14, 1912. The clock marked 23.40 minutes. It took another 20 minutes for midnight to arrive. While traveling in the cold waters of the North Atlantic, the Titanic shook, as if struck by a mountain. Iceberg…! The underwater ice mountain treacherously attacked the iron mountain from below. Upstairs, in First Class, the horror had begun. “We in Class III didn’t know what was going on upstairs,” said Naska. A representative of the crew had given them the fatal news, which the Greeks had translated. The ship sinks in about 2 and half hours…! Captain Edward Smith orders her abandonment. Save whoever can…”!
By now, the great captain, Smith, was in command of the ship. They were all three on deck. There is no mouth to neither tell nor pen to write the horror they had seen. Strange scenes, full of horror and horror. “It was like in a madhouse, where people weren’t crazy, but they passed them by” – said Naska…! Only the musicians played the plainest instruments. The musical instruments were crying, the musicians were also crying, they were sending people and themselves to the other world with music! A horror!
“We were horrified by the terror. That life is beautiful, especially when death looks you in the eye, you don’t approach it, said Naska. We had to make a decision. And we got it. The three of us jumped into the water. As if written by God. No matter what, we should be together, by each other’s side, even at the bottom of the ocean. We had to escape. The decision gave us strength and hopes to live. How? Without a boat, in the middle of the ocean?! We looked around. Empty tables shaking, chairs sliding…!
Who could become the means of salvation?! They decided…! They threw the table, and then took a chair… and we jumped with them, straight into the water…! Screams and screams, as if they came out of the water and ascended to the sky, like a prayer and a curse. Swimming with chairs, they approached the table, which they had thrown and was lying on the water. We put our hands on her. We fought with death. We had to escape death. But death followed us. It took courage, bravery, and luck.”
They drove away death, with the courage of age and of indomitable men. Suddenly, he saw an overturned boat floating on the water. As if they saw a thread of saving light, small. They put it on her, along with a few others, and turned her back completely. An overturned boat, turned fate again and brought him back to life. That boat became the savior of survival. They drove it with their hands. They fled to escape the suction of the vortex that the ship would create when it sank completely. They ran away across the ocean, without direction, they ran away and the great cold, before the icy death, was not felt.
After 2 hours and 40 minutes, the treacherous ice mountain defeated the iron mountain…! That’s how long it took the ocean to swallow that iron mountain. And, as he could not swallow it right away, he tore it in two, then, as he let out a gurgling sound, as the ocean trembled, he swallowed it and carried it 2,787 m. deep. The Titanic had “drank”, inside its lungs, 25 million liters of water. And above all, so many people who had never drowned.
This is why Thanas Tuglla said that; “Titanic” was drowned by Qibra!
Thanas Tullga, how he organized the family and the son of Kristaq, after his wife had died, took the road to America again. In 1920, he returned to Korça, married Vangjelina and never left. He died in Korça in the 60s, leaving behind children, grandchildren and the extraordinary story of survival. Many had asked: why did the Titanic sink?
And he, with the logic of a simple man, and the irony of a corsair, had said: “He was drowned by pride and arrogance and the loss of delirium…!
No one could have died, if they had listened to the signals of their colleagues on other ships, who warned them with concern, to divert the route because there were mountains with that one. Very few people could have died; there were no boats and those that were, left without being filled. In this world, there are no immortals and invincibles.” Today in America, the grandchildren of Kristaq, one of the Tullga brothers, live.
Ilo Deti, early confirmed as “an Albanian on the Titanic”!
About 20 years ago, when we were watching the movie “Titanic” (the old one) on TVSh, in my family in Tirana, my mother Olimbi Stoja, while she kept her eyes on the screen with an unexpressed persistence and curiosity, kept repeating with pain: The desolate Ilua of Kovi, I have seen death with my eyes”! “Poor Lui, what has he removed”! (The Americans called him “Lui” for short).
She surprised me, when she told me, that in that; “the great poor man who drowned”, was her cousin, Ilo Deti from Vithkuqi. Through surprise, curiosity and disbelief, for weeks, I used the press of the time, in the National Library in Tirana, browsed books, as much as I could, but I could not find anywhere the name of Ilo Det, the Albanian who survived the Titanic tragedy.
But in the contacts I made with the family members of Ilo Det in Korçë, I was convinced of the truth and published in 1992, in the newspaper “Pasqyra”, where I was editor-in-chief, the article “An Albanian in “Titanic”. After me, others also wrote about this event, simply revolving around the facts brought by the article “An Albanian on the Titanic”, but the only one who showed professional interest, who persistently and curiously followed this event and brought facts of the young one, who I left in the middle, was the journalist Ferdinand Murati. But the surprise continues.
Only the stars of the sky can tell that night of horror!
Three more hours of terror and horror, spinning on the ocean in that boat. There was no moon. The stars moved in terror and came and went over the ocean, scenes they had never seen before. They passed head to head and kissed while crying for the dead, the half-dead, but also the living, which trembled and held their heads towards the sky…! Only the stars can tell all that happened that night. But those stars, as if they sent a miracle, glad tidings, that death was ending.
A ship… the Greek ship ‘Carpathia’… after five or six hours of the “SOS” signal, came to the field-flooding and field-death to save them. He had given the “SOS” signal first, for the area with glaciers, for the iceberg, but they didn’t listen to him. The brave sailors separated, like lightning on the sea, and gathered the dead (those who could), the half-dead and the living together. Only 700 had survived.
They were coming around; some small boats were calling him with a horn: Is there anyone alive…?! Is there anyone alive…?!! Those cries of pain and prayer were swallowed up by the Ocean…! Then he left quietly towards America, New York, with the cargo that no one would want and with the love of those, that ‘Carpathia’ became the “God of salvation”. Then other ships had arrived.
The steamer ‘Carpathia’, after three or four days, on April 18, arrived in New York, Naska said. How they arranged us, they sent us to Boston, because we searched there ourselves. Lots of work. The American government supported us, gave us help and reward, all of us survivors, because we lost everything, but we regained our lives and a story, which was not just history, was also a tragedy, which will be told as a legend. Memorie.al
