Only Red Tape Kept Him From Watery Grave

Could a certain pair of hobnail boots be in Davey Jones’ footlocker amid all the other clutter and casualties of the great ship Titanic?

Reggie Hoskin, 93, tells the tale often of how his family cheated death, but lost his father’s new boots when their luggage left port without them aboard the doomed vessel.

The white-haired Four Lakes resident was 7 when the Titanic steamed out of Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912. He and his mother and three sisters attempted to board the great ship, he says, but were denied passage at the last minute due to a red-tape error.

A few days later - on April 14 at 11:40 p.m. - the elegant boat deemed “unsinkable,” struck an iceberg and began to go down, killing 1,517. “We would have been steerage passengers. There would have been no chance of us being saved,” says Reggie, a small, lean man who still drives a car.

You won’t see this story in “Titanic,” James Cameron’s $200 million epic that opened Friday in area theaters.

Keep your eyes peeled, though. The movie features actual footage of the once-majestic ocean liner’s watery grave. Maybe you’ll spot some of the Hoskins’ worldly possessions mired in the dark muck of the Atlantic floor.

Reggie says he and his mother, Elfreda, and his three sisters left their home in Looe, England, by train for Southampton. They were bound for America to join Reggie’s father, James. The darkly handsome Cornish miner had left England months earlier to build a new life for his family.

“My mom packed our belongings in two oak barrels and sealed them with iron hoops,” recalls Reggie. “I don’t remember all she put in them, but I do remember my dad had written to say he wanted a new pair of hobnail boots.

“They’re at the bottom of the sea someplace.”

Well, perhaps.

“If everybody was on the Titanic who said they were, the ship would have gone down from just the sheer weight,” says Don Lynch, a former Spokane resident and Titanic historian who served as a consultant for the new movie.

Without documentation, Lynch, who wrote a wonderful illustrated guide to the Titanic, says he must remain skeptical. Especially since no complete passenger list was kept for the third-class steerage quarters.

Lynch spotted one flaw in Reggie’s story. The old man claims his family was kept from being part of the Titanic’s maiden voyage because his mother had forgotten to list her new baby, Freda, on the passport.

But as Lynch points out, passports weren’t used until years after the Titanic. However, he adds, the Hoskin clan could have been turned away for a more plausible reason.

“They checked everyone for head lice or eye infections.” Had any of the young children had an obvious health problem they would not be allowed to board.

The British press accepted Reggie’s story when he returned to his tiny hometown of Looe in 1995. It was his first time back to England in 83 years.

“Man who missed Titanic’s fatal trip returns,” blared a headline in the Western Morning News. “Coming home to Looe - the man who cheated the Titanic,” trumpeted another story, this one in the Cornish Times.

“They gave me the keys to the city,” says Reggie, adding a laugh. “Oh, they treated me fine.”

The Hoskins settled in Ironwood, Mich., where Reggie grew up and began working in the mines with his father. He was married 63 years to his wife, Ruby, who died in 1992.

The couple eventually migrated to Western Washington, where Reggie worked as an electrician for the reformatory in Monroe. A ham radio buff since 1919, he says he chats on the air practically every day.

Reggie moved to the Spokane area a few years ago to be near his only child, Darlene. She died earlier this month at age 57.

“I don’t know why I’ve lived so long,” says the man who cheated the Titanic.

“I’ve seen it from the horse-andbuggy days to the Science Age. I guess the good Lord don’t want me, and I’m just too much trouble for the devil.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos