The Titanic, 100 years on The knowledge that my great-grandfather, Lawrence Beesley, survived the Titanic disaster has always swirled around my head like smoke. It is part of our family myth. In some incarnations he was a hero who rescued a baby from the sea, a fit man who offered to row a lifeboat, a chancer who got lucky, a man saved by God, even a man dressed as a woman. In fact, the truth was much more pedestrian. Just six weeks after the tragedy he published a book called The Loss of the SS Titanic. His description of the stillness of the night, the beauty of the light, the calmness of the passengers, the flares reaching into the sky, the biting cold, the band playing on and the sheer disbelief in watching the Titanic sink made his book a bestseller. But it wasn't until last year that I tracked down a copy. I immediately became fascinated not just by the tale it told, but the man it revealed. Lawrence Beesley was 35 when he paid £13 for a second-class ticket on a new cruise liner recently launched to much ceremony. He wasn't interested in the Titanic; he just wanted to get away. His youngest brother, Arthur, had joined the millions of migrants departing Britain a few years earlier and was now living in Toronto, where Lawrence was heading. Already a widower, not living with his young son, unsure of the direction in which to take his life and greatly influenced by Christian Science, Lawrence was a man in flux. The third of eight children, Lawrence had a loving mother and violent father. I have a photograph of the family outside their home in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, taken around 1903. One of Lawrence's younger brothers, Cyril, has annotated it in a teenage way. "Boring cousin Edith," is there, along with "our dear, darling mother." Next to his father he has written, "child-beater." In 1902 he had married Gertrude Macbeth. They had a son, Alec, in 1904, but by 1906 she was dead from a respiratory illness. Pre-Titanic Lawrence was studious and thoughtful and faithful, maybe a little scared, certainly angry and confused. Post-Titanic Lawrence was braver, more mature, prepared to take risks, eager to find things that pleased and excited him. He returned to England a few months after the tragedy with a new resolve. He began an affair with Molly Greenwood, already married with two daughters, which resulted in their marriage. His son Alec came to live with them and they went on to have three more children, one of whom was my grandmother. The family moved counties, professions and religions easily. I sense that Lawrence had witnessed too much death to suffer within lives that did not suit him. My grandmother talked about how he would sometimes take to his bed for weeks, how when he was up his energy was infectious, how he was a great teacher and a loving and kind father. How he was obsessed by fire and insisted on a full fire drill in every house they stayed in. How on the only occasion he took them to the seaside he sat with his back to the water all day. In 1922 one of his stepdaughters, Vera, died from cancer and in 1943 his youngest son, Hugh, was killed in the war. But everyone who I have spoken to testifies to the family's happiness. In our family tree, Lawrence explodes out of it, his descendants multiplying down the page in a riot of colour. I wonder if he would have made those brave choices without the Titanic. When looked at as a whole, a life can seem obviously connected. But the person living it experiences it as a series of random moments. One of my great-grandfather's moments became a historical event; it shaped his life and affected his character. To what extent I will never know. Araminta Hall's novel Everything and Nothing is published by HarperPress at £12.99