LITTLE Frank Cribb wasn’t allowed to go from Poole to Southampton to wave goodbye to his dad John and big sister Laura as they boarded the Titanic.

He was told it would be bad luck and so he kissed them goodbye at their Parkstone home.

Frank never saw his dad again.

Although John Hatfield Cribb was born in Australia in 1867 and had family roots in Poole, they had lived before in Newark, New Jersey where Laura had been born 16 or 17 years before.

John was no stranger to sea travel, having crossed the Atlantic 23 times. In Newark he was well-known, having served a number of prominent families as butler but he had returned to England the previous September to rejoin his wife Bessie and their four children, Frank, the youngest, Laura and a brother and sister.

Among his previous employers, John had been employed as a yacht steward and butler to millionaire Frank Gould and was later in the service of wealthy financier Mr Rappalo.

He intended to resume his position with Mr Rappalo in a private house in Madison Avenue, New Jersey and eventually move his entire family over. Laura was going with him in advance of the others.

Laura must have given up her job as a sales assistant at Beale’s Fancy Store in old Christchurch Road, Bournemouth. She and her dad had paid just over £16 each for third class tickets, dreaming of their new life in New Jersey.

It wasn’t to be.

When the iceberg struck Laura managed to clamber on board Lifeboat 12.

A week after the tragedy, she gave a graphic account of her harrowing experience to an American reporter having made it to Newark.

Her father, John, did not survive.

Back home, her brother Frank later became a purchasing officer and lived in Khyber Road, Parkstone, where he told the Echo of his childhood memories of the Titanic tragedy that robbed him of his father.

His mother, Bessie, he recalls, was “shattered”.

She received a wire from Mr Rappalo, saying that Laura was under his care.

His sister returned home, he said, but never spoke of her experience in front of her young brother.

But Poole local historian Ian Andrews discovered that Laura made her home in America where she fell in love. In 1916, despite the U-boat dangers, Laura and her fiancé, Howard M Buzzard, crossed the Atlantic again from the USA to get married in Poole where her mother, brothers and sister lived.

Her father had been a sidesman at Parkstone Congregational Church. Is that where they married?

The couple returned to the USA, setting up home in Phoenix Arizona before settling in New Mexico where Laura remained until her death in 1964.

She left two sons, three daughters and 19 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. And a notebook containing a sketch of the Titanic that was later auctioned.

Her brother Frank was 79 when he was interviewed by the Echo 27 years ago. He had two daughters and five sons.

Three of his sons – John, Kevin and Ian, still live in the Poole area.

The oldest, John, who now lives in Sandbanks, once went to the USA and met his Aunt Laura and questioned her about her Titanic experience.

She was able to share an insight into a family tragedy that was part of world history.