A Titanic Story from One of Our Own

The Titanic sunk 100 years ago this Sunday, and Novato's has a story to tell about it.

You can joke with McGovern that it's a first-hand account, but he's not quite that old.

McGovern, an English-born contractor best known in Novato for the he operated on McClay Road for 30 years, left England with his wife, Gretta, and their young daughter in 1959. They sailed on an ocean liner and arrived in New York City on April 11, one day before the 47th anniversary of the Titanic's sinking not too far from Iceland.

"It was big news on the ship that we were going to go over that spot," he recalled a few days ago. "We were warned that the atmosphere could get colder, and there were iceberg floes about. Our captain went a bit south of the exact location of the sinking."

McGovern said he is convinced that faulty construction of the Titanic's steel plates was partly at fault for the ship's sinking.

"When they discovered the wreck, they examined the steel and showed how the plates were inconsistent with each other. They didn't have the technology back then to make them consistent, so the quality was up and down — some plates were more resilient than others."

McGovern, who had worked as a construction foreman in Pakistan prior to coming to the United States, got checked out by immigration officials while still on the ship in New York Harbor (there were health, finance and skills evaluations as well). On his third day after arriving in San Francisco, he secured a construction job on an elementary school site and eventually moved to Novato.

If you're interested in an immigrant's tale of acclimating to America during that era, check out his book This Pearl, America. It's sold in some local stores and on amazon.com.