Who was the Titanic's only black passenger?

On 10 April 1912 the most technically advanced ship to ever set sail departed on its maiden voyage from Southampton.

There were 2,201 people aboard RMS Titanic bound for New York when, four days later, it hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank.

The tragedy has of course been told countless times and in many formats - from contemporary newspaper reports to a huge Hollywood movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

But the story of one of the estimated 1,500 people who perished remained largely forgotten until a sociologist happened to visit a Liverpool museum.

Joseph Philippe Lemercier Laroche was the only documented black passenger on the Titanic's maiden voyage.

But who was he? And what doomed twists of fate led the 25-year-old and his family to the supposedly "unsinkable" White Star Line ship?

Laroche was in born in 1886 in Cap-Haïtien in Haiti.

He was the great-great grandson of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first emperor of the country and the man who had led the Haitian War of Independence against French colonial rule.

Laroche grew up with the status and wealth of his family and, at the age of 15, he arrived in France, accompanied by a tutor, to receive a university education in engineering.

Little more than a decade later, Laroche was dead - the only documented black person to have sailed on Titanic.

His body was never recovered.

Laroche's story has finally been explored by Dr Carlette Norwood, who discovered him while visiting The Maritime Museum in Liverpool.

Two years ago, the Washington DC-born academic wrote and directed a play about him.

Ahead of the play's Liverpool debut on 17 October, Norwood spoke to the BBC to share the complex story of one man's life - from grand beginnings, to a brave love story and an ultimately tragic end.

Laroche arrived in France in 1901 - barely 50 years since slavery had been abolished in the French colonies.

He was able to become an engineer after going to university in Beauvais, near Paris.

"For a black man in France in the early 1900s, it was extremely racist," Norwood said.

"At that time French people really still believed that black people had tails.

"He encountered a lot of racial tensions there."

Despite the challenges that an inter-racial couple might have faced in France at the time, Laroche met and married a white French woman named Juliette Lafargue.

"She had to have been an exceptional woman to have been brave enough to have dated a black man during that time period," Norwood said of her.

"Not only that but her family supported her because they lived with her father.

"And we know Laroche and Lafargue were [supported] because there is a surviving letter that Lafargue wrote to her father about him.

"Her father was more concerned about him being educated than he was about the colour of his skin."

The couple had two daughters - Simone Marie Anne Andrée Laroche and Louise Laroche, who were respectively born in 1909 and 1910.

It was not long, though, before Laroche planned to move his family back to his home in Haiti.

"Laroche was able to get his degree although he struggled maintaining work," Norwood said.

"He was often fired or suffered really racial abuse when he had employment."

The family had planned to leave France in late 1912 - but when Lafargue was pregnant with their third child, they made plans to leave sooner.

"He did not want that child born and raised in France," Norwood explained.

"And he wanted to go back to Haiti - he was extremely close with his mother and he missed her."

Norwood said Lafargue had been concerned about leaving her widowed father in France.

But when Joseph's uncle, Cincinnatus Leconte, the then-President of Haiti, organised a job for Joseph as a mathematics teacher, the decision was made.

But how did they end up on the Titanic?

From the decision to leave France early to having tickets aboard another liner to almost missing the departure, Norwood said: "He wasn't supposed to be on that ship.

"Laroche's mother sent the family first-class tickets aboard the SS France.

"But when they found out that the children wouldn't be able to dine with them on the SS France, they took the first-class tickets and traded them in for second-class passenger tickets aboard the Titanic."

A second twist of fate came about when the family were trying to board the ill-fated White Star Line ship.

The Titanic was supposed to dock in Cherbourg, France, but was too large for the harbour.

Instead, passengers boarding at Cherbourg were transported to the Titanic on a tender ship, the SS Nomadic.

"They had to take a boat out to the ship," said Norwood.

"The boat they were on had engine trouble and they almost didn't make the boarding.

"It really is a story of fate."

The Titanic struck the iceberg at about 23:40 on 14 April 1912.

Laroche woke his wife and they gathered a few valuables before carrying their sleeping children to the ship's top deck.

A pregnant Lafargue and the two girls were able to board a lifeboat and were successfully rescued by RMS Carpathia the following day.

It is not known what happened to Joseph.

For Norwood, the importance of telling Laroche's story "without embellishment" goes far beyond exploring the history of one individual.

"This is a story that attracts everyone because it's part of the Titanic legacy," she said.

"But for black people a lot of us don't know our history.

"Because of chattel slavery there were no records.

"We have a lack of identity of our past."

Norwood added: "Stories like Laroche's show prominent black stories exist - and that we are more than just slavery.

"That there were people that were thriving and very successful.

"It connects us with our past.

"We weren't necessarily related to Joseph Laroche - but we can relate to him."

Laroche will be performed at the Maritime Museum in Liverpool on Saturday 17 October.

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