Titanic Legacy The Captain, The Daughter and The Spy

Published: February 2025

By Dan E. Parkes Foreword by Gary Cooper

Through private letters, family photographs and archival documents, the untold story of the tragic and inspirational legacy of Titanic’s legendary Captain E.J.Smith and his only daughter Mel.

On 3 July 1930, a maid discovered the dead body of her employer on the floor of the sitting room in an upmarket apartment in Temple, London. The victim was 37-year-old Sidney Russell Cooke, mysteriously shot through the stomach by a hunting rifle. He was the husband of Titanic Captain Edward Smith’s only daughter, Helen, known to friends as ‘Mel’. Unknown to many, he was also an MI5 spy, described as a ‘prototype James Bond’ - and the esteemed Cambridge economist John Maynard Keynes’ lover.

Never before published private letters and family photographs tell the true, untold story of a legendary captain, the mysterious death of a British spy and an inspirational daughter who stepped out of the shadow of misfortune to carve her own path. By the time Mel was 49 she had lost her father, mother, husband, son, and daughter, all in unusual circumstances. Yet she would become a pilot, a driver of fast cars, an artist’s muse and collector of fine art, living within a coterie of suffragettes, politicians, Russian spies, yachtsmen, gay lovers and the fabulously wealthy.

Read the Nautilus Telegraph's review