Speaker – Joanna Hitchcock Among the 1,300 passengers aboard the Titanic when she steamed out of Southampton Harbor in April 1912 was Noël, Countess of Rothes. She was traveling to the States to join her husband. This account of Noël’s experiences on the ship, in the lifeboat, and aboard the rescue ship is told through her own eyes, based on letters she wrote immediately after the sinking to her parents and to her cousin, the speaker’s grandmother. Joanna Hitchcock is the former Director of the University of Texas Press and a past President of the Association of American University Presses. She graduated from Oxford University (Lady Margaret Hall) with a B.A. in Modern History. She started her publishing career at Oxford University Press in London. Before coming to Austin in 1992, she was executive editor for the humanities and assistant director at Princeton University Press.