John James Eagleton was reportedly born in Liverpool, Lancashire, England¹, on 15 June 1896.² The identity of his parents remains uncertain and it may be the case that he was a foundling or orphan.

When Eagleton appears on the 1901 census he was an inmate at a workhouse in Walton, Liverpool; by the time of the 1911 census he was one of over 200 “sea apprentices” stationed on the training ship Indefatigable at Birkenhead. 

In April 1912 Eagleton was serving as an ordinary seaman aboard the eastward-bound voyage of the Carpathia when that ship rescued the survivors of the Titanic. 

After the Carpathia Eagleton served as able seaman aboard the Rhesus. He served with the merchant fleet throughout WWI and well into peacetime, still recorded as working into the 1950s.

He was married in the 1940s to widow Isabella McNamara, née Makin (b. 1892). 

John Eagleton in the 1950s

John Eagleton died in Birkenhead in 1959.