bluebird research

Gumoshtnik is little more than a hamlet today, being occupied by only around 165 people, but it was formerly a significantly larger settlement, reportedly boasting a population of approximately 1,000 at the time of Bulgaria’s liberation from the Turks in 1878. Two principal causes lay behind the population decline – the recent depopulation of the countryside common to much of mid- to late Communist and post-Communist era Bulgaria, and the earlier transatlantic emigration. It is the latter that places Gumoshtnik on the map today. 

Eight men from the village were on the Titanic when it picked up passengers from Cherbourg on 10th April 1912, after leaving Southampton on its maiden and only voyage. All eight perished. However, just as in the blockbuster film, not everyone who had purchased tickets to America actually boarded. While Leonardo Di Caprio won a ticket in a card game and so took another’s place at the last minute, so Stefan Kliinovski and at least one and possibly two other villagers (Matyu Gankov and Petko Gloushkov) from Gumoshtnik apparently drank too many brandies in Paris the night before and failed to make the boat at Cherbourg. 

There is a memorial to the victims in Gumoshtnik’s St Nikolai Letni churchyard. The eight who died, all of whom were potters, booked together into 3rd class for New York and bound for Chicago IL, were: 

Their names often appear differently spelt in original documents and the subsequent articles and commentaries on the sinking of the Titanic, due both to errors and to the alternative systems used when transliterating from the Bulgarian language’s Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet.