He was savaged at the time as a 'coward' and was consequently one of the villains of James Cameron's 1997 film.
Shipping chief Joseph Bruce Bruce Ismay famously survived the sinking of his own pride and joy, the Titanic, by mysteriously finding a place in a lifeboat even though they were reserved for women and children.
His fifth cousin and chief defender, author Cliff Ismay, has long insisted that the White Star Line boss has been unfairly treated by history.
But in a Channel 4 documentary airing tonight, Mr Ismay goes as far as apologising to the granddaughter of a survivor of the 1912 disaster whose new husband died after being told that her spouse was turned away from the same lifeboat.
'That's really sad because up until now, I believed there was actually no one else around that lifeboat, so I'm really sad to hear and sorry to hear that he lost his life that night,' he tells tells Laura Decker Ward, whose grandmother was Lebanese third class passenger Celena Alexander Yasbeck, travelling with her husband Antoni.
