A Night to Remember

by Walter Lord

  Still worried, Smith now told Boxhall, ‘Go down and find the carpenter and get him to sound the ship.’ Boxhall wasn’t even down the bridge ladder when he bumped into carpenter J. Hutchinson rushing up. As Hutchinson elbowed his way by, he gasped, ‘She’s making water fast!’

  Hard on the carpenter’s heels came mail clerk Iago Smith. He too pushed on towards the bridge, blurting out as he passed, ‘The mail hold is filling rapidly!’

  Next to arrive was Bruce Ismay. He had pulled a suit over his pyjamas, put on his carpet slippers, and climbed to the bridge to find out whether anything was happening that the president of the line should know. Captain Smith broke the news about the iceberg. Ismay then asked, ‘Do you think the ship is seriously damaged?’ A pause, and the captain slowly answered, ‘I’m afraid she is.’

  They would know soon enough. A call had been sent for Thomas Andrews, managing director of Harland & Wolff shipyard. As the Titanic’s builder, Andrews was making the maiden voyage to iron out any kinks in the ship. If anybody could figure out the situation, here was the man.

  He was indeed a remarkable figure. As builder, he of course knew every detail about the Titanic. But there was so much more to him than that. Nothing was too great or too small for his attention. He even seemed able to anticipate how the ship would react to any situation. He understood ships the way some men are supposed to understand horses.

  And he understood equally well the people who run ships. They all came to Andrews with their problems. One night it might be First Officer Murdoch, worried because he had been superseded by Chief Officer Wilde. The next night it might be a couple of quarrelling stewardesses who looked to Andrews as a sort of supreme court. This very evening chief baker Charles Joughin had made him a special loaf of bread.

  So far, Andrews’ trip had been what might be expected. All day long he roamed the ship, taking volumes of notes. At 6.45 every evening he dressed for dinner, dining usually with old Dr O’Loughlin, the ship’s surgeon, who also had a way with the stewardesses. And then back to his stateroom A-36, piled high with plans and charts and blueprints. There he would assemble his notes and work out his recommendations.

  Tonight the problems were typical – trouble with the restaurant galley hot press … the colouring of the pebble dashing on the private promenade decks was too dark … too many screws on all the stateroom hat hooks. There was also the plan to change part of the writing room into two more staterooms. The writing room had originally been planned partly as a place where the ladies could retire after dinner. But this was the twentieth century, and the ladies just wouldn’t retire. Clearly, a smaller room would do.

  Completely absorbed, Andrews scarcely noticed the jar and stirred from his blueprints only when he got Captain Smith’s message that he was needed on the bridge.

  In a few minutes Andrews and the captain were making their own tour – down the crew’s stairway to attract less attention … along the labyrinth of corridors far below … by the water surging into the mail room … past the squash court, where the sea now lapped against the foul line on the backboard.

  Threading their way back to the bridge, they passed through the A deck foyer, still thronged with passengers standing around. Everybody studied the two men’s faces for some sign of good news or bad; nobody could detect any clue.

  Some of the crew weren’t so guarded. In D-60, when Mrs Henry Sleeper Harper asked Dr O’Loughlin to persuade her sick husband to stay in bed, the old doctor exclaimed, ‘They tell me the trunks are floating around in the hold; you may as well go on deck.’

  In C-91 a young governess named Elizabeth Shutes sat with her charge, nineteen-year-old Margaret Graham. Seeing an officer pass the cabin door, Miss Shutes asked him if there was any danger. He cheerfully said no, but then she overheard him further down the hall say, ‘We can keep the water out for a while.’

  Miss Shutes glanced at Margaret, who was uneasily nibbling at a chicken sandwich. Her hand shook so badly the chicken kept falling out of the bread.

  No one was asking questions along the working alleyway on E deck. This broad corridor was the quickest way from one end of the ship to the other – the officers called it ‘Park Lane’, the crew ‘Scotland Road’. Now it was crowded with pushing, shoving people. Some were stokers forced out of boiler room No. 6, but most were steerage passengers, slowly working their way aft, carrying boxes, bags and even trunks.

  These people didn’t need to be told there was trouble. To those berthed far below on the starboard side, the crash was no ‘faint grinding jar’. It was a ‘tremendous noise’ that sent them tumbling out of bed.

  Mrs Celiney Yasbeck – a bride of fifty days – ran out into the corridor with her husband. Instead of making the long hike to the deck, it was easier to look below for trouble. In their night clothes they walked along to a door leading down to the boiler rooms and peeked through. Engineers were struggling to make repairs and get the pumps going. The Yasbecks needed no second glance – they rushed back to their cabin to dress.

  Far above on A deck, second-class passenger Lawrence Beesley noticed a curious thing. As he started below to check his cabin, he felt certain the stairs ‘weren’t quite right’. They seemed level, and yet his feet didn’t fall where they should. Somehow they strayed forward off balance … as though the steps were tilted down towards the bow.

  Major Peuchen noticed it too. As he stood with Mr Hays at the forward end of A deck, looking down at the steerage passengers playing soccer with the loose ice, he sensed a very slight tilt in the deck. ‘Why, she is listing!’ he cried to Hays. ‘She should not do that! The water is perfectly calm and the boat has stopped.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Mr Hays replied placidly, ‘you cannot sink this boat.’

  Others also felt the downward slant, but it seemed tactless to mention the matter. In boiler room No. 5, fireman Barrett decided to say nothing to the engineers working on the pumps. Far above in the A deck foyer, Colonel Gracie and Clinch Smith had the same reaction. On the bridge the commutator showed the Titanic slightly down at the head and listing five degrees to starboard.

  Nearby, Andrews and Captain Smith did some fast figuring. Water in the fore-peak … No. 1 hold … No. 2 hold … mail room … boiler room No. 6 … boiler room No. 5. Water fourteen feet above keel level in the first ten minutes, everywhere except boiler room No. 5. Put together, the facts showed a 300-foot gash, with the first five compartments hopelessly flooded.

  What did this mean? Andrews quietly explained. The Titanic could float with any two of her sixteen watertight compartments flooded. She could float with any three of her first five compartments flooded. She could even float with all of her first four compartments gone. But no matter how they sliced it, she could not float with all of her first five compartments full.

  The bulkhead between the fifth and sixth compartments went only as high as E deck. If the first five compartments were flooded, the bow would sink so low that water in the fifth compartment must overflow into the sixth. When this was full, it would overflow into the seventh, and so on. It was a mathematical certainty, pure and simple. There was no way out.

  But it was still a shock. After all, the Titanic was considered unsinkable. And not just in the travel brochures. The highly technical magazine Shipbuilder described her compartment system in a special edition in 1911, pointing out, ‘The captain may, by simply moving an electric switch, instantly close the doors throughout and make the vessel practically unsinkable.’

  Now all the switches were pulled, and Andrews said it made no difference.

  It was hard to face, and especially hard for Captain Smith. Over fifty-nine years old, he was retiring after this trip. Might even have done it sooner, but he traditionally took the White Star ships on their maiden voyages. Only six years before, when he brought over the brand-new Adriatic, he remarked: ‘I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster ha
ppening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.’ Now he stood on the bridge of a liner twice as big – twice as safe – and the builder told him it couldn’t float.

  At 12.05 a.m. – twenty-five minutes after that bumping, grinding jar – Captain Smith ordered Chief Officer Wilde to uncover the boats … First Officer Murdoch to muster the passengers … Sixth Officer Moody to get out the list of boat assignments … Fourth Officer Boxhall to wake up Second Officer Lightoller and Third Officer Pitman. The captain himself then walked about twenty yards down the port side of the boat deck to the wireless shack.

  Inside, first operator John George Phillips and second operator Harold Bride showed no sign that they realized what was happening. It had been a tough day. In 1912 wireless was still an erratic novelty; range was short, operators were inexperienced, and signals were hard to catch. There was a lot of relaying, a lot of repeats, and a lot of frivolous private traffic. Passengers were fascinated by the new miracle, couldn’t resist the temptation of sending messages to friends back home or on other ships.

  All this Sunday the messages had piled up. It was enough to fray the nerves of any man working a fourteen-hour day at thirty dollars a month, and Phillips was no exception. Evening came, and still the bottomless in-basket, still the petty interferences. Only an hour ago – just when he was at last in good contact with Cape Race – the Californian barged in with some message about icebergs. She was so close she almost blew his ears off. No wonder he had snapped back, ‘Shut up, shut up! I am busy; I am working Cape Race!’

  It was such a hard day that second operator Bride decided to relieve Phillips at midnight, even though he wasn’t due until 2.00 a.m. He woke up at about 11.55, brushed by the green curtain separating the sleeping quarters from the ‘office’, and asked Phillips how he was getting along. Phillips said he had just finished the Cape Race traffic. Bride padded back to his berth and took off his pyjamas. Phillips called after him that he thought the ship had been damaged somehow and they’d have to go back to Belfast.

  In a couple of minutes Bride was dressed and took over the headphones. Phillips was hardly behind the green curtain when Captain Smith appeared: ‘We’ve struck an iceberg and I’m having an inspection made to see what it has done to us. You’d better get ready to send out a call for assistance, but don’t send it until I tell you.’

  Then he left but returned again in a few minutes. This time he merely stuck his head in the doorway:

  ‘Send the call for assistance.’

  By now Phillips was back in the room. He asked the captain whether to use the regulation distress call. Smith replied, ‘Yes, at once!’

  He handed Phillips a slip of paper with the Titanic’s position. Phillips took the headphones from Bride, and at 12.15 a.m. began tapping out the letters ‘CQD’ – at that time the usual international call of distress – followed by ‘MGY’, the call letters of the Titanic. Again and again, six times over, the signal rasped out into the cold, blue Atlantic night.

  Ten miles away, Third Officer Groves of the Californian sat on the bunk of wireless operator Cyril F. Evans. Groves was young, alert and always interested in what was going on in the world. After work he liked to drop by Evans’ wireless shack and pick up the latest news. He even liked to fool with the set.

  This was all right with Evans. There weren’t many officers on third-rate liners interested in the outside world, much less the wireless telegraphy. In fact, there weren’t any others on the Californian. So he used to welcome Groves’ visits.

  But not tonight. It had been a hard day, and there was no operator to relieve him. Besides, he had been pretty roughly handled around 11.00 when he tried to break in on the Titanic and tell her about the ice blocking the Californian. So he lost no time tonight closing down his set at 11.30, his scheduled hour for going off duty. Now – dead tired – he was in no mood for chatting with anybody. Groves made a brave try: ‘What ships have you got, Sparks?’

  ‘Only the Titanic.’ Evans scarcely bothered to glance up from his magazine.

  Undeterred, Groves took the headphones and put them on. He was really getting quite good, if the message was simple enough. But he didn’t know too much about the equipment. The Californian’s set had a magnetic detector that ran by clockwork. Groves didn’t wind it up, and so he heard nothing.

  Giving up, he put the phones back on the table, and went below to find livelier company. It was just a little after 12.15 a.m.

  3. ‘God Himself Could Not Sink This Ship’

  The door to the cooks’ quarters whacked open against the iron cot of assistant baker Charles Burgess. He woke up with a start and stared at second steward George Dodd standing in the doorway. Normally a rotund, jolly man, Dodd looked serious as he called, ‘Get up, lads, we’re sinking!’

  Dodd moved forward to the waiters’ quarters, where saloon steward William Moss was trying to rouse the men. Most of them were laughing and joking, when Dodd burst in, shouting, ‘Get every man up! Don’t let a man stay here!’

  He moved on with Moss towards the stewards’ quarters. Just outside, smoking-room steward Witter was already getting some disturbing news from carpenter Hutchinson: ‘The bloody mail room is full.’ Moss came up and added, ‘It’s really serious, Jim.’

  The wisecracks that greeted the first warnings faded, and the crew tumbled out of their berths. Still half-asleep, baker Burgess pulled on pants, a shirt, no lifebelt. Walter Belford wore his white baker’s coat, pants, didn’t stop to put on his underdrawers. Steward Ray took more time; he wasn’t worried – nevertheless he found himself putting on his shore suit. Steward Witter, already dressed, opened his trunk and filled his pockets with cigarettes … picked up the caul from his first child, which he always carried with him … then joined the crowd of men now swarming out into the working alleyway and up towards the boat stations.

  Far forward, away from the uproar, trimmer Samuel Hemming climbed back into his bunk, satisfied that the hissing sound in the forepeak didn’t mean very much. He was just drifting off to sleep when the ship’s joiner leaned in, saying, ‘If I were you, I’d turn out. She’s making water one-two-three, and the racket court is getting filled up.’ An instant later the boatswain appeared: ‘Turn out, you fellows. You haven’t half an hour to live. That is from Mr Andrews. Keep it to yourselves and let no one know.’

  Certainly no one knew in the first-class smoking-room. The bridge game was going full blast again. Lieutenant Steffanson was still sipping his hot lemonade, and another hand was being dealt, when a ship’s officer suddenly appeared at the door: ‘Men, get on your lifebelts; there’s trouble ahead.’

  In her A deck stateroom, Mrs Washington Dodge lay in bed, waiting for Dr Dodge, Assessor for San Francisco, to dig up some news. The door opened and the doctor came in quietly: ‘Ruth, the accident is rather a serious one; you had better come on deck at once.’

  Two decks below, Mrs Lucien Smith – tired of waiting for Mr Smith to finish exploring – had gone back to sleep. Suddenly the lights snapped on, and she saw her husband standing by the bed, smiling down at her. Leisurely he explained, ‘We are in the north and have struck an iceberg. It does not amount to anything but will probably delay us a day getting into New York. However, as a matter of form, the captain has ordered all ladies on deck.’

  And so it went. No bells or sirens. No general alarm. But all over the Titanic, in one way or another, the word was passed.

  It was very bewildering to eight-year-old Marshall Drew. When his aunt Mrs James Drew woke him and said she had to take him on deck, he sleepily protested he didn’t want to get up. But Mrs Drew paid no attention.

  It was no less bewildering to Major Arthur Peuchen, despite his sightseeing expedition to look at the ice. He heard the news on the grand staircase and could hardly believe it. Completely stunned, he stumbled to his cabin to change from evening dress into something warm.

  For many, first word came from their stewards. J
ohn Hardy, second-class chief steward, personally roused twenty to twenty-four cabins. Each time he threw the door open wide, shouting, ‘Everybody on deck with lifebelts on, at once!’

  In first class it was more polite to knock. These were the days when a steward on a crack liner didn’t have more than eight or nine cabins, and he was like a mother hen to all the passengers he served.

  Steward Alfred Crawford was typical. He had spent thirty-one years handling difficult passengers, and now he knew just how to coax old Mr Albert Stewart into a life jacket. Then he stopped and tied the old gentleman’s shoes.

  In C-89, steward Andrew Cunningham helped William T. Stead into his lifebelt, while the great editor mildly complained that it was all a lot of nonsense. In B-84, steward Henry Samuel Etches worked like a solicitous tailor, fitting Benjamin Guggenheim for his lifebelt.

  ‘This will hurt,’ protested the mining and smelting king. Etches finally took the belt off altogether, made some adjustments, put it on again. Next, Guggenheim wanted to go on deck as he was, but Etches was adamant – it was much too cold. Ultimately Guggenheim submitted; Etches pulled a heavy sweater over him and sent him packing off topside.

  Some of the passengers were even more difficult. At C-78, Etches found the door locked. When he knocked loudly with both hands, a man inside asked suspiciously, ‘What is it?’ and a woman added, ‘Tell us what the trouble is.’ Etches explained and again tried to get them to open the door. He had no luck, and after a few minutes’ pleading he finally passed on to the next cabin.

  In another part of the ship a locked door raised a different problem. It was jammed, and some passengers broke it down to release a man inside. At this point a steward arrived, threatening to have everybody arrested for damaging company property when the Titanic reached New York.