A Night to Remember

by Walter Lord

  At 12.15 it was hard to know whether to joke or be serious – whether to chop down a door and be a hero, or chop it down and get arrested. No two people seemed to have the same reaction.

  Mrs Arthur Ryerson felt there wasn’t a moment to lose. She had long since abandoned the idea of letting Mr Ryerson sleep; now she scurried about trying to keep her family together. There were six to get ready – her husband, three children, governess and maid – and the children seemed so slow. Finally she gave up on her youngest daughter; just threw a fur coat over her nightgown and told her to come on.

  There seemed all the time in the world to Mrs Lucien Smith. Slowly and with great care she dressed for whatever the night might bring – a heavy woollen dress, high shoes, two coats and a warm knitted hood. All the while Mr Smith chatted away about landing in New York, taking the train south, never mentioning the iceberg. As they started for the deck, Mrs Smith decided to go back for some jewellery. Here Mr Smith drew the line. He suggested it might be wiser not to bother with ‘trifles’. As a compromise Mrs Smith picked up two favourite rings. Closing the door carefully behind them, the young couple headed up towards the boat deck.

  Close behind came the Countess of Rothes and her cousin Gladys Cherry. They had difficulty putting on their lifebelts, and a passing gentleman paused to help them. He topped off the courtesy by handing them some raisins to eat.

  The things people took with them showed how they felt. Adolf Dyker handed his wife a small satchel containing two gold watches, two diamond rings, a sapphire necklace and 200 Swedish crowns. Miss Edith Russell carried a musical toy pig (it played the ‘Maxixe’). Stuart Collett, a young theological student travelling second class, took the Bible he promised his brother he’d always carry until they met again. Lawrence Beesley stuffed the pockets of his Norfolk jacket with the books he had been reading in bed. Norman Campbell Chambers pocketed a revolver and compass. Steward Johnson, by now anticipating far more than ‘another Belfast trip’, stuck four oranges under his blouse. Mrs Dickinson Bishop left behind 11,000 dollars in jewellery, then sent her husband back for her muff.

  Major Arthur Peuchen looked at the tin box on the table in C-104. Inside were 200,000 dollars in bonds, 100,000 dollars in preferred stock. He thought a good deal about it as he took off his dinner jacket, put on two suits of long underwear and some heavy clothes.

  Then he took a last look around the little cabin – the real brass bed … the green mesh net along the wall for valuables at night … the marble washstand … the wicker armchair … the horsehair sofa … the fan in the ceiling … the bells and electrical fixtures that on a liner always look as if they were installed as an afterthought.

  Now his mind was made up. He slammed the door, leaving behind the tin box on the table. In another minute he was back. Quickly he picked up a good-luck pin and three oranges. As he left for the last time, the tin box was still on the table.

  Out in the C deck foyer, Purser Herbert McElroy was urging everyone to stop standing around. As the Countess of Rothes passed, he called, ‘Hurry, little lady, there is not much time. I’m glad you didn’t ask me for your jewels as some ladies have.’

  Into the halls they poured, gently prodded along by the crew. One room steward caught the eye of Miss Marguerite Frolicher as she came down the corridor. Four days before, she had playfully teased him for putting a lifebelt in her stateroom, if the ship was meant to be so unsinkable. At the time he had laughed and assured her it was just a formality … she would never have to wear it. Remembering the exchange, he now smiled and reassured her, ‘Don’t be scared; it’s all right.’

  ‘I’m not scared,’ she replied, ‘I’m just seasick.’

  Up the stairs they trooped – a hushed crowd in jumbled array. Under his overcoat Jack Thayer now sported a greenish tweed suit and vest, with another mohair vest underneath. Mr Robert Daniel, the Philadelphia banker, had on only woollen pyjamas. Mrs Turrell Cavendish wore a wrapper and Mr Cavendish’s overcoat … Mrs John C. Hogeboom a fur coat over her nightgown … Mrs Ada Clark just a nightgown. Mrs Washington Dodge didn’t bother to put on stockings under her high-button shoes, which flopped open because she didn’t stop to button them. Mrs Astor looked right out of a bandbox in an attractive light dress, Mrs James J. Brown – a colourful Denver millionairess – equally stylish in a black velvet two-piece suit with black and white silk lapels.

  Automobiling, as practised in 1912, affected the attire of many ladies – Mrs C. E. Henry Stengal wore a veil tightly pinned down over her floral hat, Madame de Villiers a long woollen motoring coat over her nightgown and evening slippers.

  Young Alfred von Drachstedt, a twenty-year-old youth from Cologne, settled on a sweater and a pair of trousers, leaving behind a brand-new 2,133-dollar wardrobe that included walking sticks and a fountain pen, which he somehow felt was a special badge of distinction.

  Second class was somewhat less elegantly disarrayed. Mr and Mrs Albert Caldwell – returning from Siam, where they taught at the Bangkok Christian College – had bought new clothes in London, but tonight they dressed in the oldest clothes they owned. Their baby Alden was wrapped in a blanket. Miss Elizabeth Nye wore a simple skirt, coat and slippers. Mrs Charlotte Collyer didn’t bother to put up her hair, just tied it back with a ribbon. Her eight-year-old daughter Marjory had a steamer rug around her shoulders. Mr Collyer took little trouble dressing, because he expected to be back soon – he even left his watch lying on his pillow.

  The scene in third class was particularly confusing because the White Star Line primly quartered the single men and single women at opposite ends of the Titanic. Now many of the men – who slept towards the bow – hurried aft to join the girls.

  Katherine Gilnagh, a pert colleen not quite sixteen, heard a knock on the door. It was the young man who had caught her eye earlier that day playing the bagpipes on deck. He told her to get up – something was wrong with the ship. Anna Sjoblom, an eighteen-year-old Finnish girl bound for the Pacific Northwest, woke up when a young Danish swain came in to rouse her room-mate. He also gave Anna a lifebelt and urged her to come along. But she was too seasick to care. Eventually there was so much commotion that she went up after all, even though she still felt awful. She was quickly helped into a lifebelt by Alfred Wicklund, a schoolfriend from home.

  Among these young men, Olaus Abelseth was especially worried. He was a twenty-six-year-old Norwegian heading for a South Dakota homestead, and an old family friend had put a sixteen-year-old daughter in his care until they reached Minneapolis. As he pushed his way aft along the E deck working alleyway, Minneapolis seemed a long way off.

  Abelseth found the girl in the main steerage hallway on E deck. Then, along with his brother-in-law, a cousin and another girl, he climbed the broad, steep third-class stairs to the poop deck at the very stern of the ship.

  Into the bitter night the whole crowd milled, each class automatically keeping to its own decks – first class in the centre of the ship, second a little aft, third at the very stern or in the well deck near the bow. Quietly they stood around waiting for the next orders … reasonably confident yet vaguely worried. With uneasy amusement they eyed how one another looked in lifebelts. There were a few half-hearted jokes.

  ‘Well,’ said Clinch Smith as a girl walked by carrying a Pomeranian, ‘I suppose we ought to put a life preserver on the little doggie too.’

  ‘Try this on,’ a man told Mrs Vera Dick as he fastened on her life jacket. ‘They are the very latest thing this season. Everybody is wearing them now.’

  ‘They will keep you warm if you don’t have to use them,’ Captain Smith cheerfully explained to Mrs Alexander T. Compton of New Orleans.

  At about 12.30 Colonel Gracie bumped into Fred Wright, the Titanic’s squash pro. Remembering he had reserved the court for 7.30 in the morning, Gracie tried a little joke of his own: ‘Hadn’t we better cancel that appointment?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Wright. His voice was flat and
without enthusiasm, but the wonder is he played along at all. He knew the water was now up to the squash-court ceiling.

  In the brightly lit gym, just off the boat deck, Mr and Mrs Astor sat side by side on a pair of motionless mechanical horses. They wore their lifebelts, and Mr Astor had an extra one in his lap. He was slicing it open with his penknife, whiling away the time by showing his wife what was inside.

  While the passengers joked and talked and waited, the crew moved swiftly to their stations. The boat teemed with seamen, stewards, firemen, chefs, ordered up from below.

  A curiously late arrival was Fifth Officer Harold Godfrey Lowe. A tempestuous young Welshman, Lowe was hard to suppress. When he was fourteen, his father tried to apprentice him to a Liverpool businessman, but Lowe said he ‘wouldn’t work for nobody for nothing’. So he ran away to sea and a life after his own heart – schooners … square-riggers … five years steaming along the West African coast.

  Now, at twenty-eight, he was making his first trip across the Atlantic. This Sunday night he was off duty and slept through the collision. Voices outside his cabin on the boat deck finally woke him up. When he looked out of the porthole and saw everybody in lifebelts, he catapulted out of bed, into his clothes, and rushed on deck to help. Not exactly an auspicious start, but then, as Lowe later explained to US senator Smith, ‘You must remember that we do not have any too much sleep, and therefore when we sleep we die.’

  Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller was late too, but for an entirely different reason. Like Lowe, he was off duty in his bunk when the Titanic hit, but he woke up instantly and, in his bare feet, ran out on the boat deck to see what was up. Nothing could be seen on either side of the ship, except on the starboard wing of the bridge, where he dimly made out Captain Smith and First Officer Murdoch. They too were peering out into the night.

  Lightoller returned to his cabin and thought it over. Something undoubtedly was wrong with the ship – first that jar, now the silent engines. But he was off duty and, until called, it was no business of his. When they needed him, they would send for him. When this happened, he should be where they’d expect to find him. Lightoller got back into bed and lay awake waiting …

  Five, fifteen, thirty minutes went by. He could now hear the roar of the funnels blowing off steam, the rising sound of voices, the clanking of gears. But still, his duty was to be where they’d expect to find him.

  At 12.10 Fourth Officer Boxhall finally came bursting in: ‘You know we have struck an iceberg.’

  ‘I know we have struck something,’ Lightoller replied, getting up and starting to dress.

  ‘The water is up to F deck in the mail room,’ continued Boxhall, by way of a little prodding. But no urging was needed. Lightoller was already well on the way. Cool, diligent, cautious, he knew his duty to the letter. He was the perfect Second Officer.

  On the boat deck men began to clear the sixteen wooden lifeboats. There were eight on each side – a cluster of four towards the bow, then an open space of 190 feet, then another four towards the stern. Port boats had even numbers, starboard odd. They were numbered in sequence, starting from the bow. In addition, four canvas collapsible lifeboats – known as Englehardts – were stowed on deck. These could be fitted into the empty davits after the two forward boats were lowered. The collapsibles were lettered A, B, C and D.

  All the boats together could carry 1,178 people. On this Sunday night there were 2,207 people on board the Titanic.

  This mathematical discrepancy was known by none of the passengers and few of the crew, but most of them wouldn’t have cared anyhow. The Titanic was unsinkable. Everybody said so. When Mrs Albert Caldwell was watching the deck hands carry up luggage at Southampton, she had asked one of them, ‘Is this ship really non-sinkable?’

  ‘Yes, lady,’ he answered. ‘God Himself could not sink this ship.’

  So now the passengers stood calmly on the boat deck – unworried but very confused. There had been no boat drill. The passengers had no boat assignments. The crew had assignments, but hardly anybody bothered to look at the list. Now they were playing it strictly by ear – yet somehow the crew seemed to sense where they were needed and how to be useful. The years of discipline were paying off.

  Little knots of men swarmed over each boat, taking off the canvas covers, clearing the masts and useless paraphernalia, putting in lanterns and tins of biscuits. Other men stood at the davits, fitting in cranks and uncoiling the lines. One by one the cranks were turned. The davits creaked, the pulleys squealed and the boats slowly swung out free of the ship. Next, a few feet of line were paid out, so that each boat would lie flush with the boat deck … or, in some cases, flush with promenade deck A directly below.

  But the going was slow. Second Officer Lightoller, in charge of the port side, believed in channels, and Chief Officer Wilde’s side seemed quite a bottleneck. When Lightoller asked permission to swing out, Wilde said, ‘No, wait.’ Lightoller finally went to the bridge and got orders direct from Captain Smith. Now Lightoller asked Wilde if he could load up. Again Wilde said no; again Lightoller went to the bridge; again Captain Smith gave him the nod: ‘Yes, put the women and children in and lower away.’

  Lightoller then lowered boat 4 level with A deck and ordered the women and children down to be loaded from there. It seemed safer that way – less chance of falling overboard, less distance to the water, and it helped clear the boat deck for hard work ahead. Too late he remembered the promenade deck was closed here and the windows were shut. While someone was sent to get the windows open, he hastily recalled everybody and moved aft to boat 6.

  With one foot in No. 6 and one on deck, Lightoller now called for women and children. The response was anything but enthusiastic. Why trade the bright decks of the Titanic for a few dark hours in a rowboat? Even John Jacob Astor ridiculed the idea: ‘We are safer here than in that little boat.’

  As Mrs J. Stuart White climbed into No. 8, a friend called, ‘When you get back you’ll need a pass. You can’t get back on tomorrow morning without a pass!’

  When Mrs Constance Willard flatly refused to enter the boat, an exasperated officer finally shrugged: ‘Don’t waste time – let her go if she won’t get in!’

  And there was music to lull them too. Bandmaster Wallace Henry Hartley had assembled his men, and the band was playing ragtime. Just now they stood in the first-class lounge, where many of the passengers waited before orders came to lower the boats. Later they moved to the boat deck forward, near the entrance to the grand staircase. They looked a little nondescript – some in blue uniform coats, some in white jackets – but there was nothing wrong with their music.

  Everything had been done to give the Titanic the best band on the Atlantic. The White Star Line had even raided the Cunarder Mauretania for bandmaster Hartley. Pianist Theodore Brailey and cellist Roger Bricoux were easily wooed from the Carpathia. ‘Well, steward,’ they happily told Robert Vaughan who served them on the little Cunarder, ‘we will soon be on a decent ship with decent grub.’ Bass player Fred Clark had never shipped before, but he was well known on the Scottish concert circuit, and the line brought him away too. First violinist Jock Hume hadn’t yet played in any concerts, but his fiddle had a gay note the passengers seemed to love. And so it went – eight fine musicians who knew just what to do. Tonight the beat was fast, the music loud and cheerful.

  On the starboard side things moved a little faster. But not fast enough for President Ismay, who dashed to and fro, urging the men to hurry. ‘There’s no time to lose!’ he urged Third Officer Pitman, who was working on boat 5. Pitman shrugged him off – he didn’t know Ismay and he had no time for an officious stranger in carpet slippers. Ismay told him to load the boat with women and children. This was too much for Pitman: ‘I await the commander’s orders,’ he announced.

  Suddenly it dawned on him who the stranger might be. He eased down the deck, gave his hunch to Captain Smith and asked if he should do what Ism
ay wanted. Smith answered a crisp, ‘Carry on.’ Returning to No. 5, Pitman jumped in and called, ‘Come along, ladies!’

  Mrs Catherine Crosby and her daughter Harriet were firmly propelled into the boat by her husband, Captain Edward Gifford Crosby, a Milwaukee shipping man and an old Great Lakes skipper. Captain Crosby had a way of knowing things – right after the crash he scolded his wife, ‘You’ll lie there and drown!’ Later he told her, ‘This ship is badly damaged, but I think the watertight compartments will hold her up.’ Now he was taking no chances.

  Slowly others edged forward – Miss Helen Ostby … Mrs F. M. Warren … Mrs Washington Dodge and her five-year-old son … a young stewardess. When no more women would go alone, a few couples were allowed. Then a few single men. On the starboard side this was the rule all evening – women first, but men if there was still room.

  Just aft, First Officer Murdoch, in charge of the starboard side, was having the same trouble filling No. 7. Serial movie star Dorothy Gibson jumped in, followed by her mother. Then they persuaded their bridge companions of the evening, William Sloper and Fred Seward, to join them. Others trickled in, until there were finally nineteen or twenty in the boat. Murdoch felt he could wait no longer. At 12.45 he waved away No. 7 – the first boat down.

  Then he ordered Pitman to take charge of No. 5, told him to hang around the after gangway, shook hands and smiled: ‘Good-bye, good luck.’

  As No. 5 creaked downward, Bruce Ismay was beside himself. ‘Lower away! Lower away! Lower away! Lower away!’ he chanted, waving one arm in huge circles while hanging on to the davit with the other.

  ‘If you’ll get the hell out of the way,’ exploded Fifth Officer Lowe, who was working the davits, ‘I’ll be able to do something! You want me to lower away quickly? You’ll have me drown the whole lot of them!’

  Ismay was completely abashed. Without a word he turned and walked forward to No. 3.

  Old-timers in the crew gasped. They felt Lowe’s outburst was the most dramatic thing that could happen tonight. A Fifth Officer doesn’t insult the president of the line and get away with it. When they reached New York, there would be a day of reckoning.