A Night to Remember

by Walter Lord

  And nearly everyone still expected to reach New York. At worst, they would all be transferred to other ships.

  ‘Peuchen,’ said Charles M. Hays as the major began helping with the boats, ‘this ship is good for eight hours yet. I have just been getting this from one of the best old seamen, Mr Crosby of Milwaukee.’

  Monsieur Gatti, maître of the ship’s à la carte French restaurant, was equally unperturbed. Standing alone on the boat deck, he seemed the picture of dignity – his top hat firmly in place, grip in hand and a shawl travelling-blanket folded neatly over his arm.

  Mr and Mrs Lucien Smith and Mr and Mrs Sleeper Harper sat quietly chatting in the gym just off the boat deck. The mechanical horses were riderless now – the Astors had moved off somewhere else. And for once there was no one on the stationary bicycles, which the passengers liked to ride, pedalling red and blue arrows round a big white clock. But the room with its bright, blocked linoleum floor and the comfortable wicker chairs was far more pleasant than the boat deck. Certainly it was warmer, and there seemed no hurry.

  In the nearly empty smoking-room on A deck, four men sat calmly around a table – Archie Butt, Clarence Moore, Frank Millet, and Arthur Ryerson seemed deliberately trying to avoid the noisy confusion of the boat deck.

  Far below, greaser Thomas Ranger began turning off some forty-five electric fans used in the engine room, and he thought about the ones he had to repair tomorrow. Electrician Alfred White, working on the dynamos, brewed some coffee at his post.

  At the very stern of the Titanic, Quartermaster George Thomas Rowe still paced his lonely watch. He had seen no one, heard nothing since the iceberg glided by nearly an hour ago. Suddenly he was amazed to see a lifeboat floating near the starboard side. He phoned the bridge – did they know there was a boat afloat? An incredulous voice asked who he was. Rowe explained, and the bridge then realized he had been overlooked. They told him to come to the bridge right away and bring some rockets with him. Rowe dropped down to a locker one deck below, picked up a tin box with twelve rockets inside, and clambered forward – the last man to learn what was going on.

  Others knew all too well by now. Old Dr O’Loughlin whispered to stewardess Mary Sloan, ‘Child, things are very bad.’ Stewardess Annie Robinson stood near the mail room, watching the water rise on F deck. As she puzzled over a man’s Gladstone bag lying abandoned in the corridor, carpenter Hutchinson arrived with a lead line in his hand – he looked bewildered, distracted, wildly upset. A little later Miss Robinson bumped into Thomas Andrews on A deck. Andrews greeted her like a cross parent:

  ‘I thought I told you to put your lifebelt on!’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘but I thought it mean to wear it.’

  ‘Never mind that. Put it on; walk about; let the passengers see you.’

  ‘It looks rather mean.’

  ‘No, put it on … Well, if you value your life, put it on.’

  Andrews understood people very well. A charming, dynamic man, he was everywhere, helping everyone. And people looked to him. He handled them differently, depending on what he thought of them. He told garrulous steward Johnson that everything would be all right. He told Mr and Mrs Albert Dick, his casual dinner companions, ‘She is torn to bits below, but she will not sink if her after bulkheads hold.’ He told competent stewardess Mary Sloan, ‘It is very serious, but keep the bad news quiet, for fear of panic.’ He told John B. Thayer, whom he trusted implicitly, that he didn’t give the ship ‘much over an hour to live’.

  Some of the crew didn’t need to be told. About 12.45, able seaman John Poingdestre left the boat deck to get his rubber boots. He found them in the forecastle on E deck forward, and was just starting up again when the wooden wall between his quarters and some third-class space to starboard suddenly gave way. The sea surged in, and he fought his way out through water up to his waist.

  Further aft, dining-saloon steward Ray went to his quarters on E deck to get a warmer overcoat. Coming back up, he went forward on ‘Scotland Road’ towards the main staircase. The jostling firemen and third-class passengers were gone now. All was quiet along the broad working alleyway, except for water sloshing along the corridor from somewhere forward.

  Still further aft, assistant second steward Joseph Thomas Wheat dropped down to pick up some valuables from his room on F deck, port side. It was right next to the Turkish bath, a gloriously garish set of rooms that formed a sort of bridge between the Victorian and Rudolph Valentino eras of interior decoration. The mosaic floor, the blue-green tiled walls, the gilded beams in the dull red ceiling, the stanchions encased in carved teak – all were still perfectly dry.

  But when Wheat walked a few yards down the corridor and started back up the stairs, he saw a strange sight: a thin stream of water was flowing down the stairs from E deck above. It was only a quarter-inch deep – just about covered the heel of his shoe – as he splashed up the steps. When he reached E deck, he saw it was coming from the starboard side forward.

  He guessed what had happened: water forward on F deck, blocked by the watertight compartment door, had risen to E deck, where there was no door, and now was slopping over into the next compartment aft.

  Boiler room No. 5 was the only place where everything seemed under control. After the fires were drawn, leading fireman Barrett sent most of the stokers up to their boat stations. He and a few others stayed behind to help engineers Harvey and Shepherd with the pumps.

  At Harvey’s orders he lifted the iron manhole cover off the floor plates on the starboard side, so Harvey could get at the valves to adjust the pumps.

  The boiler room was now clouding up with steam from the water used to wet down the furnaces. In the dim light of their own private Turkish bath, the men worked on … vague shapes moving about through the mist.

  Then Shepherd, hurrying across the room, fell into the manhole and broke his leg. Harvey, Barrett and fireman George Kemish rushed over. They lifted him up and carried him to the pump room, a closed-off space at one end of the boiler room.

  No time to do more than make him comfortable … then back into the clouds of steam. Soon orders came down from the bridge for all hands to report to boat stations. As the men went up, Shepherd still lay in the pump room; Barrett and Harvey kept working with the valves. Another fifteen minutes and both men were beginning to cheer up – the room was still dry, the rhythm of the pumps was fast and smooth.

  Suddenly the sea came roaring through the space between the boilers at the forward end of the room. The whole bulkhead between No. 5 and No. 6 collapsed.

  Harvey shouted to Barrett to make for the escape ladder. Barrett scrambled up, the foam surging around his feet. Harvey himself turned towards the pump room where Shepherd lay. He was still heading there when he disappeared under the torrent of rising water.

  The silence in the Marconi shack was broken only by the rasping spark of the wireless, as Phillips rapped out his call for help and took down the answers that bounced back. Bride was still struggling into his clothes, between dashes to the bridge.

  So far the news was encouraging. First to reply was the North German Lloyd steamer Frankfort. At 12.18 she sent a crisp ‘OK … Stand by’ – but no position. In another minute acknowledgements were pouring in – the Canadian Pacific’s Mt Temple … the Allan liner Virginian … the Russian tramp Birma.

  The night crackled with signals. Ships out of direct contact got the word from those within range … The news spread in ever-widening circles. Cape Race heard it directly and relayed it inland. On the roof of Wanamaker’s department store in New York, a young wireless operator named David Sarnoff caught a faint signal and also passed it on. The whole world was snapping to agonized attention.

  Close at hand, the Cunarder Carpathia steamed southward in complete ignorance. Her single wireless operator, Harold Thomas Cottam, was on the bridge when Phillips sent his CQD. Now Cottam was back at his set and thought he’d be helpful. Did the Titanic know,
he casually asked, that there were some private messages waiting for her from Cape Race?

  It was 12.25 when Phillips tapped back an answer that brushed aside the Carpathia’s courteous gesture: ‘Come at once. We have struck a berg. It’s a CQD, old man. Position 41.46N 50.14W.’

  A moment of appalled silence … then Cottam asked whether to tell his captain. Phillips: ‘Yes, quick.’ Another five minutes and welcome news – the Carpathia was only fifty-eight miles away and ‘coming hard’.

  At 12.34 it was the Frankfort again – she was 150 miles away. Phillips asked, ‘Are you coming to our assistance?’ Frankfort: ‘What is the matter with you?’ Phillips: ‘Tell your captain to come to our help. We are on the ice.’

  Captain Smith now dropped into the shack for a first-hand picture. The Olympic, the Titanic’s huge sister ship, was just chiming in. She was 500 miles away; but her set was powerful, she could handle a major rescue job and there was a strong bond between the two liners. Phillips kept in close touch, while urging on the ships that were nearer.

  ‘What call are you sending?’ Smith asked.

  ‘CQD,’ Phillips answered noncommitally.

  Bride had a bright idea. While CQD was the traditional distress call, an international convention had just agreed to use instead the letters SOS – they were easy for the rankest amateur to pick up. So Bride suggested: ‘Send SOS; it’s the new call, and it may be your last chance to send it.’

  Phillips laughed at the joke and switched the call. The clock in the wireless shack said 12.45 a.m. when the Titanic sent the first SOS ever flashed by an ocean liner.

  None of the ships contacted seemed as promising as the light that winked ten miles off the Titanic’s port bow. Through his binoculars Fourth Officer Boxhall saw clearly that it was a steamer. Once, as he tried to get in touch with the Morse lamp, he felt he saw an answer. But he could make nothing of it and finally decided it must be her mast light flickering.

  Stronger measures were necessary. As soon as Quartermaster Rowe reached the bridge, Captain Smith asked if he had brought the rockets. Rowe produced them, and the Captain ordered, ‘Fire one, and fire one every five or six minutes.’

  At 12.45 a blinding flash seared the night. The first rocket shot up from the starboard side of the bridge. Up … up it soared, far above the lacework of masts and rigging. Then with a distant, muffled report it burst, and a shower of bright white stars floated down towards the sea. In the blue-white light Fifth Officer Lowe remembered catching a glimpse of Bruce Ismay’s startled face.

  Ten miles away, apprentice James Gibson stood on the bridge of the Californian. The strange ship that came up from the east had not moved for an hour, and Gibson studied her with interest. With glasses he could make out her side lights and a glare of lights on her afterdeck. At one point he thought she was trying to signal the Californian with her Morse lamp. He tried to answer with his own lamp, but soon gave up. He decided the stranger’s masthead light was merely flickering.

  Second Officer Herbert Stone, pacing the Californian’s bridge, also kept his eye on this strange steamer. At 12.45 he saw a sudden flash of white light burst over her. Strange, he thought, that a ship would fire rockets at night.

  4. ‘You Go and I’ll Stay a While’

  Second-class passenger Lawrence Beesley considered himself the rankest landlubber, but even he knew what rockets meant. The Titanic needed help – needed it so badly she was calling on any ship near enough to see.

  The others on the boat deck understood too. There was no more joking or lingering. In fact, there was hardly time to say good-bye.

  ‘It’s all right, little girl,’ called Dan Marvin to his new bride; ‘you go and I’ll stay a while.’ He blew her a kiss as she entered the boat.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ Adolf Dyker smiled as he helped Mrs Dyker across the gunwale.

  ‘Be brave; no matter what happens, be brave,’ Dr W. T. Minahan told Mrs Minahan as he stepped back with the other men.

  Mr Turrell Cavendish said nothing to Mrs Cavendish. Just a kiss … a long look … another kiss … and he disappeared into the crowd.

  Mark Fortune took his wife’s valuables, as he and his son Charles saw off Mrs Fortune and their three daughters. ‘I’ll take care of them; we’re going in the next boat,’ he explained.

  ‘Charles, take care of Father,’ one of the girls called back to her brother.

  ‘Walter, you must come with me,’ begged Mrs Walter D. Douglas.

  ‘No,’ Mr Douglas replied, turning away, ‘I must be a gentleman.’

  ‘Try and get off with Major Butt and Mr Moore,’ came a final bit of wifely advice. ‘They are big, strong fellows and will surely make it.’

  On the fringe of the crowd stood a young Spanish honeymoon couple. Señor Victor de Satode Penasco was just eighteen years old and his bride only seventeen. Neither could understand English. As they watched in bewilderment, the Countess of Rothes spied them and hurried over. A few hurried words in French … then Señor Penasco delivered his bride to the countess’s care and stepped back into the shadows.

  Some of the wives still refused to go. Mr and Mrs Edgar Meyer of New York felt so self-conscious arguing about it in public that they went down to their cabin. There, they decided to part on account of their baby.

  Arthur Ryerson had to lay down the law to Mrs Ryerson: ‘You must obey orders. When they say “Women and children to the boats,” you must go when your turn comes. I’ll stay here with Jack Thayer. We’ll be all right.’

  Alexander T. Compton Jr was just as firm when his mother announced she would stay rather than leave him behind: ‘Don’t be foolish, Mother. You and Sister go in the boat – I’ll look out for myself.’

  Mr and Mrs Lucien Smith were having the same kind of argument. Seeing Captain Smith standing near with a megaphone, Mrs Smith had an inspiration. She went up to him, explained she was all alone in the world, and asked if her husband could go along with her. The old captain ignored her, lifted his megaphone and shouted, ‘Women and children first!’

  At this point Mr Smith broke in: ‘Never mind, Captain, about that; I’ll see she gets in the boat.’ Turning to his wife, he spoke very slowly: ‘I never expected to ask you to obey, but this is one time you must. It is only a matter of form to have women and children first. The ship is thoroughly equipped and everyone on her will be saved.’

  Mrs Smith asked him if he was being completely truthful. Mr Smith gave a firm, decisive ‘Yes’. So they kissed good-bye, and as the boat dropped to the sea, he called from the deck, ‘Keep your hands in your pockets; it is very cold weather.’

  Sometimes it took more than gentle deception. Mrs Emil Taussig was clinging to her husband when No. 8 started down with her daughter. Mrs Taussig turned and cried, ‘Ruth!’ The brief distraction proved enough: two men tore her from Mr Taussig and dropped her into the lowering boat.

  A seaman yanked Mrs Charlotte Collyer by the arm, another by her waist, and they dragged her from her husband Harvey. As she kicked to get free, she heard him call, ‘Go, Lottie! For God’s sake, be brave and go! I’ll get a seat in another boat!’

  When Celiney Yasbeck saw she had to go alone, she began yelling and crying to rejoin Mr Yasbeck, but the boat dropped to the sea while she tried in vain to get out.

  No amount of persuasion or force could move Mrs Hudson J. Allison of Montreal. A little apart from the rest, she huddled close to Mr Allison. Their baby Trevor had gone in a boat with the nurse, but Lorraine, their three-year-old daughter, still tugged at her mother’s skirt.

  Mrs Isidor Straus also refused to go: ‘I’ve always stayed with my husband; so why should I leave him now?’

  They had indeed come a long way together: the ashes of the Confederacy … the small china business in Philadelphia … building Macy’s into a national institution … Congress … and now the happy twilight that crowned successful life – advisory boards, charities, hobbies, travel.
This winter they had been to Cap Martin, and the Titanic’s maiden voyage had seemed a pleasant way to finish the trip.

  Tonight the Strauses came on deck with the others, and at first Mrs Straus seemed uncertain what to do. At one point she handed some small jewellery to her maid Ellen Bird, then took it back again. Later she crossed the boat deck and almost entered No. 8 – then turned around and rejoined Mr Straus. Now her mind was made up: ‘We have been living together for many years. Where you go, I go.’

  Archibald Gracie, Hugh Woolner, other friends tried in vain to make her go. Then Woolner turned to Mr Straus: ‘I’m sure nobody would object to an old gentleman like you getting in …’

  ‘I will not go before the other men,’ he said, and that was that. Mrs Straus tightened her grasp on his arm, patted it, smiled up at him, and smiled at the group hovering around them. Then they sat down together on a pair of deck chairs.

  But most of the women entered the boats – wives escorted by their husbands, single ladies by the men who had volunteered to look after them. This was the era when gentlemen formally offered their services to ‘unprotected ladies’ at the start of an Atlantic voyage. Tonight the courtesy came in handy.

  Mrs William T. Graham, nineteen-year-old Margaret and her governess Miss Shutes were helped into boat 8 by Howard Case, London manager of Vacuum Oil, and young Washington Augustus Roebling, the steel heir who was striking out on his own as manager of the Mercer Automobile Works in Trenton, New Jersey. As No. 8 dropped to the sea, Mrs Graham watched Case, leaning against the rail, light a cigarette and wave good-bye.

  Mrs E. D. Appleton, Mrs R. C. Cornell, Mrs J. Murray Brown and Miss Edith Evans, returning from a family funeral in Britain, were under Colonel Gracie’s wing, but somehow in the crowd he lost them, and it wasn’t until much later that he found them again.