A Night to Remember

by Walter Lord

  Some of the men took the captain at his word and jumped overboard. Night baker Walter Belford leaped as far out as he could, cannon-balled into the water in a sitting position. He still shudders and sucks his breath sharply when he thinks of the stabbing cold. Greaser Fred Scott, just up from boiler room 4, tried to slide down an empty fall, missed and took a belly-flopper into the sea. He was picked up by boat 4, still standing by the ship but trying to row clear of the barrels and deck chairs that were now hurtling down. Steward Cunningham made a hefty leap and also managed to reach No. 4.

  But most of the crew stuck to the ship. On top of the officers’ quarters, Lightoller noticed trimmer Hemming at work on one of the tangled collapsibles … yet Hemming should have gone long ago as part of the crew in No. 6.

  ‘Why haven’t you gone, Hemming?’

  ‘Oh, plenty of time yet, sir.’

  Not far away two young stewards idly watched Lightoller, Hemming and the others at work. In the fading light of the boat deck, their starched white jackets stood out as they leaned against the rail, debating how long the ship could last. Scattered around the boat deck, some fifteen first-class bellboys were equally at ease – they seemed pleased that nobody cared any longer whether they smoked. Nearby, gymnasium instructor T. W. McCawley, a spry little man in white flannels, explained why he wouldn’t wear a life jacket – it kept you afloat but it slowed you down; he felt he could swim clear more quickly without it.

  By the forward entrance to the grand staircase, between the first and second funnel, the band – now wearing life jackets on top of their overcoats – scraped lustily away at ragtime.

  The passengers were just as calm, although they too had their jumpers. Frederick Hoyt saw his wife into collapsible D, leaped and swam to where he thought the boat might pass. He guessed well. In a few minutes boat D splashed by and hauled him in. For the rest of the night he sat soaked to the skin, rowing hard to keep from freezing.

  But for the most part the passengers merely stood waiting or quietly paced the boat deck. New York and Philadelphia society continued to stick together – John B. Thayer, George and Harry Widener, Duane Williams formed a little knot … lesser luminaries like Clinch Smith and Colonel Gracie hovering nearby. Astor remained pretty much alone, and the Strauses sat down on deck chairs.

  Jack Thayer and Milton Long debated whether to jump. The davit they were using as a gauge showed the Titanic was going much faster now. Thayer wanted to jump out, catch an empty lifeboat fall, slide down and swim out to the boats he could dimly see 500 or 600 yards away. He was a good swimmer. Long, not nearly as good, argued against it and persuaded Thayer not to try.

  Further forward, Colonel Gracie lent his penknife to the men struggling with the collapsibles lashed to the officers’ quarters. They were having a hard time, and Gracie wondered why.

  Some of the third-class passengers had now worked their way up to the boat deck, and others were drifting towards the gradually rising stern. The after poop deck, normally third-class space anyhow, was suddenly becoming attractive to all kinds of people.

  Olaus Abelseth was one of those who reached the boat deck. Most of the evening he had been all the way aft with his cousin, his brother-in-law and the two Norwegian girls. With other steerage men and women, they aimlessly waited for someone to tell them what to do.

  Around 1.30 an officer opened the gate to first class and ordered the women to the boat deck. At 2.00 the men were allowed up too. Many now preferred to stay where they were – this would clearly be the last point above water. But Abelseth, his cousin and brother-in-law went up on the chance there was still a boat left. The last one was pulling away.

  So they just stood there, as worried about being in first class as by the circumstances that had brought them there. Abelseth watched the crew trying to free the collapsibles. Once an officer, searching for extra hands, called, ‘Are there any sailors here?’

  Abelseth had spent sixteen of his twenty-seven years on the sea and felt he should speak up. But his cousin and brother-in-law pleaded, ‘No, let us just stay here together.’

  So they did. They felt rather awkward and said very little. It was even more awkward when Mr and Mrs Straus drew near. ‘Please,’ the old gentleman was saying, ‘get into a lifeboat and be saved.’

  ‘No, let me stay with you,’ she replied. Abelseth turned and looked the other way.

  Within the ship the heavy silence of the deserted rooms had a drama of its own. The crystal chandeliers of the à la carte restaurant hung at a crazy angle, but they still burned brightly, lighting the fawn panels of French walnut and the rose-coloured carpet. A few of the little table lights with their pink silk shades had fallen over, and someone was rummaging in the pantry, perhaps for something to fortify himself.

  The Louis Quinze lounge with its big fireplace was silent and empty. The Palm Court was equally deserted – one passer-by found it hard to believe that just four hours ago it was filled with exquisitely dressed ladies and gentlemen, sipping after-dinner coffee, listening to chamber music by the same men who now played gay songs on the boat deck above.

  The smoking-room was not completely empty. When a steward looked in at 2.10, he was surprised to see Thomas Andrews standing all alone in the room. Andrews’ lifebelt lay carelessly across the green cloth top of a card table. His arms were folded over his chest; his look was stunned; all his drive and energy were gone. A moment of awed silence, and the steward timidly broke in: ‘Aren’t you going to have a try for it, Mr Andrews?’

  There was no answer, not even a trace that he heard. The builder of the Titanic merely stared aft.

  Outside on the decks, the crowd still waited; the band still played. A few prayed with the Reverend Thomas R. Byles, a second-class passenger. Others seemed lost in thought.

  There was much to think about. For Captain Smith there were the four ice messages he had received during the day – a fifth, which he may not have seen, told exactly where to expect the berg. And there was the thermometer that fell from forty-three degrees at seven o’clock to thirty-two degrees at ten o’clock. And the temperature of the sea, which dropped to thirty-one degrees at 10.30 p.m.

  Wireless operator Jack Phillips could ponder over the sixth ice warning – when the Californian broke in at 11.00 p.m. and Phillips told her to shut up. That one never even reached the bridge.

  George Q. Clifford of Boston had the rueful satisfaction of remembering that he took out 50,000 dollars’ extra life insurance just before the trip.

  For Isidor Straus there was the irony of his will. A special paragraph urged Mrs Straus to ‘be a little selfish; don’t always think only of others.’ Through the years she had been so self-sacrificing that he especially wanted her to enjoy life after he was gone. Now the very qualities he admired so much meant he could never have his wish.

  Little things too could return to haunt a person at a time like this. Edith Evans remembered a fortune-teller who once told her to ‘beware of the water’. William T. Stead was nagged by a dream about somebody throwing cats out of a top-storey window. Charles Hays had prophesied just a few hours earlier that the time would soon come for ‘the greatest and most appalling of all disasters at sea’.

  Two men perhaps wondered why they were there at all. Archie Butt hadn’t wanted to go abroad, but he needed a rest; and Frank Millet had badgered President Taft into sending Butt with a message to the Pope – official business but spring in Rome, too. Chief Officer Wilde didn’t plan to be on board either. He was regularly on the Olympic, but the White Star Line transferred him at the last minute for this one voyage. They thought his experience would be useful in breaking in the new ship. Wilde had considered it a lucky development.

  In the wireless shack Phillips struggled to keep the set going. At 2.10 he sounded two V’s – heard faintly by the Virginian – as he tried to adjust the spark for better results. Bride made a last inspection tour. He returned to find that a fainting lady had be
en carried into the shack. Bride got her a chair and a glass of water, and she sat gasping while her husband fanned her. She came to, and the man took her away.

  Bride went behind the curtain where he and Phillips slept. He gathered up all the loose money, took a last look at his rumpled bunk, pushed through the curtain again. Phillips still sat hunched over the set, completely absorbed. But a stoker was now in the room, gently unfastening Phillips’ life jacket.

  Bride leaped at the stoker, Phillips jumped up and the three men wrestled around the shack. Finally Bride wrapped his arms about the stoker’s waist, and Phillips swung again and again until the man slumped unconscious in Bride’s arms.

  A minute later they heard the sea gurgling up the A deck companionway and washing over the bridge. Phillips cried, ‘Come on, let’s clear out!’ Bride dropped the stoker, and the two men ran out on to the boat deck. The stoker lay still where he fell.

  Phillips disappeared aft. Bride walked forward and joined the men on the roof of the officers’ quarters who were trying to free collapsibles A and B. It was a ridiculous place to stow boats – especially when there were only twenty for 2,207 people. With the deck slanting like this, it had been hard enough launching C and D, the two collapsibles stowed right beside the forward davits. It was impossible to do much with A and B.

  But the crew weren’t discouraged. If the boats couldn’t be launched, they could perhaps be floated off. So they toiled on – Lightoller, Murdoch, trimmer Hemming, steward Brown, greaser Hurst, a dozen others.

  On the port side Hemming struggled with the block and tackle for boat B. If he could only iron out a kink in the fall, he was sure it could still be launched. He finally got the lines working, passed the block up to Sixth Officer Moody on the roof, but Moody shouted back, ‘We don’t want the block; we’ll leave the boat on the deck.’

  Hemming saw no chance of clearing boat B this way; so he jumped and swam for it. Meanwhile the boat was pushed to the edge of the roof and slid down on some oars to the deck. It landed upside down.

  On the starboard side they were having just as much trouble with boat A. Somebody propped planks against the wall of the officers’ quarters, and they eased the boat down bow first. But they were still a long way from home, for the Titanic was now listing heavily to port, and they couldn’t push the boat ‘uphill’ to the edge of the deck.

  The men were tugging at both collapsibles when the bridge dipped under at 2.15 and the sea rolled aft along the boat deck. Colonel Gracie and Clinch Smith turned and headed for the stern. A few steps, and they were blocked by a sudden crowd of men and women pouring up from below. They all seemed to be steerage passengers.

  At this moment bandmaster Hartley tapped his violin. The ragtime ended, and the strains of the Episcopal hymn ‘Autumn’ flowed across the deck and drifted in the still night far out over the water.

  In the boats women listened with wonder. From a distance there was an agonizing stateliness about the moment. Close up, it was different. Men could hear the music, but they paid little attention. Too much was happening.

  ‘Oh, save me! Save me!’ cried a woman to Peter Daly, Lima representative of the London firm Haes and Sons, as he watched the water roll on to the deck where he stood.

  ‘Good lady,’ he answered, ‘save yourself. Only God can save you now.’

  But she begged him to help her make the jump, and on second thoughts he realized he couldn’t shed the problem so easily. Quickly he took her by the arm and helped her overboard. As he jumped himself, a big wave came sweeping along the boat deck, washing him clear of the ship.

  The sea foamed and swirled around steward Brown’s feet as he sweated to get boat A to the edge of the deck. Then he realized he needn’t try any longer – the boat was floating off. He jumped in … cut the stern lines … yelled for someone to free the bow … and in the next instant was washed out by the same wave that swept off Peter Daly.

  Down, down dipped the Titanic’s bow, and her stern swung slowly up. She seemed to be moving forward too. It was this motion which generated the wave that hit Daly, Brown and dozens of others as it rolled aft.

  Lightoller watched the wave from the roof of the officers’ quarters. He saw the crowds retreating up the deck ahead of it. He saw the nimbler ones keep clear, the slower ones overtaken and engulfed. He knew that this kind of retreat just prolonged the agony. He turned and, facing the bow, dived in. As he reached the surface, he saw just ahead of him the crow’s-nest, now level with the water. Blind instinct seized him, and for a moment he swam towards it as a place of safety.

  Then he snapped to and tried to swim clear of the ship. But the sea was pouring down the ventilators just in front of the forward funnel, and he was sucked back and held against the wire grating of an air shaft. He prayed it would hold. And he wondered how long he could last, pinned this way to the grating.

  He never learned the answer. A blast of hot air from somewhere deep below came rushing up the ventilator and blew him to the surface. Gasping and spluttering, he finally paddled clear.

  Harold Bride kept his head too. As the wave swept by, he grabbed an oarlock of collapsible B, which was still lying upside down on the boat deck near the first funnel. The boat, Bride and a dozen others were washed off together. The collapsible was still upside down, and Bride found himself struggling underneath it.

  Colonel Gracie was not as sea-wise. He stayed in the crowd and jumped with the wave – it was almost like Newport. Rising on the crest, he caught the bottom rung of the iron railing on the roof of the officers’ quarters. He hauled himself up and lay on his stomach right at the base of the second funnel.

  Before he could rise, the roof too had dipped under. Gracie found himself spinning round and round in a whirlpool of water. He tried to cling to the railing, then realized this was pulling him down deeper. With a mighty kick he pushed himself free and swam clear of the ship, far below the surface.

  Chef John Collins couldn’t do much of anything about the wave. He had a baby in his arms. For five minutes he and a deck steward had been trying to help a steerage woman with two children. First they heard there was a boat on the port side. They ran there and heard it was on the starboard side. When they got there, somebody said their best chance was to head for the stern. Bewildered, they were standing undecided – Collins holding one of the babies – when they were all swept overboard by the wave. He never saw the others again, and the child was washed out of his arms.

  Jack Thayer and Milton Long saw the wave coming too. They were standing by the starboard rail opposite the second funnel, trying to keep clear of the crowds swarming towards the stern. Instead of making for a higher point, they felt the time had come to jump and swim for it. They shook hands and wished each other luck. Long put his legs over the rail, while Thayer straddled it and began unbuttoning his overcoat. Long, hanging over the side and holding the rail with his hands, looked up at Thayer and asked, ‘You’re coming, boy?’

  ‘Go ahead, I’ll be right with you,’ Thayer reassured him.

  Long slid down, facing the ship. Ten seconds later Thayer swung his other leg over the rail and sat facing out. He was about 10 feet above the water. Then with a push he jumped out as far as he could.

  Of these two techniques for abandoning ship, Thayer’s was the one that worked.

  The wave never reached Olaus Abelseth. Standing by the fourth funnel, he was too far back. Instead of plunging under, this part of the ship was swinging higher and higher.

  As she swung up, Abelseth heard a popping and cracking … a series of muffled thuds … the crash of glassware … the clatter of deck chairs sliding down.

  The slant of the deck grew so steep that people could no longer stand. So they fell, and Abelseth watched them slide down into the water right on the deck. Abelseth and his relatives hung on by clinging to a rope in one of the davits.

  ‘We’d better jump or the suction will take us down,’ his brother-in-law urged.


  ‘No,’ said Abelseth. ‘We won’t jump yet. We ain’t got much show anyhow, so we might as well stay as long as we can.’

  ‘We must jump off!’ the cry came again, but Abelseth held firm: ‘No, not yet.’

  Minutes later, when the water was only 5 feet away, the three men finally jumped, holding each other’s hands. They came spluttering to the surface, Abelseth hopelessly snarled in some rope from somewhere. He had to free his hands to untangle the line, and his cousin and brother-in-law were washed away. Somehow he got loose, but he said to himself, ‘I’m a goner.’

  In the maelstrom of ropes, deck chairs, planking and wildly swirling water, nobody knew what happened to most of the people. From the boats they could be seen clinging like little swarms of bees to deck houses, winches and ventilators as the stern rose higher. Close in, it was hard to see what was happening, even though – incredibly – the lights still burned, casting a sort of murky glow.

  In the stories told later, Archie Butt had a dozen different endings – all gallant, none verified. According to one newspaper, Miss Marie Young, music teacher to Teddy Roosevelt’s children, remembered him calling, ‘Good-bye, Miss Young, remember me to the folks back home.’ Yet the papers also reported Miss Young as saying she saw the iceberg an hour before the crash.

  In an interview attributed to Mrs Henry B. Harris, Archie Butt was described as a pillar of strength, using his fists here – a big brother approach there – to handle the weaklings. Yet Lightoller, Gracie and the others working on the boats never saw him at all. When Mrs Walter Douglas recalled him near boat 2 around 1.45, he was standing quietly off to one side.