A Night to Remember

by Walter Lord

  So Rostron sent for the Reverend Father Anderson, an Episcopal clergyman aboard, and the people from the Titanic and Carpathia assembled together in the main lounge. There they gave thanks for the living and paid their respects to the lost.

  While they murmured their prayers, the Carpathia steamed slowly over the Titanic’s grave. There were few traces of the great ship – patches of reddish-yellow cork … some steamer chairs … several white pilasters … cushions … rugs … lifebelts … the abandoned boats … just one body.

  At 8.50 Rostron was satisfied. There couldn’t possibly be another human being alive. He rang ‘full speed ahead’ and turned his ship for New York.

  Already the city was wildly excited. When the first word arrived at 1.20 a.m., nobody knew what to think. The AP flash was certainly cryptic – just a message from Cape Race that at 10.25 local time the Titanic called CQD, reported striking an iceberg, and asked for help immediately. Then another message that the liner was down at the head and putting the women off in boats. Then silence.

  The news was in time for the first morning editions – but barely. No leeway for double-checking: only time to decide how to handle it. The story seemed fantastic. Yet there it was. The editors nibbled gingerly; the Herald’s headline was typical:

  THE NEW TITANIC STRIKES ICE AND CALLS FOR AID. VESSELS RUSH TO HER SIDE

  Only The Times went out on a limb. The long silence after the first few messages convinced managing editor Carr Van Anda that she was gone. So he took a flyer – early editions reported the Titanic sinking and the women off in lifeboats; the last edition said she had sunk.

  By 8.00 a.m. newsmen were storming the White Star Line offices at 9 Broadway. Vice-President Philip A. S. Franklin made light of the reports: even if the Titanic had hit ice, she could float indefinitely. ‘We place absolute confidence in the Titanic. We believe that the boat is unsinkable.’

  But at the same time he was frantically wiring Captain Smith: ‘Anxiously await information and probable disposition of passengers.’

  By mid-morning friends and relatives of the Titanic’s passengers were pouring in: Mrs Benjamin Guggenheim and her brother De Witt Seligman … Mrs Astor’s father W. H. Force … J. P. Morgan Jr … hundreds of people nobody recognized. Rich and poor, they all got the same reassuring smiles – no need to worry … the Titanic was unsinkable; well, anyhow, she could float two or three days … certainly there were enough boats for everybody.

  And the Press joined in. The Evening Sun ran a banner headline:

  ALL SAVED FROM TITANIC AFTER COLLISION

  The story reported all passengers transferred to the Parisian and the Carpathia, with the Titanic being towed by the Virginian to Halifax.

  Even business seemed confident. At the first news the reinsurance rate on the Titanic’s cargo soared to fifty per cent, then to sixty per cent. But as optimism grew, London rates dropped back to fifty per cent, then to forty-five … thirty … and finally twenty-five per cent.

  Meanwhile Marconi stock skyrocketed. In two days it soared fifty-five points to 225. Not bad for a stock that brought only two dollars just a year ago. And IMM – the great combine that controlled the White Star Line – was now recovering after a shaky start in the morning.

  Yet rumours were beginning to spread. No official word, but wireless men listening in on the Atlantic traffic picked up disturbing messages not meant for their ears, and relayed the contents anyhow. During the afternoon a Cunard official heard from a friend downtown that the Titanic was definitely gone. A New York businessman wired a friend in Montreal the same thing. Franklin heard too, but the source seemed unreliable; so he decided to keep quiet.

  At 6.15 the roof fell in. Word finally arrived from the Olympic: the Titanic went down at 2.20 a.m.; the Carpathia picked up all the boats and was returning to New York with the 675 survivors. The message had been delayed in transit several hours. Nobody knows why, but there has never been any evidence supporting the World’s suggestion that it was the work of Wall Street bears and shippers reinsuring their cargoes.

  Franklin was still steeling himself to tell the public when the clock in the White Star office struck seven. An alert reporter smelled the gloom in the air, took a chance, and barged into the manager’s office. Others followed. ‘Gentlemen,’ Mr Franklin stammered, ‘I regret to say that the Titanic sank at 2.20 this morning.’

  At first that was all he would say, but bit by bit the reporters chipped out admissions. At 8.00: the Olympic’s message ‘neglected to say that all the crew had been saved’. At 8.15: ‘Probably a number of lives had been lost.’ At 8.45: ‘We very much fear there has been a great loss of life.’ By 9.00 he couldn’t keep up the front any longer: it was a ‘horrible loss of life’ … they could replace the ship but ‘never the human lives’.

  At 10.30 Vincent Astor arrived and disappeared into Franklin’s office. In a little while he left weeping. On a hunch a reporter phoned Mrs John Jacob Astor’s father, W. H. Force. ‘Oh, my God,’ cried the old gentleman, ‘don’t tell me that! Where did you get that report from? It isn’t true! It can’t be true!’

  No one could reach the Strauses’ daughter, Mrs Alfred Hess. Early that afternoon she had taken the special train chartered by the White Star Line to meet the supposedly crippled Titanic at Halifax. By 8.00 the train was lumbering through the Maine countryside, as Mrs Hess sat in the diner chatting with reporters. She was the only woman on board, and it was rather fun.

  She was just starting some grapefruit when the train slowed, stopped, and then began moving backwards. It never stopped until Boston. There she learned, ‘Plans have changed; the Titanic’s people are going straight to New York.’ So she took the sleeper back and was met at the gate by her brother early the next morning: ‘Things look pretty bad.’

  By now the first survivor list was up, and crowds again stormed the White Star office. Mrs Frank Farquharson and Mrs W. H. Marvin came together to learn about their children, who were coming back from their honeymoon. The bride’s mother, Mrs Farquharson, gave a happy little yelp when she spied the name ‘Mrs Daniel Marvin’; then managed to stifle it when she saw no ‘Mr’ beside it.

  Mrs Ben Guggenheim clung to the hope that some lifeboat was missing. ‘He may be drifting about!’ she sobbed.

  And he might have been, for all anyone knew. Nobody could get any information out of the Carpathia – Rostron was saving his wireless for official traffic and private messages from the survivors – so the newspapers made up their stories. The Evening World told of a fog, the Titanic’s booming siren, a crash like an earthquake. The Herald described how the ship was torn asunder, plunged into darkness, almost capsized at the moment of impact.

  When imagination ran low, the papers took it out on the silent rescue ship. The Evening Mail thundered:

  WATCHERS ANGERED BYCARPATHIA’S SILENCE

  The World pouted:

  CARPATHIA LETS NO SECRETS OF THE TITANIC’S LOSS ESCAPE BY WIRELESS

  So Tuesday turned to Wednesday … and Wednesday to Thursday … and still there was no news. The weeklies were caught now. Harper’s Weekly described the prominent people aboard, featuring Henry Sleeper Harper, a member of the family who owned the magazine. It conjured a fog and a frightful shock; then remarked a little lamely, ‘As to what happened, all is still surmise.’ But Harper’s assured its readers that the rule was women and children first, ‘the order long enforced among all decent men who use the sea’. Next issue, the magazine turned a possible embarrassment into a journalistic scoop when Henry Sleeper Harper turned up complete with Pekingese and personal Egyptian dragoman. Harper’s happily announced an exclusive interview.

  Thursday night the wait ended. As the Carpathia steamed by the Statue of Liberty, 10,000 people watched from the Battery. As she edged towards pier 54, 30,000 more stood in the waterfront rain. To the end Rostron had no truck with newsmen. He wouldn’t let them on the ship at qua
rantine, and as the Carpathia steamed up the North River, tugs chugged beside her, full of reporters shouting questions through megaphones.

  At 8.37 she reached the pier and began unloading the Titanic’s lifeboats so she could be warped in. They were rowed off to the White Star pier, where souvenir hunters picked them clean during the night. (The next day men were put to work removing the Titanic’s nameplate from each boat.)

  At 9.35 the Carpathia was moored, the gangplank lowered, and the first survivors tumbled off. Later a brown canvas carry-all, its two-by-three-inch sides bulging, was taken off and placed under Customs letter G. Customs officials said it was the only luggage saved from the Titanic. Owner Samuel Goldenberg denied such foresight. He claimed he bought it on board the Carpathia. He said it contained only the clothes he wore off the Titanic and a few accessories purchased on the rescue ship – pyjamas, coat, trousers, dressing gown, raincoat, slippers, two rugs, shirt, collars, toilet goods, and shoes for his wife and himself.

  The Carpathia’s arrival made clear who survived, but it didn’t unravel what had happened. The survivors added their own myths and fables to the fiction conjured up on shore. For some the heartbreaking trip back was too much. Others were simply carried away by the excitement. The more expansive found themselves making a good story even better. The more laconic had their experiences improved by reporters. Some were too shocked, some too ashamed.

  Newspaper interviews reported that second-class passenger Emilio Portaluppi rode a cake of ice for hours … Miss Marie Young saw the iceberg an hour before the collision … seamen Jack Williams and William French watched six men shot down like dogs … Philadelphia banker Robert W. Daniel took over the Carpathia’s wireless during the trip back. All the evidence went against such stories, but the public was too excited to care.

  The sky was the limit. The 19 April New York Sun had first-class passenger George Brayton saying:

  ‘The moon was shining and a number of us who were enjoying the crisp air were promenading about the deck. Captain Smith was on the bridge when the first cry from the lookout came that there was an iceberg ahead. It may have been 300 feet high when I saw it. It was probably 200 yards away and dead ahead. Captain Smith shouted some orders … a number of us promenaders rushed to the bow of the ship. When we saw we could not fail to hit it, we rushed to the stern. Then came a crash, and the passengers were panic-stricken … The accident happened at about 10.30 p.m … about midnight, I think, came the first boiler explosion. Then for the first time, I think, Captain Smith began to get worried …’

  Carpathia seaman Jonas Briggs’s interview told the story of Rigel, a handsome black Newfoundland dog, who jumped from the deck of the sinking Titanic and escorted a lifeboat to the Carpathia, his joyous barks signalling Captain Rostron that he was coming.

  Personal thoughts weighed heavily on the minds of some. Lookout Reginald Lee – it seemed a century since that dreadful moment when his mate Fleet sighted the berg – told of a haze on the horizon, remembered Fleet saying, ‘Well, if we can see through that, we’ll be lucky.’ Fleet never recalled the conversation.

  An interview with one of the men in first class gave this careful explanation of his presence in No. 7, the first boat to leave:

  ‘On one point all the women were firm. They would not enter a lifeboat until all the men were in first. They feared to trust themselves to the seas in them. It required courage to step into the frail craft as they swung from the creaking davits. Few men were willing to take the chance. An officer rushed behind me and shouted, “You’re big enough to pull an oar. Jump into this boat or we’ll never get the women off.” I was forced to do so, though I admit the ship looked a great deal safer to me than any small boat.’

  Gradually the full story emerged, but many of the engaging tales born these first few days have lingered ever since – the lady who refused to leave her Great Dane … the band playing ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ … Captain Smith and First Officer Murdoch committing suicide … Mrs Brown running No. 6 with a revolver.

  But legends are part of great events, and if they help keep alive the memory of gallant self-sacrifice, they serve their purpose. At the time, however, no legends were needed to drive home the story. People were overwhelmed by the tragedy. Flags everywhere flew half-mast. Macy’s and the Harris theatres were closed. The French line called off a reception on the new SS France. In Southampton, where so many of the crew lived, grief was staggering – twenty families in one street bereaved. Montreal called off a military review. King George and President Taft exchanged condolences – and the Kaiser got into the act. J. S. Bache & Co. cancelled its annual dinner. J. P. Morgan called off the inauguration of a new sanatorium he was building at Aix-les-Bains.

  Even the Social Register was shaken. In those days the ship that people travelled on was an important yardstick in measuring their standing, and the Register dutifully kept track. The tragedy posed an unexpected problem. To say that listed families crossed on the Titanic gave them their social due, but it wasn’t true. To say they arrived on the plodding Carpathia was true, but socially misleading. How to handle this dilemma? In the case of those lost, the Register dodged the problem – after their names it simply noted the words, ‘died at sea, 15 April 1912’. In the case of the living, the Register carefully ran the phrase, ‘Arrived Titan-Carpath, 18 April 1912’. The hyphen represented history’s greatest sea disaster.

  What troubled people especially was not just the tragedy – or even its needlessness – but the element of fate in it all. If the Titanic had heeded any of the six ice messages on Sunday … if ice conditions had been normal … if the night had been rough or moonlit … if she had seen the berg fifteen seconds sooner – or fifteen seconds later … if she had hit the ice any other way … if her watertight bulkheads had been one deck higher … if she had carried enough boats … if the Californian had only come. Had any one of these ‘if’s turned out right, every life might have been saved. But they all went against her – a classic Greek tragedy.

  These thoughts were yet to come, as the Carpathia turned towards New York in the bright morning sunshine of 15 April. At this point the survivors still slumped exhausted in deck chairs or sipped coffee in the dining-saloon or absently wondered what they would wear.

  The Carpathia’s passengers pitched in gallantly – digging out extra toothbrushes, lending clothes, sewing smocks for the children out of steamer blankets brought along in the lifeboats. A Macy’s wine buyer bound for Portugal became a sort of guardian angel for the three rescued Gimbels buyers. Mrs Louis Ogden took cups of coffee to two women in gay coats and scarves sitting alone in a corner. ‘Go away,’ they said, ‘we have just seen our husbands drown.’

  For some of the survivors life began again – Lawrence Beesley busily scribbled off a wireless message that he was safe. For others it took longer. Colonel Gracie lay under a pile of blankets on a sofa in the dining-saloon while his clothes dried in the bake oven. Bruce Ismay sat trembling in the surgeon’s cabin, shot full of opiates. Harold Bride came to lying in somebody’s stateroom; a woman was bending over him, and he felt her hand brushing back his hair and rubbing his face.

  Jack Thayer was in another cabin nearby. A kindly man had lent him pyjamas and a bunk. Now Thayer was getting into bed, just as he had started to do ten hours before. He climbed between the cool sheets, and it occurred to him that a cup of brandy he just swallowed was his first drink of hard liquor. He must indeed be growing up.

  Far below, the Carpathia’s engines hummed with a swift, soothing rhythm. Far above, the wind whistled through the rigging. Ahead lay New York, and home in Philadelphia. Behind, the sun caught the bright red-and-white stripes of the pole from the Titanic’s barber shop, as it bobbed in the empty sea. But Jack Thayer no longer knew or cared. The brandy had done its work. He was fast asleep.

  Facts about the Titanic

  ‘There will never be another like her,’ says baker Charles Burgess, who ought to know. In
forty-three years on the Atlantic run he has seen them all – Olympic … Majestic … Mauretania … and so on. Today, as carver in the kitchen of the Queen Elizabeth, Burgess is probably the last Titanic crewman on active service.

  ‘Like the Olympic, yes, but so much more elaborate,’ he reflects. ‘Take the dining-saloon. The Olympic didn’t even have a carpet, but the Titanic – ah, you sank in it up to your knees. Then there’s the furniture: so heavy you could hardly lift it. And that panelling …

  ‘They can make them bigger and faster, but it was the care and effort that went into her. She was a beautiful, wonderful ship.’

  Burgess’s reflections are typical. The Titanic has cast a spell on all who built and sailed her. So much so that, as the years go by, she grows ever more fabulous. Many survivors now insist she was ‘twice as big as the Olympic’ – actually they were sister ships, with the Titanic just 1,004 tons larger. Others recall golf courses, regulation tennis courts, a herd of dairy cows and other little touches that exceeded even the White Star Line’s penchant for luxury.

  The Titanic was impressive enough without embellishment. Her weight – 46,328 gross tons … 66,000 tons displacement. Her dimensions – 882.5 feet long … 92.5 feet wide … 60.5 feet from waterline to boat deck, or 175 feet from keel to the top of her four huge funnels. She was, in short, eleven storeys high and a sixth of a mile long.

  Triple screw, the Titanic had two sets of four-cylinder reciprocating engines, each driving a wing propeller, and a turbine driving the centre propeller. This combination gave her 50,000 registered horsepower, but she could easily develop at least 55,000 horsepower. At full speed she could make 24 to 25 knots.

  Perhaps her most arresting feature was her watertight construction. She had a double bottom and was divided into sixteen watertight compartments. These were formed by fifteen watertight bulkheads running clear across the ship. Curiously, they didn’t extend very far up. The first two and the last five went only as high as D deck, while the middle eight were carried only up to E deck. Nevertheless, she could float with any two compartments flooded, and since no one could imagine anything worse than a collision at the conjuncture of two compartments, she was labelled ‘unsinkable’.