Voices from the Titanic

by Geoff Tibballs

  Four Trimmers Who Missed the Ship

  Inquiries in Chantry Road led to the discovery that in one house there resided four men, all of whom signed to sail in the Titanic, but arrived at the quay-side too late to get on board. They were the three brothers Slade and another trimmer named Penney. They left home together to go to the ship, but when they arrived the gangway had been removed, and they were told they could go home again. Mrs Slade was seen by our representative, and her first words were, ‘What a good job they missed their ship! I have thanked God for it ever since.’ ‘How did they miss the boat?’ was asked. ‘I can’t tell you exactly, but they left home in good time. Somehow or other my boys did not seem very keen on going in the ship. You may not believe in dreams, but I am telling you the truth when I say that one of my boys had a dream about the boat the night before sailing-day, and he afterwards said that he had a dread of her. I knew they were not very keen on going, but nevertheless they went down. The engineer called to them to get on board, but for some reason they didn’t go. The boys had had a great deal of unemployment lately. Mr Penney has been out of work since just before Christmas, and my eldest boy has only earned £2 10s in four months.’

  In other houses in Chantry Road there was keen sorrow for lost ones. A greaser named Kearl has left a wife and one young son, and two men named Clench and Edwards, residing at No. 10, have perished. The most distressing case in the district, however, was discovered in Endle Street, where the wife of a fireman named F. Wardner has been left with a family of eight young children. The youngest was but a few months old, and Wardner had lately been out of a ship. He was in the Olympic when she and the Hawke collided, but during the last six weeks he has been out of work. He took the job on the Titanic somewhat eagerly in consequence, and has lost his life. Another fireman, named Bennett, who went down on the Titanic, also served on the Olympic at the time of the collision. He helped to support his father and mother, and has a brother on the Armadale Castle.

  There are two or three cases in which brothers have died together. In Cawte Road an old sea captain has to mourn the loss of two sons, whilst of two step-brothers, Fredk. Dall, of Richmond Street, and Charles Olive, of College Street – the latter is believed to have perished. In Ryde Terrace, an aged couple named Perry feared that they had lost their two sons, who were their sole source of support, but the name of one appears in the list of survivors.

  No doubt there are many distressing cases in other parts of the town, but the foregoing will serve to indicate the severity of the blow which has fallen on Southampton.

  (Southampton Times and Hampshire Express, 20 April 1912)

  BANDSMEN HEROES WENT DOWN PLAYING BEAUTIFUL HYMN

  Not since the wreck of the Birkenhead, when brave troops lined up on the side of the deck of the sinking ship, and went down at the salute to a watery grave, has there been so stirring an exhibition of sublime heroism as that shown by the bandsmen of the Titanic.

  From narratives of survivors it is clear that after the liner crashed into the iceberg, and it was deemed advisable to transfer the women to the boats. the band lined up on deck and began to play operatic and other lively airs in order to allay any excitement among the passengers.

  Few among those on board at that time realized that the ship was doomed, but when the worst became known, and lifeboats were making away for safety, the spirit of the music was changed, and the beautiful hymn, ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee’, was played with deep religious feeling by the bandsmen as the ship was fast sinking. It was a fitting end to a solemn and terrible tragedy.

  The leader of the orchestra, Mr Wallace Hartley, of Dewsbury, whose aged parents, though terribly distressed by the loss of their son, are proud to think that he faced the end with such courage.

  He toured for three years with the Carl Rosa Opera Co. and for three years with the Moody-Manners Co.

  Attracted by the possibilities and the pay on board an ocean liner, he secured the post of bandmaster with the Cunard Co., and was on the Mauretania and the Lusitania.

  When he arrived back in Liverpool on Tuesday week Mr Black, the musical director for the Cunard and White Star Companies, asked him to direct the orchestra of eight for the Titanic’s first voyage.

  Mr Hartley was not anxious, according to the father, to accept the offer, but finally agreed to go, and proceeded to Southampton only a day after his arrival in Liverpool.

  After every voyage his sweetheart, Miss Robinson, eldest daughter of the late Mr Robinson, a well-known Holbech manufacturer, was in the habit of meeting him at Liverpool, and Mr Hartley invariably paid a visit to his parents at Dewsbury. He had resolved to leave the sea and to marry in about three months’ time.

  (Liverpool Evening Express, 20 April 1912)

  TITANIC SURVIVOR WEDS OREGON MAN

  Fiancé Missed Her at the Pier and Did Not Locate Her Until Friday

  Miss Marion Wright, a young Englishwoman, one of the rescued Titanic’s passengers, was married at 11 o’clock yesterday morning in St Christopher’s Chapel at No. 211 Fulton Street, to Arthur Woolcott, a fruit grower of Cottage Grove, Oregon. There is romance for you.

  Engaged to Mr Woolcott for the past year, Miss Wright came from her home in Yeovil, Somerset, England, to marry him here. He, to meet her when the Titanic arrived, came from Oregon to this city last Monday.

  Imagination is not capable of drawing the picture of last Monday morning – Mr Woolcott starting white-faced from his breakfast at the Grand Union Hotel, and Miss Wright looking hopelessly from her seat in a lifeboat upon a sea of ice cakes, that did not promise even the faintest hope of rescue. Neither then expected to meet the other again.

  Mr Woolcott is 32; his bride 26. When the young man learnt that the Titanic had sunk he sought to learn the names of the saved, but the list was slow in coming, and when it was flashed by wireless there were so many errors it was imprudent to even hope that his sweetheart, who was in the second cabin, had escaped. At length the tension lessened with authoritative news.

  Among the first to stand watch at the Cunard pier on Thursday night was Woolcott. His fiancée had been unable to get through to him a wireless message saying that her health was unimpaired. He heard all of the wild rumours flying about the pier that scores of survivors were dying on the Carpathia, and that others were hopelessly maimed.

  Keen-eyed though he was, Woolcott did not see the young woman leave the ship. Frantically he rushed onto the vessel. He was told that Miss Wright had landed. He did not believe it. He believed then that she had been lost and that this fact had been concealed through an error in the wireless.

  Miss Wright, on failing to see her sweetheart, roamed around the pier, but she could not find Woolcott. Then she went to No. 204 West 128th Street with Mrs Bessie Watt of Edinburgh, and the latter’s daughter, Bertha, 14, both of whom had been saved from the Titanic.

  This was not known to Woolcott. From the Grand Union Hotel he called up all of the hospitals and vainly asked for his fiancée. Miss Wright, unable to explain his failure to find her, called up all of the hotels. On Friday afternoon, while he was still searching anxiously for her, she learnt that he was stopping at the Grand Union. She left her address. When he returned, practically heart-broken, to the hotel in the evening, the information was given to him. He went to No. 204 West 128th Street and his fiancée answered the ring at the door.

  Yesterday morning they secured a marriage licence at the City Hall. Mrs Watt and her brother, Harry Milne, went with them. The Rev. J. Wilson Sutton accompanied them to St Christopher’s Chapel and performed the ceremony.

  ‘She was very cool,’ said Mr Sutton in speaking about it after-wards. ‘She could not have been less frightened at the prospect of matrimony than if she had to experience another Titanic wreck.’

  (New York World, 21 April 1912)

  FIRST OFFICER KNEW OF ICEBERG AHEAD 15 MINUTES BEFORE THE TITANIC STRUCK

  That First Officer Murdoch of the Titanic committed suicide because he had known a quarter of an hou
r before she struck that the liner was headed for an iceberg was only one detail of the story told by Thomas Whiteley, first saloon steward, to a World reporter last night. Whiteley is at St Vincent’s Hospital receiving treatment for feet and legs frostbitten and bruised by the falls of a boat tackle on the night of the disaster.

  People lingered long over their dinners Sunday night, he said. Just before the doors closed at 9.30 Chief Surgeon O’Laughlin got up in his chair at the head of his table, which was next to the one I served. In his hand was a glass of champagne.

  ‘Here’s to the mighty Titanic!’ he said. ‘Long may she defy the seas!’

  Captain Smith dined as usual at the head of his own table, Mr Andrews on his right, on his left a very beautiful woman who always wore white furs of great richness, but whose name I did not know. Mr Ismay during the whole trip sat at one of the small tables for two persons. Throughout the voyage he was always served by the head waiter; always he ate alone.

  When the alarm was rung we began rounding up people and started the boats off, beginning forward on the port side and working around to the starboard, from aft to forward. John Jacob Astor could not have helped anyone into boats after Mrs Astor was put into the lifeboat, for no one was allowed to do that but the people of the ship. But I saw him just outside the smoking room. I knew him well, for he sat at the next table to mine in the saloon.

  ‘Steward,’ he said to me, ‘are we going to pull through?’

  ‘Don’t you doubt it, sir,’ I answered, ‘she’s good for seven or eight hours yet.’ We all believed she was practically unsinkable.

  He took out his cigarette case and handed me a cigarette. Then he lit one himself. I saw him go into the smoking room and sit down. It was only a few minutes later that the end came. I believe Mr Astor met his death there.

  The last boat was just pulling off. The order had come to slash the falls and all but one was cut. I was told to leap for it. My foot, as I went over the side, caught in the fall and I was badly burnt, though I never found it out till I reached the Carpathia. Of course I went down. Somehow I cut myself loose from that rope and arose amidst a lot of wreckage as the Titanic was sinking. Four Italians and I clung to a state room wardrobe that floated up from the wreck. One by one, the others dropped off, overcome by the cold.

  Then I drifted near the overturned boat of Second Officer Lightoller. There was no room for me. By and by one of the men died and I took his place. As we stood there, each man holding on to his neighbour’s shoulders, fearful every moment that some lurch would send me off again into that icy water, two of the men I knew had been on watch in the crow’s nest that night spoke up.

  ‘It’s no wonder Mr Murdoch shot himself,’ said one to the other. I asked them why.

  ‘From the crow’s nest we sighted the iceberg that hit us at 11.15,’ he replied. ‘I at once reported it to Mr Murdoch. It was not white, but a sort of bluish colour, plainly distinguishable against the clear sky. Twice afterwards I reported the berg to Mr Murdoch. I could not see that he at all varied the Titanic’s course. He knew he should have changed his course. He shot himself because he knew it.’

  Now, I carry an old gold watch of my father’s that has always kept fair time, and that I was in the habit of setting every day by the ship’s time. My watch showed 11.30 when the ship struck. The time I read here in the newspapers must be wrong. I believe from that that Mr Murdoch must have known about the iceberg a quarter of an hour before we struck.

  (New York World, 21 April 1912)

  TITANIC’S ENGINES RACING TOP SPEED WHEN SHE HIT

  Two injured members of the Titanic’s crew in the infirmary of St Vincent’s Hospital believe they hold between them the key to the two vital facts of her disaster. John Thompson, fireman, with a broken arm, occupies the cot next to Thomas Whiteley, first saloon steward, who in yesterday’s World testified that First Officer Murdoch shot himself because he had known a quarter of an hour before she struck that the Titanic was headed for an iceberg. Whiteley told the World reporter yesterday that he had not a word to add or take away from that statement or any other in his narrative.

  Thompson’s faith in the accuracy of New York reporters grew after he had read the exact presentation of his shipmate’s story in The World and he broke the silence, which he had stolidly maintained, as to events in the Titanic’s stokehole and engine room to tell The World man.

  That top speed was maintained from the beginning to the end of the Titanic’s fatal course. That she was speeded uniformly as close to 77 revolutions as could be. That she was racing at the utmost capacity of her engines when she ripped off her plates on the iceberg.

  John Thompson is forty-two years old and hails from Liverpool.

  From Queenstown out, he said, all the firemen had been talking of the orders we had to fire her up as hard as we possibly could. We were to make as quick a passage as possible, the orders ran, and we were to beat all records on our maiden trip. I heard that these orders came from the engineering department. But, bless you, we men didn’t have time to talk about where those orders came from. There was no spare time whatever for any of us firemen.

  We were carrying full pressure. From the time we left Queenstown until the moment of the shock we never ceased to make from 74 to 77 revolutions. It never went below 74 and as during that whole Sunday we had been keeping up to 77, surely she must have been making that speed then.

  At 11 we were called to be ready to go on watch at 12. Our quarters were in the forecastle. We felt the crash with all its force up there in the eyes of the ship and my mates and I were all thrown sprawling from our bunks. It was a harsh, grinding sound, as if everything were being torn out of her. I judge it must have lasted at least five minutes, until she came to a standstill. I ran on deck and found the forward well-deck covered with masses of ice torn from the berg. We went below to grab some clothes. Our leading fireman, William Small, rushes in, and shouts, ‘All hands below!’ But we had no chance to go down the tunnels to the fireroom, for the water was rising and plainly to be seen. So we had to go up on the main deck. Next the leading fireman rushes up there and orders us back to get lifebelts and go on the boat-deck.

  We put out again for the forecastle, got our lifebelts on and then up to the boat-deck. The chief officer wanted to know what in hell we were doing up there and sent us down to the sun-deck. We walked about there, watching her sink.

  About one o’clock the chief officer called us all up again to hoist up a pair of lifeboats. The first we launched was No. 16 from starboard. On the port-side we put off the rest, with two collapsibles on the boat-deck. Two other collapsibles were on a platform alongside the funnels, 12ft at least above the boat-deck, and we had to slide them down to the deck on planks, for launching. By that time the water was rising right onto the boat-deck, and Captain Smith sings out:

  ‘Every man for himself!’

  Next thing she parted in two. I managed to get into the collapsible boat we had on the planks, in which there were twenty-seven altogether, with one woman from the steerage. We were washed over the side. The boat went right under water with the weight of us as we rowed away from the Titanic.

  Captain Smith was standing within five feet of me at the time our lifeboat went over the side, with nobody between us. He was swept away with the rush of water. He had two lifebelts on, one on his stomach and another over his neck and chest. As he went overboard he shouted, ‘Every man for himself!’ That was the last I saw of him.

  On the collapsible we drifted out from the Titanic’s side. We could not have been more than twenty or thirty yards away when we saw the stern end coming right up in the air. On it there were hundreds of human beings. Next came the explosion. It was like a waterspout, filled with black things that must have been bits of iron. Then she glided down, headed straight for the bottom.

  We had no oars or other means of moving our boat and there we stuck, standing knee-deep in water, till the Fourth Officer came up in one of the sail lifeboats and picked us up.
I was told to get up the ladder when we reached the Carpathia’s side. But I found I could not use my right arm. So they lowered a boat-swain’s chair and hoisted me up. I remembered then that my arm must have been broken by the forward one of a broken set of davits as the collapsible was washed against it when we went off the deck. The cold of that night was so intense that when we got to the Carpathia my jaws were tight locked together as if with lockjaw.

  It was common talk on the Carpathia about the ‘money boat’ Mr Whiteley told you of yesterday. I think another reason why First Officer Murdoch shot himself may perhaps be found in the story of that boat, for the story runs among the men that he was there when the millionaire’s boat was loaded.

  (New York World, 22 April 1912)

  HEROIC PRIESTS GAVE UP LIVES TO QUIET CROWDS

  Two priests of the Roman Catholic Church went down on the Titanic with men and women grouped about them responding to prayers. Not only Catholics, but Protestants and Jews, realizing that their last hour was at hand, took part in the final religious service on the sloping deck of the Titanic as she was heading downward for the depths.

  One of the clergymen was Rev. Thomas R. Byles of Westminster Parish, London, who was on his way to this city to officiate at the marriage of his brother in Brooklyn. The other was a German priest who spoke the Hungarian language in addition to his own. Father Byles was in the first cabin. The German priest was in the third cabin. The name of the German priest has not been ascertained.

  Both priests celebrated mass for the steerage passengers Sunday morning. Father Byles delivered a sermon in English and French, the other in German and Hungarian. Strangely enough each of the priests spoke of the necessity of man having a lifeboat in the shape of religious consolation at hand in case of spiritual shipwreck.