Titanic's Last Secrets: The Further Adventures of Shadow Divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler

by Brad Matsen

  Sarnoff froze. Olympic sent the message again, and again. He took off his headphones, picked up the telephone, and called his boss at the New York office of the Marconi company to get permission to notify the press. An hour later, extra editions of the major newspapers were on the stands. Sarnoff was riveted to his chair, tapping out Carpathia’s call sign.

  At the White Star office, Phillip Franklin read the telegram from Olympic but could not bring himself to believe the death toll was so high. If Titanic had sunk—and part of him still did not admit that it had—it would have stayed afloat at least long enough for several nearby ships to arrive. It would have been a simple matter for another ship to pull alongside and transfer every last one of the crew and passengers before Titanic went down. Franklin had followed the big new ships through their design, construction, and trials. He knew they were built to take heavy punishment and still survive for hours, if not days. When HMS Hawke had slammed into Olympic, Olympic had not only survived but made it to port under its own power. Titanic was as strong, if not stronger.

  Franklin went downstairs to make a statement to the swarm of reporters who were milling around in the ticketing hall. Some survivors were aboard Carpathia, Franklin told them. Two other ships that were in the vicinity, Parisian and Virginian, might also have arrived in time to save more passengers and crew. There has probably been a terrible loss of life, he admitted.

  By midnight, a crowd of hundreds had gathered in front of the White Star office, all of them desperate to know if their loved ones were among those alive aboard Carpathia. In his office, Franklin relinquished the last of his optimism that Titanic was still afloat, called back the train to Halifax, and canceled the Lady Laurier charter.

  In Times Square, another mob shuffled around all night, waiting for handwritten bulletins from the newspapers on the fate of Titanic. Most of them knew no one on the unlucky ship. They were there because they sensed a primitive disturbance in the rhythms of life that allowed one day to follow another. The disappearance of a gigantic, unsinkable ocean liner and hundreds of innocent people threatened their belief that the world was essentially an orderly place. They had heard of the Johnstown flood that killed more than two thousand, and countless horrible war stories, but somehow this was worse. In the few short hours since the news broke, Titanic had captured the imaginations of millions of people, who were both fascinated and terrified by so outrageous a turn of fate.

  In Southampton, dawn washed over a thousand women and children gathered on the cobbles in front of the White Star office. All of them lived in row houses within a few blocks of the waterfront. From time to time, their men came home from the sea to live with them before another ship took them away. During the night, the rumors and conflicting bulletins had flowed into the seafaring neighborhood. Titanic had hit an iceberg; another ship was towing it to Halifax. Titanic had hit an iceberg and sank, but everyone aboard was safe on two or three ships that arrived in time to rescue them.

  In the darkest part of the night, the despicable truth rippled from house to house. More than 1,500 of Titanic’s passengers and crew were missing. Fewer than 800 had been taken from lifeboats onto Carpathia. The wives of the crewmen stood silently under umbrellas in a soft rain, facing the White Star office, hoping that at any minute someone would emerge to tell them that none of them were widows.

  Daylight on April 16 brought no relief in New York City. Carpathia’s Marconi had a range of only two hundred miles and could not reach Cape Race. It had cabled the names of a few of the survivors to the nearby Olympic, which had relayed them to New York before steaming eastward on its original course. Nine out of ten people who rushed to the White Star office that morning hoping for good news left in tears when the names of their loved ones were not on the first list of survivors sent by Carpathia.

  In the newspapers, people around the world read that Titanic had definitely sunk, along with the sketchy details about survivors. The New York American, a Hearst paper, led the way, devoting eight of the twenty-four pages of its early afternoon edition to the disaster.

  Jack Binns, the hero telegrapher of the RMS Republic who had become a newspaperman, wrote a story on David Sarnoff at his post in the Wanamaker’s Marconi station. The rest of the New York American’s coverage included stories on the lack of enough lifeboats for everyone on board, icebergs, watertight doors, and Titanic’s insurance coverage. A cutaway profile of the ship was spread across the tops of pages 6 and 7. Beneath it, an editorial cartoon depicted the god Neptune sending lightning bolts out of his head to three ships on the horizon, while holding Titanic up, speared on the tines of his trident. The caption was A SACRIFICE TO CARELESSNESS AND GREED.

  The crowd outside the White Star office in New York demanding the names of survivors had grown from hundreds to thousands. It was verging on becoming a riot. The policemen who were already there called for reinforcements. When Franklin or another White Star man appeared at the door, the mob surged toward them, shouting curses and accusations that they had lied to the world about survivors.

  Despite the increasingly grim truth that was emerging, hopeful rumors still circulated in New York and Southampton. Some passengers and crew were confirmed to be aboard Virginian, Parisian, or Olympic. Some had saved themselves by climbing from the sinking ship on the iceberg and were waiting there to be rescued.

  To ease fears that survivors might still be at the scene awaiting rescue, Franklin told the crowd outside his office that he had wired Halifax and chartered another ship to speed to Titanic’s last reported position. He didn’t tell them that the cable-laying steamer Mackay-Bennett would carry a mortician, a chaplain, a cargo of pine caskets, and forty tons of ice in the hold for preserving bodies.

  In Washington, the news reached President Taft, who was already reeling from his defeat in Pennsylvania at the hands of his once-close friend and mentor, Teddy Roosevelt. Roo-sevelt had served two terms as president, decided not to run for a third, and handpicked Taft to succeed him. Roosevelt had counted on Taft to stay the progressive course he had set for the Republican Party, but Taft had taken the GOP in the opposite direction. Now Roosevelt had not just beaten Taft in Pennsylvania; he had routed him. For Taft, the additional bad news that his friend Archie Butt might be lost at sea was devastating.

  On the morning of April 17, Taft still did not know if Butt was dead or alive. He sent a telegram to Franklin asking for news about his friend and adviser.

  Taft waited two hours. Franklin did not reply. Taft was incensed that the man had ignored him. He ordered the fast navy scout cruisers Chester and Salem to sortie from Norfolk, Virginia, make contact with Carpathia, and demand a complete list of survivors.

  While Taft was sending the navy to run down Carpathia, William Alden Smith was across town reading the newspaper coverage of the disaster. Smith was fifty-two years old, had served his first term in one of Michigan’s two Senate seats, and was almost certain to be reelected the following year. He was a deceptively ordinary-looking man of average height with a flair for saying just what was on his mind in a way that usually didn’t offend anyone unless he intended to offend them. He owned a small railroad and a newspaper in Michigan, and championed small business against big business whenever he saw an opportunity.

  Smith had a reputation in Congress as a man who could seize attention by gauging the right psychological moment and then hold it with sheer showmanship. He came by his talents, Smith said, when he was twelve years old. After being turned down for a job as a newsboy because he didn’t have the $10 front money for the route, he spent a quarter on unpopped popcorn. He popped the corn, bagged it, and persuaded a friend who played the banjo to stand with him on a corner in Grand Rapids. While the banjo player strummed “Camptown Races,” Smith danced, tossed bags of popcorn to customers, and caught pennies in return. He made $1.25 the first day. Within a year, Will’s Popcorn was bringing in a profit of $75 a month, supporting the entire Smith family and the banjo player.

  As Smith read about Titani
c, he was struck by a bizarre coincidence. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a yellowed newspaper clipping from 1902. It was a poem about a shipwreck that had strangely moved him ten years earlier. Until that moment he had forgotten that he still had it.

  Then she, the stricken hull,

  The doomed, the beautiful,

  Proudly to fate abased

  Her brow, Titanic.

  Smith noticed another coincidence, too: There on the front pages of every newspaper on his desk was a photograph of Captain E. J. Smith. Six years earlier, then-congressman Smith and his son had crossed the Atlantic aboard Baltic, under the command of E. J. Smith. The captain had invited him and his son to dinner, then took them on a tour of the bridge. Congressman Smith was a student of human behavior, and he’d pegged Captain Smith as an extremely level-headed, safety-conscious mariner.

  Every newspaper Senator Smith read carried a story about Captain Smith’s recklessness in running too fast through a known ice field. One reporter asked naval architect Robert Stocker to look at Titanic’s specifications, evaluate the time the ship had stayed afloat, and offer a conclusion. “The Titanic must have been making full speed ahead when she collided with the iceberg,” he said, “and evidently her compartments must have been sprung from bow to stern.”

  That was not the E. J. Smith whom Senator Smith knew. The papers painted Titanic’s captain as a reckless fool, but that simply could not be true. If it wasn’t, Smith wondered, what had happened to the ship? What about the ice warnings the papers said Smith had received? Why had the world’s largest, finest, and safest passenger ship foundered on its maiden voyage?

  Two days after the disaster, while Carpathia was still steaming to New York, either out of range or maintaining radio silence, millions of people all over America and Europe were asking the same questions. The newspapers were answering them with accusations and supposition. Smith thought the poem in his wallet was way too much of a coincidence to not mean something. What it meant, he decided, was that he was the man to get the real answers. With a flash of certainty, he knew that his entire life had led him to that moment.

  Smith called the White House and reached Taft’s secretary, Charles Hilles. What did the president intend to do about the Titanic disaster? Smith asked. Most likely, Hilles replied, the president will do nothing.

  That morning, Smith drafted a resolution to convene a panel to investigate the wreck of Titanic under the auspices of the Committee on Commerce, of which he was a member. At the beginning of the day’s Senate session, Smith interrupted the prayer by the chaplain to present his resolution.

  James Martine of New Jersey took the floor. “Senators, let us act at once,” he said. “True, we cannot help the unfortunate souls who went to their watery graves; but lest another craft shall go to the bottom of the insatiable sea with her human cargo, I urge the passage of this resolution.”

  The lone objection came from Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. Lodge insisted that his own Committee on Foreign Relations held the power to deal with any prospective international treaty that might come as a result of the inquiry.

  Smith jumped to his feet. “I am perfectly indifferent to what committee it may be referred. But in God’s name let us do something!”

  By unanimous consent, the Senate gave Smith’s committee the authority to conduct an investigation to determine what had happened to RMS Titanic on the night of April 14–15, 1912. If the conclusions of the inquiry called for a treaty or other international instrument, Lodge would step in. The Commerce Committee chairman, Senator Knute Nelson, appointed Smith as chairman. The panel of inquisitors would have an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, with a liberal, moderate, and conservative member of each party

  The next day, April 18, Smith set his Titanic inquiry aside to tend to some business on his upcoming reelection campaign in Michigan. He was dictating a letter to his ally the governor when the telephone rang. Smith answered it himself.

  It was a commander at the Department of the Navy, calling at the request of President Taft. The cruisers Chester and Salem had finally made contact with Carpathia. For reasons that were not entirely clear, Carpathia’s captain had declined to send a complete list of survivors. The president was furious, and the cruisers were continuing to transmit their demands to Carpathia.

  Smith was stunned. Carpathia had turned down a request by the president of the United States.

  There’s more, the commander said. The warships had intercepted a telegram from Carpathia that might be of interest to the committee getting ready to investigate the disaster.

  Read it, Smith said.

  TO PAS FRANKLIN WHITE STAR. MOST DESIRABLE TITANIC CREW SHOULD BE RETURNED HOME EARLIEST MOMENT POSSIBLE. SUGGEST YOU HOLD CEDRIC, SAILING HER DAYLIGHT FRIDAY. PROPOSE RETURNING IN HER MYSELF. YAMSI

  Who is Yamsi? Smith asked.

  We believe it is J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line and president of International Mercantile Marine. He owns Titanic and was aboard the ship.

  He’s alive? Smith asked.

  Apparently, sir, the commander said.

  Smith slowly hung his telephone earpiece on the hookswitch and sorted through what he had just heard. The man who owned the ship had definitely survived. Why? This Ismay wanted to spirit Titanic’s crew out of New York as soon as Carpathia arrived. Why? Of course, Smith realized: Once Ismay and the crew were off American soil, he would have no way to subpoena them to testify before his committee.

  A minute later, Smith had the solution. If Ismay and his crew would not come to Washington to present themselves to his committee, then Washington would go to them. He called the White House, got Hilles, and arranged a noon meeting with the president.

  Minutes before Smith arrived in the Oval Office, the cruisers had intercepted the full list of surviving first-class passengers and transmitted it to the president. Archie Butt was not on it. Smith was shocked to see Taft looking so distraught. His face was bright red, his collar soaked with sweat, his breath coming in gasps. Smith disagreed with Taft on most political issues, but he liked him personally, and he felt sorry for the man.

  Smith thanked the president for seeing him at so difficult a time. He said he hoped the president appreciated the importance of the investigation to the nation. Taft responded that he supported Smith’s resolution and the formation of the committee. He would do everything in his power to help the inquiry.

  Smith asked the president if it was legal to subpoena British citizens and hold them in the United States until they testified. Taft called the attorney general, George Wickersham, who told him that Congress was perfectly justified in holding Ismay and the crew in the country until they satisfied the committee. It was highly unlikely that the British would raise diplomatic objections.

  Smith had three more requests. First, he wanted Secretary of Commerce and Labor Charles Nagel, who was in charge of immigration, to go to New York with the committee to make things as easy as possible for the steerage passengers arriving in the country for the first time. Taft agreed. Second, Smith wanted George Uhler, the government’s top steamship inspector, to join the panel. Taft agreed. Finally, Smith asked the president to dispatch a U.S. Treasury revenue cutter to rendezvous with Carpathia to be sure no one left the ship before it reached the dock. Taft said he would have the cutter under way within the hour.

  Smith thanked Taft and told him that he and a few members of his committee were taking an afternoon train to New York. They would arrive just before Carpathia docked.

  In New York, David Sarnoff was still at his post on the roof of Wanamaker’s department store. He had been at it for seventy-two hours, catnapping on the floor of the Marconi room and listening to messages from Carpathia and the navy cruisers, as well as every other transmission about Titanic.

  William Randolph Hearst had personally taken charge of the coverage in his New York American. As Carpathia skirted the coast of New England, a day out of New York, its telegraph transmissions were incomplete or
unintelligible. Hearst chartered the seagoing tug Mary Scully to get a reporter closer to the ship and make radio contact.

  The day before, J. Bruce Ismay’s name had appeared on one of the partial lists of survivors intercepted by Sarnoff. Hearst remembered Ismay as the arrogant, unfriendly Englishman he had met at a party twenty-five years earlier and wasted no time in handing the president of the White Star Line to the mob. By Friday, as William Alden Smith went to Union Station to board his train for New York, most papers were leading with the story of the perfect villain in the most sensational tragedy in history.

  In the New York Times, Admiral Alfred Mahan was quoted as saying, “Ismay could certainly not be held responsible for the collision with the iceberg, but the shortage of lifeboats meant that so long as there was a soul that could be saved, the obligation lay on Mr. Ismay that that one person and not he should have been in the boat.”

  Hearst’s New York American ran a full-page cartoon depicting Ismay in a lifeboat watching the Titanic sink. The caption read: This is J. Brute Ismay. We respectfully suggest that the emblem of the White Star Line be changed to that of a yellow liver.

  When the newspapers ran out of facts about Titanic, they filled their pages with opinions. The New York Times quoted Stanley Bowdle, an engineer. “The loss of life on Titanic was a sacrifice to degenerate luxury,” he said. “Floating palaces like the White Star liner were degenerate in size, foolish in enjoyment, and criminal in speed.”

  The New York Evening Post published a letter from Admiral F. E. Chadwick. “The Titanic was lost by unwise navigation, by running at full speed, though so amply forewarned, into the dangerous situation which might easily have been avoided. This is the fundamental sad, and one important fact. It accounts for everything,” he opined. Bad navigation accounted for the disaster. Bad British navigation.