Titanic: A Survivor's Story

by Gracie, Archibald

  About this time I recall that an officer on the roof of the house called down to the crew at this quarter, ‘Are there any seamen down there among you?’ ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ was the response, and quite a number left the Boat Deck to assist in what I supposed to have been the cutting loose of the other Engelhardt boat up there on the roof. Again I heard an inquiry for another knife. I thought I recognized the voice of the second officer working up there with the crew. Lightoller has told me, and has written me as well, that ‘boat A on the starboard side did not leave the ship,’1 while ‘B was thrown down to the Boat Deck,’ and was the one on which he and I eventually climbed. The crew had thrown the Engelhardt boat to the deck, but I did not understand why they were so long about launching it, unless they were waiting to cut the other one loose and launch them both at the same time. Two young men of the crew, nice looking, dressed in white, one tall and the other smaller, were coolly debating as to whether the compartments would hold the ship afloat. They were standing with their backs to the rail looking on at the rest of the crew, and I recall asking one of them why he did not assist.

  At this time there were other passengers around, but Clinch Smith was the only one associated with me here to the last. It was about this time, fifteen minutes after the launching of the last lifeboat on the port side, that I heard a noise that spread consternation among us all. This was no less than the water striking the bridge and gurgling up the hatchway forward. It seemed momentarily as if it would reach the Boat Deck. It appeared as if it would take the crew a long time to turn the Engelhardt boat right side up and lift it over the rail, and there were so many ready to board her that she would have been swamped. Probably taking these points into consideration, Clinch Smith made the proposition that we should leave and go toward the stern, still on the starboard side, so he started and I followed immediately after him. We had taken but a few steps in the direction indicated when there arose before us from the decks below, a mass of humanity several lines deep, covering the Boat Deck, facing us, and completely blocking our passage toward the stern.

  There were women in the crowd, as well as men, and they seemed to be steerage passengers who had just come up from the decks below. Instantly, when they saw us and the water on the deck chasing us from behind, they turned in the opposite direction towards the stern. This brought them at that point plumb against the iron fence and railing which divide the first and second cabin passengers. Even among these people there was no hysterical cry, or evidence of panic, but oh, the agony of it! Clinch Smith and I instantly saw that we could make no progress ahead, and with the water following us behind over the deck, we were in a desperate place. I can never forget the exact point on the ship where he and I were located, viz., at the opening of the angle made by the walls of the officers’ house and only a short distance abaft the Titanic’s forward ‘expansion joint.’ Clinch Smith was immediately on my left, nearer the apex of the angle, and our backs were turned towards the ship’s rail and the sea. Looking up toward the roof of the officers’ house I saw a man to the right of me and above lying on his stomach on the roof, with his legs dangling over. Clinch Smith jumped to reach this roof, and I promptly followed. The efforts of both of us failed. I was loaded down with heavy long-skirted overcoat and Norfolk coat beneath, with clumsy life-preserver over all, which made my jump fall short. As I came down, the water struck my right side. I crouched down into it preparatory to jumping with it, and rose as if on the crest of a wave on the seashore. This expedient brought the attainment of the object I had in view. I was able to reach the roof and the iron railing that is along the edge of it, and pulled myself over on top of the officers’ house on my stomach near the base of the second funnel. The feat which I instinctively accomplished was the simple one, familiar to all bathers in the surf at the seashore. I had no time to advise Clinch Smith to adopt it. To my utter dismay, a hasty glance to my left and right showed that he had not followed my example, and that the wave, if I may call it such, which had mounted me to the roof, had completely covered him, as well as all people on both sides of me, including the man I had first seen athwart the roof.

  I was thus parted forever from my friend, Clinch Smith, with whom I had agreed to remain to the last struggle. I felt almost a pang of responsibility for our separation; but he was not in sight and there was no chance of rendering assistance. His ultimate fate is a matter of conjecture. Hemmed in by the mass of people toward the stern, and cornered in the locality previously described, it seems certain that as the ship keeled over and sank, his body was caught in the angle or in the coils of rope and other appurtenances on the deck and borne down to the depths below. There could not be a braver man than James Clinch Smith. He was the embodiment of coolness and courage during the whole period of the disaster. While in constant touch and communication with him at the various points on the ship when we were together on this tragic night, he never showed the slightest sign of fear, but manifested the same quiet imperturbable manner so well known to all of his friends, who join with his family in mourning his loss. His conduct should be an inspiration to us all, and an appropriate epitaph to his memory taken from the words of Christ would be: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.’

  1 With the evidence on the subject presented later he recognizes that Boat A floated away and was afterwards utilized.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Foundering Of The Titanic

  ‘There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet.’ – Jeremiah 49:23.

  Before I resume the story of my personal escape it is pertinent that I should, at this juncture, discuss certain points wherein the statements of survivors are strangely at variance.

  First: Was there an explosion of the ship’s boilers?

  I am of opinion that there was none, because I should have been conscious of it. When aboard ship I should have heard it and felt it, but I did not. As my senses were on the lookout for every danger, I cannot conceive it possible that an explosion occurred without my being made aware of it. When I went down holding on to the ship and was under water, I heard no sound indicating anything of the sort, and when I came to the surface there was no ship in sight. Furthermore, there was no perceptible wave which such a disturbance would have created.

  The two ranking surviving officers of the Titanic, viz., Second Officer Lightoller and Third Officer Pitman, with whom I had a discussion on this and other points in almost daily conversation in my cabin on the Carpathia, agreed with me that there was no explosion of the boilers. The second officer and myself had various similar experiences, and, as will be noticed in the course of this narrative, we were very near together during all the perils of that awful night. The only material difference worth noting was the manner in which each parted company with the ship, and finally reached the bottom-up Engelhardt boat on top of which we made our escape. According to his testimony before the Senate Committee, he stood on the roof of the officers’ quarters in front of the first funnel, facing forward, and as the ship dived, he dived also, while I held on to the iron railing on the same roof, near the second funnel, as has been described, and as the ship sank I was pulled down with it. The distance between us on the ship was then about fifteen yards.

  There are so many newspaper and other published reports citing the statements of certain survivors as authority for this story of an explosion of the boilers that the reading world generally has been made to believe it. Among the names of passengers whose alleged statements (I have received letters repudiating some of these interviews) are thus given credence, I have read those of Miss Cornelia Andrews, of Hudson, N.Y.; Mrs. W.E. Carter, of Philadelphia, Pa.; Mr. John Pillsbury Snyder, of Minneapolis, Minn.; Miss Minahan, of Fond du Lac, Wis., and Lady Duff Gordon, of England, all of whom, according to the newspaper reports, describe their position in the lifeboats around the ship and how they heard, or saw, the ‘ship blow up,’ or ‘the boilers explode’ with one or two explosions just before the ship sank out of their sight. O
n the other hand, Mr. Hugh Woolner told me on the Carpathia that from his position in the lifeboat, which he claims was the nearest one to the Titanic when she sank some seventy-five yards away, there was a terrific noise on the ship, as she slanted towards the head before the final plunge, which sounded like the crashing of millions of dishes of crockery. Woolner and I when on board the Carpathia, as presently described, had our cabin together, where we were visited by Officers Lightoller and Pitman. This was one of the points we discussed together, and the conclusion was at once reached as to the cause of this tremendous crash. Since then, Lightoller has been subjected to rigid examination before this country’s and England’s Investigating Committees, and has been a party to discussions with experts, including the designers and builders of the Titanic. His conclusion expressed on the Carpathia is now strengthened, and he says that there was no explosion of the boilders and that the great noise which was mistaken for it was due to ‘the boilers leaving their beds’ on E Deck when the ship was aslant and, with their great weight, sliding along the deck, crushing and tearing through the doomed vessel forward toward the bow. Third Officer Pitman also gave his testimony on this, as well as the next point considered. Before the Senate Committee he said: ‘Then she turned right on end and made a big plunge forward. The Titanic did not break asunder. I heard reports like big guns in the distance. I assumed the great bulkheads had gone to pieces.’ Cabin-steward Samuel Rule said: ‘I think the noise we heard was that of the boilers and engines breaking away from their seatings and falling down through the forward bulkhead. At the time it occurred, the ship was standing nearly upright in the water.’

  The peculiar way in which the Titanic is described as hesitating and assuming a vertical position before her final dive to the depths below can be accounted for only on this hypothesis of the sliding of the boilers from their beds. A second cabin passenger, Mr. Lawrence Beesley, a Cambridge University man, has written an excellent book about the Titanic disaster, dwelling especially upon the lessons to be learned from it. His account given to the newspapers also contains the most graphic description from the viewpoint of those in the lifeboats, telling how the great ship looked before her final plunge. He ‘was a mile or two miles away,’ he writes, ‘when the oarsmen lay on their oars and all in the lifeboat were motionless as we watched the ship in absolute silence – save some who would not look and buried their heads on each others’ shoulders….

  As we gazed awe-struck, she tilted slightly up, revolving apparently about a centre of gravity just astern of amidships until she attained a vertical upright position, and there she remained – motionless! As she swung up, her lights, which had shown without a flicker all night, went out suddenly, then came on again for a single flash and then went out altogether; and as they did so there came a noise which many people, wrongly, I think, have described as an explosion. It has always seemed to me that it was nothing but the engines and machinery coming loose from their place and bearings and falling through the compartments, smashing everything in their way. It was partly a roar, partly a groan, partly a rattle and partly a smash, and it was not a sudden roar as an explosion would be; it went on successively for some seconds, possibly fifteen or twenty, as the heavy machinery dropped down to the bottom (now the bows) of the ship; I suppose it fell through the end and sank first before the ship. (For evidence of shattered timbers, see Hagan’s testimony, page 85.) But it was a noise no one had heard before and no one wishes to hear again. It was stupefying, stupendous, as it came to us along the water. It was as if all the heavy things one could think of had been thrown downstairs from the top of a house, smashing each other, and the stairs and everything in the way.

  ‘Several apparently authentic accounts have been given in which definite stories of explosions have been related – in some cases even with wreckage blown up and the ship broken in two; but I think such accounts will not stand close analysis. In the first place, the fires had been withdrawn and the steam allowed to escape some time before she sank, and the possibility from explosion from this cause seems very remote.’

  Second: Did the ship break in two?

  I was on the Carpathia when I first heard any one make reference to this point. The seventeen-year-old son of Mr. John B. Thayer, ‘Jack’ Thayer, Jr., and his young friend from Philadelphia, R.N. Williams, Jr., the tennis expert, in describing their experiences to me were positive that they saw the ship split in two. This was from their position in the water on the starboard quarter. ‘Jack’ Thayer gave this same description to an artist, who reproduced it in an illustration in the New York Herald, which many of us have seen. Some of the passengers, whose names I have just mentioned, are also cited by the newspapers as authority for the statements that the ship ‘broke in two,’ that she ‘buckled amidships,’ that she ‘was literally torn to pieces,’ etc. On the other hand, there is much testimony available which is at variance with this much-advertised sensational newspaper account. Summing up its investigation of this point the Senate Committee’s Report reads: ‘There have been many conflicting statements as to whether the ship broke in two, but the preponderance of evidence is to the effect that she assumed an almost end-on position and sank intact.’ This was as Lightoller testified before the Committee, that the Titanic’s decks were ‘absolutely intact’ when she went down. On this point, too, Beesley is in accord, from his viewpoint in the lifeboat some distance away out of danger, whence, more composedly than others, he could see the last of the ill-fated ship as the men lay on their oars watching until she disappeared. ‘No phenomenon,’ he continues, ‘like that pictured in some American and English papers occurred – that of the ship breaking in two, and the two ends being raised above the surface. When the noise was over, the Titanic was still upright like a column; we could see her now only as the stern and some 150 feet of her stood outlined against the star-specked sky, looming black in the darkness, and in this position she continued for some minutes – I think as much as five minutes – but it may have been less. Then, as sinking back a little at the stern, I thought she slid slowly forwards through the water and dived slantingly down.’

  From my personal viewpoint I also know that the Titanic’s decks were intact at the time she sank, and when I sank with her, there was over seven-sixteenths of the ship already under water, and there was no indication then of any impending break of the deck or ship. I recently visited the sister ship of the Titanic, viz., the Olympic, at her dock in New York harbor. This was for the purpose of still further familiarizing myself with the corresponding experriences on the Titanic, and which are referred to in this narrative. The only difference in the deck plan of the sister ship which I noted, and which the courteous officers of the Olympic mentioned, is that the latter ship’s Deck A is not glass-enclosed like the Titanic’s; but one of the principal points of discovery that I made during my investigation concerns this matter of the alleged breaking in two of this magnificent ship. The White Star Line officers pointed out to me what they called the ship’s ‘forward expansion joint,’ and they claimed the Titanic was so constructed that she must have split in two at this point, if she did so at all. I was interested in observing that this ‘expansion joint’ was less than twelve feet forward from that point on the Boat Deck whence I jumped, as described (to the iron railing on the roof of the officers’ quarters). It is indicated by a black streak of leather-covering running transversely across the deck and then up the vertical white wall of the officers’ house. This ‘joint’ extends, however, only through the Boat Deck and Decks A and B, which are superimposed on Deck C. If there was any splitting in two, it seems to me also that this superstructure, weakly joined, would have been the part to split; but it certainly did not. It was only a few seconds before the time of the alleged break that I stepped across this dividing line of the two sections and went down with the after section about twelve feet from this ‘expansion joint.’

  One explanation which I offer of what must be a delusion on the part of the advocates of the ‘break-in-two�
� theory is that when the forward funnel fell, as hereafter described, it may have looked as if the ship itself was splitting in two, particularly to the young men who are cited as authority.

  Third: Did either the Captain or the First Officer shoot himself?

  Notwithstanding all the current rumors and newspaper statements answering this question affirmatively, I have been unable to find any passenger or member of the crew cited as authority for the statement that either Captain Smith or First Officer Murdoch did anything of the sort. On the contrary, so far as relates to Captain Smith, there are several witnesses, including Harold S. Bride, the junior Marconi operator, who saw him at the last on the bridge of his ship, and later, when sinking and struggling in the water. Neither can I discover any authentic testimony about First Officer Murdoch’s shooting himself. On the contrary, I find fully sufficient evidence that he did not. He was a brave and efficient officer and no sufficient motive for self-destruction can be advanced. He performed his full duty under difficult circumstances, and was entitled to praise and honor. During the last fifteen minutes before the ship sank, I was located at that quarter forward on the Boat Deck, starboard side, where Murdoch was in command and where the crew under him were engaged in the vain attempt of launching the Engelhardt boat. The report of a pistol shot during this interval ringing in my ears within a few feet of me would certainly have attracted my attention, and later, when I moved astern, the distance between us was not so great as to prevent my hearing it. The ‘big wave’ or ‘giant wave,’ described by Harold Bride, swept away Murdoch and the crew from the Boat Deck first before it struck me, and when I rose with it to the roof of the officers’ house, Bride’s reported testimony fits in with mine so far as relates to time, place, and circumstance, and I quote his words as follows: ‘About ten minutes before the ship sank, Captain Smith gave word for every man to look to his own safety. I sprang to aid the men struggling to launch the life raft (Engelhardt boat), and we had succeeded in getting it to the edge of the ship when a giant wave carried it away.’ Lightoller also told me on board the Carpathia that he saw Murdoch when he was engulfed by the water and that if before this a pistol had been fired within the short distance that separated them, he also is confident that he would have heard it.