Titanic

by Diane Hoh

  But of course that wasn’t all it was, and Max knew it. The plain truth was, it maddened him that men were still standing silently around him, though their faces were strained and pale, when to him, it seemed they should all have been screaming, “It isn’t fair, it just isn’t fair! We don’t want to go down with this ship! We want to be saved! Someone save us, please!”

  Angry tears stung his eyes and he turned away from the rail. He watched for a few moments as crewmen began wrestling to untie the only boat left that Max could see, a collapsible boat with canvas sides lashed to the top of the officer’s quarters. It came crashing down, and landed upright. While the men were working at attaching it to the falls of the nearest davit, Captain Smith approached with a megaphone, calling out, “Well, boys, do your best for the women and children, and look out for yourselves.”

  Suddenly, the bow of the Titanic began to plunge swiftly, sending a tremendous wave of water washing aft from the forward end of the boat deck.

  Here it is, Max thought, his heart stopping as the terror took over. Oh, god, here it comes! Though he thought he had been prepared, he was stunned by the sheer bulk of the solid wall of water as it swept over the ship. Screams and shouts for help filled the air around Max. All semblance of calm, dignified acceptance of their fate vanished as those still on deck, completely panicking under this horrendous threat, scrambled to find safety.

  There was none.

  Fighting despair, Max sprang like a cat for the roof of the officers’ quarters…and made it, clutching at its edges with desperate fingers. Once there, he hung on grimly, his head turned slightly to one side to watch below him.

  There was that split second or two when a valiant steward, his eyes on the wall of water coming at him, shouted for someone to cut the forward falls as people scrambled into a collapsible boat. Once seated, several people hastened to obey the steward’s order. But they had barely loosened the falls when the solid wall of water slammed into them, scooping them up and yanking them back out of the boat. The collapsible was picked up and carried, slamming against a davit, then drifting into the forward funnel as the bridge disappeared under water. The last Max saw of the boat, it was floating away with only a few occupants remaining inside. He could do nothing for himself but hold on.

  Although Elizabeth’s boat, number six, had pulled well away from the ship, Katie and Paddy’s boat, number four, was still close enough to hear a steadily increasing roar, like the bellow of a wounded animal, coming from the ship.

  She tugged on Paddy’s sleeve. “What is that fearful noise?”

  “Don’t know,” he answered, but a man sitting next to him said in halting English, “Things falling now. Ship tilting, big things fall, bump into each other. Piano. Chair. Table. Big things. Dishes, too. Lotsa broken things. Lotsa broken glass. One big mess. Lotsa noise.”

  Paddy drew in his breath, and Katie knew he was thinking about Brian, still on the ship. He was probably afraid that one of those big, loose objects the man was talking about might have swooped down upon his brother, crushing him, taking away any chance he had of swimming free of the ship.

  Though swept by terror herself, she squeezed Paddy’s hand in an attempt to comfort him.

  The bow of the Titanic continued to dive. Still clinging to the roof of the officer’s quarters, Max found himself suddenly caught up in an icy cauldron of water. His fingers were torn away by the force of it, and suddenly he realized he was off the ship and into the very sea itself. The water temperature, three degrees below freezing, penetrated instantly, in spite of his heavy coat. He could feel the biting cold in his ears, his nostrils, down his neck and chest. And then he was being pulled down, down, in a swirling whirlpool of water so dark, he might as well have been stricken blind. Sensing that it was hopeless but refusing to allow that to be so…not yet…not yet…Max fought valiantly to swim.

  But the tug and pull of the ocean determined to claim him was far stronger than he.

  Still, he managed to fight his way to the surface. He had barely gulped in several huge swallows of air when he realized with fresh, numbing despair that his arms and legs were now too frozen to move, to swim, to be of any use to him at all. “Oh, god, no,” he groaned as the icy water closed over his head a second time. It dragged him beneath the surface again, his body so limp it might have been a log.

  Max Whittaker did not want to die. He did not want to die in a black, graveyard-cold ocean. He meant to fight. He wanted to fight. Hadn’t that been the reason he had never given up hope on board the ship, because all along he was convinced that he could somehow save himself?

  The frigid water of the Atlantic Ocean was a far greater foe than he had expected.

  As it dragged his limp, frozen body ever downward, he said a silent good-bye to Elizabeth, wondering as he did so how close her boat might be, and if she could somehow sense that he was near.

  He wished she could know that his last thought was of her.

  Nola Farr, watching with wide, horrified eyes as the stern of the ailing ship continued to climb higher into the air as if it meant to point out the starry sky to observers, suddenly began sobbing. The sound was heartbreaking, and was quickly joined by other similar sounds, some softer, some more agonized and louder. As for Elizabeth, she was at least relieved to see some show of emotion from her mother. But how horrible, that it had taken this fresh new shock—the sight of the great ship tilting ever higher at one end—to pull Nola out of her near-catatonic state.

  Then there came from the Titanic a horrendous, crashing sound, as if everything inside the ship had broken free of its moorings and was careening wildly into the sinking bow.

  It is happening now, Elizabeth thought numbly. The thing that everyone said could never happen, the thing that no one believed was possible even when we were forced to leave in lifeboats, it is happening now. The Titanic is going under before our very eyes.

  And her father, and Max, were still on board.

  Katie and Paddy watched in horror as the forward funnel of the ship, with the painful sound of ripping metal, suddenly toppled toward the bow. It crashed down into the water, sending out a cloud of sparks and soot. At the same time, it created a huge wave that washed free all of the passengers on a canvas boat in the water, and sent the boat itself sailing off another twenty feet, away from the ship.

  Katie, watching aghast, could see people on the Titanic clinging desperately to anything solid to prevent being washed overboard. In vain. The deck lay at such a steep angle now, they were beginning to slide off into the water. Terrified screams mixed with the continuing sounds of crashing objects inside the ship. People fell alone; they fell in groups; they fell in pairs, holding hands.

  The ship’s lights, shining all this time, went out suddenly. Passengers in the lifeboats, startled by the sudden absence of light, cried out.

  The utter darkness changed everything. As long as the ship’s lights had been on, a small spark of hope had remained that it might somehow survive. That spark died with the lights.

  Still, no one was prepared for the sudden splitting of the ship between two of the giant funnels. The separation was accompanied by a terrible cracking sound that sent Katie’s hands up to cover her ears.

  As the Titanic broke into two sections, the bow slid below the surface, while the stern section seemed to settle back for a moment, almost on an even keel.

  The settling back seemed to last a long time. Katie wondered if there were anyone left on board, who might have held on and could now float along on the level section until help arrived. Perhaps Brian?

  But then that section, too, began to slide beneath the surface, the split end sinking down, the aft section rising higher and higher until it was almost perpendicular in the water.

  Those in the closer lifeboats anticipated the complete disappearance of the ship. But instead of sinking, the stern remained upright for a minute or two, and someone in Katie’s boat said, “There, it’s stopped! Didn’t I tell you it couldn’t sink?”


  The words were barely out of the man’s mouth before the ship began to plunge again, faster now. As the stern disappeared beneath the water, Katie heard four sharp cracks that sounded as if someone had decided to mark the dark occasion with fireworks.

  Then the Titanic was gone, leaving in its aftermath only a slight bubbling sound, like that of a warm kettle on the stove.

  One of the crewman cried, “Pull for your lives or you’ll be sucked under!” Several of the women, and Paddy, grabbed oars and began to row.

  As they rowed, the sea around them filled with the desperate shouts and screams of more than one thousand men, women, and children.

  There were bloodcurdling sounds no one in the lifeboats would ever forget. To Katie, every other horror of the night paled in comparison to being surrounded by a sea of screams.

  Then those horrifying sounds were joined by the agonized cries of women in the lifeboats whose husbands, fathers, and sons had been left behind and were at that moment fighting to survive the sea.

  Just when Katie thought she would lose her mind from helplessness, Quartermaster Perkis ordered that they row back to the scene to look for survivors. Theirs was the only boat to do so immediately.

  When the cries finally ended, after what seemed like hours, there was nothing. The lifeboats were surrounded now by darkness and silence. Both seemed to intensify the bitter cold.

  Elizabeth wept for her father and for Max.

  Nola Farr hid her face in her hands and moaned, “Martin, oh, Martin!” Other women wept for their own.

  Now, when they rowed, there was nothing to break the flat stillness of the water but twenty scattered lifeboats. The giant Titanic, brilliantly lit, shiny and new, sitting atop the sea like a floating castle, was gone.

  They were alone.

  Chapter 29

  Monday, April 15, 1912

  Boat number four, in Quartermaster Perkis’s charge, rowed back. They pulled five crewmen from the water. The men were shivering and terrified. One gasped that his friend had died in the water. Another, nearly frozen to death, had a bottle of brandy in his pocket. Perkis grabbed it and threw it into the sea.

  “That mighta been useful,” Paddy protested. “Brandy’s a help when people are freezin’.’’

  But the brandy was gone, floating in the sea amid other debris.

  The men pulled from the water looked so near death, Katie feared they would not survive. Only one of them was conscious, and without the brandy, there was nothing in the boat with which to warm their frozen bodies.

  It was the most horrifying scene Katie had ever been witness to. The water around them was filled with thrashing swimmers, fighting to reach two of the canvas boats closest to where the ship had disappeared from sight. She could almost feel the frigid water paralyzing their bodies. One of the collapsibles had overturned, but people were climbing aboard. Katie heard warnings of swamping being shouted from one of the boats. Still, the overturned collapsible continued to fill with men standing, sitting, or kneeling. She prayed that Brian might be among them.

  When the cries for help ended, Quartermaster Perkis ordered the rowing to resume. But they had made little progress when Fifth Officer Lowe, in lifeboat number fourteen, came upon them with a tiny cluster made up of boats ten, twelve, and collapsible D. He had gathered them all together, believing that a rescue ship would be more likely to see a larger object. Now his goal, he explained, was to empty his boat, distributing the passengers he was carrying among the other boats, and then take his empty boat back to pick up any survivors.

  Katie couldn’t believe that anyone could still be alive in that water. It had been at least half an hour since the Titanic went down, and there were no more cries for help. The passengers they had picked up within minutes were near death. Could someone really survive this long in a sea as cold as the iceberg that had dealt a death blow to the great ship?

  But Brian had stayed behind on the Titanic, and if there was any chance at all that he might still be alive, she was willing to do whatever it took to find him.

  “Are there any seamen here?” Lowe called out as he reached boat number four.

  “Yes, sir,” a crewman replied. Paddy, too, nodded. Katie could see that he was anxious to help.

  “All right, then. You will have to distribute these passengers among these boats. Tie the boats together and then come with me. We’re going into the wreckage to pick up anyone who is still alive.”

  Some people objected, fearing a swamping of one boat or another. The thought terrified Katie, since she couldn’t swim. But Lowe persisted. When the exchange, with great difficulty, had been made, he ordered his crewmen to row to the scene of the disaster.

  The action forced people in the boat to rouse themselves from their stupefied shock.

  “They’ll never find a soul alive out there,” someone in boat four muttered. “Waste of time, if you ask me.”

  But Katie reminded herself that Brian was a strong swimmer, and young and healthy. Perhaps he had already climbed aboard one of those collapsible canvas boats. Impossible to see in this pitch-black darkness. But he might have.

  It was only then that she realized, to her horror, that Paddy was no longer with her. In the confusion of the transfer, with people awkwardly, carefully climbing from one boat into another, she hadn’t even noticed that Paddy was one of the passengers who had left. She knew why he had switched to boat fourteen. Because it was returning to the scene to look for survivors. He wanted to do everything he could to find his brother.

  The shock of finding Paddy gone was almost too much for Katie to bear. Although she understood, she felt abandoned. Without him, the numbing cold and the utter darkness seemed far more terrifying. And without Paddy’s body heat close beside her, she was quickly frozen to the bone. She couldn’t imagine ever being warm again. The life vest protected her chest, but her face felt as if it were coated with a fine sheen of ice. She tried to take comfort in the fact that at least she was safe in a boat and not in the water like so many others, and the thought helped some. If it was this cold in a boat, what must it be like to be in the ocean, your body soaked to the skin and freezing? How could anyone survive that?

  One of the lifeboats sent up a green flare from time to time. When the first one went up, Katie thought it was a ship approaching. Through frozen lips, she said so aloud. A crewman said it was no such thing, dashing her hopes.

  The act of rearranging the passengers had stirred some people into speech. The atmosphere in the boat ranged from optimistic about the chance of rescue to pessimistic. Some said the sea would be full of ships by morning, others said it could be days before help arrived. One woman said she could never take the bitter cold for that long and would rather be dead, and was promptly scolded for expressing such a dark thought.

  But it was a thought that was on most of the despairing, frightened minds.

  In boat six, Elizabeth’s mother had stopped crying. But she had sunk once again into her silent depression, her head on her chest, her eyes closed to everything around her. Elizabeth felt totally alone. Everyone was in shock. Some women had lost both a husband and a son. Lives had been shattered as well as ended. And those who had lost no one were frightened half out of their minds by the vast, black sea around them, the bitter cold, and the sense of isolation they were all feeling.

  Then there was Quartermaster Hichens, who did nothing to inspire hope. Instead, he seemed determined to undermine the confidence of everyone at the oars. “Here, you on the starboard side,” he yelled at Lookout Frederick Fleet, “your oar is not being put in the water at the right angle.” And when the women tried to persuade him to help row, he refused, saying he was in command and would be giving the orders.

  His negative attitude incensed Elizabeth. He was in charge. Shouldn’t he be trying to lift their spirits, keep them going? Instead, he railed that they were likely to be at sea for days. He complained that they were hundreds of miles from land, they had no food, no water, no protection from the elements.
He said everything that they didn’t need to hear, and nothing that they did.

  When he noticed that one of the ladies held a flask, he asked for a drink and for one of her wraps. While she passed him an extra blanket, she refused him the liquor, and a woman sitting beside her murmured, “Maybe you should give it to him. It might improve his disposition.”

  At some point during the night, another boat, number sixteen, drew near, and the two were lashed together. But they knocked against one another, creating a racket that got on everyone’s nerves, until Major Peuchen suggested they pillow the sound with a couple of life preservers. That done, silence reigned again and everyone settled in to wait until morning. Some anticipated rescue. Others, like Elizabeth’s mother, anticipated nothing.

  When she had made certain that neither her father nor Max was in boat sixteen, and had dealt as best she could with her bitter disappointment, Elizabeth tried to sleep. Morning, when it came, could bring great difficulty, and she would need rest to get through the day. But sleep wouldn’t come. Images of utter horror played over and over again in her mind. Her father, struggling in the icy sea, freezing to death…Max, doing the same…all those people, being torn off the deck and plunged into the deep, icy, dark water.…She could scarcely bear to think about it. Just a few hours earlier, they had all felt safe and protected and warm and secure. No one had dreamed this terrible thing could ever happen. Now that it had, nothing in their lives would ever be the same again.

  Needing to face the truth, she told herself, My father can’t swim. He is dead. I will never see him or talk to him again. When that brought no reaction beyond a dull pain, she tested further. Max, too, is dead. I was just beginning to fall in love with him, and now he’s gone. Still she felt nothing. It was as if the frigid air had frozen not only her limbs and face, but her emotions as well.

  She sat up and glanced around her. No one was weeping, no one was screaming, no one was tearing at her hair or clothes. The faces of those who were still awake all wore the same blank expression. We must look like a boat filled with china dolls, Elizabeth thought, a wave of sadness overwhelming her. Identical blank expressions painted on each face, as if there were nothing inside.