The Night Lives On

by Walter Lord

  In 1929 she set off on a leisurely trip around the world…and then the roof fell in. The stock market crashed in October, and Renée Harris’s fortune vanished even faster than it had materialized. She hurried home, but it was too late. Everything, including the Hudson Theater, was gone. The last of her collection of antiques were auctioned off in 1931.

  By 1940 she was reduced to a single room in a welfare hotel. There was nothing left except her sunny disposition. But this never failed her, and was her most striking characteristic when I interviewed her at the time of A Night to Remember.

  Seeking to find some happy reminder of the old days, I once brought her a little jar of caviar. After one taste she gently pushed it aside. I took this as a challenge and from time to time tried again. Always her response was the same: “You call that caviar?” she would ask with cheerful incredulity.

  She liked to talk about the Titanic, and her shrewd theatrical eye caught all sorts of nuances. Poor as a church mouse but radiantly blissful, she died quietly in September 1969 at the age of 93.

  Helen Churchill Candee was another Titanic survivor who managed to cope with adversity. “Our coterie,” as Colonel Gracie called her little circle of shipboard swains, was forever shattered: Colley, Kent, and Clinch Smith drowned; Gracie died from the after effects within nine months; only Hugh Woolner and Bjornstrom Steffanson survived. As far as can be determined, she was never again in touch with either of them.

  Putting the past behind her, Mrs. Candee turned to the galleys of her new book on tapestry. Titled simply The Tapestry Book, it was published in 1913, receiving a fine review in the Times. During the 20’s she carved out a whole new career as a travel lecturer on exotic places. China and Southeast Asia were her specialties, and her book Angkor, the Magnificent earned her decorations from both the French government and the King of Cambodia. Nor did she just stick to sightseeing. As early as 1927 she was warning her listeners of the rising tide of anticolonialism in the area.

  Through it all, she continued to charm everyone she met. She remained active until just before her death at the age of 90 in her summer home at York Harbor, Maine.

  Many of the Titanic widows soon married again— another sign that the Victorian Age was over, with its interminable years of mourning and dripping black veils. Besides Renée Harris, the list included prominent names like Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Widener, and (a little later) Mrs. Ryerson. Among this group Mrs. Lucien P. Smith deserves special note. Her new husband was Robert Daniel, a fellow survivor whom she met on the Carpathia. The tennis player Karl Behr also married a survivor, but in his case it was no chance meeting. He had pursued Helen Newsom across the Atlantic and back.

  Most survivors picked up pretty much where they left off, and one was back in business even before he reached dry land. Cardsharp and confidence man George Brayton had been in the Titanic’s smoking room stalking a prospective victim when the ship struck. He escaped in one of the starboard boats, and by the time the Carpathia docked in New York, he had already met and picked out a new pigeon.

  Henry C. E. Stengel was a Newark, New Jersey, leather manufacturer, one of the two other passengers who had been in Boat 1 with the Duff Gordon party. Strolling the Carpathia’s deck on the second day after rescue, he noticed a man looking downcast, and politely inquired what was the matter. The man, who turned out to be George Brayton, explained that he had to get to Los Angeles but had lost all his money. Stengel advised him to ask the White Star Line to advance him his fare.

  Nothing more was said at the moment, but shortly after the Carpathia landed, Stengel received a phone call from Brayton reporting that White Star had come through, that he would be leaving soon for Los Angeles, and that he just wanted to thank Stengel for his interest. Pleased, Stengel asked Brayton to dinner at his home in Newark that night.

  During the evening Brayton mentioned a big deal pending in New York, which would come to a head as soon as his brother-in-law, an executive with Western Union, got back from a trip to Mexico. Several weeks later Stengel received another phone call from Brayton, reporting that the brother-in-law was back and in a position to make some money. He’d like to cut Stengel in on the deal.

  Stengel hurried to New York, where he, Brayton, and the brother-in-law ended up in a room at the Hotel Seville. Here the brother-in-law explained that he was in charge of the “RD” Department at Western Union. This was the department responsible for flashing the results of horse races, and he was in a position to withhold the results for at least eight minutes—allowing a wonderful opportunity to bet on a sure thing. It would cost Stengel just $1,000 to get in on the scheme.

  Stengel later said that at this point he sailed into the brother-in-law, and when Brayton pleaded with him not to “squeal,” Stengel began punching him too. Finally, the scuffle ended, but by the time the police were called, the con men had slipped away.

  George Brayton fades from the Titanic story at this point. With his collection of aliases, his deft moves, and his instinct for survival, it seems safe to assume that under some other name he continued plying his trade on the North Atlantic run.

  Finally, what about the Titanic’s surviving officers? In view of their splendid discipline that last night—and their loyalty to White Star on the witness stand—one might suppose they enjoyed steady promotion, crowned by a command as their just reward.

  It didn’t work out that way. No officer from the Titanic ever achieved his own command, no matter how brave or loyal he may have been. The White Star Line was determined to take no step that might remind the traveling public of its darkest hour.

  Fifth Officer Lowe was appointed Third Officer on the Medic, a minor vessel on the Australian run—obviously a dead end. He served in the Royal Navy during the First World War, then retired to his native Wales. Fourth Officer Boxhall hung on through the merger of White Star and Cunard, but advancement in the 30’s was painfully slow. He finally retired as Chief Officer of the small Cunarder Ausonia. Third Officer Pitman decided his eyes weren’t good enough for a deck officer, shifted to the Purser’s Section, and spent the rest of his seagoing days shuffling paper.

  Second Officer Lightoller also served in the Royal Navy during the first war. He returned to White Star after the Armistice and was made Chief Officer of the lumbering Celtic. For a while he had hopes of a transfer to the crack Olympic, but was passed over. He retired from the sea in the early 20’s and tried his hand (not too successfully) at everything from writing columns to raising chickens.

  But the sea still ran in his blood. He designed and sailed his own yacht Sundowner and had a final taste of peril in 1940. He took Sundowner over to Dunkirk with the great fleet of “little ships,” and rescued 131 British soldiers. At his best in the midst of disaster, he cheerfully wrote his brother-in-law several days later, “We’ve got our tails well up and are going to win no matter when or how.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  Unlocking the Ocean’s Secret

  “SHE’S GONE; THAT’S THE last of her,” someone sighed in Boat 13 as the sea closed over the flagstaff on the Titanic’s stern. Actually, it was anything but the last of her. Figuratively, she would always be afloat, gripping the world’s imagination for years to come. Literally, she would be seen again 73 years later, thanks to the miracle of modern technology.

  Men began dreaming up ways to find and raise the Titanic right from the start. In March 1914—less than two years after the disaster—a Denver architect named Charles Smith published a plan based on the use of electromagnets. These would be attached to a specially designed submarine, which would dive down from the Titanic’s radioed position, 41°46’N, 50°14’W. The steel hull of the liner would immediately attract the magnets, drawing the sub to the sunken vessel’s side. With the exact location of the ship now fixed, more electromagnets would be sent down and attached directly to her hull. Cables would run from these magnets to winches on a fleet of barges stationed above the wreck. At a given signal, the winches would all be wound up, pulling the Titanic to th
e surface.

  Mr. Smith’s plan had a precise quality that was quite enticing. Surely, any inventor must have done his homework who said he would need exactly 162 men—no more, no less. But Smith also said he would need $1.5 million, and it was here that his scheme met a fate that would become all too familiar: nobody would put up the money.

  Electromagnetism had much popular appeal in these primitive days before “high tech.” Another plan, which apparently never got farther than the Sunday-supplement pages, called for magnets to be fastened to the sunken Titanic and attached by cable to empty pontoons, rising above the hulk like a cluster of circus balloons. When enough pontoons had been added, presumably the ship would come popping up.

  Two world wars, the carefree 20’s, and the depression 30’s put a temporary end to such schemes. No one had the time or inclination to dive on the Titanic. Not enough years had passed for legends to sprout about the supposed great treasure aboard the ship (some said diamonds, others gold), and perhaps most important, the “fascination factor” was low. Finding the Titanic would ultimately become a challenge like scaling Mount Everest—because it is there—but not yet.

  The 50’s saw the first flicker of renewed interest. In July 1953 the British salvage vessel Help, on charter from the Admiralty to the salvage firm Risdon Beazley Ltd., slipped quietly out of Southampton Harbor and headed for the Titanic’s position. Here the Help began underwater blasting with heavy explosives. No one would say what she was up to, but she was equipped with deep-set telephoto cameras and remotely controlled retrieval gear. It seems likely that the operators hoped to blow open the Titanic’s hull and search for some of the treasure rumored to be inside.

  Nothing was found—not even a trace of the ship— but the Help was back next summer for another try. Again, nothing turned up, and this time Risdon Beazley Ltd. had enough. They vanish from the story.

  The 60’s brought a dramatic surge of activity. It was a time of great technological advances. Men conquered space—even went to the moon—and there was a parallel, if less spectacular, leap forward in oceanography and our ability to explore the world beneath the sea. At the same time, the triumph of the jet plane as the norm in trans-Atlantic travel focused attention on that suddenly “endangered species,” the ocean liner…and this of course included the Titanic. Even the political and social climates seemed to contribute. It was a time of questioning values, and what could be more fascinating than peering closely at the symbols of a period when everyone seemed to know their place? The Titanic became an intriguing artifact of the smug little Edwardian world.

  None of this was especially surprising. What was surprising was the particular individual who led the parade. Douglas Woolley knew nothing about oceanography. He was an English workman who dyed nylon stockings in a hosiery factory. He had no scientific training, no experience in salvage, no college degree, no financial resources; but he did have an obsession about the Titanic. Sitting in his cluttered one-room flat in the small English town of Baldock, he whiled away the hours dreaming of finding and raising the lost liner. He also had a remarkable knack for getting his plans into the newspapers. Apparently, through some intuitive understanding of an editor’s mind, he could regularly get coverage that would be the envy of a highly paid public relations consultant.

  Starting in 1966, Woolley announced his plans for raising the Titanic almost annually, and every time the press would pick up his release and give it fresh treatment, as though it had never happened before. At first he made only the local papers, but by 1968 he was appearing in even the august Times.

  As reported in the press, Woolley originally planned to find the Titanic by means of a “bathyscaphe,” and then raise her by means of nylon balloons attached to her hull. These would be pumped full of air, letting the ship “gently rise to the surface.” How the balloons would be inflated 13,000 feet down wasn’t clear.

  For a while it seemed as if something might actually come of Woolley’s dreams. Two Hungarian inventors turned up with a plan that looked, on paper at least, impressively scientific. An admittedly shadowy group of West German investors (some said three; others, ten) promised the necessary capital. A London accountant incorporated the project as the Titanic Salvage Company. And finally, even a boat was obtained, which Woolley thought could be turned into a practical salvage vessel.

  Then all began to unravel. The Hungarians’ plan called for plastic bags to be filled with hydrogen produced by electrolysis of the seawater, and only a week had been allowed to generate the 85,000 cubic yards of hydrogen that would theoretically be needed to move the Titanic. A scholarly paper by an American chemistry professor showed that it might take not a week, but ten years. The West German investors never materialized; the Titanic Salvage Company remained little more than a name; and even the boat turned out to be a dud. Lying at Newlyn in Cornwall, it was so old and rusty that local fishermen predicted it would never get out of the harbor. Gradually the whole project evaporated.

  But Douglas Woolley did achieve one thing. He started a lot more people thinking about finding the Titanic. During the 1970’s at least eight different groups planned to explore the ship. Some wanted only to locate and film her; others hoped to raise her, and there was no limit to their ingenuity. One plan called for 180,000 tons of molten wax to be pumped into the vessel. When hardened, the wax would become buoyant and lift the Titanic to the surface. Another plan would work the same way, but with Vaseline.

  Still another plan would achieve buoyancy by injecting thousands of Ping-Pong balls into the hull. Another would employ gigantic winches to crank the ship up. Yet another would encase the liner in ice. Then, like an ordinary cube in a drink, the ice would rise to the surface, bringing the Titanic with it.

  Whatever the practicality, all the plans suffered from a common fault: they cost too much. One scheme, for instance, contemplated the use of benthos glass floats…but it turned out that the necessary number would cost $238,214,265.

  Just mounting the expedition would require more than most people were willing to risk. A truly suitable vessel—and there were very few—would eat up $10,000 a day. Add to this the cost of the equipment needed, which looked like a list drawn up on another planet: a deep-tow wide-screen sonar sled, a three-axis magnetometer, a sub-bottom profiler, a depressor, and a number of acoustic transponders…plus a payroll that covered every requirement from a top oceanographer to a decent cook. Altogether, the total outlay could easily run over a million dollars.

  Nor was it a sure thing even then. The exact position of the Titanic remained uncertain, and the search required a calm sea in one of the roughest areas of ocean in the world. No wonder the odds-makers put the chances of finding the ship at less than 50% to 60%.

  These odds were good enough for Jack Grimm, a wealthy Texas wildcat oilman, who appeared on the scene in 1980. He had already sponsored expeditions in search of Noah’s ark, the Loch Ness monster, and the legendary Big Foot. Now, when a professional expedition leader named Mike Harris suggested the Titanic as a new project, Grimm quickly agreed. After all, he had drilled 25 straight dry holes before he finally hit his first gusher. Compared to striking oil, the chances of finding the Titanic seemed almost promising. Moreover, there were the dividends: fame, publicity, adventure.

  Jack Grimm gave it his best shot. He talked up the project at the Petroleum Club in his hometown, Abilene, got some of his poker-playing buddies to take a piece of the action. He hired the William Morris Agency to handle TV, movie, and serialization rights. He arranged for a book. He persuaded Orson Welles to narrate a documentary.

  Above all, he won respectability. In a deal with Columbia University, Grimm gave $330,000 to the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory for a wide-sweep sonar rig, and in return got five years’ exclusive use of the equipment plus the services of the technical personnel needed to run it. Lured by the prospects, two distinguished oceanographers also signed on: Dr. William Ryan of Columbia and Dr. Fred Spiess of the Scripps Institution in California.
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  July 17, 1980, the expedition set out from Port Everglades, Florida, in the research vessel H.J.W. Fay. They reached the search area on the 29th, and for the next three weeks plodded back and forth with no really promising results. Finally, they ran out of time and went back home.

  June 29, 1981, they headed out again, this time on the research vessel Gyre. Reaching the search area, they spent nine days checking out possibilities suggested by their sonar the previous summer, and scanning other less likely areas. Again nothing definite, although Grimm felt sure they had located a propeller.

  July 1983, they returned for one more try, now on the research vessel Robert Conrad. This time the cameras didn’t function properly, and they were further handicapped by high seas. After two weeks they again returned home empty-handed. An optimist in the ship’s company felt that the sonar had picked up a profile characteristic of the Titanic, but the world remained unconvinced. One skeptic thought that it looked more like “a computer code on a can of green beans.”

  Aware of these fruitless efforts, the press paid little attention when still another group set out to find the Titanic in the summer of 1985. This time the sponsor was the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; the ship was the Institution’s 245-foot research vessel Knorr; and the leader was Dr. Robert D. Ballard, a personable 42-year-old geologist, who headed up the Institution’s Deep Submergence Laboratory. To the casual observer, the expedition appeared to be like all the others—an ungainly-looking boat loaded with mysterious hardware.

  First, a stop at the Azores. Here Bob Ballard and most of his team joined the ship. There was now a total of 49 people aboard—24 scientists and 25 in the crew. Leaving Ponta Delgada on August 15, they headed not northwest for the Titanic, but southeast for the position of the U.S. nuclear submarine Scorpion, mysteriously lost with all hands in 1968. They spent the 17th taking pictures of the sunken sub, and if these photographs throw any new light on what happened to her, this could well be the most important accomplishment of the entire expedition. At the time, it went virtually unnoticed.