Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage

by Hugh Brewster

  W. T. Stead was in storytelling mode that evening as well, and his table companion, Frederic Seward, recalled how over cigars in the smoking room Stead told the tale “of a mummy case in the British Museum which, he said, had had amazing adventures, but which punished with great calamities any person who wrote its story. He told of one person after another who … had come to grief after writing the story, and added that, although he knew it, he would never write it. He did not say whether ill-luck attached to the mere telling of it.” This tale later became attached to the Titanic story, and the notion that a mummy with a curse on it was traveling on board her became one of the many enduring myths about the sinking. Stead had also predicted a sea disaster remarkably similar to the one he was about to experience, in an 1886 article entitled “How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic,” which concluded with the statement “This is exactly what might take place and what will take place if the liners are sent to sea short of boats.”

  Sometime after ten o’clock, Walter and Mahala Douglas rose from their table in the now almost-empty restaurant. On the way down to their stateroom on C deck they noticed a strong vibration on the staircase and remarked to each other that the ship was going faster than it ever had. As he sat reading on the bunk in his second-class D-deck cabin, Lawrence Beesley noticed that the “dancing motion” in his mattress caused by vibrations from the engines was more pronounced than usual. The indomitable René Harris had by then persuaded Harry to move on from the smoking room to the first-class lounge, where they, too, sat down with Edgar and Leila Meyer. The Duff Gordons by then had gone—Cosmo had retired to bed in his cabin, while Lucile and her assistant, Franks, sat chatting in front of the electric heater in her room across the hall. An electric fire was also burning in the fireplace of the lounge but it was not providing enough heat to dispel a chill in the room and Harry was soon urging René to go to their stateroom. “I must have looked pretty fagged—I felt it,” she recalled, “so at about ten thirty we turned in.” In the Café Parisien, Mrs. Candee, too, was feeling the cold, and soon retired to her cabin, possibly escorted by the gentlemanly Edward Kent. The Irish engineer Edward Colley also called it a night while the four other men stayed at the table, finishing what Woolner called their “hot grog.”

  By eleven, the lounge was mostly empty except for a foursome absorbed in a lively game of bridge. One of the players was William Sloper, the young Connecticut banker who had been persuaded to take the Titanic by Alice Fortune. He had spent considerable time with Alice during the first four days of the voyage but had not seen her at all that day. After dinner, he had been writing thank-you letters to his London friends at a desk in the lounge when what he described as “a very pretty young woman” approached and asked him if he would join her group to make a fourth for bridge. Although Sloper was not very proficient at bridge, he wasn’t about to turn down an invitation from Dorothy Gibson, the prettiest girl on board. Dorothy’s distinctive beauty had also caught the attention of the illustrator Harrison Fisher, who had put her face on the covers of Cosmopolitan and the Saturday Evening Post, as well as on countless picture postcards. This had led to some appearances in motion pictures, and in July of 1911 Dorothy was hired as the first leading lady for the American branch of Éclair, a French cinema company making films in Fort Lee, New Jersey. By March of 1912 she had completed a string of silent one-reelers and, in need of a rest, decided to take a holiday in Europe with her mother. After only a few weeks abroad, however, she had been called back to Fort Lee by the head of Éclair to start work on two new films.

  When Sloper joined Dorothy, she and her mother were sitting with W. T. Stead’s tablemate, Frederic Seward, whom Dorothy knew because they attended the same church in New York. Seward asked the library steward to set up a bridge table for them in the center of the room near the fireplace. After a few hours, the four were so involved in their game that they were oblivious to the nearly empty room and to the pacing library steward, who was eager to turn out the lights. Edith Rosenbaum, who had been writing letters at one of the desks in the lounge, realized it was time to go and gave the steward some envelopes to post for her and took two books from the bookcase. Finally at eleven-thirty, the steward asked the bridge players to finish the game so he could close the room. As the group walked toward the grand staircase, Dorothy Gibson announced to William Sloper that she wanted to take a walk around the deck before bedtime. He suggested they both go below and put on warmer clothes and meet on the A-deck staircase landing. He quickly went down one flight to his cabin, put on a Shetland wool V-necked sweater under his suit, donned his winter-weight overcoat, and went up the staircase to wait for Dorothy. A map of the north Atlantic was on the wall nearby, so he began to study it while he waited.

  Dorothy Gibson in a Harrison Fisher illustration (photo credit 1.76)

  After eleven, the smoking rooms in first and second class were usually the only two public rooms that were kept open. When the café closed, the remaining men from “our coterie” made their way up to the first-class smoking room. Archibald Gracie joined a table where Charles Melville Hays, the stocky, grizzle-bearded president of Canada’s Grand Trunk Railway, was holding forth with a cigar in hand. Gracie overheard Hays make a pronouncement that “the White Star, the Cunard, and the Hamburg-American lines are now devoting their attention to a struggle for supremacy in obtaining the most luxurious appointments for their ships, but the time will soon come when the greatest and most appalling of all disasters at sea will be the result.” In recalling this, Gracie would write that “the pleasure and comfort which all of us enjoyed upon this floating palace” seemed “an ominous feature to many of us … who felt it almost too good to last without some terrible retribution inflicted by the hand of an angry omnipotence.” It is unlikely that Charles Hays believed that luxurious accommodations would lead to God’s retribution, since he was embarked on the building of a string of luxury railway hotels and was returning home for the opening of the first of them, the Château Laurier in Ottawa, on April 26. A bust of the former Canadian prime minister, Wilfrid Laurier, for whom the hotel was named, was to be unveiled, and accompanying the Hays party was its sculptor, Paul Romaine Chevré. With his drooping mustache Chevré looked every inch the Left Bank artiste as he sat at a nearby table enveloped in tabac noir smoke and absorbed in auction bridge with two other Frenchmen and one American.

  Archie Butt was by then playing bridge whist with Clarence Moore, and two men from the dinner party, Harry Widener and William Carter. Bridge whist was also the game of choice for the three professional gamblers who were setting up an American oil company executive as their next victim. Earlier René Harris had pointed out one of the suspected cardsharps to May Futrelle, who had noted his cold, calculating smile. At a smaller table, Frank Millet was playing cards with a New York stockbroker and yachting enthusiast named Frederick Hoyt, who was returning from a combined business trip and vacation in England with his wife. Arthur Peuchen sat chatting and smoking with two of “the Three Musketeers,” Thomson Beattie and Thomas McCaffry, and an Englishman who was headed for Canada. At around eleven-twenty Peuchen bade them good night and headed down to his room on C deck. In cabin C-83, the Harrises were not yet in bed as the pain in René’s arm was quite intense, and she had refused to take the morphine the doctor had left. Harry had cut a sleeve out of a pair of pajamas for her, helped her into a bathrobe, and then wrapped her in a blanket on a chair. He sat opposite while they played a game of double Canfield.

  Up in the crow’s nest the two lookouts were into the second hour of their watch. A slight haze had emerged on the horizon which Fred Fleet had pointed out to Reginald Lee, but neither of them thought it was important enough to report to the bridge. The stars were still twinkling overhead and the sea remained a flat calm. At about ten-thirty the freighter Californian had steamed into the ice field that lay ahead of the Titanic’s course and had decided to stop there for the night. The captain asked the ship’s wireless operator to notify ships in the ar
ea about the ice. Just before eleven, Jack Phillips was busily transmitting passenger messages when the Californian’s call blasted into his headset: “Say, old man, we are stopped and surrounded by ice.” An exhausted Phillips angrily tapped back, “Keep out! Shut up! I am busy. I am working Cape Race.” The Californian’s operator listened in as Phillips apologized to Cape Race for the interruption and asked for a repeat of the last message. Twenty-five minutes later the Californian’s wireless man could still hear Phillips sending messages to Newfoundland, so at 11:35 he took off his headset, turned off his equipment, and went to bed.

  On the Titanic’s bridge Quartermaster Robert Hichens was at the ship’s wheel, with Sixth Officer Moody standing beside him in the wheelhouse. All the lights on the bridge had been extinguished so that they could see clearly through the windows. The ship was now moving at twenty two and a half knots. Suddenly Fred Fleet spied a large, dark shape directly ahead. It could be only one thing. Reaching past Lee, he quickly rang the crow’s nest bell three times. He then grabbed the telephone and heard it being picked up in the wheelhouse.

  “Is someone there?” Fleet asked.

  “Yes,” replied Moody. “What do you see?”

  “Iceberg right ahead!”

  (photo credit 1.6)

  The iceberg struck the liner’s starboard bow only thirty-seven seconds after lookout Fred Fleet telephoned the bridge. (photo credit 1.42)

  A blue-white cliff face suddenly loomed out of the darkness. The liner raced on, its prow aimed directly toward it. Fred Fleet braced for a crash. Then slowly, slowly, the ship began to turn. Would they miss it? He saw the tip of the bow slide past. But then came a shuddering jar on the starboard side. Large chunks of ice thudded into the well deck. Fleet heard a grating noise from deep below as the berg scraped along the starboard hull. Less than a minute had passed since he had first sighted it.

  As he stood on the staircase landing, William Sloper felt the ship lurch slightly to starboard. It reminded him of a ferryboat striking the planks of a landing slip. Dorothy Gibson came hurrying up the stairs and they ran out onto the A-deck promenade. Peering over the side into the starlit darkness, they could just make out a large white shape disappearing behind the stern. In the smoking room, Hugh Woolner sensed a heavy grinding shock passing right under his feet. Several men headed for the door at the back of the room and he quickly followed. On reaching the afterdeck, Woolner heard excited talk in the night air. Over the clamor a loud voice called out, “An iceberg just passed astern!” Archie Butt soon appeared with the other men from his card game—William Carter, Harry Widener, and Clarence Moore—and just then the engines stopped. The unusual silence caused everyone to become quiet. Algernon Barkworth, a Yorkshire justice of the peace, spotted W. T. Stead, who told him “An iceberg has ground against the starboard side.” Soon the words “iceberg” and “nothing to worry about” were passed along. The men nodded, shrugged, and returned to the smoking room and their card games. William Carter, however, left to go down to his cabin on B deck to check on his wife and two sleeping children. Hugh Woolner thought of Helen Candee and decided that he should look in on her. Frank Millet took Carter’s place at Archie’s table as the bridge whist resumed.

  The collision was less noticeable to passengers in their staterooms. Many were in bed and sensed only a slight, grating jar. Ella White was about to turn out the light when it seemed as if the ship ran over a thousand marbles. Lucy Duff Gordon was awakened by an odd rumbling noise that sounded like a giant hand was playing bowls deep beneath her. Madeleine Astor thought there had been an accident in the kitchens. René Harris was still up playing cards with Harry and noticed that the dresses in her open closet were swaying. It wasn’t until the engines stopped that René, like many other passengers, realized something might be amiss.

  Captain Smith knew it immediately. “What have we struck?” he demanded as he hurried onto the bridge from his cabin behind the wheelhouse.

  “An iceberg, sir,” First Officer Murdoch replied. He explained how he had tried to maneuver around it but the berg had been too close.

  “Close the watertight doors,” the captain ordered.

  “The watertight doors are closed, sir,” Murdoch replied.

  In Boiler Room 6 stoker Frederick Barrett had just been sprayed by a geyser of water that had shot through the hull about two feet away from him. When the light above the room’s watertight door suddenly began flashing he had been forced to make a run for it and had jumped through the closing door followed by another man, while a third stoker scrambled up an emergency ladder. After climbing to a higher deck, Barrett looked down to Boiler Room 6 and saw that it was already eight feet deep in seawater.

  In a small cabin deep in the forward bow, steerage passenger Daniel Buckley was awakened by a shuddering noise. He jumped down from his bunk and felt water under his bare feet. His three roommates from County Cork were still snoring in their bunks and protested groggily when he roused them. Buckley dressed and went out into the corridor. There he heard two crewmen shouting, “All up on deck unless you want to get drowned.” As Buckley headed upward, the third-class corridors began to fill with steerage passengers carrying their belongings toward the stern.

  As he lay reading on his bunk on D deck, Lawrence Beesley noticed that the dancing motion of his mattress had stopped. Slipping on a dressing gown and shoes, he went out into the corridor and up the staircase to the boat deck. As he peered over the side at the calm black sea below, nothing seemed amiss, so he went into the second-class smoking room and asked some of the cardplayers if they knew what had happened. They told him that they had seen an iceberg pass by and gave estimates that it had been anywhere from sixty to a hundred feet high. One of them said, “I expect the iceberg has scratched off some of her new paint and the captain doesn’t like to go on until she is painted up again.” Another pointed to his glass of whiskey and quipped, “Just run along the deck and see if any ice has come aboard. I would like some for this.” Amid the general laughter, Beesley returned to his cabin and resumed reading. But on hearing voices in the corridor, he donned a warm jacket and once again went up to the boat deck. There he saw that the ship was moving ahead slowly and noticed a little white foam breaking at the bow.

  Lawrence Beesley (photo credit 1.55)

  The fact that the Titanic slowly resumed her course after hitting the iceberg is not included in many accounts of the disaster but it was noted by several others on board besides Lawrence Beesley. Quartermaster Alfred Olliver later testified that Captain Smith gave the “Half Speed Ahead” order for the engines not long after the collision. The captain had by then sent Fourth Officer Boxhall below on a tour of inspection, so it seems likely that he thought the ship would have to limp in to New York or Halifax under its own steam and that they could proceed slowly in the meantime. By best estimates, the ship moved forward for about ten minutes and may have stopped when Chief Officer Wilde reported to Smith that the forepeak tank, a water ballast tank deep in the forward bow, was taking in seawater.

  Bruce Ismay had awakened in his deluxe B-deck suite not long after the collision and lay in bed wondering why the ship had stopped. His first thought was that they had dropped a propeller blade. Stepping into the hallway in his pajamas, he asked a steward, “What has happened?” The steward replied that he did not know, so Ismay donned an overcoat and slippers and went up to the bridge.

  “We have struck ice,” Smith explained.

  “Do you think the ship is seriously damaged?” Ismay asked.

  “I am afraid she is,” he replied.

  Ismay returned to the grand staircase, where he met Chief Engineer Bell and asked him if he thought the damage was serious. Bell replied that it seemed to be so but that he thought the pumps would keep the ship afloat. Smith clearly believed this as well, since otherwise he would not have given the “Half Speed Ahead” order.

  Just before midnight, Fourth Officer Boxhall returned to the bridge from his brief inspection down as far as F deck
and told the captain he had seen nothing awry. Smith ordered him to find the ship’s carpenter so he could “sound” the vessel. Boxhall was on the stairs to A deck when he met the carpenter coming up. “The ship is making water,” he reported breathlessly. Boxhall asked him to report this to the captain and continued down the staircase until he met a mail clerk, who announced, “The mail hold is filling rapidly.”

  “You go and tell the captain and I will go down and see,” Boxhall replied.

  When the fourth officer entered the post office on G deck, the mail clerks were hastily pulling armfuls of envelopes out of the sorting racks. On looking down into the lower storage room, he saw mailbags floating in water. When Boxhall reported this to the bridge, the captain gave the order for the lifeboats to be uncovered and went below to see the damage for himself. The ship’s designer, Thomas Andrews, was already making his own inspection tour of the lower decks. He went into the post office and soon dispatched a mail clerk to find the captain. The clerk hurried along the corridor and returned with Captain Smith and Purser McElroy. After they had viewed the damage, Andrews was overheard saying to Smith, “Well, three have gone already, Captain.” Andrews was undoubtedly referring to three of the ship’s bulkheads that divided the ship into the watertight compartments that gave the Titanic its reputation for unsinkability. With only three compartments flooded, however, there was a chance that the pumps could stay ahead of it. The captain then returned to the bridge and gave the order for women and children to go up on deck with lifebelts. Thomas Andrews, meanwhile, continued his inspection.