Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage

by Hugh Brewster

  In Boat 1, Cosmo Duff Gordon likewise told Henry Stengel to quit his incessant shouts of “Boat Ahoy.” Cosmo was worried about his wife, who was stretched out in the boat, seasick and shivering from the cold. Mabel Francatelli soon lay down next to “Madame,” as she called her employer, and from time to time, Lucy roused herself to reassure Cosmo that she was all right. She also tried occasionally to make light conversation and at one point teased Franks about the odd assortment of clothes she was wearing. “Just fancy,” she said, “you actually left your beautiful nightdress behind you.” For Fireman Robert Pusey this proved to be too much. “Never mind about your nightdress, madam,” he retorted, “as long as you have got your life.” Another fireman joined in. “You people need not bother about losing your things for you can afford to buy new ones.” Seeing “Madame” stretched out in her fur coat and pink velvet designer mules made this all too apparent. “What about us?” the fireman continued. “We have lost all our kit and our pay stops from the moment the ship went down.” “Yes, that’s hard luck if you like,” replied Sir Cosmo. “But don’t worry, you will get another ship. At any rate I will give you a fiver towards getting a new kit.” He could not then have imagined how this small gesture of noblesse oblige would come to haunt him.

  In Boat 6, Margaret Brown had doffed her sables to free her up for rowing. She had encouraged the other women to row as well, defying the quartermaster who railed at her from the stern. But Robert Hichens had chosen the wrong group of women to bully. In addition to the forceful Mrs. Brown, the plucky Mrs. Candee, and the voluble Berthe Mayné, there were two English suffragettes on board, Elsie Bowerman and her mother, Edith Chibnall. Both were active members of Sylvia Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union, the most militant of Britain’s votes-for-women organizations. Edith was one of ten women who had accompanied Mrs. Pankhurst on a 1910 deputation to Parliament that had resulted in arrests after a scuffle with police. She had also donated a banner for a Hyde Park demonstration that read “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

  A full-scale rebellion against one male tyrant was soon under way in Boat 6. The women tried to taunt the quartermaster into joining them at the oars, but Hichens refused, preferring to stand at the tiller shouting out rowing instructions and doom-filled warnings that they could be lost for days with no food or water. Eventually Boat 16 came near and the two lifeboats tied up together. Margaret Brown spotted a chilled, thinly clad stoker in the adjoining boat and after he jumped over into Boat 6 to help with the rowing, she wrapped him in her sables, tying the tails around his ankles. She then handed him an oar and instructed Boat 16 to cut them loose so they could row to keep warm. Howling curses in protest, Hichens moved to block this but an enraged Mrs. Brown rose up and threatened to throw him overboard. The fur-enveloped stoker reproached Hichens for his foul language in the broadest of Cockney accents: “Soy, don’t you know you are talking to a loidy!”

  “I know who I’m talking to and I am commanding this boat!” the quartermaster spluttered as Boat 6 rowed away under Margaret Brown’s direction.

  Ella White was appalled by the hapless rowing in Boat 8 and tried to set the pace by counting out strokes while waving her illuminated cane. This only succeeded in annoying the men at the oars, but Marie Young loyally noted that Mrs. White’s electric cane was “treasured above all” since they had no other source of light in the boat. The piteous cries from a twenty-two-year-old Spanish newlywed, Maria Josefa “Pepita” Peñasco, calling out for her husband Victor, became so vexing for those in Boat 8 that the English aristocrat, the Countess of Rothes, left the tiller to take her in her arms and comfort her. Pepita and Victor Peñasco were a wealthy young honeymooning couple from Madrid who, when in Paris, had decided to take the maiden voyage of the Titanic as a lark without telling their families. Another passenger remembered that Pepita and Victor “were just like little canaries … they were so loving … but she was saved and he perished.”

  At thirty-three, Noëlle, the Countess of Rothes, had been the chatelaine of Leslie House, a ten-thousand-acre estate near Fife, since marrying the heir to this ancient Scottish seat in 1900, and her take-charge manner had caused Seaman Jones to put her at the tiller of Boat 8. While she went to comfort Pepita, Noëlle asked her husband’s cousin, Gladys Cherry, to take over the helm. When the dreadful moans of the dying came across the water, the countess put her hands over the Spanish bride’s ears. Noëlle and Gladys both backed Seaman Jones when he proposed returning to rescue swimmers, but Gladys recalled that the others “would have killed us rather than go back.” She also remembered the beauty of the stars that night but stated, “That icy air and stars I never want to feel or see again.”

  Noëlle, Countess of Rothes, in 1905 with her young son, Lord Leslie (photo credit 1.79)

  Edith Rosenbaum also recalled how keenly the cold was felt by those in her lifeboat. To distract the children in Boat 11, Edith would occasionally twist the tail of her toy pig and play “The Maxixe.” William Sloper, however, actually found himself too warm as he pulled on an oar in Boat 7. The Shetland pullover and woolen suit he was wearing beneath his winter overcoat and lifebelt were causing him to drip with perspiration. Seeing Dorothy Gibson shivering nearby in the polo coat she had put on over her silk evening dress, Sloper removed his overcoat and put it around her shoulders. In Boat 5 Karl Behr took a break from rowing to rub Helen Newsom’s stockinged feet, which were wet from the water in the bottom of the boat. The man next to Behr nudged him and revealed a small nickel-plated revolver in the palm of his hand. “Should the worse come to the worst,” he said calmly, “you can use this after my wife and I have finished with it.” Behr thanked him politely and only later thought about how strange the offer was.

  On half-submerged Collapsible A, circumstances truly were life and death, with the latter taking a heavy toll. A man behind Norris Williams asked if he could rest his arm on his shoulder and Norris agreed. Over time his grip loosened, and when Norris looked at his face, the man gave him a weak smile and fell dead in the water. As a faint glow appeared in the eastern horizon, hopes of rescue began to rise but they were not enough to save a mother and daughter who drifted away lifeless in each other’s arms.

  On overturned Collapsible B two men had died from the cold during the night and one of them had fallen overboard. Algernon Barkworth thought to himself how quickly any horror of the dead disappears at such times. And even one less man lightened the burden on their precarious raft which was slowly sinking beneath them. Shortly before dawn there was a shout from the stern, “There is a steamer coming behind us!”

  “All you men stand steady!” commanded Lightoller, “I will be the one to look astern!” He then looked but did not confirm the good news. Shooting stars and lights from the other lifeboats had raised many false alarms during the night. Soon, however, Archibald Gracie saw in the distance what was unmistakably the mast lights of a steamer. Behind the lights were large white shapes that one man suggested were fishing boats from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. As the sun rose, Gracie saw that they were icebergs.

  With the dawn came a breeze that sent waves washing over the boat and Lightoller began to doubt whether the collapsible would last until the Carpathia reached them. He had lined up the men two abreast along the keel and now called out “Lean left!” or “Lean right!” to counteract the swells. As the sky grew brighter, they suddenly spotted four of the Titanic’s lifeboats tied up together about eight hundred yards away. The men shouted and Lightoller fished an officer’s whistle out of his pocket and blew a shrill blast. Boats 4 and 12 untied from Boat 14 and Collapsible D and began to inch toward them. To Seaman Samuel Hemming in Boat 4 it looked as if the men were standing on a slab of ice.

  “Come over and take us off!” shouted Lightoller when the boats came within hailing distance. The overturned collapsible was by then so low in the water that the wash as Boat 12 drew near almost caused it to capsize. Lightoller began unloading the men one at a time; four or five we
nt into Boat 4, the rest into Boat 12. The boat shook dangerously as each man made his leap. Baker Joughin paddled over to the boat, claiming to have been in the water the whole time. The second officer was the last to leave, and before doing so he hoisted the body of the dead man into Boat 12. Archibald Gracie massaged the lifeless body’s head and wrists but rigor mortis had already set in. Lightoller soon made his way to the stern of Boat 12 and took the tiller as the now heavily loaded boat lumbered toward the rescue ship.

  For the half-frozen survivors on Collapsible A, the sight of the Carpathia’s mast lights in the early dawn light kindled new hope. They cheered and on a count of three began shouts of “Boat Ahoy.”

  “We can see a ship now,” said Olaus Abelseth, a Norwegian-born farmer from North Dakota, to a man he was holding up by one shoulder. Abelseth had recognized him as a man from New Jersey who had been in his compartment on the Boat Train to Southampton.

  “Who are you?” the man from New Jersey responded blankly. “Let me be. Who are you?”

  Abelseth continued to hold him up but within half an hour he was dead. As the sun rose, Norris Williams couldn’t help noticing what a beautiful, sparkling morning it was. He could see the scattered lifeboats in the distance and reflected on how little was left from the greatest ocean liner ever built.

  In Boat 14, Fifth Officer Lowe had hoisted a sail and was making good time toward the Carpathia, even while towing Collapsible D behind them. Hugh Woolner soon saw Lowe heading the boat toward a group of people who seemed to him to be standing up in the water. “They were a party of fourteen or so,” he recalled, “among them a black-haired woman and two corpses.” Rhoda Abbott, the only female to have survived in Collapsible A, was the first to be taken off. René Harris watched as this small woman dressed all in brown “sank into the bottom of the boat like a drowned bird.” When Norris Williams clambered into Boat 14, his legs felt as if thousands of needles were piercing them. Finally, only three corpses were left in the half-submerged collapsible. Two of them appeared to be crewmen; the other was a man in evening clothes. Lowe checked to make certain they were dead and then set the boat adrift. As the collapsible floated off, a white lifebelt covered the face of the lifeless man in evening clothes. A month later, the Oceanic would recover the abandoned collapsible almost two hundred miles away from where the Titanic sank. Still wearing the white tie and tails he had worn to dinner on the Titanic’s last night, Thomson Beattie, the last of “the Three Musketeers,” was given a burial at sea.

  When one of the Carpathia’s rockets was first spotted from Boat 6, the ever-contrary Quartermaster Hichens dismissed it, saying, “That is a falling star.” After it became clear that it was indeed a ship, Hichens stated, “No, she is not going to pick us up. She is to pick up bodies,” and ordered that the rowers let the boat drift. But the women at the oars were having none of it. “Where those lights are lies our salvation,” said Helen Candee, voicing what they were all thinking, and with renewed spirit they began pulling hard toward the Carpathia.

  When the sun came up fully, the ice field began to glow in mauves and corals, a breathtaking sight. There was one iceberg with a double peak about two hundred feet high. To Lucy Duff Gordon the illuminated bergs looked like giant opals, and May Futrelle noted how they glistened like rock quartz, though one of them, she thought, was doubtless the murderer. The scene reminded Hugh Woolner of photographs of an Antarctic expedition. Seven-year-old Douglas Spedden raised a few smiles in Boat 3 by exclaiming to his nurse, “Oh Muddie, look at the beautiful North Pole with no Santa Claus on it!” Daisy Spedden recorded in her diary that as their boat was rowed toward rescue, “the tragedy of the situation sank deep into our hearts as we saw the Carpathia standing amidst the few bits of wreckage with the pitifully small number of lifeboats coming up to her from different directions.”

  After racing through the night to the Titanic’s distress position, the Carpathia had spotted Fourth Officer Boxhall’s green flares and had headed for them. “Shut down your engines and take us aboard,” Boxhall shouted up as the Carpathia drew alongside Boat 2 at 4:10 a.m.

  “I have only one sailor,” he added, as the boat tossed on the choppy swells.

  “All right,” came back the voice of the Carpathia’s captain, Arthur Rostron.

  “The Titanic has gone down with everyone on board!” Mahala Douglas shrieked from beside the tiller and Boxhall promptly told her to “shut up,” a reproach that she later thought was justified. Yet after helping his passengers onto the rope ladder that was lowered from the Carpathia, Boxhall, too, would become emotional. After being escorted to the bridge, the twenty-eight-year-old fourth officer with the boyish face confirmed with Captain Rostron that the Titanic had indeed gone down. As he began giving details, Rostron interrupted to ask how many people were left on board when she sank.

  “Hundreds and hundreds! Perhaps a thousand! Perhaps more!” Boxhall burst out, his voice breaking. “My God, sir, they’ve gone down with her. They couldn’t live in this icy water.”

  “Thank you, mister,” the captain replied with characteristic calm. “Go below and get some coffee and try to get warm.”

  In the Carpathia’s dining saloons, coffee, hot brandy, and sandwiches were being served to Mahala Douglas and the other numbed survivors from Boat 2. Stewards had taken their names and given them blankets, and a doctor with medical supplies was stationed in each of the three dining saloons. These arrangements had been requested by the captain, and they represented only a few of the entries on a long list of orders that he had issued to his department heads shortly after receiving the Titanic’s distress call. And it was only by chance that the CQD call was received at all. The Carpathia’s wireless operator, Harold Cottam, had quit for the night but had left his earphones on as he was unlacing his boots. Once alerted about the CQD call, the forty-two-year-old captain immediately ordered that the Carpathia head for the Titanic’s distress position and told Cottam to inform the Titanic they would be there in four hours. By putting on top speed, they made it in only three and a half, maneuvering their way around icebergs spotted by the extra lookouts posted in the crow’s nest, bow, and wing bridge.

  Rostron had also ordered that bosun’s chairs and canvas ash bags be positioned by the rope ladders to hoist up the women and children. Lucy Duff Gordon and Mabel Francatelli were both swung up in bosun’s chairs, after Boat 1, the second boat to arrive, came alongside at 4:40 a.m. Once on deck, Lucy recalled, she and Franks “clung to each other like children, too exhausted to speak, only realizing the blessed fact that we were saved.” Lucy drank some hot brandy but felt too ill to eat. After taking a sedative, she fell asleep in a first-class cabin offered by Carpathia passengers and did not wake till the next morning.

  As Lucy drifted off to sleep, the sixteen remaining boats continued to make their way toward the Carpathia. Henry Harper in Boat 3 was struck by how tiny the Cunarder looked compared to the Titanic but thought that he had never seen a finer sight. Daisy Spedden, meanwhile, was growing increasingly annoyed with a “fat” woman in Boat 3, who, as she later wrote, “had been dreadful all along for she never stopped talking and telling the sailors what to do, and she imbibed from her brandy flask frequently, never offering a drop to anyone else.” As they approached the Carpathia, the fat woman stood up to be the first off, and it gave Daisy great satisfaction to pull her down by the lifebelt and see her land on the floor of the boat with her heels in the air. She was held there, seething, until they were alongside the Carpathia, when, in Daisy’s words, “we were all charmed to let her go up in the sling first.” Henry Harper recorded that when a “woman of substantial size” stepped toward the bosun’s chair, another woman, dressed only in a nightgown and kimono, suddenly sat up and pointed at her. “Look at that horrible woman!” she cried out. “She stepped on my stomach! Horrible creature!” According to Harper, the woman in the kimono had been lying unseen on the bottom of the boat the whole night. Her identity is unknown, but many researchers believe that the �
�fat” woman could only have been the Main Line millionairess Charlotte Cardeza.

  Collapsible C, with Bruce Ismay aboard, approached the Carpathia at approximately 5:45 a.m. Once on board, Ismay stood apart from the other passengers, speaking to no one. Dr. Frank McGee, the Carpathia’s surgeon, approached him and suggested he go into the dining saloon and get something warm to drink but Ismay replied that he didn’t want anything. Noting his distraught expression, the doctor urged him again to go into the dining saloon and Ismay snapped, “No. If you will leave me alone I will be much happier here.” He then added, “If you will get me in some room where I can be quiet, I wish you would.” A steward took Ismay to one of the doctor’s examining rooms where he remained until the ship arrived in New York. William Carter, meanwhile, remained on deck, waiting anxiously for his wife and children.

  Edith Rosenbaum recalled that when Boat 11 arrived it almost collided with another lifeboat as they were tossed about in the waves. The babies and children in Boat 11 went up first in the canvas ash bags and Edith was then quickly hoisted in a bosun’s chair, which bumped and scraped along the side of the ship. When Boat 14 drew alongside at around 7:15 a.m., Norris Williams was able to climb up the rope ladder even though his feet were numb. A steward handed him a tumbler of brandy which he quickly emptied and as the alcohol’s warmth radiated through him, he suddenly felt very hungry. He managed to hobble to one of the ship’s galleys where the cooks made him what he thought was the best meal he had ever tasted. On finishing it, Norris spied an invitingly warm space behind one of the stoves, crawled in with his blanket, and fell fast asleep.

  Boat 14 arrived with Collapsible D still in tow. During the night, Fifth Officer Lowe had called out encouraging words to the women in the collapsible behind him, completely winning over René Harris. As the sun rose, she looked to where the voice came from and saw “a young man of six feet two, very slender and sinewy.… His face was clear cut and of the fine British race.… His cap was tilted boyishly to one side. He looked like a college boy out on an early morning lark.” This slightly romantic fixation on Harold Lowe helped distract René from the gnawing fear that her own beloved “boy” was now lost to her forever. Once on the Carpathia, she followed a group of steerage women to the crowded third-class dining saloon. She sat there silently for some time before a steward found her and apologized for putting her with the third-class passengers. “What difference does it make?” René thought.