Titanic, First Accounts
Page 38
As regards the boat accommodation it was entirely insufficient to accommodate the people on board, but let us bear in mind that the White Star Line set out to build an absolutely unsinkable boat, and in their opinion they had done so. They knew, they said, that the Titanic could not be sunk, and from the evidence before them they were quite justified in that knowledge. So that lifeboats were a superfluity from one point of view, but they carried them because they had to do so by Board of Trade regulations; and, again, the ship might always be called upon to rescue lives of other people at sea. But if the theory of the unsinkable boat deluded them into not providing lifeboat accommodation for all on board it helped in another way. When the Titanic struck everyone said:
“Well, we are all right; this boat cannot sink. We shall have to wait here until another ship comes along to take us off.”
This, I have little doubt, stopped panic and prevented those rushes for boats which might have taken place had the theory not been so widely and firmly held.
But here, again, if you blame the White Star, you must blame other lines similarly. The Titanic was at any rate better equipped than other boats, i. e. on the unsinkable theory plus sixteen lifeboats and four rafts.
Naturally, I do not wish to criticize the Cunard Line and their ship the Carpathia; but because I noticed her equipment posted up on the public screen, I noted it mentally and think the figures are as follows: Highest possible total of crew and passengers, 2,864; boat equipment, 20 boats with accommodation for 800 passengers—(I think this is perhaps higher than the accommodation, but I have put it as high as possible)—and no rafts or collapsible boats. This would be a lower accommodation per head than the Titanic, and I don’t think the Carpathia was built as an unsinkable boat. Now, the Cunard’s record is that of not having lost a life, and a record that they are justly proud of; but judged from this question of boat accommodation alone, the Titanic was better equipped than the Carpathia.
Again, the Board of Trade had subjected the Titanic to a rigid inspection and had passed her. The White Star had complied to the full with the law of the land. The system again, and not this one particular steamship line! “They ought to have foreseen the danger.” Well, so ought the Board of Trade: they employ the best experts, presumably. And then the French government and the American government have the right of veto on the entry of any ship into their ports.
If the White Star had been so negligent, why did not these Governments stop their entry? The French, and particularly the American experts must share the responsibility with the Board of Trade and the White Star Line. The American particularly, because the traffic is greater with America, and the Government had only to say the word and lifeboats would have been on board the next day. The responsibility is with the system to which three Governments have agreed.
Again. Let anyone read the standing instructions of the White Star Line to its Captains. They are to “run no risks”: “the safety of lives of passengers is the ruling principle” to insure “a reputation for safety.” This is a clear and definite statement of policy, and if the instructions are disobeyed the company’s rules are broken, and it cannot be held responsible.
On the other hand, custom establishes many unwritten laws, and may override printed instructions. It seems it did in this case.
Did the White Star know its printed instructions were regularly disobeyed, or did it think the risks taken were negligible? I think the question should be answered.
I would like to give here a personal experience of the Marconi apparatus on board the Titanic. It would seem to show the apparatus was not the best obtainable.
I coded a message (which I still have) on the day before the collision, to my friends in London, and took it to the purser for transmission. To my surprise he said:
“We cannot accept this, because our apparatus has only a range of 200 miles. We shall be in touch with Cape Race tomorrow, and can send it then, but I will ring up the operating room.”
He did so, and was told there was no one in communication with us, and so the message was returned with the remark again that we reached only 200 miles. He may have been wrong in his estimate of the distance, but in any case it had not apparently a very long range.
The glasses for the lookout seem to have been an omission, but whether they would have helped to avert the disaster is problematical. The ship was nearly a sixth of a mile long, and at the speed she was traveling it is doubtful whether she could be turned away from an object half a mile away without some part of her touching, and with the peculiarly dark atmosphere of the night, I don’t suppose the lookout could have seen icebergs half a mile away. He says he could have seen them in time to avert the disaster, but perhaps he has not considered the tremendous length of the ship, and the room required to take her out of her course.
The number of practical seamen seems to have been too small. I heard of several boats without one. Ours had none, and a stoker took command. This same stoker told me there were only 30 seamen among a crew of 800, but I have no means of checking his statement. If true it seems far too small.
In many boats there was no food, water or lights, either colored or white. This was the case in mine, and yet No. 13 was not launched until over an hour after the collision. There should have been time to put these bare necessities in.
I hope I am not criticizing unduly here. Perhaps the organization was not developed, or perhaps it broke down under the strain. But in a boat these things are essentials and should always be available. The drills would have insured their proper provision.
The method of embarking passengers seems to be open to some criticism. The boats I saw were loaded to standing room—65 in mine—and then lowered some 70 feet into the water. Neither tackle nor boats are meant to stand such a strain. They did stand it, fortunately. Again, is not the risk of upsetting such a boatload very great? These are the reasons why the officers thought it better that the first boats should be only partially filled and sent away. They might have stood by and taken more aboard from rope ladders, &c., had the crew been organized. I suppose the correct way is to lower the boat and then embark passengers, but was the Titanic arranged for that? I am told it was not possible in the way she was built.
There is one more person whose responsibility should be considered, and I have purposely left him to the last, because he is the most important. He is the average man who travels. Columbus took ninety days in a forty-ton ship. A friend of mine crossed fifty years ago in a paddle steamer that took six weeks. And now we cross in something over four days. And all the time “m” and “v” in the formula are increasing and their product “M” is raised day by day until one shudders at the craze for speed and luxury, for in ships size spells luxury. The public demand it and the lines supply it, and that is why the Titanic sank.
You cannot have both “m” and “v” high in the formula, and until we sacrifice one or both to some extent the danger will always be the same. No bulkheads or double bottoms or extra lifeboats or searchlights are of lasting value while “m” and “v” leap upward!
I think no responsibility will ever be fixed on an individual or on individuals for this disaster. All those who have cried for speed—you and I and our neighbor—have to share it among ourselves in so far as we have expressed a wish to travel faster and in greater comfort, for the expression of such a desire and the discontent with what we call slow travel (a very relative consideration when we remember Columbus!) are the seed sown in the minds of men which presently bear fruit in an insistence on greater speed and size. You and I may not have done it directly, but we may have talked about it and thought about it and after all, no action begins without thought.
I said at the commencement that accusations sometimes come back to wound the accuser; let every man who has ever grumbled to a ship’s officer about the slow speed, take it to heart. He had, perhaps, something to do with the sinking of the Titanic.
John Ericsson, from Sweden, may come in the steerage to America with infinitely greater means of blessings to the community in himself and his family than the millionaire in the first saloon, but the percentages of those saved show that he is not allowed the same opportunity of expressing such blessing.
Again, Major Butt and Col. Astor and Mr. Straus died as brave men died, but did not John Brown and Wilhelm Klein and Karl Johanssen? And yet they are not chronicled, and no newspaper has columns on their self-sacrifice and personal courage. But we know these things were true, and we can bear testimony now to every brave man who perished in the steerage, even if we know not his name.
But with sufficient boat accommodation these distinctions would never have had to be drawn. Think of it! A few more boats, only a few more pieces of wood nailed together, and many brave men and women for whom this country and the whole world mourns would be here and these words would not be written.
One incident has occurred to me during the week that has elapsed since we landed in New York that may be of interest, especially to those who had friends on board. Among the passengers were the Rev. and Mrs. Carter, who were on their way to Canada. Mr. Carter was instrumental in arranging on the Sunday evening, a few hours before we struck, what he called a “hymn sing-song.”
There was no evening service, and he invited to the saloon such passengers as cared to come to sing hymns. Any one was allowed to choose a hymn, and, as many were present and were thoroughly enjoying the quite informal gathering, the singing went on to quite a late hour.
Mr. Carter was apparently well acquainted with the history of many of the hymns, their authors, where they were written and in what circumstances, and he interested all present with his remarks on each hymn before it was sung. I recollect that many chose hymns dealing with safety at sea. “For Those in Peril on the Sea” was sung by all with no hint of the peril that lay but a very few miles ahead.
Mr. Carter closed with a few words of thanks to the purser for allowing him to use the saloon, made a few remarks as to the happy voyage we had had on a maiden trip and the safety there was in this vessel; and then the meeting closed with an impromptu prayer by him. This cannot have been more than two hours before the Titanic struck.
My motive in mentioning this is that some of those who have lost relatives may like to know that their friends must have been helped and cheered at the last by the words that they had sung but a short time before; the sound of singing voices must have been still a conscious one to many as they stood on the deck faced with the “peril on the sea.”
I will finish with a few purely personal remarks. My only excuse for putting them on record is that to me they are absolutely true. I do not make them with any intention of asking a single person to believe in them or to agree with me in what I say, but, having been face to face with the possibility of death and having seen its shadow rather near, I may perhaps not be trespassing on the columns of The Times in saying how I consider I was saved.
I have been a Christian Scientist in England for the last six years, and was on my way to America to study the greater work in New York, Boston and the West. The moment I realized there was any danger I turned at once to the method and habit of thought which are incumbent on a Christian Scientist—the attempt to eliminate fear from the human mind. After dressing and before going on deck I read quietly, and then went upstairs with a knowledge that fear was almost entirely eliminated and that opportunity to escape from the peril that threatened was a right we ought all to be able to claim. This condition of mind enabled me to stand quietly on the deck and watch boats being lowered until the moment came when I was able to get a place in a boat without depriving any one of room. I was asked to go by one of the crew in a perfectly natural manner. There were only a few men standing near, and they all came away, leaving the deck quite clear.
I think it certain that I should have walked about seeking every available opportunity to escape had I not been taught by Christian Science to wait quietly and get rid of fear. Had I gone about seeking opportunities, I do not imagine I should now be writing these words. I need hardly add that my gratitude to Christian Science and its founder, Mrs. Eddy, is unbounded.
LAWRENCE BEESLEY
New York Times,
MAY 8, 1912
May I trespass on your space in order to correct a statement I made in an article that appeared in your issue of April 29? I said that the Titanic lifeboats were not supplied with bread and water, and so far as I was aware this was correct; none could be found in the lifeboat I came in, and several passengers from other lifeboats related a similar experience. I have, however, received from Second Officer Lightoller a letter in which he says:
One statement only (in the article) is not correct, namely; that bread and water were lacking in the boats. Mr. Pitman and myself examined every boat from the Titanic on board the Carpathia and found ample supply of fresh biscuits and two casks (beakers) of water in every lifeboat.
I am sure you will allow me through your columns to make this correction. I can explain the mistake only by saying we could not find these necessities in the dark night and with a crowded boat. I know your readers will be glad to have this additional evidence of preparation on the part of the owners and officers of the Titanic.
LAWRENCE BEESLEY
Roxbury, Mass.
May 6, 1912
AFTERWORD
My grandfather, Lawrence Beesley, wrote his book about the Titanic within a few weeks after arriving in New York aboard the rescue ship Carpathia. Before him as he wrote, he mentions in the book, was “a small cardboard square: ‘White Star Line. R.M.S. Titanic. 208.” The label was the receipt for an envelope of money he had handed to the Titanic’s purser. “Along with other similar envelopes it may still be intact at the bottom of the sea,” he wrote in 1912.
One day in May 1995, I was called by Michael Findlay, a historian who had been examining the artifacts retrieved from the Titanic’s wreck site eight years earlier. He had recognized a label No. 208 as the counterpart to my grandfather’s receipt. It had lain for seventy-five years beneath 12,500 feet of water on the sea floor some four hundred miles off the coast of Newfoundland, preserved like many other documents in a leather bag. I don’t know what became of my grandfather’s receipt; its counterpart, now the property of the salvor, seems to have been better protected.
The Titanic keeps resurfacing to haunt our memories because its loss was a perfect monument to human folly. The great ship was being driven at high speed through an iceberg field without adequate technology to spot icebergs or enough lifeboats for all its passengers.
The loss of the ship through technology and miscalculation foreshadowed the far greater disaster that arose from the same causes two years later in World War I.
Even now, a century later, the story of the Titanic continues to resonate. It was not just lives that were lost in the tragedy but a way of life. Both in England and the United States, society was then more stratified and or
dered. The ships’ officers believed women and children should have first access to the available lifeboats, and the men on board accepted this convention even at the cost of their own lives.
No one rushed the boats. The orchestra kept playing until the last moments. My grandfather in his book remarked at length on these scenes of social discipline. “What controlled the situation principally was the quality of obedience and respect for authority which is a dominant characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race,” he wrote. “Passengers did as they were told by the officers in charge: women went to the decks below, men remained where they were told and waited in silence for the next order.”
Whether from race or culture, the social prerogatives of class and gender prevailed. Of the women passengers travelling first class, 97 percent survived. Of the men in second class, just 8 percent lived.
The sinking of the Titanic marked the watershed between the relatively calm seas of the Victorian era and the turbulence of the two world wars that were to follow—a warning that all the social and political certainties of the preceding age were about to be upturned.
As for my grandfather, he was just an individual caught in the tides of a historic tragedy. He had given up his career as a science teacher at Dulwich College in London to become a Christian Science practitioner. On April 10, 1912, then aged thirty-four, he boarded the Titanic at Southampton, intending to visit the United States for the first time and to meet with his youngest brother Arthur, who lived in Toronto. He paid £13 for a second-class ticket.
My grandfather was not a conformist, and it was to this habit of mind that he owed his escape. In the minutes after the lifeboats were being prepared for launch, a rumor went around that the men were to board them from the port side. Everyone moved to that side of the ship, but my grandfather stayed on the starboard side. He does not give a clear reason in his book for his decision not to follow the crowd, and perhaps it was one he could not explain to himself.