Voices from the Titanic

by Geoff Tibballs

  Before the next boats were lowered passengers who had become excited were calmed by the utterances of the officers that the injury was trivial and that, in case it proved serious, at least four steamships had been summoned by wireless and would be on hand within an hour.

  (San Francisco Bulletin, 20 April 1912)

  Edward Dorking, a nineteen-year-old steerage passenger from Liss in Hampshire, was travelling to America to start a new life working for his uncle, an Illinois cement manufacturer. At the moment of impact, he was in the music room playing cards with several of his fellow travellers.

  When the boat collided with the berg, we were thrown from the bench on which we were sitting. The shock was accompanied by a grinding noise, which we took to be the result of an accident to the machinery that suddenly halted the ship.

  I went on deck to see what had happened and saw several persons running to the forward part of the ship. I followed and found that the port side was strewn with particles of ice. Someone said we had struck an iceberg and that a huge hole had been torn in the port side below the waterline.

  I obtained a good glimpse of the iceberg as it floated by. It was off some distance then, but in the clear night, I could see it rising out of the water like a great white spectre, towering above the funnels of the ship. To me it seemed that the iceberg was at least four or five times as large as the Titanic.

  At that time there was no sign of panic. The passengers and crew seemed to feel assured that the collision was not serious and that there was no grave danger to the ship. I returned to the music room and resumed our card game. After a while some of the foreigners in the steerage became excited and the women began to weep, and before long there was a stream of them pouring out of the steerage dragging their luggage with them. They were driven out by the water which was rushing into the hold in a huge stream, in spite of the pumps which were working furiously.

  In a little while longer, the nose of the boat began to dip forward. As the ship began to list, the excitement of the lower decks increased and there was a scramble for the lifeboats. Men and women, stricken with fright, huddled around the crew, shouting and crying and sending up prayers to heaven for aid.

  I was on deck when the first boat was lowered away. The women and children were taken off first. An officer stood beside the lifeboats as they were being manned and, with a pistol in hand, threatened to kill the first man who got into a boat without orders.

  The rule of ‘women first’ was rigidly enforced. Two stewards hustled into a lifeboat that was being launched. They were commanded to get out by the officers and, on refusing to obey the command, were shot down and thrown into the sea. A Chinaman was also shot for the same cause. Afterwards, aboard the Carpathia, I saw six Chinamen who had escaped in the lifeboats, disguised as women.

  (Bureau County Republican, 2 May 1912)

  Daisy Minahan from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, was travelling first-class with her doctor brother and his wife. She escaped via boat No. 14, one of the last – but, contrary to her account, not the last – to leave the ship.

  We were sitting on the Titanic’s deck in the evening enjoying the crisp air and the starlit night. Old sailors told us the sea had never seemed so calm and glassy. About 9.30 the atmosphere took a sudden drop, which drove everybody inside their cabins. We must have been going at a terrific rate in the direction of the icebergs, for the air became so chilly in a few minutes that we found it impossible to keep warm even when we put wraps and blankets around us.

  We had retired when there was a dull shaking of the Titanic, which was not so much like a shake as it was a slowing down of the massive craft. I noticed that our boat had come to a standstill and then we heard the orders of the captain and went on deck to see what it all meant. I never saw such composure and cool bravery in my life as the men of the first and second cabins displayed. Colonel Astor seemed to be the controlling figure. He, Major Butt, Mr Guggenheim, Mr Widener and Mr Thayer clustered in a group as if they were holding a quick consultation as to what steps should be taken next. Then Colonel Astor came forward with the cry, ‘Not a man until every woman and child is safe in the boats.’

  Many of the women did not seem to want to leave the vessel. Mrs Astor clung to her husband, begging him to let her remain on the Titanic with him. When he insisted that she save herself, she threw her arms around him and begged him with tears to permit her to share his fate. Colonel Astor picked her up bodily and carried her to a boat, which was the one just ahead of ours, and placed her in it.

  I lingered with my brother and his wife, loath to leave them, although we all knew the ship was sinking and that the ocean would soon swallow up all that remained of the steamer. We both begged my brother to come with us, but he said: ‘No, I will remain with the others, no matter what happens.’

  Then, when it was time to go, when the last boat was being lowered to the water line, we were hurried into it by my brother, who bade us goodbye and said calmly but with feeling: ‘Be brave; no matter what happens, be brave.’

  Senior stewardess Sarah Stap had been transferred from the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic. She described the crew as being ‘so radiantly happy together’ on leaving Southampton and enthused about how well everything was going until the fatal night of the fourteenth.

  I was in bed and was awakened by a slight bump. It would then have been about a quarter to twelve at night. I did not take very much heed of the noise at first, because I had been used to a ship’s bumping before. In fact I thought that something or other had gone wrong in the engine room.

  Presently I heard the night-watchman pass my door and I called out to him, ‘What’s the matter?’

  He replied: ‘Oh, we have only touched a bit of ice. I think it is all right. I don’t think it is anything.’

  It was three-quarters of an hour after I felt the ship bump that I got up and when I reached the deck the lifeboats had been ordered out. I was not in the least frightened; I was simply stunned.

  Perfect order prevailed, and everybody seemed calm and collected. The passengers would not believe that we had struck an iceberg, but I myself knew what had happened. The officers and crew behaved magnificently, as did also the dear old captain. Mr Ismay was on deck in his pyjamas and a coat, vainly endeavouring to get the passengers into the boats. He worked might and main all the time, and I did not think he actually realized that the ship was sinking.

  (Birkenhead News, 4 May 1912)

  Hilda Slayter, a doctor’s daughter from Halifax, Nova Scotia, had been in England shopping for her trousseau for her impending wedding in Canada. The trousseau was lost at sea, but Miss Slayter survived. She too told of the parting of the Astors.

  I was standing right near by when Mrs Astor was helped into one of the boats. He asked the officer who was at the rail whether he might go also, and permission was refused. With the calmest smile in the world, Col. Astor said: ‘Goodbye, dearie,’ and waved his hand to Mrs Astor. It was plain she did not realize that their parting was anything but momentary, but I’m sure he suspected it, for as though to conceal his emotion he hastily pulled out his cigarette case and started smoking. Then he leant over the rail, and as the boat Mrs Astor was in swung out and was lowered he cried again: ‘Goodbye, dearie, I’ll join you later.’

  I never saw the Colonel again, but a moment later my attention was caught by a Frenchman who approached one of the lowering boats with two beautiful little boys in his arms. An officer waved him back, and he replied:’Bless you, man, I don’t want to go, but for God’s sake take these boys. Their mother is waiting for them at home.’

  So the boys were tossed into the boat and the Frenchman turned away, seemingly quite satisfied. Poor fellow, I did not see him on the Carpathia either.

  (New York World, 19 April 1912)

  Miss Constance Willard of Duluth, Minnesota, was in one of the last boats to leave the Titanic.

  When I reached the deck after the collision the crew were getting the boats ready to lower, and many of the w
omen were running about looking for their husbands and children. The women were being placed in the boats, and two men took hold of me and almost pushed me into a boat. I did not appreciate the danger and I struggled until they released me. ‘Do not waste time. Let her go if she will not get in,’ said an officer.

  I hurried back to my cabin again and went from cabin to cabin looking for my friends, but could not find them. A little English girl about fifteen years old ran up to me and threw her arms about me. ‘I am all alone,’ she sobbed. ‘Won’t you let me go with you?’

  I then began to realize the real danger and saw that all but two of the boats had been lowered. Some men called to us and we hurried to where they were loading a boat. All the women had been provided with life belts. As the men lifted us into the boat they smiled at us and told us to be brave.

  I will never forget an incident that occurred just as we were about to be lowered into the water. I had just been lifted into the boat and was still standing when a foreigner rushed up to the side of the vessel and, holding out a bundle in his arms, cried with tears running down his face: ‘Please, kind lady, won’t you save my little girl, my baby? For myself it is no difference, but please, please take the little one.’ Of course, I took the child.

  The newly widowed Mrs May Futrelle concluded her narrative to American newsmen.

  Jacques died like a hero. He was in the smoking room when the crash came and I was going to bed. I was hurled from my feet by the impact. I hardly found myself when Jacques came rushing into the state room. ‘The boat is going down! Get dressed at once,’ he shouted.

  When we reached the deck everything was in the wildest confusion. The screams of women and the shrill orders of the officers were drowned intermittently by the tremendous vibrations of the Titanic’s deep bass fog horn. The behaviour of the men was magnificent. They stood back without murmuring and urged the women and children into the lifeboats. A few cowards tried to scramble into the boats, but they were quickly thrown back by the others. The only men who were saved were those who sneaked into the lifeboats or were picked up after the Titanic sunk.

  I did not want to leave Jacques, but he assured me that there were boats enough for all and that he would be rescued later. ‘Hurry up, May – you’re keeping the others waiting.’ They were his last words as he lifted me into a lifeboat and kissed me goodbye. I was in one of the last lifeboats to leave the ship. We had not put out many minutes when the Titanic disappeared. I almost thought, as I saw her sink beneath the water, that I could see Jacques, standing where I had left him and waving at me.

  Twenty-two-year-old Londoner Harold Bride was the junior wireless operator on the Titanic. Both he and the senior operator, twenty-four-year-old Jack Phillips, were Marconi employees but were classified as junior officers on board the ship. Bride took over from his colleague at midnight each night and was kept busy by a stream of requests from passengers eager to impress friends and family back home by relaying a message from the Titanic. Bride and Phillips remained at their posts until the bitter end on that fateful night and Bride’s subsequent account of the tragedy was one of the most graphic to emerge. As such, it was printed in newspapers across the world.

  There were three rooms in the wireless cabin. One was a sleeping room, one a dynamo room, and one an operating room. I took off my clothes and went to sleep in the bed. Then I was conscious of waking up and hearing Phillips sending to Cape Race. I read what he was sending. It was only routine matter. I remembered how tired he was, and got out of bed without my clothes on to relieve him. I didn’t even feel the shock. I hardly knew it had happened until after the captain had come to us. There was no jolt whatever.

  I was standing by Phillips, telling him to go to bed, when the captain put his head in the cabin. ‘We’ve struck an iceberg,’ the captain said, ‘and I’m having an inspection made to tell what it has done for us. You had better get ready to send out a call for assistance, but don’t send it until I tell you.’ The captain went away, and in ten minutes, I should estimate, he came back. We could hear terrible confusion outside, but not the least thing to indicate any trouble. The wireless was working perfectly. ‘Send a call for assistance,’ ordered the captain, barely putting his head in the door. ‘What call should I send?’ Phillips asked. ‘The regulation call for help, just that.’ Then the captain was gone.

  Phillips began to send ‘C.Q.D.’ He flashed away at it, and we joked while he did so. All of us made light of the disaster. We joked that way while we flashed the signals for about five minutes. Then the captain came back. ‘What are you sending?’ he asked. ‘C.Q.D.,’ Phillips replied.

  The humour of the situation appealed to me, and I cut in with a little remark that made us all laugh, including the captain. ‘Send S.O.S.,’ I said. ‘It’s the new call, and it may be your last chance to send it.’ Phillips, with a laugh, changed the signal to ‘S.O.S.’ The captain told us we had been struck amidships, or just aft of amid-ships. It was ten minutes, Phillips told me, after he noticed the iceberg, but the slight jolt was the only signal to us that a collision had occurred. We thought we were a good distance away. We said lots of funny things to each other in the next few minutes. We picked up the first steamship Frankfurt, gave her our position, and said we had struck an iceberg, and needed assistance. The Frankfurt operator went away to tell his captain. He came back, and we told him we were sinking by the head, and that we could observe a distinct list forward.

  The Carpathia answered our signal, and we told her our position, and said we were sinking by the head. The operator went to tell the captain, and in five minutes returned, and told us the Carpathia was putting about and heading for us.

  Our captain had left us at this time, and Phillips told me to run and tell him what the Carpathia had answered. I did so, and I went through an awful mass of people to his cabin. The decks were full of scrambling men and women. I came back and heard Phillips giving the Carpathia further directions. Phillips told me to put on my clothes. Until that moment I forgot I wasn’t dressed. I went to my cabin and dressed. I brought an overcoat to Phillips, and as it was very cold I slipped the overcoat upon him while he worked. Every few minutes Phillips would send me to the captain with little messages. They were merely telling how the Carpathia was coming our way, and giving her speed.

  I noticed as I came back from one trip that they were putting off the women and children in lifeboats, and that the list forward was increasing. Phillips told me the wireless was growing weaker. The captain came and told us our engine rooms were taking water, and that the dynamos might not last much longer. We sent that word to the Carpathia.

  I went out on deck and looked around. The water was pretty close up to the boat deck. There was a great scramble aft, and how poor Phillips worked through it I don’t know. He was a brave man. I learnt to love him that night, and I suddenly felt for him a great reverence to see him standing there sticking to his work while everybody else was raging about. I will never live to forget the work Phillips did for the last awful fifteen minutes.

  Phillips clung on, sending and sending. He clung on for about ten minutes, or maybe fifteen minutes, after the captain released him. The water was then coming into our cabin. From aft came the tunes of the band. It was a ragtime tune. I don’t know what. Then there was ‘Autumn’. Phillips ran aft, and that was the last I ever saw of him alive.

  CHAPTER 4

  WATCHING AND WAITING

  There were some 2,228 passengers on board the Titanic but the twenty lifeboats had a total capacity of just 1,178. Even-numbered boats were launched from the port side; odd-numbered from the starboard side. The first lifeboat, No. 7, was lowered at 12.45 a.m. – over an hour after the collision. Its capacity was sixty-five yet it left with only twenty-eight passengers.

  BOAT NO. 7

  Among the passengers on this boat were newlyweds Mrs Helen Bishop and husband Dickinson.

  When we got on deck there were few people there. We were in the first lifeboat to be lowered over the side
. Someone said: ‘Put the brides and grooms in first.’

  There were three newly married couples who went in that boat. Altogether, there were twenty-eight in our boat. There might as well have been forty or so, but the half hundred men on deck refused to leave, even though there was room for them.

  John Jacob Astor was standing at the foot of the stairway as I started to go back the second time. He told us to get on our life-belts and we did. Before our boat was lowered into the water, Mr and Mrs Astor were on the deck. She didn’t want to go, saying that she thought we were all silly, that the Titanic couldn’t sink. Because the Astors’ state room was close to ours, we had had considerable to do with them on the voyage and I disliked to leave them on deck. As a matter of fact I believed, much as they did, that there was little chance of being picked up in the lifeboats.

  The water was like glass. There wasn’t even the ripple usually found on a small lake. By the time we had pulled 100 yards, the lower row of portholes had disappeared. When we were a mile away the second row had gone, but there was still no confusion. Indeed everything seemed to be quiet on the ship until her stern was raised out of the water by the list forward. Then a veritable wave of humanity surged up out of the steerage and shut the lights from our view. We were too far away to see the passengers individually, but we could see the black masses of human forms and hear their death cries and groans.

  For a moment the ship seemed to be pointing straight down, looking like a gigantic whale submerging itself, head-first.

  One dining room steward, who was in our boat, was thoughtful enough to bring green lights – the kind you burn on the Fourth of July. They cast a ghostly light over the boat, but you know we had no light of any kind. Whenever we would light one of these diminutive torches, we would hear cries from the people perishing aboard. They thought it was help coming.