Voices from the Titanic

by Geoff Tibballs

  LOST FIREMAN’S VINDICATION

  Among the ‘remarkable’ stories published by London journals concerning men who had been lost in the Titanic disaster was one about a fireman named Hart. It was stated that a Liverpool man named T. Hart had joined the ill-fated ship at Southampton, and when the list of the crew was published his mother claimed compensation, on the assumption that her son had been lost. A few days later, however, the son turned up, and it transpired that he had never seen the Titanic. He had, however, lost his discharge book, and it was presumed that ‘someone had signed on with her son’s name and credentials’. We quote the words of a London paper.

  That there was a man named Hart on the Titanic there is no doubt. J. Hart, of 51, College Street, attached his signature to the ship’s articles, and the inference was that he had sailed under false pretences. The suggestion that he used another man’s book has given intense pain to the members of the family, who indignantly deny the statement. Mr Hart has sailed out of Southampton for over twenty years. He served the Union-Castle Company and the R.M.S.P. before transferring to the White Star Line, and we are assured that his discharge book was a good one. There was, therefore, no reason why he should hide behind another man’s character, and that he made no attempt to do so is proved by the fact that he gave his College Street address when signing on. Had he assumed the name of the Liverpool man, he must also have given the Liverpool address of that fireman. J. Hart was a member of the British Seafarers’ Union, and we have been asked by the members of his family to publish these facts in order that the dead might be vindicated.

  (Southampton Times and Hampshire Express, 18 May 1912)

  FUNERAL OF MR WALLACE HARTLEY

  The body of Mr Wallace Hartley – Colne’s hero, Britain’s hero, the world’s hero – picked up on the crest of the ocean, thousands of miles distant on the great rolling Atlantic, was borne to Colne on Friday last, to the town of his nativity, and interred the following day in the family vault in the Public Cemetery. It was an impressive funeral. The coffin bearing his remains passed before the eyes of a multitude, saddened but proud, stricken in heart but of manly bearing, grave, yet secretly grateful that a townsman and a friend should have died so heroically.

  O Death, where is thy sting?

  Grave, where is thy victory?

  Colne rose to the highest eminence of its character and traditions on Saturday and girded with warm sincerity and pride and love, paid to the hero a tribute of sympathy, spontaneous, heartfelt, ungrudging, the outpoured sympathy of a people who felt and gloried in the magnificence of a townsman’s courage. The keynote of the whole proceedings was Victory, a hero’s triumph. Gaunt Death had claimed his poor weak body of clay, but the soul of the man had climbed far above earthly things into the highest thoughts of man, and the splendour of the man’s character, the golden worth of the man at heart, had won the plaudits and admiration of two hemispheres.

  Probably 40,000 persons did homage to the dead musician. Of these a very large percentage were, of course, people of Colne, and nearly all of these had kinship with the deceased. Many more far-distant sent flowers where they could not attend in person.

  All of the 40,000 were fully acquainted with the deathless story of a story of death. The loss of the Titanic is an occurrence that can never die or fade from the memory of the men and women of today. The ghastliness of it, the unbelievable horror of it, the scarce-comprehensible significance of it, the awful dread which the picture of the ship taking its last plunge and with it a heavy freight of brave, powerless humans, conjures up, has impressed the event on the human heart beyond eradication. But while we mourn we glory in what we have learnt of the capabilities of the soul, and we are proud of our race and our destiny. For while we shall ever recoil from the horrors of the disaster we shall never fail to feel a glow of pride in the magnificent heroism which inspired men to puff the smoke from cigarettes in the face of Fate while the crew rescued the women and children, which prompted stokers and engineers to battle with the elements unflinchingly, which kept the brave Phillips at his wireless instrument, and which upheld Wallace Hartley and his comrades as they played on, on, into another world.

  We know that all aboard answered the captain’s command to ‘Be British’. And none more faithfully than the orchestra. Can we picture the scene? Indescribable confusion on board in the lowering of boat-loads of people down the mountain-sides of the ship, the cries of the weak, the frantic despair of the coward, the ravings of the bully, and the quiet Christian confidence and equanimity of the true British gentleman wielding his baton or fingering his violin, who snapped his fingers in the face of Death and died a fighting hero, succouring the weak and cheering all – playing the violin soon to be the angel’s harp. The bandsmen received word that the ship must go down and they with it lost in the intoxication of light music and around them all the luxury that their profession could desire. They heard of the approach of death, and the tune changed. No longer the merry whirling American ragtime music. Now it was the slow, impressive appeal to God by hymn, ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee’. A dumb horror gripped the hearts of the players, yet they never faltered under the firm lead of Wallace Hartley. Outside, men and women were hastening away back to life; the bandsmen were left to cheer those whose doom was sealed. None could help them; theirs was to do and die, and they died.

  Wallace Hartley put into practice a resolution he had expressed to a friend, that if ever disaster overtook the ship on which he was aboard he would stick to his violin and play the hymn he loved, ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee’. With the water creeping, creeping slowly but surely over his body he played and played – he was nearer to Him – he was with Him.

  The heroic band-leader died on April 15, and a fortnight later his body was found attired in the evening dress in which he had played and with his music-case strapped to it.

  (Colne & Nelson Times, 24 May 1912)

  The following story was typical of accounts which appeared in local newspapers the length and breadth of the British Isles during the months of May and June.

  TITANIC VICTIM INTERMENT OF A YOUNG MAN AT ST IVES

  The funeral of a Titanic victim took place yesterday. The deceased was William Carbines, whose embalmed body had been brought across the Atlantic that it might rest near the old home at Nanjivey on the outskirts of the Cornish borough. When death overtook him, in the worst of all shipping disasters, young Carbines, just entering manhood, was setting out hopefully on a new career. His brothers, John and Robert, were copper mining in Michigan, and the intention of the St Ives boy was to join them. The remains of the deceased were picked up from the ocean by the steamer Mackay-Bennett which sailed to the region of the catastrophe for the purpose of recovering bodies, and were landed at Halifax, where the brothers received them. Afterwards the corpse was placed on board the Oceanic for conveyance to England, John and Robert Carbines being passengers by the same ship. From Southampton the deceased was taken by rail to St Ives, and removed thence to Nanjivey to await interment. In the cemetery chapel the simple service was read by the Rev. W.A. Chettle (Wesleyan). After the coffin had been committed to the grave, Mr Chettle delivered an address. Every man’s life, he said, was like a diary, in which he intended to write one thing, but wrote another. Why? Because he was not his own. Their departed brother planned yonder – should they say a home and a career? – and there intervened that sudden stroke so terrible in its mystery to them.

  (Western Daily Mercury, 31 May 1912)

  HIS THOUGHTFULNESS SAVED GIRL’S LIFE

  Dr Pain’s Last Act Made Possible The Romance of Titanic

  In the midst of all the bitter disappointment and sorrow which have come into the lives of Mr and Mrs Albert Pain, of this city, through the loss of their son, Dr Alfred Pain, by the sinking of the Titanic eight weeks ago, there has been a ray of sunshine through the numerous letters of sympathy from friends on two continents. One of those especially discloses a lovely little act of romance which the thoughtfulness of Dr Pain m
ade possible, and a happy young couple in the far Western States will ever bless the memory of Dr Alfred Pain.

  While in England, Dr Pain arranged that he should meet Miss Marion Wright of Yeovil, England, who had arranged to come to America on the Titanic, to be married on her arrival in New York to a young Englishman who some time ago came to this country and took up fruit farming at Cottage Grove, Oregon. Circumstances prevented Miss Wright from being present at the home of a mutual friend, but he looked her up on board the Titanic, and promised that she would be his charge. His last known act was to put her into a lifeboat. She was the last person put into that boat, and unquestionably Dr Pain’s thoughtfulness in taking her out of the crowd on one side of the boat and getting her into a lifeboat on the other side saved her life and made possible the marriage which subsequently took place in New York.

  Miss Wright lost all her trousseau and wedding gifts but when she arrived in New York her plight became known to the Women’s Relief Committee who, seeing the romance in it, quickly procured a new trousseau, and the wedding took place the Saturday after the arrival of the Carpathia – in St Christopher’s chapel. Mr and Mrs Woolcott went to their home in Oregon and only last week Mrs Albert Pain received a letter from the bride. It was really the first precise news she had had of her son and the fact that it showed that he had been the saviour of the young English girl’s life helped to soften the anguish of the loss of her son. Mrs Woolcott wrote as follows:

  Cottage Grove, Oregon, U.S.A., May 28.

  Dear Mrs Pain, I have been wanting so much to write to you some time, but I didn’t know your address until a few days ago, when I got a letter from Miss Richards, written from Devonshire, in which she asked me to write her all I could about your dear son, Dr Alfred Pain. She also gave me your address, so now I feel I must do my duty, painful though it is. How your poor heart must be torn to lose him as you have, in all his prime, and in such perfect health. We did not get acquainted till the Friday after we sailed. So, though I only knew him for three days, yet I felt he was a friend. He said I was the first lady he had spoken to. I had noticed him before. He seemed so good at getting up games for the young fellows on board. We had several meals together and he told me how much he had enjoyed his stay in England. On the Sunday I asked him to come to the service in the second class saloon. He did, and again in the evening came with a number of others to sing hymns in the dining saloon, and himself chose one or two. I believe he especially asked for ‘Abide With Me, Fast Falls The Eventide’. Afterwards we had supper with one or two other people who had been singing with us, and then retired to our berths. About 12.30 p.m., when I had been on deck already for some time, your son came up, properly dressed, and with his lifebelt on. I could see he was looking for someone, and after a while he found me and said: ‘I have been trying to find you for some time.’ I asked him if he thought there was any great danger, and he assured me there could not be. We stood for some time on the starboard, watching them load boats. There were hundreds of women on that side, and your son suddenly said: ‘I think we had better go round the other side; there aren’t so many people there.’ We did so, and scarcely had we got round when the call came, ‘Any more ladies, this way!’ Your son said, ‘You had better run.’ I did so, and he followed and put me in the lifeboat. It is such a grief to me that I didn’t say goodbye to him, but I thought, as everyone else did, that we would go back to the Titanic before very long. When we got out on the sea we could see the boat gradually sinking, deck after deck, and oh! how much we hoped all would be saved ere she went down. But when the awful news came to us that only 700 were saved, and those were with us on the Carpathia, how grieved I felt and how I wished your son had been among that 700. It all seems so sad and overwhelming, and I will never forget it, as long as I live. I trust just these few lines may comfort the heart of Dr Pain’s sorrow stricken mother, is the prayer of yours, with much sympathy, Marion Woolcott.

  (Hamilton (Canada) Spectator, June 1912)

  Able Seaman Thomas Jones from Anglesey, Wales, had been placed in command of lifeboat No. 8. He had so admired the conduct of the Countess of Rothes that he subsequently presented her with the boat’s brass number plate. It would seem that the feeling was mutual for the Countess’s cousin, Gladys Cherry, who had also been a passenger in boat 8, wrote to Jones to express her gratitude for his gallantry that night. The letter was published in several newspapers.

  I feel I must write and tell you how splendidly you took charge of our boat on the fatal night. There were only four English people in it – my cousin, Lady Rothes, her maid, you and myself – and I think you were wonderful.

  The dreadful regret I shall always have, and I know you share with me, is that we ought to have gone back to see whom we could pick up; but if you remember, there was only an American lady, my cousin, self and you who wanted to return. I could not hear the discussion very clearly, as I was at the tiller; but everyone forward and the three men refused; but I shall always remember your words: ‘Ladies, if any of us are saved, remember, I wanted to go back. I would rather drown with them than leave them.’ You did all you could, and being my own countryman, I wanted to tell you this.

  Yours very truly, Gladys Cherry.

  Miss Marie Grice Young, thirty-six, a former music teacher at the White House, shared a first-class state room on the Titanic with Mrs J. Stuart White. Both women escaped in lifeboat No. 8 where Miss Young assisted manfully with the rowing. She later wrote a personal account of the wreck for an American magazine.

  Six months have elapsed since the Titanic – the most splendid of all passenger ships – sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, in sight of fifteen boatloads of survivors, numbering less than a third of the passengers and crew who had embarked at her three ports of call.

  Perhaps no two survivors would answer alike the question: ‘What is your most poignant memory of the fatal voyage, and of its fifth and final night?’

  A panorama of incidents passes before the mind – trivial events ordinarily, but rendered tragic because of the death of many who sailed on the Titanic, but who never heard the eager roll call of the Carpathia. What became of the merry group of boys who were beside me, in the telegraph office at the dock at Cherbourg, hurrying off last messages to friends on shore?

  Who can forget the cruel change in the faces of those who waved gay farewells as the tender left the French harbour, and ere they again sighted land, had yielded up all that made life beautiful to them?

  Figures, faces and even varying facial expressions are remembered of those, who though strangers, were fellow passengers, beloved of many ashore to whom even our fading impressions and slight knowledge would be a consolation, should the paths of our lives ever cross.

  In my thoughts I often lie again in my steamer chair, and watch the passing throng on the Titanic’s promenade deck. After the usual excitement of buying lace from the Irish girls who came aboard at Queenstown was over, the routine of life on deck was established. Two famous men passed many times every day in a vigorous constitutional, one talking always – as rapidly as he walked – the other a good and smiling listener.

  Babies and nurses, dear old couples, solitary men, passed sunlit hours of those spring days on deck, while the Titanic swept on to the scene of the disaster; approaching what might not have been so much a sinister fate awaiting her, as it was an opportunity for her commander and the President of the White Star Line to prove true seamanship and their great discretion in the presence of reported and recognized peril.

  It so happened that I took an unusual interest in some of the men below decks, for I had talked often with the carpenter and the printer in having extra crates and labels made for the fancy French poultry we were bringing home, and I saw a little of the ship’s life, in my daily visits to the gaily crowing roosters, and to the hens, who laid eggs busily, undismayed by the novelty and commotion of their surroundings.

  I had seen the cooks before their great cauldrons of porcelain, and the bakers turning out the huge
loaves of bread, a hamper of which was later brought on deck to supply the lifeboats.

  In accepting some gold coins, the ship’s carpenter said: ‘It is such good luck to receive gold on a first voyage!’ Yet he was the first of the Titanic’s martyrs, who, in sounding the ship just after the iceberg was struck, sank and was lost in the inward-rushing sea that engulfed him.

  Who can imagine the earthly purgatory of anguish endured by Captain Smith during the pitifully short time vouchsafed him to prepare for death – whose claim upon him, he, more than all others, must acknowledge?

  Who exchanged a last word with any of the joyous bridal couples, to whom each day at sea had brought a deeper glow of happiness? Expectant, they stood at the threshold of earthly life, yet they passed together that night through the gates of Eternity to a fairer day than that which dawned for those left to face an unknown fate.

  What scenes were enacted to immortalize forever the engineers who kept the ship lighted and afloat, giving a last chance of escape to passengers and even officers? How can we ever realize what it meant to find courage to reject the thought of beloved dependants on shore, and to face death in stoke-hold and engine room?

  The ‘greater love’ that lays down life that another may live burnt in many a heart in the Titanic’s list of dead, and those who survive owe them a debt, only to be acknowledged and wiped out by a flawless record of lives nobly lived, because so cruelly bought.

  Vivid and endless are the impressions of that great night. They remain as closely folded in the brain as the shock of the discharge of guns, the cries of the drowning and the sobs of the broken-hearted.

  Clearest of all is the remembrance of the eighteen self-controlled women in our boat (Number 8), four of whom had parted, bitterly protesting, from their husbands.