In those hours spent face to face with the solemn thoughts of trials still to undergo before possible rescue, it was inspiring to see that these twentieth-century women were, in mentality and physique, worthy descendants of their ancestors who had faced other dire perils in Colonial and Revolutionary periods. Women rowed all night, others in the bow waved the lantern light in the air as a signal to the ship towards whose light our boat crept slowly till dawn, with only a young girl at the tiller to keep the boat headed straight in spite of the jerky, uneven rowing.
Treasured above all else was the electric light in the handle of a cane belonging to Mrs J. Stuart White, who waved it regularly while counting strokes for the haphazard crew.
The assurance that its light would burn continuously for thirty hours helped comfort many minds, aghast at the possibility of another night to be endured before rescue. We had no knowledge of wireless response to the Titanic’s frantic calls for help nor of the glorious rush through the sea of ice which was bringing near the fearless little Carpathia. If we, the survivors, spent a night of exhausting struggle, of emotion, and of prayer, what of the captain, the crew, and the awakening passengers of the rescue ship?
Nevertheless we turn to a brighter side of the picture, for hope must have filled all the hearts of those who turned back so promptly at the first distress signal. The United States Senate investigation brought to the world’s notice a document containing Captain Rostron’s written orders to his officers and crew, a copy of which should be framed on every ship as a model of perfect organisation in time of stress. No detail of careful preparation was omitted. All the reading world knows now that, after answering the Titanic’s wireless appeal, Captain Rostron put an additional officer on the Carpathia’s bridge, doubled his lookouts in the crow’s nest, and called out an extra fire-room force.
But of his final and complete preparations, enough cannot be said. His three physicians – English, Italian and Hungarian – were detailed to look after the different classes of rescued passengers; his passengers were supplied with food, medicine and blankets, and they were ready to lower as soon as he should approach the wreck, which alas! he was indeed never to see.
He ordered his own crew to be fed and fortified for the coming hours of strain, and they promised their brave commander to show the world of what stuff the British seaman is made.
His own steerage passengers were placed in closer quarters, and their natural excitement quieted by a few judicious words. And these given instances of careful forethought are but a few, remembered at random, and only a suggestion of the great work accomplished by Captain Rostron in the cause of humanity.
When the Carpathia reached the scene of the disaster, finding fifteen boats, some only half-filled, the survivors of the tragedy that had been enacted between the setting and the rising sun were lifted on board with pity and tenderness almost divine in their gentleness.
The details of the shipwreck, its perils, horrors and uncertainties, have filled the magazines and newspapers, but of the wonderful, unique days that followed, little has been said.
Many of the survivors were dazed by the paralyzing events of the night, the shock of collision, and the terror of the realization that their only chance for life was in escaping in the lifeboats. The perilous descent into these boats, their ignorant handling, the immediate sinking of the Titanic, the heartrending cries of the dying, the night spent adrift on the bitterly cold sea, and finally the hazardous ascent in the boatswain’s seat from the lifeboat to the Carpathia’s gangway, were all experiences to haunt and tax the most stoical.
For those who had lost members of their families, friends or servants, it was a bitter moment when, at ten o’clock on Monday morning, April 15, Captain Rostron steamed away from the scene of the wreck, leaving two tardy and cruelly negligent steamers to watch the scene of the greatest maritime tragedy.
The day was cold, but brilliant. All morning the Carpathia passed a field of ice, 40 miles in length, and extending northward as far as the eye could see.
After food and blankets had been distributed amongst the survivors, their names were carefully noted. Then the weary task began, lasting for days, of sending them by wireless to an awestricken, listening, longing world. The Carpathia’s own exhausted operator was relieved by the equally worn-out second operator (Harold Bride) from the Titanic, who had been lifted more dead than alive from the ocean.
Meanwhile, the Carpathia’s sympathetic passengers were sharing rooms and clothing with those rescued; every possible berth was assigned, and all available space in the library and dining saloon used for sleeping quarters. Mattresses were laid on the dining tables, and at night, old and young ‘made up’ beds on the library floor, a most informal proceeding consisting of spreading a folded steamer rug on the floor, with a second rug to sleep under, and, perhaps, if one had luck, a sofa cushion for a pillow.
Such beds were smilingly and uncomplainingly occupied. One bright old lady, who slept thus beside her sister’s bed on a bench, called it the ‘lower berth in the Carpathia Pullman!’
No such makeshift, however, for the President of the White Star Line – hidden in the English physician’s comfortable room, he voyaged to New York, as heedlessly indifferent to the discomfort of his company’s passengers as he had been to the deadly peril that had menaced them. Richer, far, in experience, were those who mingled freely in that ship’s company.
There were lessons to be learnt in every hour of that voyage. Who could ever forget the splendid work of one young girl whose father was a missionary? After giving garments of her own to many survivors, she collected more clothing to supply further needs – she cut out dresses for the many forlorn babies, and spent days ministering to the terrified emigrants of the steerage.
Cruel indeed was the plight of these foreigners. Many of them were young mothers, with wailing babies who refused food – widowed, penniless, ignorant of the language of an unknown country, they faced the New World. But indeed, the wind was truly tempered to these shorn lambs, for North and South, East and West were gathering together a golden store for their needs on landing and for their future assistance.
The last three days of the voyage were taxing because rain kept the passengers crowded in the library, the wail of the foghorn sounding continuously, strained overwrought nerves, as the Carpathia steered cautiously and slowly towards New York with her doubly precious freight of human souls.
Many were the experiences and tales of adventures on sea and land exchanged in those penned-in, irksome hours; hot and bitter were the denunciations of the criminal neglect of those whose authority could and should have averted the disaster.
Inevitable were the collections and disagreements over loving cups and votes of thanks, to be presented to the embarrassed, bashful, but truly heroic captain.
Fire Island! Ambrose Channel! Welcoming sirens of hundreds of tugs, newspaper boats, steamers and yachts! And the lights of New York!
Hardly were the many telegrams from our friends handed us, before we neared the Cunard docks; never was homecoming so sweet, as on that immortal night of nights, when again the world waited, hushed, for the coming epic of abysmal horror, of consuming, unending grief, and of sublime heroism.
Even now, one must doubt whether the terrible lesson to be learnt from such an appalling tragedy has been given due consideration by those who govern the courses of the ocean liners. One reads of steamers again venturing over the northerly course, and reporting ice in sight. The captains of the best patronized lines state they would have followed Captain Smith’s route, under similar conditions, apparently preferring insane speeding among icebergs to taking a more southerly course.
Almost from the time of the world’s creation, men have ‘gone down to the sea in ships’. Human intelligence has laboured long to conquer the elements, and today inventive genius seems to triumph over all that vexed the soul and brain of the sturdy adventurers who discovered our land. But man can never be omnipotent. An unsinkable ship will never
cross the sea. Granting that the Titanic was a triumph of construction and appointments, even she could not trespass upon a law of nature, and survive.
Helplessly that beautiful and gallant ship struggled to escape from the hand of God, but was only an atom in the hold of inexorable justice.
Majestically she sailed; but bowed, broken and crouching, she sank slowly beneath the conquering ocean – a hidden memorial shaft to the unburied dead she carried with her, and to the incredible wickedness of man, until the coming of the day when ‘there shall be no more sea.’
(National Magazine, October 1912)
SINKING OF TITANIC STILL HORROR TO COUPLE HONEYMOONING ON SHIP
It was a strange honeymoon for Mr and Mrs Edward Beane of 44 Michigan Street when on April 14, 1912 they fled the doomed Titanic and from the temporary safety of a rowboat saw the gallant ship and its human cargo go crashing down to Davy Jones’ locker.
Looking back on the event after nineteen years with two eager young sons to prod reluctant memory, the event is a hideous nightmare, they say. Mrs Beane, a bride of 17, longed in that midnight hour of disaster for the secure shelter of her home in Norwich, England.
‘For years I didn’t want to talk about it,’ she said yesterday as her sons bent their heads over yellowed newspapers which described the event. ‘Wherever we went, people pointed at us curiously, and made us aware that death had brushed us by. We must have been a mile away in the rowboat when the Titanic went down. We could hear the band playing and then just before the crash of sinking the anguished cries of those on board which was like one great human wail. It was years before I could forget that terrible scream.’
Mr Beane had been in the United States some years and had made several crossings before he sailed with his bride on the maiden voyage of the great Titanic, new mistress of the seas. They loved the beauty of the new ship and waved goodbye to their friends with happy pride. And yet they confessed to a fear of foreboding when the Titanic narrowly avoided a collision in the Southampton harbour.
The night of the thirteenth was stormy and dark, but the fourteenth dawned clear and bright. The boat was ripping through the water at 21 knots an hour, under orders to make a new record, when near midnight she struck an iceberg. It was some time before all the passengers realized the situation. The Beanes were, at first, not alarmed and received the news that the boat was sinking calmly, suspecting the commotion was only a boat drill. Indeed they were so laconic that a woman in the next state room came back twice to warn them. And then they were caught up in the terror of the event and went rushing up the stairs to the deck, the jewels on the night-stand forgotten and the beautiful linens and embroideries in the bride’s trousseau, just neglected trappings.
‘The crew had their rifles to keep the men back until the women and children could get into the boats,’ explained Mr Beane. ‘A man never knows what he’ll do in an emergency or what tricks his nerves will play on him. I saw a man shot down for trying to break through the lines. I saw Charles Williams, the prize fighter, coming over for a tag match drop back when the rifle fire scorched his fingers for overeagerness. He was a big brute of a man, too.’
Mrs Beane was hustled into one of the lifeboats, dazed and stricken, and a little hypnotized by the terrifying beauty of that torchlit deck and its cowering humans; and strengthened too by the sturdy valour of a crew which went down with their ship.
Mr Beane, like the other men on the boat, could find no place in the lifeboats, and so jumped overboard. After swimming about in the water for hours he was picked up by one of the small rowboats and eventually put on board the Carpathia with the other survivors.
‘All any of us wanted was solid ground under our feet and forgetfulness,’ they added.
Neither Mr nor Mrs Beane have been on an ocean-going ship since they disembarked from the Carpathia.
(Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 15 April 1931)
PASSENGER AND CREW LISTS
There is no definitive list for passengers and crew aboard the Titanic when she went down since the official lists contain many discrepancies and do not take into account the presence of stowaways, people travelling under assumed names or substitutes. This, therefore, is about as accurate a list as can be obtained although no doubt there are still a number of errors. Survivors are in bold.
PASSENGERS
FIRST CLASS
Allen, Miss E. W.
Allison, H. J.
Allison, Mrs H. J.
Allison, Miss H.
Allison, Master H.
Anderson, Mr H.
Andrews, Miss K.
Andrews, Thomas
Appleton, Mrs E. D.
Artagaveytia, R.
Astor, Col. J. J.
Astor, Mrs J. J.
Aubart, Mme L.
Barber, Miss E.
Barkworth, A. H.
Bauman J.
Baxter, Mrs J.
Baxter, Mr Q.
Bazzoni, Miss A.
Beattie, Mr T.
Beckwith, Mr R. T.
Beckwith, Mrs R. T.
Behr, Mr K. H.
Bidois, Miss R.
Birnbaum, Mr J.
Bird, Miss E.
Bishop, Mr D. H.
Bishop, Mrs D. H.
Bissette, Miss A.
Bjornstrom-Steffanson, Mr M. H.
Blackwell, Mr S. W.
Blank, Mr H.
Bonnell, Miss C
Bonnell, Miss E.
Borebank, Mr J. J.
Bowen, Miss G.
Bowerman, Miss E.
Brady, Mr J. B.
Brandeis, Mr E.
Brayton, Mr G.
Brew, Dr A. J.
Brown, Mrs J. J.
Brown, Mrs J. M.
Bucknell, Mrs W.
Burns, Miss E.
Butt, Major A.
Cairns, Mr A.
Calderhead, Mr E. P.
Candee, Mrs E.
Cardeza, Mrs J. W .M.
Cardeza, Mr T. D.
Carlson, Mr F.
Carrau, Mr F.
Carrau, Mr J.
Carter, Miss L.
Carter, Master W.
Carter, Mr W. E.
Carter, Mrs W. E.
Case, Mr H. B.
Cassebeer, Mrs H. A.
Cavendish, Mr T. W.
Cavendish, Mrs T. W.
Chaffee, Mr H.
Chaffee, Mrs H.
Chambers, Mr N. C
Chambers, Mrs N. C
Chaudanson, Miss V.
Cherry, Miss G.
Chevré, Mr P.
Chibnall, Mrs E. M.
Chisholm, Mr R.
Clark, Mr W. M.
Clark, Mrs W. M.
Cleaver, Miss A.
Clifford, Mr G.
Colley Mr E.
Compton, Mrs A. T.
Compton, A.T. Jnr
Compton, Miss S.
Cornell, Mrs R. C
Crafton, Mr J.
Crosby, Mr E. G.
Crosby, Mrs E. G.
Crosby, Miss H.
Cumings, Mr J. B.
Cumings, Mrs J. B.
Daly, Mr P.
Daniel, Mr R. W.
Daniels, Miss S.
Davidson, Mr T.
Davidson, Mrs T.
Dick, Mr A. A.
Dick, Mrs A. A.
Dodge, Mr W.
Dodge, Mrs W.
Dodge, Master W.
Douglas, Mrs F. C.
Douglas, Mr W.
Douglas, Mrs W.
Duff Gordon, Sir C.
Duff Gordon, Lady
Dulles, Mr W. O.
Earnshaw, Mrs B.
Endres, Miss C.
Eustis, Miss E.
Evans, Miss E.
Farthing, Mr J.
Flegenheim, Mrs A.
Fleming, Miss J. M.
Flynn, Mr J. L.
Foreman, Mr B. L.
Fortune, Miss A.
Fortune, Miss E.
Fortune, Miss M.<
br />
Fortune, Mr M.
Fortune, Mrs M.
Francatelli, Miss L.
Franklin, Mr T. P.
Frauenthal, Dr H.
Frauenthal, Mrs H.
Frauenthal, Mr I.
Frolicher, Miss H. M.
Frolicher-Stehli, Mr M.
Frolicher-Stehli, Mrs M.
Fry, Mr J.
Futrelle, Mr J.
Futrelle, Mrs J.
Gee, Mr A.
Geiger, Miss A.
Gibson, Miss D.
Gibson, Mrs L.
Giglio, Mr V.
Goldenberg, Mr S. L.
Goldenberg, Mrs S. L.
Goldschmidt, Mr G.
Gracie, Col. A.
Graham, Mr G.
Graham, Miss M. E.
Graham, Mrs W.
Greenfield, Mrs L. D.
Greenfield, Mr W.
Guggenheim, Mr B.
Harder, Mr G. A.
Harder, Mrs G. A.
Harper, Mr H. S.
Harper, Mrs H. S.
Harrington, Mr C. H.
Harris, Mr H. B.
Harris, Mrs H. B.
Harrison, Mr W.
Hassah, Mr H.
Haven, Mr H.
Hawksford, Mr W. J.
Hays, Mr C. M.
Hays, Mrs C. M.
Hays, Miss M.
Head, Mr C.
Hilliard, Mr H. H.
Hippach, Mrs I. S.
Hippach, Miss J.
Hogeboom, Mrs J. C.
Holverson, Mr A. O.
Holverson, Mrs A. O.
Hoyt, Mr F. M.
Hoyt, Mrs F. M.
Hoyt, Mr W. F.
Icard, Miss A.
Isham, Miss A.
Ismay, Mr J. B.
Jones, Mr C. C.
Julian, Mr H. F.
Keeping, Mr E.
Kent, Mr E.
Kenyon, Mr F. R.
Kenyon, Mrs F. R.
Kimball, Mr E. N.
Kimball, Mrs E. N.
Klaber, Mr H.
Kreuchen, Miss E.
Leader, Mrs A.
Le Roy, Miss B.
Lesueur, Mr G.
Levy, Mr E. G.
Lindeburg-Lind, Mr E.
Lindstrom, Mrs J.
Lines, Mrs E. H.
Lines, Miss M. C.
Long, M. C.
Longley, Miss G.
Loring, Mr J.
Lurette, Miss E.
Madill, Miss G. A.
Maguire J. E.
Voices from the Titanic Page 56
