Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic

by Daniel Allen Butler

  No one could deny that the poop deck, at the stern of the ship, offered some of the most spectacular views of the sea. Because it was an exclusively Third Class area, the steerage passengers would gather there in large numbers during the day. This was where young Kathy Gilnagh was sitting early that Sunday afternoon when she found herself intrigued by Eugene Daly, the young Irish piper, playing the bagpipes on the after well deck, just forward and one deck below her. The keening wail of the pipes recalled for her the Ireland she was leaving behind, filling her with melancholy.30

  For the crew, after breakfast was over, came a faithfully followed Sunday ritual of a passenger ship at sea: the captain’s inspection. It was an impressive sight with Captain Smith leading the way, followed by the department heads—the chief officer, the chief engineer, the chief steward, and the purser, all in their best uniforms. From top deck to bottom, bow to stern,. and through all the public rooms, they visited every accessible part of the ship. Normally after the captain’s inspection would come boat drill, but to the crew’s less than secret relief, this Sunday the boat drill was inexplicably canceled.31

  In truth, even had the boat drill taken place, it would have done little good. The boat drill as outlined by the Board of Trade only required a ship’s officers to supervise a picked crew, mustered beforehand, to uncover a designated lifeboat on each side of the ship, swing it out over the ship’s side, and climb aboard. Some officers would require the crewmen to examine the oars, mast, sail, and rigging that were stowed in each boat; others weren’t so demanding. Once this was accomplished, the crewmen would climb out of the boat, swing it back inboard, pull the cover back on, and go back to work. On the Titanic only the crew had boat stations, and these were merely assignments telling the crewmen which boats they were supposed to assist in loading and lowering. As for the passengers, there were no lifeboat assignments of any kind.

  At precisely 11:00 A.M. Captain Smith held Divine Services in the First Class Dining Room. On this occasion Second and Third Class passengers were permitted in the First Class areas. The ship’s orchestra provided the music, and instead of the Book of Common Prayer, a special company-issued Book of Prayer was used. Sometimes the captain would turn the service over to one of the clergymen on board, but this time he took the service himself. In his strong, measured voice he led the assembled passengers through the General Confession and the Prayer for Those at Sea, along with other psalms and prayers, concluding with Hymn Number 418, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.”32

  With the Divine Service over, the captain returned to the bridge, and the stewards rearranged the tables and chairs for the afternoon luncheon. While the galley was busy with preparing the food, Captain Smith was attending to his navigation.

  At noon every day, the captain and his officers would gather on the port bridge wing, each with a sextant in hand. They would each take a series of sun sightings to work out the ship’s precise position, which would then be recorded in the ship’s log, along with the distance covered in the previous twenty-four hours. As with most other liners of the day, the Titanic held a sweepstakes for the passengers to wager on the day’s run. Once the noon sun-sightings were taken and the distance known, the ship’s siren blew and those passengers who had placed bets would gather in the First Class Lounge to await the results. A rumor had sprung up that the ship was going faster than it had yet, and when the day’s figure was posted it seemed that it was true, for the ship had covered 546 miles in the past day, a speed of nearly 22 ½ knots—bettering the previous day’s run of 519 miles, and making the day before that—a mere 386 miles—seem positively poky by comparison.33

  Bruce Ismay for one took considerable satisfaction in that figure. Earlier in the voyage he had given Captain Smith a list of the various speeds he wanted the ship worked up to at specific points in the crossing, and the Titanic’s performance so far had been as close to flawless as could be hoped for. Early that afternoon, as he and Captain Smith were sitting together in the First Class Lounge, Ismay announced his intentions: “Today we did better than yesterday, and tomorrow we shall do better still. We shall beat the Olympic’s time to New York and arrive Tuesday night!” It would be a terrific publicity coup for the White Star Line, with their newest and most luxurious ship arriving ahead of schedule—and doing so in time to make headlines in the Wednesday morning papers.34

  Ismay saw nothing wrong in his usurping some of the captain’s authority, although Captain Smith may have seen it differently. Ismay believed that as the owner’s representative he had the right to interfere with the ship’s operations and navigation. It was typical of him then, when he sat down to lunch with Captain Smith around 1:30 P.M., to take a message that the captain had shown him, sent by the liner Baltic, stick it in his pocket and apparently forget about it. Of course the message hadn’t been forgotten: later that afternoon Ismay encountered Mrs. Thayer and Mrs. Ryerson, two of the most socially prominent women on board, and in the course of the conversation, Ismay (who liked to remind people that he was the chairman of the White Star Line) took the message out and read it to them. It said, “Icebergs and large quantity of field ice in 41.51 N 49.9 W” The two ladies were suitably impressed.35

  For all his arrogance, though, Ismay could also be a compassionate man, as Mrs. Ryerson and her husband were to learn on their way to New York. When Ismay learned that the death of their son in America was the reason for their crossing aboard the Titanic, he arranged to have an extra cabin placed at their disposal and a steward permanently assigned to them.

  The noon luncheon was quite an affair. The menu set before Ismay would have done any hotel on either side of the Atlantic proud:R.M.S. Titanic

  April 14, 1912

  LUNCHEON

  Consomme Fermier Cockie Leekie

  Fillets of Brill

  Egg a l’ Argenteuil

  Chicken à la Maryland

  Corned Beef, Vegetables, Dumplings

  FROM THE GRILL

  Grilled Mutton Chops

  Mashed, Fried & Baked Jacket Potatoes

  Custard Pudding

  Apple Meringue Pastry

  BUFFET

  Salmon Mayonnaise

  Potted Shrimps

  Norwegian Anchovies

  Soused Herrings

  Plain and Smoked Sardines

  Roast Beef

  Round of Spiced Beef

  Veal & Ham Pie

  Virginia & Cumberland Ham

  Bologna Sauce Brawn

  Galantine of Chicken

  Corned Ox Tongue

  Lettuce

  Beet Root

  Tomatoes

  CHEESE

  Cheshire, Stilton, Gorgonzola, Cheshire Camambert, Roquefort, St. Ivel,

  Cheddar

  Iced draught Munich Lager Beer 3d. & 6d. a Tankard36

  That message about ice that was sitting in Ismay’s pocket during lunch was the third one the wireless operators aboard the Titanic had received that day. The senior and junior operators who constituted the wireless section of the Titanic’s crew were a couple of busy young men. Wireless in 1912, while something less than the “erratic novelty” that it has sometimes been depicted as being, was still new enough that it could be considered in its childhood, if not its infancy. True, ranges were limited, the performance of some sets was marginal, and there was a shortage of skilled operators, but the rapidly growing number of conventions and etiquette were adding a much-needed measure of discipline to wireless communications. What was most noticeably lacking was standardization—there were a half dozen types of equipment; two different Morse codes, American and International; no regulations concerning the hours wireless watch was to be kept; and no definite order in the ships’ crew organizations as to where the wireless operator belonged.

  This was due in part to the fact that the wireless operators did not actually work for the shipping line that owned their particular vessel. Instead there were four private companies that controlled the wireless industry and hired out the services of
their operators to the steamship lines: Compagnie General Telegraphique of France, Telefunken of Germany, and the twin companies of American and British Marconi Marine. Though the two wireless operators aboard the Titanic had signed the ship’s articles and took orders from the ship’s officers, they were actually employees of British Marconi.37

  The senior operator, John “Jack” Phillips, was a serious young man from the village of Farncombe, near Godalming in Surrey. He had just turned twenty-five on April 11, and had been with British Marconi for six years. Phillips graduated top of his class at the Marconi training school in Liverpool, and subsequently had worked on the Teutonic, Lusitania, Mauretania, Campania, and Oceanic. In addition, he spent three years at the high-powered transmitting station at Cliffden in Ireland. Like many young men who become involved with emerging technologies, Phillips was enthralled by wireless, quite knowledgeable about the theory behind it, and adept at turning a practical hand to getting the best performance out of his sometimes temperamental equipment.

  His assistant, the junior operator, was only twenty-two. Harold Bride hailed from Bromley in Kent, and had only been with Marconi about eighteen months, his first assignment being the Haverford in the summer of 1911, followed by short stints on the Lusitania, the Laftanc, and the Anselm.

  Both Phillips and Bride had learned a great deal more at the Marconi school in Liverpool (the students there called it the Tin Tabernacle) than simply the dot-dash rudiments of Morse. Courses in electricity, magnetism, radio-wave propagation, troubleshooting of equipment, and the new regulations of the Radiotelegraphy Convention were all included. An enduring complaint about wireless of that era was the deliberate interference often caused by operators of one company with the signals of another. While such incidents did happen, they were the exception rather than the rule, since such interference could work both ways. (The worst offenders were the German Telefunken operators.) The Radiotelegraphy Convention was very clear about how wireless operators were supposed to conduct themselves, and quite explicit about certain types of transmissions. One type of message that was absolutely forbidden to be interfered with was a distress call.

  The courses in radio wave propagation explained to the operators the effect of the ionosphere on wireless transmission and why both transmission and reception were clearer and longer ranged at night than during the day. Of course, this benefit in range and clarity meant that the majority of the wireless operator’s work was done during hours when most of the rest of a ship’s crew would be asleep, though not always. There was no requirement for a twenty-four-hour wireless watch to be maintained by any ships, so the wireless operators usually worked a schedule set for them by the ship’s captain. On the Titanic, this meant that Phillips and Bride alternated shifts, twelve hours on, twelve off, seven days a week. Smaller vessels with only one operator usually had a fifteen to eighteen hour shift.

  The work was not difficult in the conventional sense, but the long hours of enforced immobility and intense concentration as the operator sat at his table, key at hand and headphones on, were exhausting. The pay did little to compensate for this: Phillips, for example, as senior operator, only made £8 a month, Bride only £5. It was the knowledge that they were part of a small, select fraternity, capable of snatching messages seemingly out of the thin air with their ungainly looking apparatus that kept most operators at their stations.38

  Of course that ability fascinated others as well. Passengers especially took an almost childish delight in sending messages to friends and families from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. As a result, a good deal of Phillips’s and Bride’s time was taken up with private messages that had nothing to do with the ship itself, mostly of the “Having a wonderful time, wish you were here” variety. The messages had to be handled, since the passengers were paying for the service, but they tended to cause the work to get piled up and occasionally interfered with traffic important to the safe navigation of the ship. Unfortunately there was no set procedure for handling messages on the Titanic-or any other ship, for that matter—unless the message was specifically addressed to the captain. Otherwise, Phillips and Bride took care of any incoming messages as best they could.

  April 14 was no exception. The Titanic’s wireless was a brand new unit—1.5 kilowatts, powerful for the day and relatively long ranged—but a bit balky, so Phillips had trouble all day getting his messages sent. About 9:00 A.M. he took down a report from the Cunard liner Caronia that told of “bergs, growlers, and field ice at 42N, from 49 to 51W.” He sent Bride to the bridge with the message, and Fourth Officer Boxhall plotted the position on the chart, as well as posting the message in the wardroom. About twenty minutes before noon the Dutch liner Noordam reported ice in much the same area, and at 1:42 P.M. the message from the Baltic was received. This one went directly to Captain Smith, who showed it to Ismay, who in turn pocketed it. The Amerika, a German ship, sent a warning about ice a few minutes after the Baltic, mentioning that she had passed two large bergs at 41.27 N, 50.8 W The Amerika’s message was addressed to the U.S. Hydro-graphic Office, but her set wasn’t very powerful, so she asked the Titanic to pass it on, and Phillips did so, keeping a copy for the ship.39

  If anyone on the bridge had bothered to plot all the positions in these reports, he would have seen an immense belt of ice seventy-eight miles wide stretching across the Titanic’s projected course. Instead the messages were scattered across the ship, one already plotted by Fourth Officer Boxhall, another languishing in Ismay’s pocket, the rest somewhere in limbo between the wireless office and the bridge.

  About midafternoon the Titanic’s set went on the blink and Phillips spent the next four hours locating the fault and making repairs. It was frustrating because the traffic kept piling up, and there would be a huge backlog once the set was fixed. Just a little after 7:00 P.M. he got the wireless working again, and he began to attack the stack of messages on his desk. At 7:30 the Leyland liner Californian called to warn the Titanic about “three large bergs five miles to southward of us” and gave her position as 42.3 N, 49.9 W That meant the ice was only fifty miles ahead of the Titanic.40

  CHAPTER 4

  Ten Seconds

  Every matter has its time and way.

  —Ecdesiastes 8:6

  AT 6:00 PM. ON SUNDAY, APRIL 14, SECOND OFFICER LIGHTOLLER CAME ON watch, relieving Chief Officer Wilde on the bridge. Wilde commented to Lightoller that it felt rather colder than usual, and indeed it seemed that the temperature had plummeted once the sun had set. Lightoller agreed, and after a while decided to call up Jim Hutchinson, the ship’s carpenter. Remarking that the temperature had fallen four degrees in the past hour, Lightoller told Hutchinson to watch out for the ship’s fresh water supply—if the temperature continued to fall, there was a chance it could freeze. Hutchinson agreed to keep an eye on it. Catching the attention of Trimmer Samuel Hemming, Lightoller told him to secure the forward fo’c’s’le hatch; otherwise the glow of light coming up from below was enough to ruin the night vision of the lookouts in the crow’s nest.1

  Lightoller was sharing the watch with Sixth Officer Moody. Recalling the message he had seen posted in the wardroom, the one from the Caronia, Lightoller decided to hold an impromptu test of Moody’s navigational skills, and asked the young sixth officer when he thought the Titanic would be nearing the ice. After a few seconds’ thought, Moody answered sometime around 11:00 P.M. Lightoller was disappointed—he had already worked out the answer as being close to 9:30. Clearly, Moody’s navigation wasn’t up to snuff.

  It didn’t occur to Lightoller that Moody may have based his answer on a message the second officer hadn’t seen. In addition to the Caronia’s warning, there were the warnings sent by the Noordam and the Amerika, which had been sent to the bridge, although no one later seemed to know exactly what happened to them. There was also the message from the Baltic still sitting uselessly in Bruce Ismay’s jacket pocket. And, unknown to anyone on the bridge, yet another message had arrived, this one from the Atlantic Tran
sport liner Mesaba. She had sent out a detailed warning, reading, “Lat. 42 N to 41.25 N, Longitude 40 W to 50.30 W, saw much heavy pack ice and great number large icebergs, also field ice.” The Titanic was already inside the rectangle described in the Mesaba’s message, and had Captain Smith known this he might have considered changing course or reducing speed. But this last message was still sitting under a paperweight on Phillips’s desk, and the other warnings were going unread or unheeded.

  Captain Smith was mindful of the danger, however. Already he had laid out a course for the Titanic that took her at least ten miles south of the normal shipping lane, a precaution against the ice that had drifted unusually far south this spring. At dinner he tapped Ismay on the shoulder and asked for the Baltic’s message back, saying he needed to post it on the bridge, which he then did.2

  After dinner, George Widener invited Smith to a special reception he was giving to honor the captain’s retirement. Smith, who liked Widener and his family, was pleased to attend, and it was with some reluctance that around 9:00 P.M. he excused himself and returned to the bridge, saying that he had to attend to the ship. There he stopped to talk with his second officer as they peered out into the cold April night. It was by all reports an exceptional night—it was extraordinarily clear and calm, conditions that made both Smith and Lightoller less than happy. Smith remarked on the cold.

  “Yes, sir,” Lightoller replied, “it’s very cold. In fact it’s only one degree above freezing.”

  “There is not much wind.”

  “No, it’s a flat calm, as a matter of fact.”

  “A flat calm. Yes, quite flat.”