Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic

by Daniel Allen Butler

  The water where the ship had gone under was still troubled, as every few seconds a bubble of air released from the wreck welled up from below, or more wreckage and debris popped to the surface. Some of these pieces may well have been lethal—among the handful of swimmers that reached the lifeboats, a number had been injured by wreckage coming up from below, which included balks of timber, solid wood doors, sections of paneling and furniture, heavy deck chairs, and large chunks of cork.

  This upwelling continued for some minutes as the field of wreckage began to spread out across the surface of the sea. For many thrashing swimmers, the debris proved a godsend as they desperately clutched at casks, gratings, deck chairs, writing desks, doors, or planking, frequently fighting one another for possession of some scrap of buoyant material in the slim hope of keeping their heads above water long enough for a lifeboat to come and pluck them out of the water.1

  Far below the swimmers, everything on the Titanic was disintegrating rapidly. Those who had huddled at her stern in the last minutes of her life were quickly swept away once the liner plunged below the surface. With the possible exception of some passengers and crew—the French and Italian restaurant staff still locked in their cabins on E Deck, or the gallant engineers—trapped below decks, the ship was deserted. Powerful forces now took hold of the wreck as it began its long descent to the bottom of the North Atlantic.

  The flow of water around the hull began to force the bow onto a more or less even keel. The pressure bent the hollow foremast back across the bridge, while the second funnel was torn from its mountings. All the while the huge pocket of air trapped in the stern kept trying to lift the hull back into a vertical position. A fierce elemental battle raged between air and water for some seconds until the hull of the Titanic, which had been distorted and partially broken in two during her incredible headstand just before she went under, gave way. Between the third and fourth funnels, at the after bulkhead of Boiler Room 1, just forward of where the engines were mounted, the keel buckled and the ship jackknifed, the stern bending up at nearly 90 degrees to the rest of the ship. The decks of the forward section at the break collapsed on one another like a bellows, the keel sheared away, and the bow and stern separated.

  As they parted huge pieces of machinery spilled out of the break. The forward cylinders of the reciprocating engines broke off their casings and plummeted to the bottom, along with the five single-ended boilers from Boiler Room No. 1, followed by a shower of coal from the ruptured bunkers.

  The water-filled bow section drifted off serenely into the depths, gliding down on a more or less even keel. Seven and a half minutes after the Titanic had vanished below the surface of the North Atlantic, the great bow plowed into the silt of the ocean floor. A huge mound, some fifty feet high, of rocks, mud, and boulders was pushed up by the prow, and the wreck’s momentum caused the hull to buckle just forward of the bridge as it settled.

  The stern fared far worse. Unlike the bow, the after section was subjected to an instantaneous inrush of seawater. The trapped air pocket was forced out of the hull with almost explosive violence, splitting sections of plating and ripping decking away from the poop. Cargo cranes, deck fixtures, large sections of hull plating, even the entire fourth funnel, were all flung away from the shattered stern. Slowly spinning like a falling leaf, the stern section drifted to the bottom, impacting there some minutes later with enough force to bury the three screws, causing the broken structure of the stern to collapse even further on itself.

  For the next few hours, debris from the wreck continued to settle around and between the two halves of the wreck. The Titanic would remain unseen and undisturbed for the next seventy-three years.2

  On the surface, the saddest act of the entire tragedy was being played out. The temperature of the water was only 28 degrees, cold enough to sap the life out of a human being in less than twenty minutes. Second Officer Lightoller likened the sensation of being suddenly plunged into the water to that of “a thousand knives” being driven into his body. Years later Baker Walter Belford would “still shudder and suck in his breath” when he described what he called the “stabbing cold” to Walter Lord. Hundreds of swimmers struggled in the water, clutching at the wreckage—and sometimes each other—desperately trying to stay afloat and fight off the insidious cold. Olaus Abelseth was pulled under by a man who refused to let go until Abelseth was forced to kick him off. Steward Edward Brown was almost dragged down by someone clinging to his clothes. What happened to him, Brown never knew—not a strong swimmer, it was all he could do to keep his head above water.3

  For the handful who could make it, only Collapsibles A and B were close enough to offer a chance of rescue. Of the two, Collapsible A seemed a better choice. After floating off the Boat Deck nearly swamped, Collapsible A had been washed clear of the wreck by the falling funnel, and now a trickle of half-frozen, exhausted swimmers began to strike out for it. Hauling themselves over the low canvas sides, one by one they sprawled in the bottom of the boat. Eventually some two dozen swimmers made it to Collapsible A, but not all of them had the strength to pull themselves aboard. Among the ones who actually made it were Fireman John Thompson, who had badly burned his hands earlier that night; Mrs. Rosa Abbott, a Third Class passenger who had actually gone down with the ship but had been washed off the stern and up to the surface; Norris Williams, who weirdly enough had swum away from the ship wearing his fur coat—it was lying beside him on a thwart; Peter Daly, who had been washed off the Titanic’s deck; a pair of Swedish passengers, also from Third Class; and First Class passenger Thomson Beat-tie, who for some reason was wearing only his underwear. Two crewmen who had reached the boat would die during the night before anyone could learn their names.

  As Collapsible A drifted off into the night, farther and farther from where the Titanic had gone down, the swimmers became fewer and fewer until they ceased altogether. The handful of survivors, standing in almost knee-deep water, tried to raise the canvas sides, but found it impossible as some of the iron stays for holding the sides in place were broken and in some places the canvas had been torn, the result of being lowered down the makeshift ramp from atop the officers’ quarters. Collapsible A bobbed gently in the rising swell, seemingly alone.

  Olaus Abelseth was one of those lucky enough to make it. When he drew up alongside the collapsible, he found nearly a dozen others already in the boat. No one gave him a hand climbing aboard, but no one stopped him either. Later he recalled someone muttering, “Don’t capsize the boat.” One of the last swimmers to reach Collapsible A was August Wennerstrom. He and his friend Edvard Lindell reached the boat almost together, but Wennerstrom noticed Lindell’s wife was missing. Looking back, he saw the woman behind him; he climbed aboard the boat and held his hand out to her, only to find that he didn’t have the strength to haul her aboard. Desperately he hung on, hoping someone would help him, but finally his strength gave out, and Mrs. Lindell slipped into the water. Heartsick, Wennerstrom turned to Mr. Lindell, afraid to tell him what had happened. It wasn’t necessary: by this time, Mr. Lindell had frozen to death.4

  Collapsible B was still floating upside down just a few yards from where the wreck had gone under, with Harold Bride trapped underneath it. The boat had been pushed thirty yards clear of the Titanic when the forward funnel collapsed. Quickly the strongest swimmers began converging on the overturned collapsible. Among the first to arrive and climb onto the keel of the boat were young Jack Thayer, Greaser Walter Hurst, Second Officer Lightoller, and three or four others. They had a grandstand view of the Titanic as she took her final plunge. Within moments swimmers from every direction were trying to climb onto the boat. (One of them, Algernon Bark-worth, a justice of the peace from Yorkshire, showed up wearing a fur coat, looking like some waterlogged sheepdog standing on Collapsible B’s keel.) Colonel Gracie hauled himself aboard, having first tried clinging to a section of planking, then an overturned crate, before striking out for the overturned boat. Soon more than thirty men huddled on t
he keel of Collapsible B.

  Some of the men had grabbed oars from the water, but they weren’t using them to propel the boat anywhere. Instead they were swatting at anyone else who was trying to climb aboard. Steward Thomas Whiteley had to duck a couple of times before he was able to scramble up onto the stern, while Fireman Harry Senior, one of the last to arrive, was smacked on the head and had to duck under the boat to the other side and climb up from there.

  Bride, still trapped underneath the boat, was in an extremely tight spot. As each newcomer struggled up onto the keel of the boat, it sank a little lower in the water, and the air pocket underneath it got a little smaller. Finally deciding it was now or never, Bride took a deep breath, dove down, and kicked his way out from under the boat. Gasping for air, he finally managed to climb aboard near the stern.

  Gradually, Lightoller began to assert his authority and bring order to the boat. One of the men lying across the keel suggested, “Don’t the rest of you think we ought to pray?” and Lightoller agreed it might be a good idea. A quick poll showed there were Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Catholics aboard—and of course Lightoller himself was a Christian Scientist. The Lord’s Prayer seemed like a good compromise, and they all began reciting it in chorus.5

  As the words floated out over the water, they became mingled with the cries of those still struggling amid the wreckage. Over and over again the cry “Save one life! Save one life!” was heard, rising above the nearly continuous pleadings of people in distress. To Jack Thayer it sounded “like locusts on a midsummer night.” To Mrs. Candee in Boat 8, it was “a heavy moan as of one being from whom final agony forces a single sound.” When Third Officer Pitman tried to describe the sound to the U.S. Senate Inquiry, his eyes filled with tears as he recalled “a continual moan” that lasted “for about an hour.” Nine-year-old Franky Goldsmith would carry the memory of the sound with him the rest of his life: living in Detroit near Tiger Stadium, the roar of the crowd every time a home run was hit would take him back to the North Atlantic and the cold morning of April 15, 1912. Even Lightoller was affected. Years later he admitted that he had never allowed his thoughts to dwell on those agonized pleas for help, and he honestly believed that some survivors died premature deaths because they were never able to erase from their minds the memory of those criers. 6

  In Boat 5, Third Officer Pitman finally decided he could not ignore the sound of so many pleading for help. Standing in the stern of the boat, he called out, “Now men, we will pull toward the wreck!” Immediately the women in the boat began protesting, fearing that it would be swamped by swimmers trying to climb aboard.

  “Appeal to the officer not to go back!” one woman begged Steward Etches. “Why should we lose all our lives in a useless attempt to save others from the ship?” Pitman finally gave in and told the men to lay by their oars, but he would feel guilty for the rest of his life about not going back.

  In Boat 2 the same thing happened when Fourth Officer Boxhall suggested that the boat should go look for survivors. To Boxhall it seemed inexplicable : only a short while before these women had been in anguish over being compelled to leave their husbands behind, pleading with Captain Smith to let the men into the boats so they could row; now many of these same women were raising a cry of protest at the idea of going back to help those people struggling in the water.

  In Boat 8, when Seaman Thomas Jones, who was in charge of the boat, also suggested going back, only the Countess of Rothes, Miss Gladys Cherry, and one other woman favored the idea; everyone else in the boat, including the three men at the oars, demurred. Seaman Jones, unlike Pitman, wasn’t about to have those lives on his conscience, and scolded those in the boat: “Ladies, if any of us are saved, remember I wanted to go back. I would rather drown with them than leave them.”7

  Probably the most inexplicable inactivity of all was that of Boat 1. Fireman Charles Hendrickson announced, “It’s up to us to go back and pick up anyone in the water,” but no one agreed with him. With Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff Gordon, her secretary Miss Francatelli, and nine other men aboard, the boat easily had room for another thirty people. But Lady Duff Gordon was violently seasick—she lay at the bottom of the boat, vomiting all night—and Sir Cosmo seemed singularly incapable of exercising any leadership. Lookout Symons, who was nominally in charge of the boat, wasn’t any better, for despite his later description of his station, repeatedly describing himself at both the American and British inquiries as “being the master of the situation,” he had no more inclination to take any action than Sir Cosmo.

  Actually, it’s easy to believe that if Sir Cosmo had tried going back, he would have botched the job, for everything he did that night, no matter how well-intentioned, seemed to go wrong. First, he found himself in a boat that could hold forty people but had only seven crewmen and five passengers in it—and all First Class passengers at that. Then, no one in Boat 1 seemed to favor going back to pick up any survivors, or even attempting to do so. Finally, he was drawn into a ridiculous conversation with Fireman Pusey that would nearly ruin Sir Cosmo’s reputation. The conversation began between Pusey and Lady Duff Gordon. As she watched the Titanic go under, Lady Duff Gordon remarked to Miss Francatelli, “There is your beautiful night-dress gone.” Pusey overheard the remark and told her, “Never mind that, you have saved your lives; but we have lost our kit.”

  A little later, Pusey turned to Sir Cosmo and said, “I suppose you have lost everything?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you can get more?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we have lost our kit, and the company won’t give us any more. And what’s more, our pay stops from tonight!”

  Sir Cosmo, more than a little peeved, decided to end the conversation as. charitably as he could, and snapped, “Very well, I will give you a fiver each to start a new kit!” He was as good as his word, but when the story got out about how Boat 1 failed to pick up swimmers, the promise suddenly appeared to be some sort of payoff, and Sir Cosmo would eventually have to resort to legal action to clear his name.8

  One man did go back, and not surprisingly he was Fifth Officer Lowe. The self-described “hard case” was also a man of considerable resource and determination. Once Boat 14 had pulled away from the Titanic, he began rounding up as many of the other boats as he could find. Soon Boats 10 and 12 and Collapsible D were gathered around Lowe’s boat. Standing in the stern of Boat 14, he quickly ordered the boats tied up together, bow to stern, then began transferring his passengers to the other boats and getting some strong backs in Boat 14 to row. When Boat 4 drifted by, Lowe added it to his little flotilla.

  Hopping from boat to boat in the darkness wasn’t an easy thing to do, and when an elderly woman with a shawl over her head in Boat 14 seemed a bit too spry, Lowe reached out and yanked the shawl away. A frightened young immigrant (Lowe thought he was another “Italian”; others said he was Irish) stared up at the fifth officer, who said nothing but shoved the man into the bottom of Boat 10 as hard as he could. This incident was also notable for its relative lack of verbal fireworks: Lowe wasn’t a patient man and possessed the full range of a sailor’s vocabulary. It wasn’t surprising that when young Daisy Minahan hesitated in stepping across the gap between two of the boats Lowe suddenly shouted, “Jump, damn you, jump!” Later, some of the women in the lifeboats, shocked at the language Lowe used when he was getting the boats organized, started a rumor that he was drunk. Lowe, a lifelong teetotaler, later found the canard highly amusing.

  It took three quarters of an hour before the shuffling of passengers was complete and Boat 14 was finally able to row back to the wreckage. Lowe had originally intended to let the crowd “thin out,” though he never explained exactly what he meant by that, but he had badly overestimated how long people could survive in the frigid water, and by now the cries for help were few and faint. The first person they found was a First Class passenger, W H. Hoyt. A big man, it took the combined efforts of everyone in the boat to bring hi
m aboard. Hoyt was unconscious and bleeding from the nose and mouth—he had been taken down with the wreck, only to be released when the ship began breaking up. But the depth that he had been dragged to had been too great, and Hoyt died within an hour from internal injuries caused by decompression. Other voices called in the darkness, but it was like chasing a will-o-the-wisp, and Boat 14 never seemed to reach those calling for help in time.

  Eventually they found Steward John Stewart, who gradually revived after they were able to rub him down and massage his limbs. An Asian man who had lashed himself to a door came floating by, but since he was lying face down with the swell washing over him periodically, Lowe was inclined to pass him by, with the characteristic remark, “What’s the use? He’s dead, likely, and if he isn’t there’s others better worth saving than a Jap!” But then Lowe had second thoughts, and ordered the man brought aboard.

  Fifth Officer Lowe was about to be taught a lesson about his prejudices. A few moments after being pulled from the water, the man came to, chattered away in his native tongue at the other men in the boat (though nobody could understand a word he said, not even his name), then stood up, stretched, and began stamping his feet to get his circulation going. Minutes later he had his hands on an oar, pulling hard. “By Jove, I’m ashamed of what I said about the little blighter!” exclaimed a startled Lowe. “I’d save the likes of him six times over if I had the chance!”

  But Lowe would not have the chance. He continued looking for another hour but didn’t find anyone else alive. Finally he told his men to lay by their oars, and Boat 14, along with the other boats, drifted in the darkness, riding up and down on the rising swell, twenty boats in the middle of a lonely sea.9

  For those left behind in the water, death came quickly. The cold swiftly numbed their hands, their feet, their heads, and they soon lost consciousness. The icy sea sapped the warmth from their bodies until their hearts could take no more and, giving up the unequal struggle, finally stopped. Bodies floated motionless and silent, slowly being swept off by the current, away from the great ice floe and into the open waters of the North Atlantic.