According to the ship’s clock on the Carpathia’s bridge, it was almost 3:30 A.M. and she was drawing close to the Titanic’s position. Captain Rostron’s heart was sinking: try as he might to keep his hopes up, he knew he was too late.
For a while it hadn’t seemed so. Around 2:40, while talking to Dr. McGhee, Rostron had caught a glimpse of green light—clearly a flare of some sort—on the horizon just off the port bow. “There’s his light!” Rostron exclaimed. “He must still be afloat!” Minutes later, Second Officer Bisset spotted the first iceberg, dimly lit by the reflected light of a star, then a second one, then a third. Carefully timing his helm orders, Rostron began working the Carpathia through the fringes of the ice field—but he never slowed down. Occasionally another flare would be seen, but no sign of the Titanic herself. Hoping to give some hope to those aboard the sinking ship, Rostron began firing colored rockets, interspersed with Cunard Roman candles, every fifteen minutes. Down below the stokers and firemen shoveled coal like they never had before and every plate and rivet in the ship shook with the exertion as the Carpathia thundered on. As one crewman later quipped, “The old boat was as excited as any of us.”
Rostron, though, was nearly certain that the Titanic was gone. It had been nearly two hours since Cottam had last heard from her. The last message he received had been at 1:50 and had pleaded, “Come as quickly as possible, old man; the engine room is filling up to the boilers.” Cottam had told Rostron that the Titanic’s signals had been getting weaker; with that last message and the ominous silence afterwards, Rostron feared the worst. Those flares, he decided, couldn’t have come from the Titanic herself after all. At 3:50 he rang down to the engine room to “Stand By”; at 4:00 he rang for “All Stop.” The Carpathia was at 41.46 N, 50.14 W There was nothing to be seen but darkness: the Titanic was gone. 10
As the cries from those left behind in the water slowly faded away and the twenty lifeboats drifted in the rising swell, an odd quiet settled over the survivors. In Boat 2, Fourth Officer Boxhall began firing off green flares. The flares confused people in many of the boats: some thought they came from an approaching steamer, and others used them as beacons to row toward. Soon Boats 5 and 7 came across each other and tied up together; Boats 6 and 16 did the same. Fifth Officer Lowe finally gave up looking for any more survivors, and now Boat 14 rejoined the others. All they could do now was wait for dawn and the rescue ships everyone prayed would arrive.
The survivors did what they could to occupy themselves. It would only be a matter of time, but the magnitude of what they had just seen happen hadn’t yet sunk in. So there was something almost idyllic about Edith Russell entertaining a little child in Boat 11 with her toy pig, the one that played the “Maxixe” when its tail was twisted; or Hugh Woolner in Collapsible C feeding cookies to four-year-old Michel Navatril; or Lawrence Beesley tucking the end of a blanket around the toes of ten-month-old Alden Caldwell, only to discover the woman holding the child, Miss Hilda Slayter, and he had mutual friends in Clonmel, Ireland. In Boat 4, Jean Gertrude Hippach idly watched the night sky; she had never known the stars to shine so bright or had seen so many shooting stars. Unbidden, came the memory of a legend she had once heard: that whenever there was a shooting star, someone dies.
There were some people who, though not necessarily mean-spirited, couldn’t help but bicker. Mrs. J. Stuart White was particularly offended that the stewards in her boat should be smoking cigarettes—she was so put out that she would formally complain to the American inquiry about the stewards smoking, as she put it, “on an occasion like that!” In Boat 3, the women sniped at each other over petty annoyances—nobody ever remembered exactly what. For some strange reason a woman in Boat 11 kept setting off an alarm clock until Maud Slocombe, the Titanic’s masseuse, angrily rounded on her and told her to stop. 11
In Boat 6, Quartermaster Robert Hitchens, who was nominally in charge, indulged in a singular display of childishness. The boat’s problems began when Major Peuchen slid down the fall from the Titanic’s deck to round out the boat’s crew. Hitchens, who apparently resented Peuchen’s presence and thought that the major would try to take charge of the boat, decided to let everyone know who was in command, and he immediately began ordering Peuchen about. Peuchen, who was used to giving orders, not taking them, demanded that Hitchens turn the tiller over to one of the women and help with rowing the boat. Hitchens would have none of it, telling Peuchen that he was in charge and that Peuchen was to pull at his oar and keep quiet.
With just Lookout Fleet and Peuchen rowing (the only other man in the boat, a Third Class stowaway, had an injured arm), the boat made painfully slow progress away from the Titanic, with Hitchens all the while criticizing them for not pulling harder and claiming the boat would be sucked under when the ship went down. At one point he shouted at Fleet, “Here, you fellow on the starboard side, you’re not putting you oar in the water at the right angle!” Like many a petty tyrant, Hitchens’ newfound authority went to his head, causing him at one point to disobey a direct order from Captain Smith. Just after Boat 6 reached the water, Smith, standing on the port bridge wing, shouted down through his megaphone, “Come alongside the gangway!” Hitchens stared up at the bridge for several minutes, then put the tiller over and said, “No, we are not going back to the boat. It’s our lives now, not theirs.”
After the ship went down, several of the women in the boat, with, predictably, Molly Brown as their leader, began demanding that Hitchens turn the boat around so that they could go back and pick up at least some of those hapless souls struggling in the water. Hitchens refused, giving a lurid description of masses of frenzied swimmers clutching at the sides of the boat, overloading and eventually overturning it. Peuchen added his voice to the protests, but Hitchens shouted him down, saying, “There’s no use going back, ’cause there’s only a lot of stiffs there.” Peuchen lapsed into a hurt silence, and Hitchens told the men to stop rowing and let the boat drift.
This was too much for Molly Brown. Hitchens had settled himself in the stern, pulling the sail around him for warmth, and Mrs. Brown got up, pushed her way passed him, and grabbed the tiller bar. The women, whose husbands and fathers were the “stiffs” Hitchens wanted to leave behind, demanded that Hitchens let them row so they could keep warm. He only wanted to let the boat drift. Mrs. Brown told the women to start rowing, and when Hitchens made a move toward her, she told him if he took one more step she’d throw him overboard. Even Hitchens knew not to call Molly’s bluff, so he sank back under the sail, announcing that all was lost: they had no food, no water, no compass, and no charts. Mrs. Candee pointed out the North Star to him, Mrs. Edgar Meyer called him a coward, and Molly told him to shut up. Hitchens swore at her, and a stoker who had transferred from Boat 16 suddenly spoke up, saying, “I say, don’t you know you’re talking to a lady?”
“I know who I’m speaking to,” Hitchens yelled back, “and I’m in command of this boat.” But apparently Hitchens had enough—or else he realized it was a losing battle and he lapsed into a sulking silence. While all of this quarreling had been going on, the cries for help had gradually diminished and faded into silence. There was no point in going back now, so Boat 6 rowed on into the night, with “the unsinkable Molly Brown,” as the American press would soon christen her, standing like an Amazon at the tiller. 12
Collapsible B had its share of squabbles, too, but for the most part the thirty-odd men were more concerned with the common problem of survival. As the swell began to rise, the overturned keel began to pitch, and with each roll a little more of the air trapped underneath escaped, lowering the boat still further into the water. If they were going to make it, they needed leadership. They got it.
It took some time for Second Officer Lightoller to collect his wits—the cold of the sea had truly been numbing—but before long the old habits of command reasserted themselves and Lightoller began to get the men organized. Careful not to disturb the equilibrium of the boat, he had all the men stand up and form two
parallel rows, one on each side of the centerline, facing the bow. As the swell rolled the boat from side to side, Lightoller would call out to the men “Lean to the left” ... “Stand upright” ... “Lean to the right”—whatever was required to counteract the motion of the boat. From time to time the men called out “Boat ahoy! Boat ahoy!” in unison but received no replies, and after a while Lightoller told them to stop and save their strength.
Even more than the handful of survivors in Collapsible A, the men atop Collapsible B suffered severely from the cold. Standing in water that at first only washed across the boat, then rose gradually to their ankles and then to their knees as the air pocket under the boat slowly leaked away, the men had no protection from the freshening wind, and their constant movement back and forth to keep the boat steady was using up what reserves of strength they had. Soon some of the men could no longer fight off the cold, and one by one they would sink to their knees, then slowly roll over on their sides, to finally slide off the overturned boat and into the sea, where the swell would carry them away
The Titanic on the ways at Harland & Wolff. The figure leaning on the railing gives a good indication of how big the ship was. Careful examination of the photograph has shown that the name was added after the picture was taken. Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia.
The Titanic leaving Southampton, April 10, 1912. Mariners’Museum, Newport News, Virginia.
Thomas Andrews, managing director of Harland & Wolff. Responsible for supervising the construction of both the Olympic and the Titanic, he regarded the Titanic as his finest work. Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Belfast.
Captain Edward J. Smith, in the summer of 1911, standing on the Olympic’s Boat Deck, just aft of the bridge. Southampton City Heritage Services, Southampton City Museum.
Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller. Southampton City Heritage Services, Southampton City Museums.
John “Jack” Phillips, senior wireless operator aboard the Titanic. GECMarconi, Ltd.
Harold Bride, junior wireless operator. GECMarconi, Ltd.
The Grand Staircase on A Deck. The bas-relief at the head of the stairs is actually a clock; the two figures represent Honor and Glory crowning Time. Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia.
No photograph of the Titanic’s boiler rooms is known to exist. This photograph of the boiler room of the Union Line’s Moor, though she was much smaller than the Titanic, gives an excellent idea of the working conditions of a coal-fired ship. Southampton City Heritage Services, Southampton City Museums.
The Titanic’s orchestra.
Concertmaster and first violinist
Wallace Hartley is at the center.
Other members are, clockwise
from upper left: Fred Clarke, bassviol ; Percy C. Taylor, piano;
Theodore Brailey, piano;
J. W. Woodward, cello; John Law
“Jock” Hume, second violin;
George Krins, viola. Not shown is
another cellist, Roger Bricoux.
Southampton City Heritage Services,
Southampton City Museums.
“Women and Children First,” a lithograph produced in 1912. Though somewhat romanticized,it nevertheless conveys a sense of the powerful emotions present on the Boat Deck of the Titanic as the lifeboats were being filled and lowered. Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia.
Captain Arthur H. Rostron on board the Carpathia, wearing the medal for heroism given to him by the U.S. Congress. Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia.
The Carpathia. She was fifty-eight miles away when she received the Titanic’s distress signal. Her top speed was officially only 14 knots, but Captain Rostron pushed her to 17 knots as she dashed to the aid of the sinking Titanic. MarinersMuseum, Newport News, Virginia.
Fairview Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Of the victims recovered, 129 of them are buried here. A special trust fund, set up by the White Star Line and still active, provides for the maintenance of the graves. Author’s collection.
This is almost certainly the iceberg struck by the Titanic. It was photographed by the chief steward of the liner Prinze Adelbert on the morning of April 15, 1912, just a few miles south of where the Titanic went down. The steward hadn’t yet heard about the Titanic: what caught his attention was the smear of red paint along the base of the berg, indicating that it had collided with a ship sometime in the previous twelve hours. The Walter Lord Collection.
Survivors in a dangerously overloaded Boat 12, the last lifeboat to be picked up by the Carpathia, are assisted aboard. Boat 12 had picked up the thirty men who had spent the night standing atop the overturned Collapsible B. Southampton City Heritage Services, Southampton City Museums.
Lord Mersey (right), the wreck commissioner, and Captain Bigham, the secretary of the Wreck Commission, on their way to a session of the British Inquiry. Southampton City Heritage Services, Southampton City Museums.
Colonel Gracie was particularly suffering, for the effects of prolonged immersion in ice-cold water were hard on a young man, let alone one of fifty-four, no matter how fit. Even his hair was matted down and frozen to his scalp. When the colonel noticed a man wearing a wool cap standing next to him, he asked if he might borrow it for a few minutes to warm his head. “And what would I do then?” was the man’s incredulous reply. (The immersion in the ice-cold water would eventually lead to complications for the colonel, whose health would never recover from the ordeal, and he would be dead before the year was out.) A sailor offered Gracie a pull from his flask, which he politely refused, suggesting that Greaser Hurst, shivering violently a few feet away, might benefit from it. Hurst accepted the flask gratefully and took a long pull—and nearly choked: he thought it was whiskey, it was essence of peppermint.
Lightoller discovered that Jack Phillips had somehow made it to Collapsible B, and was standing toward the stern, near Harold Bride. When Lightoller asked what ships were coming, Phillips told him the Carpathia, the Mount Temple, the Olympic, and the Baltic—and that the Carpathia would probably arrive around daybreak. This was particularly good news to Lightoller, who realized that even his best coordinated efforts couldn’t keep Collapsible B afloat indefinitely. Even now the boat had sunk so low in the water that the larger swells were washing across it. Ominous gurgling sounds were heard from under the boat, and it was only a matter of time before it sank.
Lightoller didn’t know it, but Phillips had performed his last service for the passengers and crew of the Titanic. The long twelve-hour work shift on Sunday, the nerve-wracking two hours bent over the wireless key, trying to summon any ship to the stricken liner’s side, and the immersion in the frigid water before reaching Collapsible B had completely sapped the young man’s energy. Sometime around 4:00 he silently collapsed and died, his body sliding off into the sea.13
The cold was vicious to everyone. In Boat 6, Mrs. Brown wrapped her sable stole around the legs of a stoker who sat shivering uncontrollably as he pulled at his oar. In Boat 4 Mrs. Astor lent her shawl to a steerage woman whose little girl was softly crying from the cold; Third Officer Pitman had to wrap the sail about Mrs. Crosby in Boat 5. Charlotte Collyer passed out, numb from the cold, in the bottom of Boat 14; as she fell, her scalp caught in an oarlock and a big piece of her hair was yanked out, but she didn’t feel a thing. In Boat 12, Lillian Bentham noticed that a stoker who was clad only in his uniform jumper was sitting with his feet in a pool of freezing water that had collected at the bottom of the boat. The keel beneath her seat was dry, so with a forcefulness that belied her nineteen years, she insisted that the man trade places with her.14
The crew did what they could for the passengers. Steward Ray had snatched up a half-dozen handkerchiefs before leaving his cabin, and now as he sat in Boat 13 he showed how to tie a knot in each corner and turn the handkerchiefs into six caps. Just behind him Fireman Beauchamp, clad only in his work jumper, turned down the offer of an extra coat an elderly woman had brought along, saying that it should go to a you
ng steerage girl farther back in the boat who had been whimpering from the cold. In Boat 5, Mrs. Dodge was shivering violently and her feet were almost numb: she hadn’t bothered to button her shoes before she left her cabin on the Titanic, and now, with the nearest buttonhook two miles below on the floor of the Atlantic, there was no way they could be fastened. Seaman Olliver, seeing this, took off his stockings and handed them to Mrs. Dodge, with the comment, “I assure you, ma’am, they are perfectly clean. I just put them on this morning.”
In Boat 4, Trimmer Thomas Dillon, who had clearly had too much to drink, suddenly produced another bottle of brandy and offered it to those around him, but Quartermaster Walter Perkis promptly seized it and threw it overboard. Dillon was tossed, but not very roughly, to the bottom of the boat. Seaman Diamond, who was in charge of Boat 15, stood at the tiller, an exposed position, shivering violently and muttering curses about the cold that those in the boat couldn’t help but overhear.15
Soon the initial shock of what the survivors had witnessed a few hours before began to wear off, the awful reality set in, and with it for a few came hysteria. In Boat 8, seventeen-year-old Signora de Satode Penasco began screaming for her husband of three weeks, Victor. The young man, like so many of his elders, had stayed behind after seeing his wife safely into a boat. The strangest reaction though, was from Madame de Villiers: she kept crying out for her son, whom she thought was lost, but who hadn’t even been on the Titanic.16
Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic Page 23
