Some of the women were more subdued in their grief. In Boat 9, Kate Buss and Marion Wright sat together and mourned for Douglas Norman and Dr. Pain, and hoped that Reverend and Mrs. Carter had been saved. In Boat 6, some of the women who had left husbands or fathers behind embraced each other and quietly wept. Sitting in the bow of Boat 3, Mrs. Hays kept calling out to every passing boat, “Charles Hays, are you there?” hoping for a reply. It never came. Aft of where Mrs. Hays was maintaining her vigil a woman from steerage kept saying over and over again to Mrs. Vera Dick, “Oh my poor father! He put me on this boat, and wouldn’t save himselfl Why didn’t I die? Why can’t I die now?”17
But most of the women sat mute, their grief so intense that it couldn’t be vocalized—women like Mrs. Ryerson or Mrs. Thayer, or Daniel Marvin’s young bride Mary, wed, like the Signora Penasco, only a few weeks ago, or Celiney Yasbeck who left behind a husband she had married just fifty days before. Those who could did their best to cheer up the ones who were grieving the hardest. In Boat 8, the Countess of Rothes, a dark, pretty, delicate-looking woman, had been handling the tiller, but she turned it over to her cousin, Gladys Cherry, and sat down beside the Penasco girl, calming her and spending the rest of the night trying to comfort her.
The Countess had been given the position at the tiller, normally reserved for the person in charge, by Seaman Jones, who had been given command of the boat. Her courage and determination made quite an impression on Jones, and when he decided to leave the tiller and take a turn at one of the oars, he quickly decided that the Countess should be his replacement. He later explained his reasoning to The Sphere, saying, “When I saw the way she was carrying herself and heard the quiet, determined way she spoke to the others, I knew she was more of a man than any we had on board.” (When they arrived in New York, Jones had the numeral 8 removed from the gunwale of the boat, framed, and presented to her as a keepsake. The countess, in turn, would remember Jones at every Christmas after that.) 18
On Collapsible B, Lightoller’s attention was focused to the southeast, where sometime around 3:30 he had seen a flash of light, followed some seconds later by a faint “boom.” He knew from what Phillips had told him that the Carpathia was steaming hard from the south, and Lightoller was hoping it was a signal from the oncoming liner. People in the other boats had seen it too. In Boat 13, Fred Barrett, who was nearly unconscious from the cold, suddenly sat bolt upright and shouted, “That was a cannon!” In Boat 6, Margaret Martin saw a brief glimmer of light on the horizon and cried out, “There’s a flash of lightning!” while Hitchens muttered, “It’s a falling star.”
But a few minutes later another flash was seen, and shortly after that, the masthead light of an oncoming steamer. Soon the ship’s green sidelight could be seen as the vessel loomed over the horizon, still firing rockets, still coming hard. In Boat 9, Paddy McGough, a big, strapping deck hand, called out, “Let us all pray to God, for there is a ship on the horizon and it’s making for us!” and nobody dared disagree with the suggestion. In Boat 3, someone lit a rolled up newspaper and waved it wildly as a signal, followed a few minutes later by Mrs. Davidson’s straw hat. In Boat 8, Mrs. White, who now had something to distract her from those stewards and their cigarettes, swung her cane, which had a battery powered light in it, over her head for all she was worth. In Boat 2, Fourth Officer Boxhall lit the last of his green flares.19
Captain Rostron’s heart leaped when he saw a green flare light up directly ahead of the Carpathia. In the pale wash of light he could make out a lifeboat less than a quarter mile away. Quickly he ordered “Slow Ahead” on his engines and began to swing the ship to starboard, so he could pick up the boat in the shelter of his portside, which was to leeward. No sooner had the Carpathia’s bow begun to swing to the right then Bisset spotted a huge dark iceberg to starboard, and Rostron had to put his helm over to avoid it. The boat was now on his windward side, and as the morning breeze picked up, the swell had become choppy, causing the boat to bob up and down like a cork. A voice called up to the Carpathia, “We have only one seaman in the boat, and can’t work it very well!”
“All right!” Rostron shouted back, and began edging the liner closer to the boat. Turning to Bisset, he told him to go down to the starboard gangway with two quartermasters and guide the lifeboat as it came alongside. “Fend her off so that she doesn’t bump, and be careful that she doesn’t capsize.”
“Stop your engines!” The voice was Boxhall‘s, and Boat 2 was now drifting toward the Carpathia’s starboard gangway. Suddenly another voice, a woman’s, cried out, “The Titanic has gone down with everyone on board!”
Boxhall turned to the woman, Mrs. Walter Douglas, and told her to shut up. She lapsed into silence, but apparently no one aboard the Carpathia heard her anyhow. (Boxhall later apologized: Mrs. Douglas understood and refused to take offense.) Lines were dropped and the boat was made fast. A rope ladder was let down from the gangway, along with a lifeline that Boxhall would secure under the arms of each passenger before they began climbing up.
The first was Miss Elizabeth Allen who, as she neared the gangway, was lifted onto the Carpathia by Purser Brown. She stepped aboard at 4:10 A.M. Brown asked her what had happened to the Titanic, and she told him it had sunk. More survivors followed her up the ladder, the last being Boxhall. Rostron sent word that he needed to see Boxhall on the bridge immediately.
When the Fourth Officer appeared, Rostron, hoping to get this painful duty over with as quickly as possible, asked him directly, “The Titanic has gone down?”
“Yes”—Boxhall’s voice broke—“she went down about 2:30.”
“Were many people left on board when she sank?”
“Hundreds and hundreds! Perhaps a thousand! Perhaps more!” Boxhall went on as grief began to get the better of him. “My God, sir, they’ve gone down with her. They couldn’t live in this cold water. We had room for a dozen more people in my boat, but it was dark after the ship took the plunge. We didn’t pick up any swimmers. I fired flares.... I think that the people were drawn. down deep by the suction. The other boats are somewhere near.” 20
Rostron nodded, the formalities taken care of, and sent Boxhall down to the First Class Dining Saloon. Dawn was breaking and now the Carpathia’s captain could begin to see the rest of the Titanic’s boats, spread out across four or five miles. The Carpathia’s passengers were beginning to stir now, and those who were already up were lining the rails, looking down at the pitiful handful of survivors in Boat 2 or gazing out across the water at the other boats. Mrs. Louis Ogden, a First Class passenger on board the Carpathia, would later recall that the lifebelts most of the survivors wore made everyone look as if they were dressed in white. She remembered what her husband had told her about the Titanic-he had heard the news from a quartermaster in the early hours of the morning, but both he and his wife were skeptical. Seeing the White Star emblem on the side of Boat 2 now made the truth clear. She felt heartsick.21
In the growing light, maybe five miles off, stretching from the northern horizon to the western, was a vast, unbroken sheet of ice, studded here and there with towering bergs, some as much as 200 feet high. Smaller bergs and growlers dotted the open water between the ice floe and the ship, presenting the passengers of the Carpathia with a spectacle they would never forget. The sun edged over the eastern horizon, its morning rays playing across the ice, turning it shades of pink, blue, gray-green, and lavender, lending a peculiar beauty to its menace.
One of the male passengers, Charles Hurd, apparently a heavy sleeper who hadn’t been aroused by the Carpathia’s thundering dash north, awoke to find the ship stopped in the middle of the ocean. He hunted up his stewardess to demand an explanation. The woman was weeping, and before the man could say a word, she pointed to a cluster of haphazardly dressed women making their way into the Dining Saloon, and through her tears said, “They are from the Titanic. She’s at the bottom of the ocean.”22
The sky was brilliantly clear, with the sun’s golden rays
fanning out across the blue. A pale sliver of light appeared, causing Firemen Fred Barrett to cry out in sheer joy at being rescued, “A new moon, boys! Turn your money over, that is, if you have any!” (Barrett had a point: the crew’s pay stopped the moment the Titanic went under.) As the growing dawn made it clear that the Carpathia had indeed stopped to rescue the Titanic’s survivors, shouts of relief rose up from some of the boats. Others gave organized cheers as they began pulling for the liner. In Boat 13 they sang “Pull for the Shore, Sailor” as they rowed toward the Carpathia.
But some boats were very, very quiet. In Boat 7, Lookout Hogg told his charges, “It’s all right, ladies, do not grieve. We are picked up.” The women, though, just sat there, speechless with the grief of the silently relieved.23
There were no cheers from the freezing men on Collapsible B either—it took too much effort just to stay afloat. As dawn broke, Lightoller spotted Boats 4, 10, and 12, along with Collapsible D, tied together just as Fourth Officer Lowe had left them, about a third of a mile away. Concerted shouts of “Ship ahoy!” produced no results, but when Lightoller found an officer’s whistle in his pocket and gave it three sharp blasts, that got the attention of everyone.
Seaman Clinch in Boat 12 and Quartermaster Perkis in Boat 4 quickly cast off from the other two boats and brought their boats alongside Collapsible B. The overturned boat was wallowing badly now, the men almost knee deep in water, and when Boat 4 came alongside, it nearly washed everyone off. Lightoller, taking no chances, especially now that rescue was so close at hand, warned the men not to jump all at once. One by one, they scrambled into two waiting lifeboats, Colonel Gracie crawling aboard Boat 12. He was afraid of losing his footing and being pitched into the water again. Jack Thayer was so cold that as he sat shivering in Boat 12 he didn’t notice his mother, equally cold and miserable, huddled in Boat 4 only a few feet away.24
Lightoller was the last man off Collapsible B, carefully climbing into Boat 12 , taking charge of the now dangerously overloaded boat, and guiding her toward the Carpathia. Fifth Officer Lowe was equally as busy. He had hoisted the sail aboard Boat 14 as soon as the Carpathia hove into view, taking advantage of the early morning breeze. Not every sailor could do that, for as he later explained at the Senate Inquiry, “Not all sailors are boatmen, and not all boatmen are sailors.” Lowe was both, and taking advantage of the skills he had learned sailing up and down the Gold Coast, he soon had Boat 14 cutting along at close to four knots. He noticed that Collapsible D was particularly low in the water, and swung his boat over toward her.
“We have about all we want!” Hugh Woolner called out to Lowe. He thought the Fifth Officer was going to transfer more passengers to the already wallowing collapsible, but Lowe quickly told him to tie Boat 14’s painter to Collapsible D’s bow, and he would tow her to the Carpathia. Woolner gratefully complied.
Lowe then spotted Collapsible A, almost a mile and a half off, looking like it could sink any minute. More than half the thirty people who had taken refuge in Collapsible A during the night had frozen to death and fallen overboard. Now only a dozen men and Mrs. Abbott were left. Lowe wasted no time and got them aboard Boat 14 as quickly as possible, then put about for the Carpathia.25
The whole straggling fleet of boats . was now converging on the Carpathia. It was 4:45 when Boat 13 tied up at the portside gangway, a half hour after that when Boat 7 pulled alongside. There was a tearfully happy reunion when Dr. Washington Dodge, who had been in Boat 13, was brought together with his wife and five-year-old-son by Steward Ray. (Actually, Washington, Jr., in a fit of five-year-old mischievousness, had been trying to keep his mother and father from finding each other. He thought Steward Ray was a spoilsport.)26
At 6:00 survivors from Boat 3 began to climb aboard the Carpathia. Some used the rope ladders, children were hoisted up in mail sacks, and some of the women, not strong enough to negotiate the rope ladders, were lifted aboard in slings. As Elizabeth Shutes found herself swung up into the air, she heard a voice from somewhere on deck call out, “Careful fellows, she’s a lightweight !” When Henry Sleeper Harper stepped into the gangway, accompanied by his wife, his dragoman Hassan Hassah, and his prize Pekinese, one of the first people he saw was an old acquaintance, Louis Ogden. As if it were the most natural thing in the world to meet under such circumstances, Harper walked over to the astonished Ogden and said, “Louis, how do you keep yourself looking so young?” There is no record of Mr. Ogden’s reply.27
When Collapsible C tied up at 6:30, one of the first people to climb aboard the Carpathia was Bruce Ismay, characteristically announcing, “I’m Ismay ... I’m Ismay.” Dr. McGhee approached him with the suggestion that he go down to the Dining Saloon for some hot soup or something to drink.
“No, I don’t want anything at all.”
“Do go and get something,” the doctor urged gently.
“If you will leave me alone, I’ll be much happier here.... No, wait, if you can get me in some room where I can be quiet, I wish you would.”
“Please, go to the saloon and get something hot,” McGhee persisted.
“I would rather not.”
Giving in, the doctor led Ismay to his own cabin, where Ismay would sequester himself until the Carpathia reached New York. Though it was later rumored that he was kept sedated the whole time, there’s little evidence to support it. But this self-imposed isolation would indirectly fuel later rumors about Ismay’s conduct before and after the disaster until public opinion would so thoroughly pillory him that he ultimately sought refuge in anonymity. Perhaps he didn’t know it yet, but Bruce Ismay was a ruined man.28
Fifth Officer Lowe conned Boat 14 alongside the Carpathia just before 7:00, with Collapsible D still in tow. While the passengers and crewmen made their way aboard the ship, Lowe stayed behind to stow the sail and ship the mast. The boat was still company property and he was still a company officer, after all.29
There was a lot of frantic activity on deck (although the Carpathia’s passengers and crew were later to remark how quiet the Titanic’s survivors seemed) as family members sought one another out, or peered anxiously over the railing as each boat came alongside, looking for familiar faces. Usually the outcome was predictable: the sought-after loved one wouldn’t be in any of the boats and the agonizing reality would set in. But sometimes, as in the case of the Dodges, there would be a happy reunion (young Master Dodge notwithstanding). Billy Carter, who had been in Collapsible C, stood staring down at Boat 4 as it came alongside, spotting his wife and daughter, but searching frantically for his son. Finally he called out, “Where’s my boy?”
Recognizing his father’s voice, ten-year-old William, Jr., lifted the brim of a girl’s hat and looked up, saying, “Here I am, Father.”
Not all the reunions were as happy. When Mrs. Thayer and her son, Jack, saw one another, they rushed into each other’s arms. After a minute though, Mrs. Thayer asked Jack, “Where’s Daddy?” All the young Thayer could say was, “I don’t know.”
Sadder still was the plight of an Italian woman, a steerage passenger, who broke down completely in the Third Class Dining Room, weeping hysterically, and shouting out, “Bambino!” over and over again. Soon her baby was found and brought to her, but the crying continued as she held up two fingers to show that a second child was missing. This one was found, too—in the pantry, on the hot press. Someone had put it there so the body would thaw out.30
By 8:15 all the boats were alongside, except for Boat 12, which was still a quarter mile away, and moving slowly. The breeze was freshening, and with the boat as overloaded as it was—seventy—four people in a boat designed to hold sixty-five-Lightoller wasn’t about to take any chances. Rostron nudged his engines to life and brought the Carpathia forward slowly, swinging his bow to starboard a bit to bring the boat into the ship’s lee. As he turned, the wind kicked up a squall and a couple of waves crashed over the boat, covering everyone with spray. Gingerly Lightoller put his tiller over, and Boat 12 slipped into the sheltere
d waters by the Carpathia’s side. At 8:30 she made fast to the ship and Lightoller began unloading his passengers. By 9:00 they were all on board.31
Now that Captain Rostron had all the Titanic’s survivors aboard, he had to figure out what to do with them. A quick inventory of the Carpathia’s supplies told him that the only alternative was to turn around and go back to New York. The purser’s lists showed that 705 survivors were brought aboard—meaning that 1,502 people had died with the Titanic. Heartsick, the deeply religious Rostron decided that though nothing could be done for those lost, a brief service—a combined memorial and thanksgiving—might go a long way toward helping the survivors sort out their grief. Approaching the Reverend Father Roger Anderson, an Episcopalian minister who was one of the Carpathia’s passengers, Rostron broached the subject. Reverend Anderson thought it an excellent idea and agreed to preside. The service would be held that afternoon in the main lounge.32
The Carpathia’s passengers did all they could, too, helping the crew wherever they could, finding extra clothes for the survivors, making room in their cabins for some, giving up their spare toiletries and toothbrushes for many. But there were some burdens they could never ease, never share. As Mrs. Ogden was taking a tray of coffee cups over to two women sitting by themselves in a corner of the Carpathia’s upper deck, they waved her off, never taking their eyes from the ice-littered sea. “Go away” they said. “We’ve just seen our husbands drown.”33
Meanwhile Rostron returned to the bridge, and ordered as many of the Titanic’s boats brought aboard as possible. Six were slung in the Carpathia’s davits, seven more were stowed on the foredeck. That was all the Carpathia had room for—they would be returned to the White Star Line when the ship reached New York. The other seven boats, including all the collapsibles, were set adrift. While the boats were being hoisted aboard, the Mount Temple, another vessel that had come rushing to the Titanic’s assistance, hove to about six miles away. Rostron quickly appraised the Mount Temple of the situation, and asked her to continue the search for survivors. Then he returned to the chartroom to work out a course for New York.
Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic Page 24
