Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic

by Daniel Allen Butler

  The coal strike had wreaked havoc on the shipping industry and put so many men out of work that when the opportunity had come to get a job—any job—on the Titanic, there were more men clamoring for them than there were berths, and those who got them counted themselves lucky. Often families were forced to pawn their furniture or what pitiful few valuables they possessed just to be able to buy food, and some landlords were already serving notices to quit to tenants who were in arrears on their rent. Now, for hundreds of families, what had seemed like a godsend when the man of the house had secured a position on the Titanic had suddenly become catastrophe. The Daily Mail’s unknown reporter, with a lack of hyperbole remarkable for the day, personalized the tragedy: Many women who wait for hour after hour outside the White Star offices pathetically cling to the hope that their men, being in the four-to-eight watch have escaped in one of the boats. The twelve-to-four watch was the death watch. One drooping woman was leaning on a bassinet containing two chubby babies, while a tiny mite held her hand. “What are we waiting for, Mummy? Why are we waiting such a long time?” asked the tired child. “We are waiting for news of your father, dear,” came the choked answer, as the mother turned away her head to hide her tears.8

  The grief would take a long time to fade, but fortunately it would only be a few weeks before a number of relief funds were organized to assist the families of the crewmen who perished on the Titanic. The assistance said much about the character of the British people as a whole, as well as how deeply the disaster touched the entire nation: contributions to the relief funds came from every part of the country and from every strata of society. The charities ultimately collected nearly £450,000 ($2,160,000) and one of the funds was still functioning, under special circumstances, as late as the 1960s.9

  But over the years, the enormous number of crewmen lost has somehow been ignored or glossed over, while the plight of the Third Class passengers and the disproportionate loss of life among them when compared to First or Second Class has been heavily emphasized. It is almost as if by some unspoken consent the crew has come to be regarded as expendable, while the steerage passengers are presented as a rare and valuable commodity that was squandered for the benefit of First and Second Class. Yet there was a dynamic that shaped the destinies of those crewmen that was as powerful as any that shaped the fate of the Third Class passengers, and it was every bit as telling about the values of late-Victorian and Edwardian society.

  There were a handful of virtues nearly all the Victorians and Edwardians believed in passionately, regardless of class, and whether they were mythical or not they were compelling: respect, almost reverence, for the Crown; the rigidity of the social order; honor; piety; valor; and most of all, duty. Eighty-five years later these values may seem laughable among certain post-modern intellectuals, but at the turn of the century they defined, as absolutely as class determined a man’s or woman’s station in society, how those men and women would conduct themselves. Indeed the Edwardians’ devotion to duty was so deeply ingrained, and so complete, that only after the better part of an entire generation had been slaughtered on the Western Front during World War I would that devotion’s validity be challenged. In point of fact, it is only possible to understand how the Tommies were so willing to go over the top and march into the teeth of chattering Spandaus in 1916 by understanding why so many of the crew remained aboard the Titanic in 1912.

  Yet it is also important to remember that three-fourths of the crew didn’t have to die. Though the officers and crew of the Titanic were legally obliged to do their best to see the passengers to safety, in practice the officers had little except the force of moral authority to prevent the crew from simply shouldering the passengers aside. The growing power of the Seamen’s Union was making it more and more difficult to dismiss crewmen for breaches of discipline. In the years before and after the Titanic disaster there have been plenty of examples of crewmen commandeering a sinking ship’s lifeboats and leaving the passengers to their fate, a situation still with us as recently as 1965, when the cruise ship Yarmouth Castle was engulfed in flames thirty-five miles west of the Bahamas, and the first lifeboat away contained her captain, her bosun, and assorted crew members, but not one passenger.10

  Yet, on the Titanic, aside from a handful of stewards, there isn’t a single recorded incident of any crewmen trying to force their way into any of the lifeboats. On the contrary, in two separate instances (Boats 2 and 6) crewmen who had gotten into the boats and were ordered out by an officer complied without protest. Having been raised from birth with the idea that duty came above any other consideration and that obedience and duty were synonymous, it would prove to be too powerful a habit to be broken in a few hours’ time.

  It was devotion to duty that caused Fireman Cavell to go back to Boiler Room 4 when he thought he might have left too early and was letting his mates down; it kept Quartermaster Rowe on the bridge wing, firing off his rockets and working the Morse lamp, no matter how futile it seemed; it kept Trimmer Hemming on board working at loading and lowering the boats long after his assigned lifeboat had gone; it kept Phillips and Bride at the wireless even after Captain Smith released them; it kept Chief Engineer Bell and the rest of the engineering staff in the engine room even when they knew that it was far too late to reach the upper decks and get away; and it kept Wallace Hartley and the band playing until they were pitched into the sea.

  It can’t just be ascribed to something as simple as courage; after all, someone once made the observation that, “A hero is simply a coward who got cornered.” Instead the inescapable conclusion is that it was a sense of responsibility, of obligation to other people. It was the knowledge that people were depending on them that caused so many of the crew to remain at their posts, even at the cost of their lives. “No greater love ...” is the most eloquent way it’s been put, and it might be too simplistic to ascribe the crewmen’s action to love for their fellow men and women, but it’s in there somewhere.

  Eighty-five years after the disaster, in a different country, within a society that ethnically, morally, and politically is wholly removed from the one that produced the crew of the Titanic, it is difficult to believe—let alone understand how—they could knowingly, willingly sacrifice themselves. Yet the evidence is undisputable: aside from the stewardesses, whom nobody ever suggested should stay behind (only three were lost), and a score or so of opportunists who managed to sneak into a boat when one of the officers wasn’t looking, the only crewmen who left the Titanic in the lifeboats were the men ordered into them by the officers. Compulsion or fear of punishment cannot explain this—the British Merchant Marine was not the Royal Navy, with its ironbound traditions, strict regulations, and rigidly enforced discipline, always backed up by the threat of a defaulter’s board or a court-martial.

  Instead, it was a matter of individual choice, of a man’s sense of responsibility to his shipmates and to the people entrusted to his care; it was the idea that the young, the weak, the infirm, and the unable needed protection from circumstances that they could not ward off for themselves; it was a belief that death itself was preferable to the disgrace of being perceived a coward. These may seem like archaic notions today, but the result was that every crewman who stayed behind made room for one more passenger, one more woman or child, in the lifeboats. That many of those boats left the ship only half full was not their fault.

  Nor can it be suggested that the crew members were mindless, unimaginative drudges who went to their deaths because they couldn’t think of anything better to do. While centuries of class structure had certainly created in the working class an inherent belief that they were meant to toil at the direction of their “betters” (as the language of the day expressed it), they had never been taught, nor did the upper class ever think, that they were merely expendable. The crew was certainly not under any societal imperative, self imposed or otherwise, to sacrifice themselves simply for the passengers’ sake.

  What the crew had was leadership and an example to ac
tion. There’s no reason to believe that Captain Smith’s last words to his crew were, as has sometimes been reported, “Be British, men, be British!”—as if being Anglo-Saxons had given them a particular penchant for dying well—but there can be no argument that the officers, the senior engineers, the pursers, and Thomas Andrews all provided examples for the crew to follow. And follow it they did. And perhaps this was meant to be their lasting homecoming, as real as it was intangible: the example they gave by following. Not every man or woman is meant to be a leader, but it is followers who define the difference between a leader and a lonely fanatic. If there was a lasting legacy from the crew of the Titanic, something of genuine meaning that would transcend cliché and platitude that they could leave for their children and grandchildren, it was their willingness to follow men who were doing what was right and noble and good, and in so doing become right and noble and good themselves.

  Southampton would raise two memorials to those of the crew of the Titanic who wouldn’t be coming home. One was a classically inspired fountain dedicated to the stewards and other crew members, unveiled in 1915; in 1972 it was moved to the ruins of Holy Rood Church, where it remains in good company. The church, bombed-out by the Nazis in World War II, serves as Great Britain’s memorial to her merchant seamen who were lost in both world wars. The other, dedicated in April 1914, was a handsome monument of granite, with panels of bronze bas-relief depicting the engineers, which still stands in Southampton’s East Park.

  Other cities would put up monuments as well—Liverpool, like Southampton, would honor the engineers, building a column near the city’s waterfront. During its construction the design was slightly modified to include a memorial to all the British merchant marine engineers killed during World War I. In New York, the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse, sited atop the Seamen’s Church Institute, was dedicated on the first anniversary of the sinking. In 1920, Belfast would unveil a graceful statue that depicts two mermaids holding up a victim before a standing figure representing the sea. It would be the summer of 1931 before the Women’s Titanic Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. A simple, moving sculpture of a man standing with arms outstretched, it can still be found in the city’s waterfront park.

  Individuals would be commemorated as well. Captain Smith’s memory would be honored by a life-sized statue of him, erected near his home in Lichfield, England. A stone tablet commemorating the heroism of Jack Phillips was placed in the memorial cloister in Godalming, Surrey, England. In Comber, County Down, Northern Ireland, Thomas Andrews would be remembered through the efforts of his friends, who oversaw the construction of Thomas Andrews Memorial Hall; today the building is a primary school. In a park in Colne, Lancashire, a bronze bust of Wallace Hartley sits atop a marble pillar, the monument paid for by donations that came from all over England. In New York City, in the quiet shadows of Grace Church, a panel remembers Edith Evans, who gave up her place in Collapsible D so Mrs. John Murray Brown could return to her children; across town, at Broadway and West 106th Street, is a monument to Isador and Ida Straus that was funded by grieving Macy’s employees. A marble fountain was erected in Washington, D.C., dedicated to Colonel Archibald Butt. It was paid for from the private funds of President William Howard Taft, who dedicated it to the memory of his lost friend.

  But for all the outpouring of love and grief and loss that caused these memorials to be raised, such monuments were beyond the means of most of the friends and families of those who died on the Titanic. For them, and for those who had gone down with the ship, all they would ever have would be a rusting hulk lying at the bottom of the North Atlantic, which would serve as memorial, gravestone, and tomb.

  CHAPTER 12

  Inquests and Judgments

  And I will let loose my anger upon you, and will judge you according to your ways.

  —Ezekiel 7:3

  AS THE PUBLIC’S INITIAL SHOCK OVER THE MAGNITUDE OF THE TITANIC DISASTER began to fade, indignation took its place. It was almost impossible to grasp the concept, let alone the reality, that more than 1,500 lives had been lost in less than three hours. It was as if a battle had been fought and lost, or a small town had been wiped off the face of the earth. Newspaper editors, using charts, photographs, and any other visual aids they could find, tried to give some meaning to the number and to make the enormity of the casualty list comprehensible to the average person. But it was no easy task, for there had never been a maritime disaster anything like the loss of the Titanic. Compounding this sense of incredulity was the fact that ocean travel had seemed to be so safe: in forty years only four passengers had lost their lives on the North Atlantic. Within days of the news breaking about the sinking, government officials, newspaper editors, and the public were all demanding explanations.

  Now the moment had arrived for one of the most unusual and unlikely figures to become part of the story of the Titanic to take center stage: the junior senator from the State of Michigan, William Alden Smith, a classic Horatio Alger “rags to riches” success story. Born in 1859 in tiny Dowagiac, a logging town in the southwest corner of Michigan’s lower peninsula, at the age of twelve Smith had moved with his parents to Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was with that city that he would ever after be associated. His early dream of becoming a newsboy-attaché on a railroad (which developed what would be a lifelong fascination with trains and railroading), had been thwarted by his family’s poverty. But like one of Alger’s “Luck and Pluck” series heroes, he turned adversity into a challenge, and within a year he had started his own business in Grand Rapids—selling popcorn of all things—and was soon his family’s sole means of support, making more than $75 a month, nearly double what the average American family of the day made.

  For a while he moonlighted as a correspondent for the Chicago Times while serving as a page in the Michigan legislature and discovering the strange but indestructible links between the press and politics. At twenty-one, William Alden, as he was invariably known, returned to Grand Rapids to study law in the offices of Birch and Montgomery, and was admitted to the Kent County bar three years later.

  Setting up practice with the offices of Smiley, Smith and Stevens, William Alden quickly became a recognized expert in railroad law. His firm was remarkably successful, and soon Smith was able to buy a small railroad of his own, then a second shortly after, selling them both eventually at handsome profits. At the same time he was laying the foundations of a political career, and 1886 saw him sitting on the Michigan State Central Committee of the Republican party. In 1892 he ran for the Congressional seat from Michigan’s fifth district, defeating a popular—and some said unbeatable—incumbent by 10,000 votes. He would represent the state of Michigan in either the House or the Senate for the next thirty-five years.

  William Alden Smith was short, about five-feet-six, and had a curiously expressive face, capable of changing from fierce rage to warm affection in seconds. He possessed a great deal of personal charm, a remarkable memory from which he could pluck information almost effortlessly, and an oratorical style that was half persuasive, half coercive. Though he was nominally a Republican, within a short time everyone in Congress knew that William Alden was his own man, bound by no party dogma. He was the quintessential political maverick, and Smith gloried in the role.

  He was an American Midwesterner writ large, with all the altruism, naivete, dreams, hopes, fears, and prejudices of the American heartland. He was not a dupe, for before he became a politician he had been a successful lawyer and businessman; nor was he a rube, for though largely self-educated, he was a more-learned man than many of his colleagues. In no way was he merely an opportunist, for many times before and after his investigation into the loss of the Titanic, he was to fight lonely battles for causes many considered lost or hopeless. The Titanic inquiry would be Smith’s one moment to stand on the world’s stage, and he would make the most of it, not for his sake, but for the ideals and people he represented.1

  When the news of the Titanic disaster reached Washington, Smith, l
ike everyone else, was aghast at the enormity of the tragedy. Unlike most people, however, Smith’s analytical mind would not rest until he knew how 1,500 people could be left on the decks of the sinking liner. A quick review of the existing legislation regulating the passenger steamship lines on the North Atlantic showed that there were no formal regulations, and the shipping lines were run as laissez-faire operations. This situation appalled Smith, who had compiled a considerable record as the sponsor and moving force behind a great deal of the safety and operating regulations of the American railroads passed by Congress in the previous two decades. When he discovered the relationship between J. P. Morgan’s railroad interests and Morgan’s holdings in International Mercantile Marine, he launched an inquiry. He wasn’t sure if there was any evidence of negligence in the navigation, construction, or equipment of the Titanic, but if there was, he would find it. Quickly he pushed a resolution through the Senate that authorized the formation of a subcommittee from the Committee on Commerce, of which Smith was a member, naming him chairman. Smith carefully composed the subcommittee with members chosen to make it a politically balanced body, and he was careful to ensure that it possessed the power to issue subpoenas, including those for foreign nationals.2