The heroes who remained would have said, with Grenville: “We have only done our duty, as a man is bound to do.” They sought no palms or crowns of martyrdom. “They also serve who only stand and wait,” and their first action was merely to step aside and give places in the boats to women and children, some of whom were too young to comprehend or to remember.
There was no debate as to whether the life of a financier, a master of business, was rated higher in the scale of values than that of an ignorant peasant mother. A woman was a woman, whether she wore rags or pearls. A life was given for a life, with no assertion that one was priceless and the other comparatively valueless.
Many of those who elected to remain might have escaped. “Chivalry” is a mild appellation for their conduct. Some of the vaunted knights of old were desperate cowards by comparison. A fight in the open field, or jousting in the tournament, did not call out the manhood in a man as did the waiting till the great ship took the final plunge, in the knowledge that the seas round about were covered with loving and yearning witnesses whose own salvation was not assured.
When the roll is called hereafter of those who are “purged of pride because they died, who know the worth of their days,” let the names of the men who went down with the Titanic be found written there in the sight of God and men.
THE OBVIOUS LESSON
And, whatever view of the accident be taken, whether the moralist shall use it to point the text of a solemn or denunciatory warning, or whether the materialist, swinging to the other extreme, scouts any other theory than that of the “fortuitous concurrence of atoms,” there is scarcely a thinking mortal who has heard of what happened who has not been deeply stirred, in the sense of a personal bereavement, to a profound humility and the conviction of his own insignificance in the greater universal scheme.
Many there are whom the influences of religion do not move, and upon whose hearts most generous sentiments knock in vain, who still are overawed and bowed by the magnitude of the catastrophe. No matter what they believe about it, the effect is the same. The effect is to reduce a man from the swaggering braggart—the vainglorious lord of what he sees— the self-made master of fate, of nature, of time, of space, of everything—to his true microscopic stature in the cosmos. He goes in tears to put together again the fragments of the few, small, pitiful things that belonged to him.
“Though Love may pine, and Reason chafe,
There came a Voice without reply.”
The only comfort, all that can bring surcease of sorrow, is that men fashioned in the image of their Maker rose to the emergency like heroes, and went to their grave as bravely as any who have given their lives at any time in war. The hearts of those who waited on the land, and agonized, and were impotent to save, have been laid upon the same altars of sacrifice. The mourning of those who will not be comforted rises from alien lands together with our own in a common broken intercession. How little is the 882 feet of the “monster” that we launched compared with the arc of the rainbow we can see even in our grief spanning the frozen boreal mist!
“The best of what we do and are,
Just God, forgive!”
THE ANCIENT SACRIFICE
And still our work must go on. It is the business of men and women neither to give way to unavailing grief nor to yield to the crushing incubus of despair, but to find hope that is at the bottom of everything, even at the bottom of the sea where that glorious virgin of the ocean is lying.
“And when she took unto herself a mate
She must espouse the everlasting sea.”
Even so, for any progress of the race, there must be the ancient sacrifice of man’s own stubborn heart, and all his pride. He must forever “lay in dust life’s glory dead.” He cannot rise to the height it was intended he should reach till he has plumbed the depths, till he has devoured the bread of the bitterest affliction, till he has known the ache of hopes deferred, of anxious expectation disappointed, of dreams that are not to be fulfilled this side of the river that waters the meads of Paradise. There still must be a reason why it is not an unhappy thing to be taken from “the world we know to one a wonder still,” and so that we go bravely, what does it matter, the mode of our going? It was not only those who stood back, who let the women and children go to the boats, that died. There died among us on the shore something of the fierce greed of bitterness, something of the sharp hatred of passion, something of the mad lust of revenge and of knife-edge competition. Though we are not aware of it, perhaps, we are not quite the people that we were before out of the mystery and awful hand was laid upon us all, and what we had thought the colossal power of wealth was in a twinkling shown to be no more than the strength of an infant’s little finger, or the twining tendril of a plant.
“Lest we forget; lest we forget!”
CHAPTER VIII
THE CALL FOR HELP HEARD
THE VALUE OF THE WIRELESS—OTHER SHIPS ALTER THEIR COURSE—RESCUERS ON THE WAY
“WE have struck an iceberg. Badly damaged. Rush aid.”
Seaward and landward, J. G. Phillips, the Titanic’s wireless man, had hurled the appeal for help. By fits and starts—for the wireless was working unevenly and blurringly—Phillips reached out to the world, crying the Titanic’s peril. A word or two, scattered phrases, now and then a connected sentence, made up the message that sent a thrill of apprehension for a thousand miles east, west and south of the doomed liner.
The early despatches from St. John’s, Cape Race, and Montreal, told graphic tales of the race to reach the Titanic, the wireless appeals for help, the interruption of the calls, then what appeared to be a successful conclusion of the race when the Virginian was reported as having reached the giant liner.
MANY LINES HEAR THE CALL
Other rushing liners besides the Virginian heard the call and became on the instant something more than cargo carriers and passenger greyhounds. The big Baltic, 200 miles to the eastward and westbound, turned again to save life, as she did when her sister of the White Star fleet, the Republic, was cut down in a fog in January, 1909. The Titanic’s mate, the Olympic, the mightiest of the seagoers save the Titanic herself, turned in her tracks. All along the northern lane the miracle of the wireless worked for the distressed and sinking White Star ship. The Hamburg-American Cincinnati, the Parisian from Glasgow, the North German Lloyd Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm, the Hamburg-American liners Prinz Adelbert and Amerika, all heard the C.Q.D. and the rapid, condensed explanation of what had happened.
But the Virginian was nearest, barely 170 miles away, and was the first to know of the Titanic’s danger. She went about and headed under forced draught for the spot indicated in one of the last of Phillips’ messages—latitude 41.46 N. and longitude 50.14 W.. She is a fast ship, the Allan liner, and her wireless has told the story of how she stretched through the night to get up to the Titanic in time. There was need for all the power of her engines and all the experience and skill of her captain. The final fluttering Marconigrams that were released from the Titanic made it certain that the great ship with 2,340 souls aboard was filling and in desperate peril.
Further out at sea was the Cunarder, Carpathia, which left New York for the Mediterranean on April 13th. Round she went and plunged back westward to take a hand in saving life. And the third steamship within short sailing of the Titanic was the Allan liner Parisian away to the eastward, on her way from Glasgow to Halifax.
While they sped in the night with all the drive that steam could give them, the Titanic’s call reached to Cape Race and the startled operator there heard at midnight a message which quickly reached New York:
“Have struck an iceberg. We are badly damaged. Titanic latitude 41.46 N., 50.14 W.”
Cape Race threw the appeal broadcast wherever his apparatus could carry.
Then for hours, while the world waited for a crumb of news as to the safety of the great ship’s people, not one thing more was known save that she was drifting, broken and helpless and alone in the midst of a waste of ice. An
d it was not until seventeen hours after the Titanic had sunk that the words came out of the air as to her fate.
There was a confusion and tangle of messages—a jumble of rumors. Good tidings were trodden upon by evil. And no man knew clearly what was taking place in that stretch of waters where the giant icebergs were making a mock of all that the world knew best in shipbuilding.
TITANIC SENT OUT NO MORE NEWS
It was at 12.17 A.M., while the Virginian was still plunging eastward, that all communication from the Titanic ceased. The Virginian’s operator, with the Virginian’s captain at his elbow, fed the aid with blue flashes in a desperate effort to know what was happening to the crippled liner, but no message came back. The last words from the Titanic was that she was sinking. Then the sparking became fainter. The call was dying to nothing. The Virginian’s operator labored over a blur of signals. It was hopeless. So the Allan ship strove on, fearing that the worst had happened.
It was this ominous silence that so alarmed the other vessels hurrying to the Titanic and that caused so much suspense here.
CHAPTER IX
IN THE DRIFTING LIFE-BOATS
SORROW AND SUFFERING—THE SURVIVORS SEE THE TITANIC GO DOWN WITH THEIR LOVED ONES ON BOARD—A NIGHT OF AGONIZING SUSPENSE—WOMEN HELP TO ROW—HELP ARRIVES—PICKING UP THE LIFE-BOATS
SIXTEEN boats were in the procession which entered on the terrible hours of rowing, drifting and suspense. Women wept for lost husbands and sons, sailors sobbed for the ship which had been their pride. Men choked back tears and sought to comfort the widowed. Perhaps, they said, other boats might have put off in another direction. They strove, though none too sure themselves, to convince the women of the certainty that a rescue ship would appear.
In the distance the Titanic looked an enormous length, her great bulk outline in black against the starry sky, every port-hole and saloon blazing with light. It was impossible to think anything could be wrong with such a leviathan, were it not for that ominous tilt downwards in the bows, where the water was now up to the lowest row of port-holes. Presently, about 2 A.M., as near as can be determined, those in the life-boats observed her settling very rapidly, with the bows and the bridge completely under water, and concluded it was now only a question of minutes before she went. So it proved. She slowly tilted straight on end with the stern vertically upwards, as she did, the lights in the cabins and saloons, which until then had not flickered for a moment, died out, came on again for a single flash, and finally went altogether. At the same time the machinery roared down through the vessel with a rattle and a groaning that could be heard for miles, the weirdest sound surely that could be heard in the middle of the ocean, a thousand miles away from land. But this was not yet quite the end.
TITANIC STOOD UPRIGHT
To the amazement of the awed watcher in the life-boats, the doomed vessel remained in that upright position for a time estimated at five minutes; some in the boat say less, but it was certainly some minutes that at least 150 feet of the Titanic towered up above the level of the sea and loomed black against the sky.
SAW LAST OF BIG SHIP
Then with a quiet, slanting dive she disappeared beneath the waters, and the eyes of the helpless spectators had looked for the last time upon the gigantic vessel on which they had set out from Southhamton. And there was left to the survivors only the gently heaving sea, the life-boats filled with men and women in every conceivable condition of dress and undress, above the perfect sky of brilliant stars with not a cloud, all tempered with a bitter cold that made each man and woman long to be one of the crew who toiled away with the oars and kept themselves warm thereby—a curious, deadening, bitter cold unlike anything they had felt before.
“ONE LONG MOAN”
And then with all these there fell on the ear the most appalling noise that a human being has ever listened to—the cries of hundreds of fellow-beings struggling in the icy cold water, crying for help with a cry that could not be answered.
Third Officer Herbert John Pitman, in charge of one of the boats, described this cry of agony in his testimony before the Senatorial Investigating Committee, under the questioning of Senator Smith:
“I heard no cries of distress until after the ship went down,” he said.
“How far away were the cries from your life-boat?”
“Several hundred yards, probably, some of them.”
“Describe the screams.”
“Don’t, sir, please! I’d rather not talk about it.”
“I’m sorry to press it, but what was it like? Were the screams spasmodic?”
“It was one long continuous moan.”
The witness said the moans and cries continued an hour. Those in the life-boats longed to return and pick up some of the poor drowning souls, but they feared this would mean swamping the boats and a further loss of life.
Some of the men tried to sing to keep the women from hearing the cries, and rowed hard to get away from the scene of the wreck, but the memory of those sounds will be one of the things the rescued will find it difficult to forget.
The waiting sufferers kept a lookout for lights, and several times it was shouted that steamers’ lights were seen, but they turned out to be either a light from another boat or a star low down on the horizon. It was hard to keep up hope.
WOMEN TRIED TO COMMIT SUICIDE
“Let me go back—I want to go back to my husband— I’ll jump from the boat if you don’t,” cried an agonized voice in one life-boat.
“You can do no good by going back—other lives will be lost if you try to do it. Try to calm yourself for the sake of the living. It may be that your husband will be picked up somewhere by one of the fishing boats.”
The woman who pleaded to go back, according to Mrs. Vera Dick, of Calgary, Canada, later tried to throw herself from the life-boat. Mrs. Dick, describing the scenes in the life-boats, said there were half a dozen women in that one boat who tried to commit suicide when they realized that the Titanic had gone down.
“Even in Canada, where we have such clear nights,” said Mrs. Dick, “I have never seen such a clear sky. The stars were very bright and we could see the Titanic plainly, like a great hotel on the water. Floor after floor of the lights went out as we watched. It was horrible, horrible. I can’t bear to think about it. From the distance, as we rowed away, we could hear the band playing ‘Nearer, My God to Thee.’
“Among the life-boats themselves, however, there were scenes just as terrible, perhaps, but to me nothing could outdo the tragic grandeur with which the Titanic went to its death. To realize it, you would have to see the Titanic as I saw it the day we set sail—with the flags flying and the bands playing. Everybody on board was laughing and talking about the Titanic being the biggest and most luxurious boat on the ocean and being unsinkable. To think of it then and to think of it standing out there in the night, wounded to death and gasping for life, is almost too big for the imagination.”
SCANTILY CLAD WOMEN IN LIFE-BOATS
“The women on our boat were in nightgowns and bare feet—some of them—and the wealthiest women mingled with the poorest immigrants. One immigrant woman kept shouting: ‘My God, my poor father! He put me in this boat and would not save himself. Oh, why didn’t I die, why didn’t I die? Why can’t I die now?’
“We had to restrain her, else she would have jumped overboard. It was simply awful. Some of the men apparently had said they could row just to get into the boats. We paid no attention to cowardice, however. We were all busy with our own troubles. My heart simply bled for the women who were separated from their husbands.
“The night was frightfully cold, although clear. We had to huddle together to keep warm. Everybody drank sparingly of the water and ate sparingly of the bread. We did not know when we would be saved. Everybody tried to remain cool, except the poor creatures who could think of nothing but their own great loss. Those with the most brains seemed to control themselves best.”
PHILADELPHIA WOMEN HEROINES
Ho
w Mrs. George D. Widener, whose husband and son perished after kissing her good-bye and helping her into one of the boats, rowed when exhausted seamen were on the verge of collapse, was told by Emily Geiger, maid of Mrs. Widener, who was saved with her.
The girl said Mrs. Widener bravely toiled throughout the night and consoled other women who had broken down under the strain.
Mrs. William E. Carter and Mrs. John B. Thayer were in the same life-boat and worked heroically to keep it free from the icy menace. Although Mrs. Thayer’s husband remained aboard the Titanic and sank with it, and although she had no knowledge of the safety of her son until they met, hours later, aboard the Carpathia, Mrs. Thayer bravely labored at the oars throughout the night.
In telling of her experience Mrs. Carter said:
“When I went over the side with my children and got in the boat there were no seamen in it. Then came a few men, but there were oars with no one to use them. The boat had been filled with passengers, and there was nothing else for me to do but to take an oar.
“We could see now that the time of the ship had come. She was sinking, and we were warned by cries from the men above to pull away from the ship quickly. Mrs. Thayer, wife of the vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, was in my boat, and she, too, took an oar.
“It was cold and we had no time to clothe ourselves with warm overcoats. The rowing warmed me. We started to pull away from the ship. We could see the dim outlines of the decks above, but we could not recognize anybody.”
MANY WOMEN ROWING
Mrs. William R. Bucknell’s account of the part women played in the rowing is as follows:
“There were thirty-five persons in the boat in which the captain placed me. Three of these were ordinary seamen, supposed to manage the boat, and a steward.
The Sinking of the Titanic Page 7
