The Sinking of the Titanic

by Bruce M. Caplan

  The House of Shelter maintained by the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society announced that it was able to care for at least fifty persons as long as might be necessary. The German Society of New York, the Irish Immigrant Society, the Italian Society, the Swedish Immigrant Society and the Young Men’s Christian Association were among the organizations that also offered to see that no needy survivor would go without shelter.

  Mrs. W. A. Bastede, whose husband was a member of the staff of St. Luke’s Hospital, offered to the White Star Line the use of the newly opened ward at St. Luke’s, which would accommodate from thirty to sixty persons. She said the hospital would send four ambulances with nurses and doctors and that she had collected clothing enough for fifty persons. The line accepted her offer and said that the hospital would be kept informed as to what was needed. A trustee of Bellevue also called at the White Star offices to offer ambulances. He said that five or six, with two or three doctors and nurses on each, would be sent to the pier if required.

  Many other hospitals as well as individuals called at the mayor’s office, expressing willingness to take in anybody that should be sent to them. A woman living in Fiftieth Street just off Fifth Avenue wished to put her home at the disposal of the survivors. D. H. Knott, of 102 Waverley Place, told the mayor that he could take care of 100 and give them both food and lodging at the Arlington, Holly and Earl Hotels. Commissioner Drummond visited the City Hall and arranged with the mayor the plans for the relief to be extended directly by the city. Mr. Drummond said that omnibuses would be provided to transfer passengers from the ship to the Municipal Lodging House.

  MRS. VANDERBILT’S EFFORTS

  Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt, Jr., spent the day telephoning to her friends, asking them to let their automobiles be used to meet the Carpathia and take away those who needed surgical care. It was announced that as a result of Mrs. Vanderbilt’s efforts 100 limousine automobiles and all the Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive automobile buses would be at the Cunard pier.

  Immigration Commissioner Williams said that he would be at the pier when the Carpathia came in. There was no inspection of immigrants at Ellis Island. Instead, the commissioner sent seven or eight inspectors to the pier to do their work there and he asked them to do it with the greatest possible speed and the least possible bother to the shipwrecked aliens. The immigrants who had no friends to meet them were to be provided for until their cases could be disposed of. Mr. Williams thought that some of them who had lost everything might have to be sent back to their homes. Those who were to be admitted to the United States were to be cared for by the Women’s Relief Committee.

  RED CROSS RELIEF

  Robert W. de Forest, chairman of the Red Cross Relief Committee of the Charity Organization Society, after conferring with Mayor Gaynor, said that in addition to an arrangement that all funds received by the mayor should be paid to Jacob H. Schiff, the New York treasurer of the American Red Cross, the committee had decided that it could turn over all the immediate relief work to the Women’s Relief Committee.

  The Red Cross Committee announced that careful plans had been made to provide for every possible emergency.

  The emergency committee received a telegram that Ernest P. Bicknell, director of the American Red Cross, was coming from Washington. The Red Cross Emergency Relief Committee was to have several representatives at the pier to look out for the passengers on the Carpathia. Mr. Persons and Dr. Devine were to be there and it was planned to have others.

  The Salvation Army offered, through the mayor’s office, accommodation for thirty single men at the Industrial Home, 533 West Forty-eighth Street, and for twenty others at its hotel, 18 Chatham Square. The army’s training school at 124 West Fourteenth Street was ready to take twenty or thirty survivors. R. H. Farley, head of the White Star Line’s third class department, said that the line would give all the steerage passengers railroad tickets to their destinations.

  Mayor Gaynor estimated that more than 5,000 persons could be accommodated in quarters offered through his orders. Most of these offers, of course, would have to be rejected. The mayor also said that Colonel Conley of the Sixty-ninth Regiment offered to turn out his regiment to police the pier, but it was thought that such service would be unnecessary.

  CROWDS AT THE DOCKS

  Long before dark on Thursday night a few people passed the police lines and with a yellow card were allowed to go on the dock; but reports had been published that the Carpathia would not be in till midnight, and by 8 o’clock there were not more than two hundred people on the pier. In the next hour the crowd with passes trebled in number. By 9 o’clock the pier held half as many as it could comfortably contain. The early crowd did not contain many women relatives of the survivors. Few nervous people could be seen, but here and there was a woman, usually supported by two male escorts, weeping softly to herself.

  On the whole it was a frantic, grief-crazed crowd. Laborers rubbed shoulders with millionaires.

  The relatives of the rich had taxicabs waiting outside the docks. The relatives of the poor went there on foot in the rain, ready to take their loved ones.

  A special train was awaiting Mrs. Charles M. Hays, widow of the president of the Grand Trunk Railroad. A private car also waited Mrs. George D. Widener.

  EARLY ARRIVALS AT PIER

  Among the first to arrive at the pier was a committee from the Stock Exchange, headed by R. H. Thomas, and composed of Charles Knoblauch, B.M.W. Baruch, Charles Holzderber and J. Carlisle. Mr. Thomas carried a long black box which contained $5,000 in small bills, which was to be handed out to the needy steerage survivors of the Titanic as they disembarked.

  With the early arrivals at the pier were the relatives of Frederick White, who was not reported among the survivors, though Mrs. White was; Harry Mock, who came to look for a brother and sister; and Vincent Astor, who arrived in a limousine with William A. Dobbyn, Colonel Astor’s secretary, and two doctors. The limousine was kept waiting outside to take Mrs. Astor to the Astor home on Fifth Avenue.

  EIGHT LIMOUSINE CARS

  The Waldorf-Astoria had sent over eight limousine cars to convey to the hotel these survivors:

  Mrs. Mark Fortune and three daughters, Mrs. Lucien P. Smith, Mrs. J. Stewart White, Mrs. Thornton Davidson, Mrs. George C. Douglass, Mrs. George D. Widener and maid, Mrs. George Wick, Miss Bonnell, Miss E. Ryerson, Mrs. Susan P. Ryerson, Mrs. Arthur Ryerson, Miss Mary Wick, the Misses Howell, Mrs. John P. Snyder and Mr. and Mrs. D. H. Bishop.

  THIRTY-FIVE AMBULANCES AT THE PIER

  At one time there were thirty-five ambulances drawn up outside the Cunard pier. Every hospital in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx was represented. Several of the ambulances came from as far north as the Lebanon Hospital, in the Bronx, and the Brooklyn Hospital, in Brooklyn.

  Accompanying them were seventy interns and surgeons from the staffs of the hospitals, and more than 125 male and female nurses.

  St. Vincent’s sent the greatest number of ambulances, at one time, eight of them from this hospital being in line at the pier.

  Miss Eva Booth, direct head of the Salvation Army, was at the pier, accompanied by Miss Elizabeth Nye and a corps of her officers, ready to aid as much as possible. The Sheltering Society and various other similar organizations also were represented, all ready to take care of those who needed them.

  An officer of the Sixty-ninth Regiment, N.G.N.Y., offered the White Star Line officials, the use of the regiment’s armory for any of the survivors.

  Mrs. Thomas Hughes, Mrs. August Belmont and Mgrs, Lavelle and McMahon, of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, together with a score of black-robed Sisters of Charity, representing the Association of Catholic Churches, were on the pier long before the Carpathia was made fast, and worked industriously in aiding the injured and ill.

  The Rev. Dr. William Carter, pastor of the Madison Avenue Reformed Church, was one of those at the pier with a private ambulance awaiting Miss Sylvia Caldwell, one of the survivors, who is known in church circles as a missi
on worker in foreign fields.

  FREE RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION

  The Pennsylvania Railroad sent representatives to the pier, who said that the railroad had a special train of nine cars in which it would carry free any passenger who wanted to go immediately to Philadelphia or points west. The Pennsylvania also had eight taxicabs at the pier for conveyance of the rescued to the Pennsylvania Station, in Thirty-third Street.

  Among those who later arrived at the pier before the Carpathia docked were P.A.B. Widener, of Philadelphia, two women relatives of J. B. Thayer, William Harris, Jr., theatrical man, who was accompanied by Dr. Dinkelspiel, and Henry Arthur Jones, the playwright.

  RELATIVES OF SAVED AND LOST

  Commander Booth, of the Salvation Army, was there especially to meet Mrs. Elizabeth Nye and Mrs. Rogers Abbott, both Titanic survivors. Mrs. Abbott’s two sons were supposed to be among the lost. Miss Booth had received a cablegram from London saying that other Salvation Army people were on the Titanic. She was eager to get news of them.

  Also on the pier was Major Blanton, U.S.A. stationed at Washington, who was waiting for tidings of Major Butt, supposedly at the instance of President Taft.

  Senator William A. Clark and Mrs. Clark were also in the company. Dr. John R. MacKenty was waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Henry S. Harper. Ferdinand W. Roebling and Carl G. Roebling, cousins of Washington A. Roebling Jr., whose name is among the list of dead, went to the pier to see what they could learn of his fate.

  J. P. Morgan, Jr., arrived at the pier about half an hour before the Carpathia docked. He said he had many friends on the Titanic and was eagerly awaiting news of all of them.

  Fire Commissioner Johnson was there with John Peel, of Atlanta, Georgia, a brother of Mrs. Jacques Futrelle. Mrs. Futrelle has a son twelve years old in Atlanta, and a daughter Virginia, who has been in school in the North and is at present with friends in this city, ignorant of her father’s death.

  A MAN IN HYSTERICS

  There was one man in that sad waiting company who startled those near him about 9 o’clock by dancing across the pier and back. He seemed to be laughing, but when he was stopped it was found that he was sobbing. He said that he had a relative on the Titanic and had lost control of his nerves.

  H. H. Brunt, of Chicago, was at the gangplank waiting for A. Saalfeld, head of the wholesale drug firm of Sparks, White & Co., of London, who was coming to this country on the Titanic on a business trip and whose life was saved.

  WAITING FOR CARPATHIA

  During the afternoon and evening tugboats, motor boats and even sailing craft, had been waiting off the Ambrose light for the appearance of the Carpathia.

  Some of the waiting craft contained friends and anxious relatives of the survivors and those reported as missing.

  The sea was rough and choppy, and a strong east wind was blowing. There was a light fog, so that it was possible to see at a distance of only a few hundred yards. This lifted later in the evening.

  First to discover the incoming liner with her pitiful cargo was one of the tugboats. From out of the mist there loomed far out at sea the incoming steamer.

  RESCUE BOAT SIGHTED

  “Liner ahead!” cried the lookout on the tug to the captain. “She must be the Carpathia,” said the captain, and then he turned the nose of his boat toward the spot on the horizon. The huge black hull and one smokestack could be distinguished.

  “It’s the Carpathia,” said the captain. “I can tell her by the stack.”

  The announcement sent a thrill through those who heard it. Here, at the gate of New York, was a ship whose record for bravery and heroic work would be a familiar name in history.

  CHAPTER XII

  THE TRAGIC HOME-COMING

  THE CARPATHIA REACHES NEW YORK—AN INTENSE AND DRAMATIC MOMENT—HYSTERICAL REUNIONS AND CRUSHING DISAPPOINTMENT AT THE DOCK—CARING FOR THE SUFFERERS—FINAL REALIZATION THAT ALL HOPE FOR OTHERS IS FUTILE—LIST OF SURVIVORS—ROLL OF THE DEAD.

  IT was a solemn moment when the Carpathia heaved in sight. There she rested on the water, a blur of black— huge, mysterious, awe-inspiring—and yet withal a thing to send thrills of pity and then of admiration through the beholder.

  It was a few minutes after seven o’clock when she arrived at the entrance to Ambrose Channel. She was coming fast, steaming at better than fifteen knots an hour, and she was sighted long before she was expected. Except for the usual side and masthead lights she was almost dark, only the upper cabins showing a glimmer here and there.

  Then began a period of waiting, the suspense of which proved almost too much for the hundreds gathered there to greet friends and relatives or to learn with certainty at last that those for whom they watched would never come ashore.

  There was almost complete silence on the pier. Doctors and nurses, members of the Women’s Relief Committee, city and government officials, as well as officials of the line, moved nervously about.

  Seated where they had been assigned beneath the big customs letters corresponding to the initials of the names of the survivors they came to meet, sat the mass of 2,000 on the pier.

  Women wept, but they wept quietly, not hysterically, and the sound of the sobs made many times less noise than the hum and bustle which is usual on the pier among those awaiting an incoming liner.

  Slowly and majestically the ship slid through the water, still bearing the details of that secret of what happened and who perished when the Titanic met her fate.

  Convoying the Carpathia was a fleet of tugs bearing men and women anxious to learn the latest news. The Cunarder had been as silent for days as though it, too, were a ship of the dead. A list of survivors had been given out from its wireless station that was all. Even the approximate time of its arrival had been kept a secret.

  NEARING PORT

  There was no response to the hail from one tug, and as others closed in, the steamship quickened her speed a little and left them behind as she swung up the channel.

  There was an exploding of flashlights from some of the tugs, answered seemingly by sharp stabs of lighting in the northwest that served to accentuate the silence and absence of light aboard the rescue ship. Five or six persons, apparently members of the crew or the ship’s officers, were seen along the rail; but otherwise the boat appeared to be deserted.

  Off quarantine the Carpathia slowed down and, hailing the immigration inspection boat, asked if the health officer wished to board. She was told that he did, and came to a stop while Dr. O’Connell and two assistants climbed on board. Again the newspaper men asked for some word of the catastrophe to the Titanic, but there was no answer, and the Carpathia continued toward her pier.

  As she passed the revenue cutter Mohawk and the derelict destroyer Seneca anchored off Tompkinsville, the wireless on the Government vessels was seen to flash, but there was no answering spark from the Carpathia. Entering the North River she laid her course close to the New Jersey side in order to have room to swing into her pier.

  By this time the rails were lined with men and women. They were very silent. There were a few requests for news from those on board and a few answers to questions shouted from the tugs.

  The liner began to slacken her speed, and the tugboat soon was alongside. Up above the inky blackness of the hull figures could be made out, leaning over the port railing as though peering eagerly at the little craft which was bearing down on the Carpathia.

  Some of them, perhaps, had passed through the inferno of the deep sea which sprang up to destroy the mightiest steamship afloat.

  “Carpathia, ahoy!” was shouted through a megaphone. There was an interval of a few seconds, and then, “Aye, aye,” came the reply.

  “Is there any assistance that can be rendered?” was the next question.

  “Thank you, no,” was the answer in a tone that carried emotion with it. Meantime the tugboat was getting nearer and nearer to the Carpathia, and soon the faces of those leaning over the railing could be distinguished.

  TALK WITH SURVIVORS

/>   More faces appeared, and still more. A woman who called to a man on the tugboat was asked, “Are you one the of the Titanic survivors?”

  “If there is anything you want done it will be attended to.”

  “Thank you. I have been informed that my relatives will meet me at the pier.”

  “Is it true that some of the life-boats sank with the Titanic?”

  “Yes. There was some trouble in manning them. They were not far enough away from her.”

  All of this questioning and receiving replies was carried on with the greatest difficulty. The pounding of the liner’s engines, the washing of the sea, the tugboat’s engines, made it hard to understand the woman’s replies.

  ALL CARED FOR ON BOARD

  “Were the women properly cared for after the crash?” she was asked.

  “Oh, yes,” came the shrill reply. “The men were brave— very brave.” Here her voice broke and she turned and left the railing, to reappear a few moments later and cry:

  “Please report me as saved.”

  “What name?” was asked. She shouted a name that could not be understood, and, apparently believing that it had been, turned away again and disappeared.

  “Nearly all of us are very ill,” cried another woman. Here several other tugboats appeared, and those standing at the railing were besieged with questions.

  “Did the crash come without warning?” a voice on one of the smaller boats megaphoned.

  “Yes,” a woman answered. “Most of us had retired. We saved a few of our belongings.”

  “How long did it take the boat to sink?” asked the voice.

  TITANIC CREW HEROES

  “Not long,” came the reply. “The crew and the men were very brave. Oh, it is dreadful—dreadful to think of!”

  “Is Mr. John Jacob Astor on board?”

  “No.”

  “Did he remain on the Titanic after the collision?”

  “I do not know.”

  Questions of this kind were showered at the few survivors who stood at the railing, but they seemed too confused to answer them intelligibly, and after replying evasively to some they would disappear.