Titanic on Trial

by Nic Compton

Edward Wilding – Naval Architect, Harland & Wolff

  I do not believe the ship split in two. I have tried to make an approximate calculation, and I feel quite sure it did not happen. I made a rough calculation as to the probable stress arising when the ship foundered as she got her stern out of the water. I can only do it very roughly, of course. It showed the stress in the ship was probably not greater than she would encounter in a severe Atlantic storm. The ship was made to go through an Atlantic storm, and therefore would be capable of meeting that stress.

  BOAT NO 8

  George Hogg – Lookout

  As soon as I unhooked her, I mustered her people to see how many I had. I must have had 42. When I shoved away, I asked a lady if she could steer, and she said she could. I said: ‘You may sit here and do this for me, and I will take the stroke oar.’

  I was ordered to pull away from the ship for safety, for the time being. I pulled a little way from the ship, about a quarter of a mile. I went alongside another boat, and they transferred some of the passengers to my boat. I think they transferred four ladies and a baby and one gentleman. We were about 47. One lady said I should not take any more in that boat. I said: ‘I will take all I can get.’

  As soon as she went down, I went to try to assist them in picking up anybody if I could. I pulled around in search of other people before I could pull to the wreck. One man said, ‘We have done our best. There are no more people around. We have pulled all around.’ I said, ‘Very good. We will get away now.’ I laid off, then, until I saw the lights of the Carpathia. If we had had more boats, I dare say that we could have got away with a lot more.

  It was bitter cold. Not a ripple on the water; the sea was as smooth as glass.

  I saw the lights of the Carpathia. I said, ‘It is all right, now, ladies. Do not grieve. We are picked up. Now, gentlemen, see what you can do in pulling these oars for this light.’ It was practically daylight then. Then the passengers could see for themselves that there was a ship there. I pulled up and went alongside, and I assisted in putting a bowline around all the ladies, to haul them up aboard. After I saw all aboard the boat, me and my friend went aboard, and I put some blankets around myself and went to sleep.

  Everything was done, as far as I can see. Everybody did their best, ladies and gentlemen and sailormen.

  Alfred Crawford – Bedroom Steward

  The captain gave me orders to ship the rowlocks and to pull for a light. It was the light of a vessel in the distance. There were two lights, not farther than ten miles away. They were stationary masthead lights, one on the fore and one on the main. Everybody saw them – all the ladies in the boat. I am sure it was a steamer, because a sailing ship would not have two masthead lights. The captain told us to row for the light and to land the people there and come back to the ship.

  We all took an oar and pulled away from the ship. A lady – I have found out since it was the Countess of Rothes – took the tiller. Four men took the oars, and pulled away. We pulled until daybreak, but we could not catch the ship. When day broke we saw another steamer coming up which proved to be the Carpathia; and then we turned around and came back. We were the farthest boat away.

  Ella White – First Class Passenger

  Before we cut loose from the ship, two of the seamen with us – the men, I should say; I do not call them seamen, I think they were dining-room stewards – before we were cut loose from the ship, they took out cigarettes and lighted them. On an occasion like that! All of those men escaped under the pretence of being oarsmen. The man who rowed me took his oar and rowed all over the boat, in every direction. I said to him, ‘Why don’t you put the oar in the oarlock?’ He said, ‘Do you put it in that hole?’ I said, ‘Certainly.’ He said, ‘I never had an oar in my hand before.’ I spoke to the other man, and he said, ‘I have never had an oar in my hand before, but I think I can row.’ Those were the men that we were put to sea with at night – with all these magnificent fellows left on board, who would have been such a protection to us. Those were the kind of men with whom we were put out to sea that night.

  There were 22 women and four men on the boat. There was one there who was supposed to be a seaman, up at the end of our boat, who gave the orders. I do not know the names of any of those men. But he seemed to know something about it.

  Our head seaman would give an order, and those men who knew nothing about the handling of a boat would say, ‘If you don’t stop talking through that hole in your face there will be one less in the boat.’ We were in the hands of men of that kind. I settled two or three fights between them, and quieted them down. Imagine getting right out there and taking out a pipe and filling it and standing there smoking, with the women rowing, which was most dangerous, as we had woollen rugs all around us.

  The women all rowed, every one of them. Miss Swift, from Brooklyn, rowed every mile, from the steamer to the Carpathia. Miss Young rowed every minute also, except when she was throwing up, which she did six or seven times. Countess Rothe stood at the tiller. Where would we have been if it had not been for our women, with such men as that put in charge of the boat?

  We simply rowed away. We had the order, on leaving the ship, to do that. The officer who put us in the boat gave strict orders to the men to make for the light opposite and land the passengers and get back just as soon as possible. That was the light that everybody saw in the distance. I saw it distinctly. It was a boat of some kind. It was ten miles away, but we could see it distinctly. There was no doubt but that it was a boat. But we rowed and rowed and rowed, and then we all suggested that it was simply impossible for us to get to it; that we never could get to it, and the thing to do was to go back and see what we could do for the others. We only had 22 in our boat.

  Then we turned and went back, and lingered around there for a long time, trying to locate the other boats, but we could not locate them except by hearing them. The only way they could locate us was by my electric lamp. The lamp on the boat was absolutely worth nothing. They tinkered with it all along, but they could not get it in shape. I had an electric cane – a cane with an electric light in it – and that was the only light we had. We sat there for a long time, and we saw the ship go down, distinctly.

  In my opinion, the ship when it went down was broken in two. I think very probably it broke in two. I heard four distinct explosions, which we supposed were the boilers. Of course, we did not know anything about it.

  It was something dreadful. They speak of the bravery of the men, but I do not think there was any particular bravery, because none of the men thought it was going down. Nobody ever thought the ship was going down. If they had thought the ship was going down, they would not have frivoled as they did about it. Some of them said, ‘When you come back you will need a pass,’ and, ‘You cannot get on tomorrow morning without a pass.’ They never would have said these things if anybody had had any idea that the ship was going to sink.

  Just to think that on a beautiful starlit night – you could see the stars reflected in the water – with all those Marconi warnings, that they would allow such an accident to happen, with such a terrible loss of life and property. I never saw a finer body of men in my life than the men passengers on this trip – athletes and men of sense – and if they had been permitted to enter these lifeboats with their families the boats would have been appropriately manned and many more lives saved, instead of allowing the stewards to get in the boats and save their lives, under the pretence that they could row, when they knew nothing whatever about it.

  It is simply unbearable, I think.

  George Hogg – Lookout

  I think all the women ought to have a gold medal on their breasts. They were American women that I had in mind; they were all Americans. I took the oar all the time, myself, and one lady steered. Then I got another lady to steer, and she gave me a hand on the oar, to keep herself warm. God bless them. I will always raise my hat to a woman, after what I saw.

  BOAT NO 14

  Harold Lowe – Fifth Officer


  I lay off from the Titanic, as near as I could roughly estimate, about 150 yards, because I wanted to be close enough in order to pick up anybody that came by. We unshipped our oars, and I made the five boats fast together and we hung on like that for I should say an hour and a half; somewhere under two hours.

  I did not return immediately. I had to wait until the yells and shrieks had subsided, because it would have been suicide to go back there until the people had thinned out. How could you detach them? Could not a man hold his weight on the side without help from me? There are lifelines round the lifeboat too, and they could get hold of those and hang on the rail. It would have been useless to try it, because a drowning man clings at anything.

  It would not have been wise or safe for me to have gone there before, because the whole lot of us would have been swamped and then nobody would have been saved. What are you going to do with a boat of 65 where 1,600 people are drowning?

  I made the attempt, as soon as any man could do so, and I am not scared of saying it. I did not hang back or anything else. Before going to the scene of the wreck, I was just on the margin. If anybody had struggled out of the mass, I was there to pick them up; but it was useless for me to go into the mass. It would have been suicide.

  When I deemed it safe, I transferred all my passengers – somewhere about 53 passengers – I equally distributed them between my other four boats so as to have an empty boat to go back. Then I asked for volunteers to go with me, and I went off and I rowed off to the wreckage. It was rather awkward to get in amongst it, because you could not row, because of the bodies. You had to push your way through. It was pretty well dark, and we could not see the people.

  I picked up four, four alive. But one died, and that was a Mr Hoyt, of New York. It took all the boat’s crew to pull this gentleman into the boat, because he was an enormous man, and I suppose he had been soaked fairly well with water. When we picked him up he was bleeding from the mouth and from the nose. We did get him on board and I propped him up at the stern of the boat. We let go his collar, took his collar off, and loosened his shirt so as to give him every chance to breathe, but unfortunately he died. I suppose he was too far gone when we picked him up. But the other three survived.

  I then left the wreck. I went right around and, strange to say, I did not see a single female body, not one, around the wreckage. I left my crowd of boats somewhere, I should say, about between half past three and four in the morning, and after I had been around it was just breaking day, and I am quite satisfied that I had a real good look around, and that there was nothing left.

  I could see the Carpathia coming up, and the thought then flashed through my mind, ‘Perhaps the ship has not seen us in the semi-gloom.’ I thought, ‘Well, I am the fastest boat of the lot,’ as I was sailing, you see. I was going through the water very nicely, going at about four, five knots, maybe – it may have been a little more; it may have been six. Anyhow, I was bowling along very nicely in the direction of the Carpathia, and I thought, ‘I am the fastest boat, and I think if I go toward her, for fear of her leaving us to our doom.’ That is what I was scared about, and you will understand that day was dawning more and more as the time came on.

  By and by, I noticed a collapsible boat, and it looked rather sorry, so I thought, ‘Well, I will go down and pick her up and make sure of her.’ So I went about and sailed down to this collapsible, and took her in tow.

  I had taken this first collapsible in tow, and I noticed that there was another collapsible in a worse plight. I was just thinking and wondering whether it would be better for me to cut this one adrift and let her go, and for me to travel faster to the sinking one, but I thought, ‘No, I think I can manage it.’ So I cracked on a bit, and I got down there just in time and took off about 20 men and one lady out of this sinking collapsible. They were all up to their ankles in water when I took them off. Another three minutes and they would have been down.

  I left three bodies on it; three male bodies. I think they had lifebelts on. The people on the raft told me they had been dead some time. I said, ‘Are you sure they are dead?’ They said, ‘Absolutely sure.’ I made the men turn those bodies over before I took them into my boat. I said, ‘Before you come on board here you turn those bodies over and make sure they are dead,’ and they did so. I may have been a bit hard-hearted, I cannot say, but I thought to myself, ‘I am not here to worry about bodies; I am here for life, to save life, and not to bother about bodies,’ and I left them.

  Joseph Scarrott – Able Seaman

  She was sinking by the head. Very slow it appeared to be. As the water seemed to get above the bridge, she increased her rate of going down. Head first. She was right up on end then. You could see her propeller right clear, and you could see part of her keel. She seemed to go with a rush then. You could hear the breaking up of things in the ship, and then followed four explosions. To the best of my recollection that is the number of the explosions.

  We rowed in company with the four other boats, under the orders of Mr Lowe, to see if we could pick up anybody from the wreckage. There was not so much wreckage as you would expect from a big ship like that. We did not see many people in the water when we got right over the top of the ship. There did not appear to be many at all. Later on, we heard cries – rather a great deal.

  Mr Lowe ordered four of the boats to tie together by the painters. He told the men that were in charge of them, the seamen there, what the object was. He said, ‘If you are tied together and keep all together, if there is any passing steamer they will see a large object like that on the water quicker than they would a small one.’

  During the time that was going on, we heard cries coming from another direction. Mr Lowe decided to transfer the passengers that we had, and then make up the full crew and go in the direction of those cries and see if we could save anybody else. The boats were made fast and the passengers were transferred, and we went away and went among the wreckage. When we got to where the cries were, we were amongst hundreds of dead bodies floating in lifebelts.

  It was still dark, and the wreckage and bodies seemed to be all hanging in one cluster. When we got up to it, we got one man in the stern of the boat – a passenger it was – and he died shortly after. One of the stewards that was in the boat tried means to restore life to the man; he loosed him and worked his limbs about and rubbed him; but it was of no avail at all, because the man never recovered.

  We got two others then, as we pushed our way towards the wreckage, and as we got towards the centre we saw one man there. I have since found out he was a storekeeper. He was on top of a large piece of wreckage which had come from some part of the ship. It looked like a staircase. He was kneeling there as if he was praying, and at the same time he was calling for help. When we saw him, we were a short distance away from him, and the wreckage were that thick – and I am sorry to say there were more bodies than there was wreckage – it took us a good half hour to get that distance to that man, to get through the bodies.

  We could not row the boat; we had to push them out of the way and force our boat up to this man. But we did not get close enough to get him right off – only just within the reach of an oar. We put out an oar on the fore part of the boat, and he got hold of it, and he managed to hold on, and we got him into the boat. Those three survived.

  We made sail and sailed back to take our other boats in tow that could not manage themselves at all. We made sail then, but just as we were getting clear of the wreckage we sighted the Carpathia’s lights.

  Harold Lowe – Fifth Officer

  I have seen icebergs, down south, off Cape Horn and down that way. I cannot say that I have seen them in the South Atlantic. That is the only one I saw until daybreak on the Monday morning, after the accident. I saw quite a few of them then. I did not count them, but I should say there were anywhere up to 20. They were all around. I should say that the largest one was about 100 feet high above water – all within a radius of, at the outside, six miles. The nearest would be three miles.


  They must have been in the Titanic’s way if they were all along the horizon.

  They were anything from 20 feet up to 100 feet in height. That is, above water. There is one-eighth of an iceberg supposed to be above water, and seven-eighths below water. There are only two places for them to come from; that is from the north pole and the south pole, from the polar regions. That is what I learned at school. I suppose it is right. I think it will turn out to be about that if you test it.

  Frank Morris – First Class Bath Steward

  Our officer did the finest action he could have done.

  BOAT NO 12

  Frederick Clench – Able Seaman

  After the ship sank, there were awful cries, and yelling and shouting, and that. Of course I told the women in the boats to keep quiet, and consoled them a bit. I told them it was men in the boats shouting out to the others, to keep them from getting away from one another. I saw no one in the water whatsoever, whether alive or dead, and we never seen no wreckage around us.

  We remained there, I should say, up until about four o’clock. It was just after we got the women from Mr Lowe’s boat, and he said he was going around the wreckage to see if he could find anybody. I should say we had close to 60, then; we were pretty well full up. He told us to lie on our oars and keep together until he came back to us.

  While Mr Lowe was gone I heard shouts. I looked around, and I saw a boat in the way that appeared to be like a funnel. We started to back away then. We thought it was the top of the funnel. I put my head over the gunwale and looked along the water’s edge and saw some men on a raft. Then I heard two whistles blown. I sang out ‘Aye, aye. I am coming over,’ and we pulled over and found it was a raft – not a raft, exactly, but an overturned boat – and Mr Lightoller was there on that boat, and I believe the wireless operator was on there, too. We took them on board the boat and we shared the amount of the room that was there.