By no means all passengers were duped or assuaged. Olaus Abelseth, returning third class to his South Dakota homestead and chaperoning a party of fellow Norwegians, later gave the best of only three third-class accounts of the sinking submitted to the official inquiries that followed: it is touching because Abelseth did not know English nautical words and described the ship as if it were one of his livestock. He shared a two-berth cabin with Adolf Humblen, also from Ålsund. The two men were stirred awake around a quarter to midnight. They donned their clothes and went to investigate. “There was quite a lot of ice on the starboard part of the ship. They wanted us to go down again, and I saw one of the officers, and I said to him: ‘Is there any danger?’ He said, ‘No.’ I was not satisfied with that, however.” He told his brother-in-law Sigurd Moen and cousin Peter Søholt, who were sharing a cabin, to get up and dress. They walked “to the hind part of the ship” and roused two Norwegian girls, his cousin Karen Abelseth and Anna Salkjelsvik, who were traveling under his protection and Humblen’s. They traipsed on deck and, gazing over the port side of the ship, saw a light. An officer told them a rescue ship was coming, though he did not say when. Abelseth and Søholt collected life jackets for their group. Third-class passengers were by then crawling along the arm of a crane on their deck as their nearest way to the boat deck.25
Rich men were more resistant than poor to believing that life could go smash. Arthur Peuchen, a Canadian chemical manufacturer, took Charles Hays (of Canada’s Grand Trunk Pacific Railway) to inspect the ice on deck. He felt the liner’s situation was grave, and told Hays, “Why, she is listing; she should not do that, the water is perfectly calm, and the boat has stopped.” Hays, whose delusions of invincibility were driving his railway toward ruin, replied confidently, “You cannot sink this boat. No matter what we have struck, she is good for eight or ten hours.”26
In first class the New Jersey manufacturer Henry Stengel had been moaning in his sleep. His wife had just roused him from his dream when they heard a slight crash, but he felt no concern until the throbbing engines ceased. Then, with his wife in her kimono, they went to investigate. They saw Smith returning from inspecting the damage with a grave expression, and George Widener follow the captain upstairs—doubtless with the intention of quizzing him. Worried by Smith’s look, the Stengels fetched their life jackets from their stateroom and hastened on deck. Even after the lifeboat loading began, White Star officers were assuring them, “There is no danger: this is simply a matter of precaution.”27
Martha Stephenson—also in first class—“was awakened by a terrible jar with ripping and cutting noises.” The steward told her, “Go to bed, it’s nothing,” but she saw a man in an opposite cabin retrieve his shoes, which he had left in the corridor for the Boots to polish overnight, and resolved to dress. The door of another cabin had jammed, and the passenger inside was calling for help. Richard Williams, a sporting young American on his way to Harvard, rammed his shoulders to the panel and broke it in. An indignant steward threatened to have him arrested. Mrs. Stephenson and her sister, Elizabeth Eustis, “dressed as if for breakfast, putting on our burglar pockets containing our letters of credit and money. I determined also to do my hair and put on a lined waistcoat and old winter suit as it was so cold. While Elizabeth was doing her hair, the ship suddenly settled, frightening me very much.” John Thayer senior came to collect them as Miss Eustis was hooking her waist. It was the methodical details that they remembered afterward. “I put on my fur coat over everything and Elizabeth said she would wear her watch, which reminded me that mine was hanging by the bureau and I quickly put it on. I took my glasses and small change purse, also a clean handkerchief.” As the sisters left with Thayer, they were told to don life jackets. They realized the situation must be serious and were “frightened though very quiet.”28
Another woman in first class was the redoubtable widow Emma Bucknell: seventy years later her great-granddaughter would marry Jack Thayer’s grandson. At the age of fifty-nine she exuded mature vigor and resolve and shone with confidence in her person, position, and way of life. “Exceedingly intellectual and much traveled,” was the description of her by Margaret Brown, who had a good brain and had circumnavigated the world.29 Her calm, clear head impressed many in the next hours and days. Awakened by the crash, she made a foray along the corridor outside her cabin. There she found lumps of ice, which had crashed through an open porthole when the iceberg struck. A steward came along the corridor denying any danger, “but while his voice was calm and he delivered his message easily, his face belied the confidence of his words.” Emma Bucknell dressed as warmly as she could. “I anticipated that there would come greater difficulties, and I intended to be prepared. I told my maid to dress also. About this time another man came through the hallways crying out that everyone should dress immediately and go on deck. I called to my maid to fasten my gown, and only tarried long enough to get a heavy fur coat.” Back in the corridor a woman was declaring that it was impossible for the liner to have hit an iceberg. Mrs. Bucknell picked up some ice from the floor and, displaying it in the palm of her hand, said with scornful emphasis, “Here is ice! It is an iceberg!” Her maid, Albina Bazzani, pleaded with her not to go up on deck: “she cried out that we would surely be lost if we did not stay in the safety of our room, but I told her the only thing to do under the circumstances was to obey orders.” On deck Emma Bucknell joined the Astors and Wideners talking together. As the call came for women and children, the Astors crossed to the port side of the ship: “he was bending over her as they walked. And it was then that I saw the Wideners for the last time. They were all together.”30 Harry Widener had recently bought a rare 1598 edition of Bacon’s essays. “Mother,” he said on deck, “I have placed the volume in my pocket: little ‘Bacon’ goes with me!” (A fellow bibliophile has called this “the most touching, most pathetic, withal the most glorious incident in the romance of book-collecting.”31)
Jack Astor’s life had been as perfectly pitched as a concert-hall piano, with nothing skewed about the keys and nothing slack in the strings to mar the tone. Now everything went discordant and awry. On the boat deck, where he went to investigate the disturbance, he met Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, whose wife had been alarmed by the venting of the boilers. They agreed that their wives should dress. Lady Duff Gordon donned a mauve silk kimono and a squirrel coat. Madeleine Astor dressed in a black coat with sable trim, a diamond necklace, and a fur muff. In the A deck foyer the Astors met Captain Smith, whom Astor took aside and quizzed discreetly. His wife needed reassurance about her life jacket. The Astors were glimpsed sitting side by side on two mechanical horses in the gymnasium while he sliced open a life jacket with a penknife to show her its cork contents.
In second class, the Cornishwoman Agnes Davies felt a jar and rang for a steward, who assured her party that they could safely remain in their berths. But when Robert Phillips, the widowed fishmonger who wanted a new start in America, told his daughter to dress, the Cornishwoman followed suit. She decided to wake and dress her eight-year-old son, although their steward repeated that there was no danger. “Had it not been for our curiosity to learn what was going on, we might have perished. We went on deck about 12.15.”32 Also in second class, that troublemaker Imanita Shelley declared that she and Lutie Parrish were awakened by the stopping of the engines. They heard excited voices in the corridor speaking of a collision with an iceberg, but a steward who appeared after her continuous ringing insisted that nothing was amiss and that passengers should return to bed. Half an hour later, second-class passengers heard stewards running down the passages, pounding on cabin doors or bursting them open and yelling, “Everybody on deck with life belts on, at once.”33 Both women donned their life jackets and went to the boat deck. “There was practically no excitement on the part of anyone during this time,” Mrs. Shelley avowed, “the majority seeming to think that the big boat could not sink altogether, and that it was better to stay on the steamer than trust to the lifeboats.”34
/> The Polish-born leather worker Berk Trembisky was berthed in a third-class cabin. “We knew something was wrong, and we jumped out of bed and we dressed ourselves and went out.” Other passengers started arguing: “one said that it was dangerous and the other said that it was not; one said white and the other said black. Instead of arguing with those people, I instantly went to the highest spot.” He decided that if the ship was going to sink, he should be at the top of it: “That was my first idea, which was the best.” He found an open door into second class, where he saw few people, and climbed a ladder into first class.35 The Irish immigrant Daniel Buckley recounted that he and three other youths were asleep in a cabin. “I heard some terrible noise and I jumped out on the floor, and the first thing I knew my feet were getting wet; the water was just coming in slightly. I told the other fellows to get up, that there was something wrong, and that the water was coming in. They only laughed at me. One of them says: ‘Get back into bed. You are not in Ireland now.’ I got on my clothes as quick as I could.” As their cabin was tiny, he stepped out to give the three others room to dress. Two sailors came along shouting, “All up on deck unless you want to get drowned!” He hastened to the boat deck, where he realized that he had forgotten his life jacket in his cabin; but when he went to retrieve it, water rising up the stairs forced him back. Returning to the boat deck, he met a first-class passenger with two life jackets: “He gave me one, and fixed it on me.”36
It is worth recapitulating that there were twenty boats for escape. Two (number 1 on the starboard and 2 on the port) were wooden emergency boats with a capacity of forty occupants each, built for rescuing people overboard. There were fourteen wooden lifeboats designed to carry sixty-five occupants each, with odd numbers arrayed on the starboard and even numbers on the port. There were also four Engelhardt lifeboats, named after their designer, made of clinker with collapsible canvas gunwales and a rounded bottom like a canoe. Each was capable of carrying forty-seven occupants. These were designated A, B, C, and D: C was stowed underneath emergency lifeboat 1 forward on the starboard boat deck; D was under emergency lifeboat 2 on the port side; while A and B were lashed to the inaccessible roof of the officers’ quarters.
The recent capsizing in the English Channel of a lifeboat from P&O’s Oceana, which drowned nine people, discouraged passengers from being jerked down the tall precipitous side of a liner that was not expected to sink. They anticipated a delay in reaching New York, but nothing worse, and were reluctant to leave the warm comforts of the liner for the chill perils of a frail craft bobbing on the ocean. The P&O fatalities inhibited White Star’s officers, too, from filling their lifeboats. They feared that the davits and tackle for lowering the lifeboats would buckle if the boats were lowered at full capacity. Lightoller, an able seaman testified, “was frightened of the falls.”37 Harland & Wolff had tested one of the Olympic’s lifeboats—raising and lowering it six times bearing the equivalent weight of sixty-five people—without buckling or strain. The shipbuilders assumed that this was known to the crew of the Titanic, which had identical equipment, but the officers filling the lifeboats either did not know or forgot. The capacity of many lifeboats was therefore squandered. Only at the last were the lifeboats full, for by then it was clear that the ship was about to plunge two miles deep.
People were right to be scared. Lifeboat 13, for example, was lowered into a frightening outrush of water from the ship’s side about ten feet above the ocean. This cascade was swamping the boat until its occupants wielded an oar against the ship’s side and reached the ocean without overturning. Because of the Titanic’s shifting tilt, lifeboat 15, which was lowered quickly afterward, nearly crushed lifeboat 13, to the horror of the latter’s shouting, screaming occupants. On reaching the ocean, they could not detach it from the falls and tackle. A stoker finally severed the ropes with his knife. The turbulent outflow then swept the lifeboat away from the Titanic into calm waters, but its occupants had endured a terrifying ten minutes.
Murdoch, who was in charge of loading the starboard lifeboats, interpreted Smith’s order “Put the women and children in and lower away,” to mean women and children first. Lightoller, his counterpart on the port side, interpreted the order to mean women and children only. Both men ordered the lowering of boats that were not filled to capacity, but Murdoch allowed men to board if there were no women and children about. Lightoller feared, he said, that if some men were allowed to board lifeboats, excluded men would rush and overwhelm them, yet he also testified that there was no jostling of women and children by men during the loading of the earlier boats: “they could not have stood quieter if they had been in church.” In the belief that he was applying “the rule of human nature” as well as a rule of the sea, Lightoller was relentless in excluding men, youths, and even pubescent boys.38 His prohibition on boys seemed deplorably callous to Samuel Rule, chief bathroom steward: “I kept a special look-out for the lift-boys and bell-boys. Little lads they were. If I had seen any of them, I would have bundled them in the boats with the women.”39
When early lifeboats were loaded the boat decks seemed nearly empty. Seaman Lucas, who helped load the port lifeboats, said they were not filled “because there were no women knocking about.”40 This strengthens the supposition that the launching times of early lifeboats were earlier than is generally propounded. If the empty look of the boat decks sounds improbable, it is worth noting that Frank Millet, who as an artist had a strong visual sense, was awed by the size of decks as large as a tennis court or courtyard: “500 people don’t make a show on the decks.”41
A man of the world lives by notions: he minds the opinion of the world, is driven by fear of worldly disapproval, and judges by the world’s standards. It was part of the world’s masculine code that gentlemen acted as squires to women traveling alone. “Though being a gentleman sometimes gets one into scrapes it also gets one out of them,” Earl Cowper had recently written.42 This was to be exemplified by Hugh Woolner in the early hours of April 15. He felt responsible for Helen Churchill Candee, got her life jacket from atop her wardrobe, tied her into it, fetched his own life jacket, and gave the spare in his cabin to a third-class passenger: perhaps Daniel Buckley. His supreme wish was to get Mrs. Candee into the first port lifeboat, which he did. Other women were reluctant to board until Lightoller assured them that it was “a matter of precaution,” whereupon they came forward more freely.43 Even so, lifeboat 6 left with thirty-seven empty places and only twenty-eight occupants.
Archie Butt was another squire. He had known Marie Young when she taught music to the Roosevelt children in the White House, and handed her into lifeboat 8, where he tucked a blanket around her as if she were going for a blowy ride in an open motorcar. Washington Roebling escorted Edith and Margaret Graham with Elizabeth Shutes into lifeboat 3. “We passed by the palm room, where two short hours before we had listened to a beautiful concert,” Shutes recalled, and mounted stairs that had undergone a sinister transmutation. “No laughing throng, but on either side stand quietly, bravely, the stewards, all equipped with the white, ghostly life-preservers . . . only pale faces, each form strapped about with those white bars. So gruesome a scene. We passed on.”44
The emergency door from third class into second class was opened early on. There was a route from there up the center of the liner, past the second-class smoking room, straight to the boat deck.45 However, an organized call for third-class passengers to proceed to the boat deck was not made until about fifty minutes after the collision. There was no realization that, given the deficiency of lifeboats, this was fatal to the chances of most third-class passengers. The explanation was not malign Edwardian snobbery, but rather human failure: Captain Smith never gave specific instructions, and Chief Officer Henry Wilde was too dazed to think for himself. Without crew escorts, some third-classers were baffled by the maze of corridors and excluded by the locked gates that U.S. immigration laws required between third-class decks and other parts of the ship, though these were unlocked by twelve
thirty. There were claims that three young Irishwomen were excluded by a locked gate guarded by a seaman until Jim Farrell, a laborer from Aghnacliffe, County Longford, shouted “Great God, man! Open the gate, and let the girls through!”46
The men in third class were held back initially, forbidden to accompany women and children being guided to the boat deck and discouraged from going upward in the ship where they had better chances of survival. “Jack” Poingdestre saw a distraught mass of men from third class, some with luggage, gathered beneath a ladder to second class, which was blocked by stewards.47 However, “steerage passengers,” so far as Berk Trembisky saw, “were not prevented from getting up to the upper decks by anybody, or by closed doors, or anything else.”48
John Hart was a third-class steward in charge of a section of single women, wives traveling with children, and nine married couples with children: a total of about fifty-eight. He testified that some refused to don life jackets: “They did not believe the ship was hurt in any way.”49 Around twelve thirty he received the order “Pass your women to the boat deck.”50 The routes from the third-class berths to the boat deck were few and circuitous, so, holding back the men, Hart guided a group of about twenty-five women and children upward to the boat deck. As he testified, “some were not willing to go to the boat deck and stayed behind. Some of them went to the boat deck and found it rather cold, and saw the boats being lowered away, and thought themselves more secure on the ship, and consequently returned to their cabin.” A few of his entourage declared that “they preferred to remain on the ship than be tossed about on the water like a cockle-shell.”51 The Finnish girls in his rescue party stayed in lifeboat 8, but other women under his aegis jumped out and scurried back into the liner, where it was warm. After expostulating, Hart descended to collect another twenty-five third-class passengers, including the Swedish and Irish. Even at this critical stage passengers refused to leave their cabins. Some women refused to leave their husbands, and children clutched at their fathers. All the adults owned was in their luggage, which some were loath to abandon. Hart insisted on taking only women and children, despite men clamoring to join his group, and altogether saved over fifty of them. His second group reached lifeboat 15 at about one fifteen (an hour and thirty-five minutes after the collision). He started to return for another muster of third-class passengers, but was ordered to man lifeboat 15. As this lifeboat was prepared to leave, there was a renewed cry for women and children, but wives still would not leave their husbands.52
Voyagers of the Titanic: Passengers, Sailors, Shipbuilders, Aristocrats, and the Worlds They Came From Page 21
