How to Survive the Titanic
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and Bryce 137–8
cross-examination of Franklin 141
cross-examination of Hichens 154–6
cross-examination of Ismay 112–23, 160–2
cross-examination of Lightoller 127–31, 145–53
cross-examination of Rostron 123–4
English press view of 126
findings 164–6, 235
Graphic cartoon of 127 Ismay’s attempt to influence 143–4
Ismay’s request to be released 157–8
lack of sense 231
qualifications as committee chairman 138
refuses permission for Ismay to return home 133, 136, 142
return to New York 163
use of language 164–5
view of inquiry 126
‘Some Reflections on the Loss of the Titanic (Conrad) 185–7
Southampton 106, 113
Speke Hall 82
Sphere, The 254–5
spiritualism 205
Sporting Pie (Wilson) 72–3
Standard 126
Stanley, Amy 9, 12
Stead, Alfred 126
Stead, W. T. 126, 205
steamships, development of 64–6,
181, 189, 190 Steele, Charles 97
steering communication systems 155
Stenson, Patrick 149
Stevenson, Robert Louis 166, 194–5
Stoker, Bram 66
Straits Times 175
Strand 285
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
(Stevenson) 166
Straus, Ida 159
Stuart, Mary Anna Maxwell 214
Stuart White, Mrs 159
super captains 251 survivors aboard Carpathia 45–6, 54–7
adrift 27, 36
arrival in New York 57–60
need to tell tales 25
numbers 11 rescue 28–32
roll call 29–30
by social class 164
statement 57
Syren, The 99–100
Taft, William 54, 138, 200–2
Tales of Unrest (Conrad) 277
Telegraph, the 237–8, 239, 256
Teutonic 89
Thayer, Jack 9, 12, 14, 16–17, 18, 39, 54, 152, 199, 203, 219–20, 265
Thayer, John B. 9, iii, 199–200
Thayer, Marian
aboard Carpathia 54, 55–6
aboard Titanic 3, 32, 44, 163, 200, 242
appeal 201
background 199–200
community of grief 210–11
correspondence with 1smay 40, 203– 6, 209–10, 211–12, 214, 215–19, 224–8
death 279
defence of Ismay 22
insurance claim 216
later years 280
letter to President Taft 200–2
relationship with Ismay 198–9, 204– 5, 206, 216–18, 219–20, 223
relationship with Ismay aboard Titanic 202–3, 219–20
and spiritualism 205
The Times (London) 7, 33, 40, 139–40, 230
Times Democrat 260
Titanic
accounts of evacuation 5–10
all passengers believed saved 47–8
band 135, 136, 188, 234
Beesley’s account of loss 32–7
behaviour of victims 20–1
British press response to loss 233–4
casualties 160
coal supply 250
Collapsible A II
Collapsible B II
Collapsible C 5, 6, 6–10, 12, 18, 116–18, 119–20, 253–4
Collapsible C occupants 12–13
Collapsible D 8
collision with iceberg 4, 34, 119, 154–6
comparison with great buildings 110 comparison with the Waldorf-
Astoria Hotel 111
Conrad’s response to loss of 167, 184–90
construction 35, 102
criticism of women’s behaviour 134
damage 4, 12
death cries 16–17
decks 6
dilemma for male passengers 21
distress call 28, 135, 246
emigrant passengers 12–13
expectations of safety aboard 11–12
fall of forward funnel 131
fascination of 285–7
first books on 234
flotsam 16, 29
Hard-a-starboard order 154–6
ice warnings 3–4, 29, 43, 55–6, 115–16, 130, 140, 147–8, 241–4, 247–9, 265
idea for conceived 100–2
insurance 161
internal telegraph signalling system 151
inventory 35
Ismay boards 106–8
Ismay leaves 5, 114, 117–18, 253–4, 272–3
Ismay screens 44
Ismay’s account of voyage 113–14
Ismay’s confidence in 152–3, 157
Ismay’s love of 39–40
Ismay’s role aboard 24, 114, 115, 160–1, 240–1, 250–1, 256, 263–4
kitchen and dining room staff 35
lack of safety drill 11
launch 102
Lebanese passengers 12, 13
Lifeboat 1 11, 18
Lifeboat 6 155–6
Lifeboat 13 33
Lifeboat 14 18
lifeboat capacity 11, 17, 119, 162, 164, 251–2, 252
lifeboat locations 5
lifeboats launched 4–5, 10–12, 33, 116–18, 130
lifeboats stand off 17–18
Lightoller’s account of loss 38–9, 127–31, 235–6, 281
luxury 11, 186
maiden voyage 105
mail 14
movement after collision 151–3, 164, 237
movements of ix near miss with New York 45, 107
news of loss breaks 46–50, 48 pantry 35
passenger numbers 11
recovery of bodies 131, 160
rockets 29
roll call of survivors 29–30
sea trials 113
searchlights 156–7
shots 8–9, 9
sinks 13–17, 34, 276
size 4, 6
speed 114, 115, 133, 139–40, 148–9,
153, 161, 164, 243, 249–51, 255, 263–4
survivor numbers 11 survivors adrift 27, 36
survivors arrival in New York 57–60
survivors by social class 164
survivors rescued 28–32
survivors statement 57
symbolism of 189
US inquiry findings 164–6
US inquiry launched in to loss 50
watertight compartments 119
wireless operators 29, 247
women and children only policy 159, 253
Titanic (film) 23
Titanic (Young) 234, 243
Titanic and Other Ships
(Lightoller) 157, 280–1
Titanic Survivors’ Committee 263
Tom Brown’s Schooldays (Hughes) 75
Torrens 194–6, 199
Touma, Darwis 12
Touma, Georges 12
Touma, Maria 12
transatlantic steamship service 65
Travelling Palaces (Fletcher) 67
Treasure Island (Stevenson) 194–5
Tribune 94
Truth 49
Twixt Land and Sea (Conrad) 220–2
Uhler, General 118, 119–20
unconscious, the 165–6
Under Western Eyes (Conrad) 181
US inquiry
accounts of Ismay’s departure 5–10
Bride’s testimony 134–6
British press coverage 230
Conrad on 126, 185–6, 187–8
findings 164–6
first day 112–23
Franklin’s testimony 141 Hichens’ testimony 154–6
and the ice warning 115–16, 130,
147–8
Ismay released 162
Ismay’s account of departure from Titanic 114, 117–18
Ismay’s account of e
vacuation 116–18
Ismay’s account of time on Carpathia 30–I Ismay’s account of voyage 113–14
Ismay’s attempt to influence 143–4
Ismay’s attendance 157–9
Ismay’s opening statement 113
Ismay’s request to be released from 157–8
Ismay’s testimony 10, 14, 30–1, 39,
112–23, 160–2
lack of sense 230–1
launched 50
Lightoller’s opinion of 130–1
Lightoller’s testimony 127–31, 145–53
Lightoller’s use of language 156–7
location 109–12
Lowe’s testimony 144–5
newspaper accounts of first day 120–1, 122
questions about Ismay’s role on Titanic 114, 115
reconvened in Washington 140–1
report 235
Roston’s testimony 123–4
Ryerson’s testimony 163
Saturday 20
April hearing 133–6
Smith’s viewpoint of 126
transfer to Washington 136, 138–9
and the use of wireless 133–6
and the Yamsi messages 141, 145–7, 161
US merchant marine 95
US Navy 54
Uttoxeter Advertiser 79
Vachell, Horace 78
Verne, Jules 65, 66
Victory (Conrad) 202, 209
Virginian 47, 246
Voyage Out, The (Woolf) 286
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel 109–12, 133, 163
Wall Street Journal 97
Walton, Isaac 261–2
Washington 136, 138–9, 140–1, 143
Washington Post 49
Washington Times 45
Watt, Bertha 46
Waugh, Evelyn 40
Weikman, August 6, 163, 272
Wells, H. G. 20, 286
Whillan’s Yard, Maryport 61
White Star Line
arrangements for survivors 58
compensation settlements 266
guilty of negligence 263
insurance policy 153
Ismay sells 93–100
Ismay’s retirement from 218–19, 262
liners 66–7
New Zealand trade 83
ownership 239
passenger list, 1906 x
Sanderson offered chairmanship 107
Smith’s career with 42
Thomas Ismay buys 63
Widener, Eleanor 200, 203
Widener, George 52, 53, 111, 161, 200
Wilde, Chief Officer 6, 149, 156, 272
Wilde, Oscar 166, 277
Willard’s Hotel, Washington 138, 143
Williams, Augustine Podmore 175–6, 206, 276
Williams, J. E. Hodder 42
Wilson, F. B. 72–3
Wilson, Henry Threlfell 63
wireless messaging 245–9
witnesses, value of testimony 155
Wolff, Gustav 64
Women’s Relief Committee 58
Woolf, Virginia 191, 205, 229, 285, 286
Woolner, Hugh 8
Wordsworth, William 270
Yamsi messages 48, 51–4, 141, 145–7, 161, 234–5, 246
Yeats, W. B. 285
yellow press, the 136–8
Young, Filson 16, 20, 102, 234, 243, 245, 246
Young, Marie 32, 46
Youth (Conrad) 181
Photo Insert 1
J. Bruce Ismay was the odd one out in a family of doubles. Sandwiched between two dead siblings, he was succeeded by two sets of twins.
The first of his family to receive the education of a gentleman, in 1874 Ismay went aged eleven to Elstree in Middlesex, to prepare him for Harrow. A sea-gazing northerner in the south of England, he was miserable at school.
In 1882, J. Bruce’s father Thomas Ismay commissioned Richard Norman Shaw to design him a palace on 390 dank acres overlooking the River Dee. Florid at sea, Ismay senior was austere on land, the absence of trees and flowers emphasising the severity of the family home.
The Ismay family, including spouses and twins. Seated centre, then clockwise: Margaret Ismay, Charlotte, Bower, Ethel, James, Lady Margaret Seymour (James’s wife), Bruce, Thomas Ismay, Florence, (unidentified gentleman), Dora and Ada.
The picture room at Dawpool, whose domed ceiling was described by Ismay’s mother, Margaret, as ‘an eyesore’, served as a gallery for Thomas Ismay’s art collection, which included Rossetti’s The Loving Cup (on the easel to the left).
In New York, where he worked as an agent for the White Star Line, Ismay behaved much as any rich, handsome, unattached 22-year-old male would in a city four thousand miles away from his oppressive father.
Following their wedding on New York’s Fifth Avenue, Ismay and his new wife Florence sailed to Liverpool on the Oceanic to meet his family.
Margaret, the Ismays’ eldest daughter, was born in 1889. Following the death of their second child and the cooling of their marriage, Margaret became Ismay’s favourite.
Sandheys, outside Liverpool: the Ismays’ family home. Ismay, who liked order and quiet, had a separate wing built in which to house the children.
Ismay’s second son, Tom, born in 1894, was rejected by his father after polio left him disabled.
Workers leaving Harland and Wolff in Belfast, 1911. The shipyard covered 80 acres, employed 16,000 local men and distributed £28,000 in weekly wages. The Titanic can just be seen under construction in the gantry behind.
Draftsmen designing the White Star Liners in the drawing room at Harland and Wolff, 1908.
The designer’s internal drawings for the Titanic’s first-class staircase.
Plans for the construction of the Titanic. At 882 feet 9 inches in length, 92 feet 6 inches in width, 175 feet high and weighing in at 46,328 tons, the Titanic was the largest ship ever built, and at her launch, the largest moving object on Earth.
The Titanic carried four funnels — although the fourth was a dummy, thought by the designers to make the ship look more powerful. Each was the height of a two-storey house and wide enough for two locomotives to pass through simultaneously.
The Titanic and Olympic in the gantries. ‘For months and months,’ wrote Filson Young, ‘in that monstrous iron enclosure there was nothing that had the faintest likeness to a ship; only something that might have been the iron scaff olding for the naves of half-a-dozen cathedrals laid end to end.’
Prior to her launch, Lord Pirrie and Ismay (right) inspect the completed Titanic at Harland and Wolff.
‘The trouble with the beds,’ Ismay noted in his inspection of the Olympic, ‘is entirely due to their being too comfortable.’ With coal in the grates and curtains on the windows, those in first class were able to feel that they were in their own private apartment.
The two first-class entrance staircases on the Titanic were the ship’s most luxurious fittings. Built in the English style of William and Mary, the iron banister grillwork was inspired by the French court of Louis XIV. Clad in oak panelling with bronze cherubs supporting the ornamental lamps, a large glass dome allowed in natural light.
‘The reading and writing room is of 1770, but in pure white, with an immense bow window’, as one journalist described it.
Loading the mailbags prior to departure from Queenstown (Cork), Ireland. Among the 200,000 letters and packages carried by the Titanic was the manuscript of Joseph Conrad’s story, ‘Karain’.
The Titanic leaving Queenstown on 11 April 1912, her last port of call before crossing the Atlantic.
The Titanic’s boat deck. It was Ismay’s decision to restrict the number of lifeboats on the davits so that the deck was not cluttered.
Marconi room on the Olympic, as the Titanic’s would have looked. Guglielmo Marconi’s recent invention of wireless messaging allowed ships for the first time to communicate with one another without using flags and flames. Marconigrams, it was believed, made the sea as safe as a suburban street.
The Titanic
’s captain and officers. Captain Smith is seated, second from right.
Contemporary artist’s impression of the Titanic at night. ‘To stand on the deck of the Titanic,’ Lawrence Beesley later said, ‘gave one a sense of wonderful security.’
Photo Insert 2
The Marconi operators, ‘joked’ as they sent out the distress signal CQD: ‘The humour of the situation appealed to me’, Harold Bride recalled, ‘and I cut in with a little remark that made us all laugh, including the Captain. “Send SOS, it’s the new call, and it may be your last chance to send it.”’
Artist’s impression drawn for the Sphere, April 1912. The collision occurred at 11.40 p.m.; the ship’s speed was 22 knots.
Artist’s impression drawn for the Sphere, April 1912. The sound, one woman recalled, was like the scraping of a nail along metal; to another it felt as though the ship ‘had been seized by a giant hand and shaken once, twice, then stopped dead in its course’.
Artist’s impression drawn for the Sphere, April 1912. It took ten seconds for the iceberg to tear a 300-foot gash along the Titanic’s starboard side, slicing open four compartments.
There were several versions of Captain Smith’s final moments, in one of which he exhorts the passengers to ‘Be British’.
Second Officer Lightoller on the bridge of the Titanic.
Illustration by Fortunio Matania of the Titanic’s last moments, with annotations taken from eye-witness accounts. The Titanic went down two hours and forty minutes after she hit the iceberg — the same length of time as a performance in the theatre. ‘I did not wish to see her go down’, Ismay told the US inquiry, ‘I am glad I did not.’
Artist’s impression drawn for the Sphere, April 1912. In Lawrence Beesley’s account of being lowered from the Titanic in a lifeboat, he asks his readers to measure seventy-five feet of a tall building and then look down.
Lifeboat thought to be Collapsible C. A Titanic stewardess recalled Ismay ‘sitting on his haunches on the stern of the boat that was cleared by the Carpathia… He sat there like a statue, blue with cold, and neither said a word nor looked at us. He was nearly dead when taken on board, for he was wearing only his nightclothes and an overcoat.’