A Night to Remember

  It was the same with John Jacob Astor. Barber August H. Weikman described his last moments with the great millionaire. It was a conversation full of the kind of small talk that normally takes place only in the barber’s chair. And even more trite: ‘I asked him if he minded shaking hands with me. He said, “With pleasure” …’ Yet, barber Weikman also said he left the ship at 1.50, a good half-hour earlier.

  Butt’s and Astor’s endings were described in a single story attributed to Washington Dodge, the San Francisco assessor : ‘They went down standing on the bridge, side by side. I could not mistake them,’ the papers had him saying. Yet Dr Dodge was in boat 13, a good half-mile away.

  Nor did anyone really know what happened to Captain Smith. People later said he shot himself, but there’s not a shred of evidence. Just before the end steward Edward Brown saw him walk on to the bridge, still holding his megaphone. A minute later trimmer Hemmings wandered on to the bridge and found it empty. After the Titanic sank, fireman Harry Senior saw him in the water holding a child. Pieced together, this picture, far more than suicide, fits the kind of fighter who once said: ‘In a way, a certain amount of wonder never leaves me, especially as I observe from the bridge a vessel plunging up and down in the trough of the sea, fighting her way through and over great waves. A man never outgrows that.’

  Seen and unseen, the great and the unknown tumbled together in a writhing heap as the bow plunged deeper and the stern rose higher. The strains of ‘Autumn’ were buried in a jumble of falling musicians and instruments. The lights went out, flashed on again, went out for good. A single kerosene lantern still flickered high in the after mast.

  The muffled thuds and tinkle of breaking glass grew louder. A steady roar thundered across the water as everything movable broke loose.

  There has never been a mixture like it – twenty-nine boilers … the jewelled copy of The Rubáiyát … 800 cases of shelled walnuts … 15,000 bottles of ale and stout … huge anchor chains (each link weighed 175 pounds) … thirty cases of golf clubs and tennis rackets for A. G. Spalding … Eleanor Widener’s trousseau … tons of coal … Major Peuchen’s tin box … 30,000 fresh eggs … dozens of potted palms … five grand pianos … a little mantel clock in B-38 … the massive silver duck press.

  And still it grew – tumbling trellises, ivy pots and wicker chairs in the Café Parisien … shuffleboard sticks … the fifty-phone switchboard … two reciprocating engines and the revolutional low-pressure turbine … eight dozen tennis balls for R. F. Downey & Co., a cask of china for Tiffany’s, a case of gloves for Marshall Field … the remarkable ice-making machine on G deck … Billy Carter’s new French Renault … the Ryersons’ sixteen trunks, beautifully packed by Victorine.

  As the tilt grew steeper, the forward funnel toppled over. It struck the water on the starboard side with a shower of sparks and a crash heard above the general uproar. Greaser Walter Hurst, struggling in the swirling sea, was half blinded by soot. He got off lucky – other swimmers were crushed under tons of steel But the falling funnel was a blessing to Lightoller, Bride and others now clinging to overturned collapsible B. It just missed the boat, washing it thirty yards clear of the plunging, twisting hull.

  The Titanic was now absolutely perpendicular. From the third funnel after, she stuck straight up in the air, her three dripping propellers glistening even in the darkness. To Lady Duff Gordon she seemed a black finger pointing at the sky. To Harold Bride she looked like a duck that goes down for a dive.

  Out in the boats, they could hardly believe their eyes. For over two hours they had watched, hoping against hope, as the Titanic sank lower and lower. When the water reached her red and green running lights, they knew the end was near … but nobody dreamed it would be like this – the unearthly din, the black hull hanging at ninety degrees, the Christmas card backdrop of brilliant stars.

  Some didn’t watch. In collapsible C, President Bruce Ismay bent low over his oar – he couldn’t bear to see her go down. In boat 1, C. E. Henry Stengel turned his back: ‘I cannot look any longer.’ In No. 4, Elizabeth Eustis buried her face.

  Two minutes passed, the noise finally stopped, and the Titanic settled back slightly at the stern. Then slowly she began sliding under, moving at a steep slant. As she glided down, she seemed to pick up speed. When the sea closed over the flagstaff on her stern, she was moving fast enough to cause a slight gulp.

  ‘She’s gone; that’s the last of her,’ someone sighed to lookout Lee in boat 13. ‘It’s gone,’ Mrs Ada Clark vaguely heard somebody say in No. 4. But she was so cold she didn’t pay much attention. Most of the other women were the same – they just sat dazed, dumbfounded, without showing any emotion. In No. 5, Third Officer Pitman looked at his watch and announced, ‘It is 2.20.’

  Ten miles away on the Californian, Second Officer Stone and apprentice Gibson watched the strange ship slowly disappear. She had fascinated them almost the whole watch – the way she kept firing rockets, the odd way she floated in the water. Gibson remarked that he certainly didn’t think the rockets were being sent up for fun. Stone agreed: ‘A ship is not going to fire rockets at sea for nothing.’

  By two o’clock the stranger’s light seemed very low on the horizon, and the two men felt she must be steaming away. ‘Call the captain,’ Stone ordered, ‘and tell him that the ship is disappearing in the south-west and that she has fired altogether eight rockets.’

  Gibson marched into the chart room and gave the message. Captain Lord looked up sleepily from his couch: ‘Were they all white rockets?’

  Gibson said yes, and Lord asked the time. Gibson replied it was 2.05 by the wheelhouse clock. Lord rolled over, and Gibson went back to the bridge.

  At 2.20 Stone decided that the other ship was definitely gone, and at 2.40 he felt he ought to tell the captain himself. He called the news down the speaking tube and resumed studying the empty night.

  7. ‘There is Your Beautiful Nightdress Gone’

  As the sea closed over the Titanic, Lady Cosmo Duff Gordon in boat 1 remarked to her secretary Miss Francatelli, ‘There is your beautiful nightdress gone.’

  A lot more than Miss Francatelli’s nightgown vanished that April night. Even more than the largest liner in the world, her cargo and the lives of 1,502 people.

  Never again would men fling a ship into an ice field, heedless of warnings, putting their whole trust in a few thousand tons of steel and rivets. From now on Atlantic liners took ice messages seriously, steered clear, or slowed down. Nobody believed in the ‘unsinkable ship’.

  Nor would icebergs any longer prowl the seas untended. After the Titanic sank, the American and British governments established the International Ice Patrol, and today Coast Guard cutters shepherd errant icebergs that drift towards the steamer lanes. The winter lane itself was shifted further south, as an extra precaution.

  And there were no more liners with only part-time wireless. Henceforth every passenger ship had a twenty-four-hour radio watch. Never again could the world fall apart while a Cyril Evans lay sleeping off duty only ten miles away.

  It was also the last time a liner put to sea without enough lifeboats. The 46,328-ton Titanic sailed under hopelessly outdated safety regulations. An absurd formula determined lifeboat requirements: all British vessels over 10,000 tons must carry sixteen lifeboats with a capacity of 5,500 cubic feet, plus enough rafts and floats for seventy-five per cent of the capacity of the lifeboats.

  For the Titanic this worked out at 9,625 cubic feet. This meant she had to carry boats for only 962 people. Actually, there were boats for 1,178 – the White Star Line complained that nobody appreciated their thoughtfulness. Even so, this took care of only fifty-two per cent of the 2,207 people on board, and only thirty per cent of her total capacity. From now on the rules and formulas were simple indeed – lifeboats for everybody.

  And it was the end of class distinction in filling the boats. The White Star Line always denied anything of the kind – and t
he investigators backed them up – yet there’s overwhelming evidence that the steerage took a beating: Daniel Buckley kept from going into first class … Olaus Abelseth released from the poop deck as the last boat pulled away … steward Hart convoying two little groups of women topside, while hundreds were kept below … steerage passengers crawling along the crane from the well deck aft … others climbing vertical ladders to escape the well deck forward.

  Then there were the people Colonel Gracie, Lightoller and others saw surging up from below, just before the end. Until this moment Gracie was sure the women were all off – they were so hard to find when the last boats were loading. Now, he was appalled to see dozens of them suddenly appear. The statistics suggest who they were – the Titanic’s casualty list included four of 143 first-class women (three by choice) … fifteen of ninety-three second-class women … and eighty-one of 179 third-class women.

  Not to mention the children. Except for Lorraine Allison, all twenty-nine first- and second-class children were saved, but only twenty-three out of seventy-six steerage children.

  Neither the chance to be chivalrous nor the fruits of chivalry seemed to go with a third-class passage.

  It was better, but not perfect, in second class. Lawrence Beesley remembered an officer stopping two ladies as they started through the gate to first class. ‘May we pass to the boats?’ they asked.

  ‘No, madam; your boats are down on your own deck.’

  In fairness to the White Star Line, these distinctions grew not so much from set policy as from no policy at all. At some points the crew barred the way to the boat deck; at others they opened the gates but didn’t tell anyone; at a few points there were well-meaning efforts to guide the steerage up. But generally third class was left to shift for itself. A few of the more enterprising met the challenge, but most milled helplessly about their quarters – ignored, neglected, forgotten.

  If the White Star Line was indifferent, so was everybody else. No one seemed to care about third class – neither the Press, the official inquiries, nor even the third-class passengers themselves.

  In covering the Titanic, few reporters bothered to ask the third-class passengers anything. The New York Times was justly proud of the way it handled the disaster. Yet the famous issue covering the Carpathia’s arrival in New York contained only two interviews with third-class passengers. This apparently was par for the course – of forty-three survivor accounts in the New York Herald, two again were steerage experiences.

  Certainly their experiences weren’t as good copy as Lady Cosmo Duff Gordon (one New York newspaper had her saying, ‘The last voice I heard was a man shouting, “My God, my God!”’). But there was indeed a story. The night was a magnificent confirmation of ‘women and children first’, yet somehow the loss rate was higher for third-class children than first-class men. It was a contrast which would never get by the social consciousness (or news sense) of today’s Press.

  Nor did Congress care what happened to third class. Senator Smith’s Titanic investigation covered everything under the sun, including what an iceberg was made of (‘Ice’, explained Fifth Officer Lowe), but the steerage received little attention. Only three of the witnesses were third-class passengers. Two of these said they were kept from going to the boat deck, but the legislators didn’t follow up. Again, the testimony doesn’t suggest any deliberate hush-up – it was just that no one was interested.

  The British Court of Inquiry was even more cavalier. Mr W. D. Harbinson, who officially represented the third-class interests, said he could find no trace of discrimination, and Lord Mersey’s report gave a clean bill of health – yet not a single third-class passenger testified, and the only surviving steward stationed in steerage freely conceded that the men were kept below decks as late as 1.15 a.m.

  Even the third-class passengers weren’t bothered. They expected class distinction as part of the game. Olaus Abelseth, at least, regarded access to the boat deck as a privilege that went with first- and second-class passage … even when the ship was sinking. He was satisfied as long as they let him stay above decks.

  A new age was dawning, and never since that night have third-class passengers been so philosophical.

  At the opposite extreme, it was also the last time the special position of first class was accepted without question. When the White Star liner Republic went down in 1908, Captain Sealby told the passengers entering the lifeboats, ‘Remember! Women and children go first; then the First Cabin, then the others!’ There was no such rule on the Titanic, but the concept still existed in the public mind, and at first the Press tended to forestall any criticism over what a first-class passenger might do. When the news broke that Ismay was saved, the New York Sun hastened to announce, ‘Ismay behaved with exceptional gallantry … no one knows how Mr Ismay himself got into a boat; it is assumed he wished to make a presentation of the case to his company.’

  Never again would first class have it so good. In fact, almost immediately the pendulum swung the other way. Within days Ismay was pilloried; within a year a prominent survivor divorced her husband merely because, according to gossip, he happened to be saved. One of the more trying legacies left by those on the Titanic has been a new standard of conduct for measuring the behaviour of prominent people under stress.

  It was easier in the old days … for the Titanic was also the last stand of wealth and society in the centre of public affection. In 1912 there were no movie, radio or television stars; sports figures were still beyond the pale; and café society was completely unknown. The public depended on socially prominent people for all the vicarious glamour that enriches drab lives.

  This preoccupation was fully appreciated by the Press. When the Titanic sailed, the New York Times listed the prominent passengers on the front page. After she sank, the New York American broke the news on 16 April with a leader devoted almost entirely to John Jacob Astor; at the end it mentioned that 1,800 others were also lost.

  In the same mood, the 18 April New York Sun covered the insurance angle of the disaster. Most of the story concerned Mrs Widener’s pearls.

  Never again did established wealth occupy people’s minds so thoroughly. On the other hand, never again was wealth so spectacular. John Jacob Astor thought nothing of shelling out 800 dollars for a lace jacket some dealer displayed on deck when the Titanic stopped briefly at Queenstown. To the Ryersons there was nothing unusual about travelling with sixteen trunks. The 190 families in first class were attended by twenty-three handmaids, eight valets and assorted nurses and governesses – entirely apart from hundreds of stewards and stewardesses. These personal servants had their own lounge on C deck, so that no one need suffer the embarrassment of striking up a conversation with some handsome stranger, only to find he was Henry Sleeper Harper’s dragoman.

  Or take the survivors’ arrival in New York. Mrs Astor was met by two automobiles, carrying two doctors, a trained nurse, a secretary and Vincent Astor. Mrs George Widener was met not by automobile but by a special train – consisting of a private Pullman, another car for ballast, and a locomotive. Mrs Charles Hays was met by a special train too, including two private cars and two coaches.

  It was a reception in keeping with people who could afford as much as 4,350 dollars – and these were 1912 dollars – for a de luxe suite. A suite like this had even a private promenade deck, which figured out at something like forty dollars a front foot for six days.

  This kind of life, of course, wasn’t open to everybody – in fact it would take Harold Bride, who made twenty dollars a month, eighteen years to earn enough to cross in style – so those who enjoyed it gradually became part of a remarkably tightly knit little group, which also seemed to vanish with the Titanic.

  There was a wonderful intimacy about this little world of Edwardian rich. There was no flicker of surprise when they bumped into each other, whether at the Pyramids (a great favourite), the Cowes Regatta, or the springs at Baden-Baden. They seemed to get the same ide
as at the same time, and one of these ideas was to make the maiden voyage of the largest ship in the world.

  So the Titanic’s trip was more like a reunion than an ocean passage. It fascinated Mrs Henry B. Harris, wife of the theatrical producer, who certainly wasn’t part of this world. Twenty years later she still recalled with awe, ‘There was a spirit of camaraderie unlike any I had experienced on previous trips. No one consulted the passenger list, to judge from the air of good fellowship that prevailed among the cabin passengers. They met on deck as one big party.’

  This group knew the crew almost as well as each other. It was the custom to cross with certain captains rather than on particular ships, and Captain Smith had a personal following which made him invaluable to the White Star Line. The captain repaid the patronage with little favours and privileges which kept them coming. On the last night John Jacob Astor got the bad news direct from Captain Smith before the general alarm, and others learned too.

  But the other end of the bargain was to respect the privilege. Nobody took advantage of the captain’s confidence – hardly a man in the group was saved.

  The stewards and waiters were on equally close terms with the group. They had often looked after the same passengers. They knew just what they wanted and how they liked things done. Every evening steward Samuel Etches would enter A-36 and lay out Thomas Andrews’ dress clothes just the way Mr Andrews liked. Then at 6.45 he would return and help Andrews dress. It happened all over the ship.

  And when the Titanic was going down, it was with genuine affection that steward Etches made Mr Guggenheim wear his sweater … that steward Crawford laced Mr Stewart’s shoes … that second steward Dodd tipped off John B. Thayer that his wife was still on board, long after Thayer thought she had left. In the same spirit of devotion, dining-room steward Ray pushed Washington Dodge into boat 13 – he had persuaded the Dodges to take the Titanic and now felt he had to see them through.