THE TRAGEDY OF A WONDER SHIP
The Story of the “Titanic” Disaster
ON Wednesday, April 10, 1912, there steamed out of Southampton the largest boat in the world—a wonder ship, a veritable floating palace. She was bound for America. It was her first voyage, and it was her last, for five days later, from out the night, there loomed the white form of a gigantic iceberg, which crashed into her starboard side; and the Titanic and most of the people aboard her had entered upon their last two hours of life.
There is a magic in figures, but even those which tell of the size of the giant ship fail to carry the tale of her greatness. Still, they must be given in order to show how this mammoth of the ocean was as a pygmy in the grip of the elemental forces.
She was a three-screw vessel of 46,328 tons gross and 21,831 tons net. Her length was 852 feet, and her breadth 92 feet. From top of keel to top of beam she was 64 feet, while her hold was almost 60 feet deep. Her horsepower was 50,000. She was pronounced unsinkable, having fifteen water-tight bulkheads and a water-tight inner bottom, extending nearly the whole breadth of the vessel, and several other water-tight divisions. She was fitted with six independent sets of boilers, wireless telegraphy, submarine signalling, electric lights and power systems; telephones and telegraphs communicated between the various working positions; three electric elevators were installed to carry passengers from one deck to another; and every appliance necessary to enable the ship’s officers to ascertain depth of water, speed of the vessel, and a hundred and one other things, were provided, while life-saving appliances to the requirements of the Board of Trade were included in her equipment. There were concert-rooms, smoking-rooms, swimming baths, tennis courts, restaurant, libraries—everything in the way of modern luxury.
And yet when the crash came to this floating palace, this realisation of the shipwright’s dreams, out of the 2,201 souls she carried, only 711 were saved—a tragic comment upon the impotence of man against the forces of Nature.
The Titanic sailed from Southampton to Cherbourg, from Cherbourg to Queenstown, then across the Atlantic by the then accepted outward-bound route for New York, her passengers amazed at the luxury of the wonder ship which was bearing them to the New World. The first two or three days were uneventful, and on the 14th the magnificent lounge was turned into a scene of fairy delight for a gala dinner. Beautiful music filled the lounge and filtered through to other parts of the ship; well dressed men and women sat and talked, or strolled about after dinner in the camaraderie of fellow-voyagers, all unsuspecting of the catastrophe that was hastening down upon them from out the darkness of the night.
Earlier in the day a wireless message had been received from s.s. Caronia, informing Captain Smith that “West-bound steamers report bergs, growlers, and field ice in 42° N. from 49° W., April 12,” the Titanic then being about latitude 43° 35′ N. and longitude 43° 50′ W. This was at 9 A.M., and at 1.42 P.M., when the vessel was about 42° 35′ N., 45° 50′ W., another wireless message was received, this time from s.s. Baltic, saying that “large quantities of field ice” had been seen that day in 41° 51′ N., longitude 49° 52′ W.
In order to understand the significance of all these warnings, flashed across the ether, it is necessary to remember the following facts:
Icebergs are gigantic masses of Polar glacier carried out to sea, only about one-eighth of their mass being above the surface.
Growlers are small icebergs.
Field ice is frozen sea-water floating in a looser form than pack ice, covering large areas of the Polar seas, broken up into large pieces, driven together by current and wind, thus forming an almost continuous sheet of ice.
All these forms of ice masses are dangerous to shipping, and the ocean routes were mapped out so that vessels might be able to steer clear of them. As a matter of fact, although icebergs and field ice had been seen as far south before, it was many years since field ice had been observed so far south as at the time of the Titanic disaster. Two further messages were received on the ship during the day, one of them giving news of large icebergs; but, except for the officers and men whose watch it was, everybody on board the Titanic turned into bed, to dream of wonderful things, no doubt, and to wake up to a nightmare of horror.
Suddenly the stillness of the vast vessel was broken by a thudding crash, a ripping of steel plates. Something had happened. Some heard the sound—those in the steerage, who were near that portion of the ship which was a city, and those officers who were on deck and the bridge. The rest, asleep, lulled into the land of dreams by the motion of the ship, were awakened by the strange feeling of stillness that suddenly pervaded everything; there was no longer the throb of the engines; the vibration of the ship ceased, and people were roused by the utter emptiness of things, as it seemed. Heads popped out of cabins and state-rooms, people strolled up corridors asking each other “Why?” and “What?” and so forth; and getting no answer that meant anything except assurances that all was well—all must be well! Was not this the safest vessel in the world? And so they went back to bed.
But other people, those whose duty it was to keep awake, to have their fingers upon the pulse, as it were, of this leviathan, did not sleep. First Officer Murdoch and his watch were on the bridge; the captain was in his room. Murdoch, peering through the blue-blackness of night, had seen a haze before the ship, and, quick to realise what was before them, he issued sharp commands, which were obeyed instantly; but all too late. That haze resolved itself into ice—a massive, towering mountain of ice—into which the Titanic’s bows cut their way. The ice that the ether waves had been telling about all day had loomed out upon them like a spectre in the night; nay, like the impersonation of Death.
Captain Smith rushed to the bridge when he felt the ship stop.
“We have struck ice, sir,” was the first officer’s reply to his question.
“Close the water-tight doors!” was the captain’s order, only to be told that this had already been done. A movement of switches, and Murdoch had set bells a-tingling and great steel doors a-sliding in their grooves; bells to warn anyone that the doors were being closed, so that they might not be cut off.
But no closing of water-tight doors was to be sufficient to save this giant ship. The damage wrought by that white, translucent mass ran over a length of some three hundred feet, and it had all been done in—one trembles to write it—ten seconds. Twenty knots an hour had the vessel been travelling, and in ten seconds she had ripped her way along the ice for three hundred feet, tearing her plates apart as though they had been brown paper, and letting the water in in tons.
The carpenter sounded the ship; Phillips, the Marconi operator, was instructed to get ready to send out a call for assistance, in case it was wanted. The carpenter made his report; and, because of its character, Captain Smith went back to the Marconi room, and messages were sent out to all steamers within reach. Still later, but only by a few minutes, the C Q D and the S O S—international signals for help—were dispatched, to be followed by:
“We have struck a berg! Come at once!” Seventy-eight miles away that message was picked up by the Carpathia, which answered: “Coming at once!”
And, meanwhile, what of the population of the floating palace whose vitals were being swamped by hundreds of tons of water? She was listing heavily to starboard. In various parts of the ship a few people were still awake, asking what was afoot, for none had yet been told what had taken place. If there is one thing the master of a vessel dreads it is panic, and passengers must be kept in ignorance while there is a chance to obviate the danger. But rumours floated here and there. “We’ve struck an iceberg,” said one now and again; and, as if that were nothing to be alarmed about, folks shrugged their shoulders and turned into bed. So sure was everyone of the safety of this masterpiece of science and industry that the thought of danger never entered their heads.
It was a fine joke, apparently, to have struck an iceberg, and a berg was a rare sight to most of those people, who thought more of that than of the ship. The great spectral mass was a thing of wonder; its towering peak told them something of its gigantic size, since but one-eighth of it showed above the surface. “What a corker!” said someone, and then went to bed.
Meanwhile, firemen were coming up from below; and each set who came up reported that the water was pouring into their stokeholds.
Captain Smith, convinced by the list of the ship that there was indeed grave danger—she was very much down by the head, and diving now and again at the rate of six or twelve inches—gave instructions that the passengers should be gathered on the boat-decks; and the inhabitants of the “safest ship in the world” received the command that could have but one meaning, namely, that the vessel was in danger of going down. Through miles of corridors and companion-ways stewards raced with the news, rousing folk from the sleep of peace to the nightmare of reality, yet careful, every one of them, not to cause panic. Reassuring, optimistic, with unquenchable faith in the unsinkableness of the boat, they told the passengers who asked questions that they thought everything would be all right.
“The Board of Trade regulations say that in times of danger the passengers must put on lifebelts,” said one steward; “and even if the boat should sink, she will be able to keep up for forty-eight hours at least.”
“Men, strong-limbed, full-blooded, with the zest and the love of life in them, stood calmly by”
Those words are a picture of the attitude of wellnigh everybody on the Titanic, which was, as a matter of fact, within the last minutes of her life; but, obeying the call, they trooped up in their scores and hundreds to the decks. Some grumbled at being brought from warm beds to a cold, ice-strewn deck; others grumbled at the stringency of the British Board of Trade. Imagine the scene, if you can: long lines of stewards guarding the boats; a mighty crowd of men, women, and children, some dressed, others half dressed, more with only a blanket thrown about their night-clothes, dozens of them struggling into lifebelts. Many were now anxious-eyed as, inexperienced as they were, they saw that awful list to starboard, saw the tense looks on the faces of some of the officers who knew.
The women and children, now mustered on the boat-deck, were waiting while the lifeboats and collapsible boats were got ready, for the tragic cry of the sea, “Women and children first!” had rung out; and men, strong-limbed, full-blooded, with the zest and the love of life in them, stood calmly by and smoked while this was done, telling themselves even now that the boat could not sink.
Boat crews were shipped; and then the craft were swung out, though not without trouble, seeing that, being new, the tackle was not easy to work; and the women and children, ill-clad to withstand the rigours of that bitter night, were helped into the boats and lowered away, out of the floating palace they had thought so safe into a wide expanse of sea, with all its possible dangers. Some women, indeed, refused to leave the ship; they would not go without their husbands, pleaded that they be allowed to come. Like heroes, the men refused to go, and so husbands and wives stayed on the ship of death.
While the work of embarking these helpless people was proceeding officers stood ready with revolvers, lest the passion for life seize the men and send them rushing towards the boats. There was only one rush; some poor steerage passengers, foreigners, who had been near enough to the point of impact with the iceberg to realise the terror of it all, charged down upon one boat. An officer stopped them with a couple of shots, and strong hands pulled them back. Their places were taken in the boat by their wives and children, for, in this time of disaster, social distinctions were forgotten, cast aside like the trappings of life that they are, and rich women and poor, ragged and well dressed, old and young, were herded together in the same boat—companions in distress. The rich man’s child was cuddled to some poor woman’s bosom; the offspring of some “down and out” nestled in the arms of a bejewelled dame of high society.
The work went on, the heartrending scene in this tragedy of the sea was played through to the accompaniment of the noise of escaping steam, the sobbing of wives and children as they said farewell to husbands and fathers, and the peculiar noise that a crowd makes in circumstances of stress; while from various parts of the ship there were the sounds of rockets being fired, brilliant appeals for help which cast strange lights round and about the doomed vessel. And more, this drama had its own music; floating up from below came the sounds of piano and orchestra playing lively tunes, which cheered the leaving women and the staying men, who cried to each other: “Au revoir! We’ll meet in New York!”
Down, down, down, seventy feet or more the boats were lowered, some having to pass the exhaust of the condensers, and running the risk of being swamped. An incident connected with one of these boats is worth mentioning. It was described by Mr. Beezley, a schoolmaster, who was in her as helper. There were no officers on board to help them work the boat, and no petty officer or member of the crew to take charge; and when it was seen that the boat was in danger of being swamped by the water from the exhaust, one of the stokers cried: “Someone find the pin which releases the boat from the ropes and pull it up!” No one knew where it was. “We felt,” said Mr. Beezley, “as well as we could on the floor and along the sides, but found nothing. It was difficult to move among so many people. We had sixty or seventy on board. Down we went, and presently we were floating with our ropes still holding us, and the stream of water from the exhaust washing us away from the side of the vessel, while the swell of the sea urged us back against the side again.
“The result of all these forces was that we were carried parallel to the ship’s side, and directly under Boat 14, which had filled rapidly, and was coming down on us in a way that threatened to submerge our boat.
“‘Stop lowering 14!’ our crew shouted; and the crew of No. 14, now only twenty feet above, cried out the same. The distance to the top, however, was some seventy feet, and the creaking of the pulleys must have deadened all sound to those above, for down she came, fifteen feet, ten feet, five feet, and a stoker and I reached up and touched the bottom of the swinging boat above our heads. The next drop would have brought her on our heads. Just before she dropped another stoker sprang to the ropes with open knife in hand. ‘One,’ I heard him say; and then ‘Two,’ as the knife cut through the pulley ropes.”
Almost immediately the exhaust stream carried the boat clear, and the other boat slipped into the water, on exactly the same spot that the first one had occupied. It was indeed a narrow shave, for the two boats almost rubbed gunwales.
Leaving the boats as they are being got away, let us go to some other part of the ship to see what is happening.
Down below, in the engine-room and stokeholds, begrimed heroes were working hard at their duty. The black squad always occupies the most dangerous place in a ship at such times; and to the credit of these men, who are hidden from the gaze of the people who stroll leisurely about decks, or while away the hours in concert room or card room, let it be said that they rarely fail in the moment of danger. On the Titanic, those men whose engine-rooms and stokeholds had not been flooded, and who knew they would be wanted, stayed below; the engines in the principal engine-room, which was still protected by its bulkhead, must be run to keep the pumps working and the dynamos running which supplied the electricity for light and the wireless. If the pumps could be kept going, then the vessel could float long enough for help to come; if the wireless could be kept working, then help could be appealed for across the ether waves; and while the men below strove, some at drawing fires to prevent explosions, others at stoking fires that were safe, up in the Marconi cabin two men were sticking to their posts. The men, Phillips and Bride, were heroes, and their names will be remembered while men remember the story of the Titanic.
They had sent out the first messages for assistance—SOS, the new call for ships at sea, changing it occasionally to CQD, the old signal. Then, when things grew more serious than ever, and the news was brought down to them, the instruments began to buzz out longer messages, that told ships scores of miles away what had happened, and what was happening. And now and again there came a voice from the ether through the apparatus on the operators’ heads, telling them that the signals had been caught, and that this ship and that ship was coming at full speed. From seventy miles away the Carpathia’s operator sent such a message; from 300 miles away the Olympic also sent her message saying that she was coming. And thus it went on, this long-distance conversation on which so much depended, and which might stop at any moment, for the captain had told Phillips and Bride that the dynamos might not be able to hold out very long. It was the last quarter of an hour, and Phillips, forgetting all about himself, refusing to think of escape, stood to his work, tapping out the messages, urging the rushing ships to put on every ounce of steam. And Bride, no less a hero, bethought him of Phillips’s safety. He went and got their lifebelts, put one on Phillips and one on himself.
Captain Smith looked in just then, and said: “Men, you have done your full duty; you can do no more! Abandon your cabin now. It is every man for himself. Look out for yourselves. I release you.”
“But Phillips clung on,” said Bride, “sending, sending. He clung on for about ten minutes after the captain released him. The water was then coming into our cabin.”
A hero? Every inch a hero and a man! But what of another man? The one who, creeping silently into that cabin, where a man stood hazarding his life, juggling with death, lest haply he might do some good for that helpless crowd above, tried to slip the lifebelt from the hero’s back? What of that man? He had had a lifebelt himself, but, too scared to fetch it, had thought of an easier way. Bride, catching him in the act, had a desire for blood. “I suddenly felt a passion not to let that man die a decent sailor’s death,” he said. “I wished he might have stretched a rope or walked a plank. I did my duty. I hope I finished him; but I do not know.”
Phillips went down with the ship he had tried to save. Bride, more fortunate, came through alive, as will be seen. He reached the deck just as the end came. The last boat had gone—and there remained on the ship some fifteen hundred souls, hundreds of them clinging now in terror to each other. The gay tunes of the orchestra changed to the solemn strains of a hymn. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the starboard was sinking, dipping deeper and deeper, the stern rising higher and higher, hundreds of people being clustered there, waiting for they dared not think what. The full terror of it all was now beginning to sink into minds that had refused to accept the possibility of disaster. The water lapped up higher and higher, and men scrambled up the sloping deck, seeking to outrace the water, which soon covered the bridge and carried the captain away from the ship, holding in his arm some poor, lonely babe who had been forgotten in the hurly-burly. “Boys!” he had cried lustily ere he went, unwillingly, for he would have stayed by his boat but for that wave that washed him overboard. “Boys, you can do no more! Look-out for yourselves!” And men prepared to cast themselves into the sea, realising now that there was no hope to be found in this ship on which so many hopes had been set. But, instead of jumping, they now found themselves compelled to hang on like grim death to anything that was at hand—rails, stanchions, deck-houses, ropes—to save themselves from being washed away, for the stern was now towering high above the water, and the deck seemed like a sheer precipice, down which one might slip—to death.
Imagine the sight. A massive hulk, gleaming with a thousand lights, belching forth showers of sparks from a solitary funnel; a crowd of clinging figures; a crowd of figures, unable to cling, sliding down that steel road to death. Imagine the sounds. Hear the thud and the crash of the engines as, overbalanced, they tore themselves from their beds and hurled themselves across the ship, to pound against the steel sides and burst them with a deadening explosion; hear the horrific cracks as the decks bend; hear, from under water, a mighty explosion, followed quickly by another and another; hear the roar as the fire-spouting funnel tumbles into the sea; hear, above all, the cry torn from a thousand throats as the people on the stern of the boat felt the last tremors, the death-struggles of the leviathan! Imagine this sight and these sounds, and if you have the imagination of a Poe you will not have glimpsed a hundredth part of the terrors of that last two minutes of the life of the Titanic.
And the next minute there was no Titanic afloat; but the sea was dotted about with hundreds of black dots, each dot a soul struggling for life, each striving to reach something that might be floating near it—deck-chairs, gratings, wreckage of all sorts, and every little bit worth its weight in gold to him who might be so fortunate as to get it. To follow all these people in their efforts for life is, of course, impossible. And there is no need, for each was but a picture of the other.
Mr. Lightoller, the second officer, had a remarkable experience. As the ship took her final plunge he had dived, to be drawn down against the grating that covered the blower of the exhaust. An explosion hurled him up to the surface again, where, having barely filled his lungs, he was sucked down again, and drawn to the side of the sinking ship, near the funnel draught pipes. Yet once more was he blown upwards by the force of a terrific explosion, and when he came to the surface he found himself near a collapsible boat; Lightoller clung to this, to which Bride himself and half a dozen other people were also hanging. It was capsized; but it provided some sort of refuge.
The gallant captain, who had gone overboard with the baby in his arms, fought his way through the swimming crowd, making for one of the boats which were still in the vicinity, hoping to effect some rescues. He went, not to save himself, but the child. He reached the boat, cried “Take the child,” handed it up to the willing hands outstretched for it, and then, refusing to be taken into the boat, cried “Let me go!” and swam back to where the ship had disappeared.
There were many acts of heroism in that dreadful sea. A man swam up to the capsized lifeboat, now overladen. “Will it hold another?” he asked. Those men on the boat knew, positively, that if one more man were on her, she would pitch them all off, and they said so, not jealously, not selfishly. And as unselfishly, the man who wanted to live cried: “All right! Good-bye! God bless you all!” And turned away, only to sink almost immediately.
Another man, clinging to a crate, heard someone ask: “Will it hold another?” He did not know; all he knew was that here was a man who loved life as he himself loved it; and the crate might offer a chance. “Try it!” he cried; “we’ll live or die together!”
The story of the great disaster is told, and yet there are some things which cannot be recounted—horrors, endings and partings. Into the Great Unknown many hundreds had gone. Fewer hundreds were saved by those giant ships rushing to their aid, brought by the call out of the vast silences of the night.
The appalling horror of it all staggered the world; but the great fact stood out that Man the Ingenious is no match for Nature the Mighty!