Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World (32 page)

Mahala Douglas
(photo credit 1.60)

On the slanting deck, crewmen then began lifting two of the Engelhardt collapsible lifeboats, numbered C and D, into the two forward-most davits, which had held Boats 1 and 2. The wooden-hulled collapsible boats had canvas sides that could be raised and clipped into place. In the Marconi Room, meanwhile, Jack Phillips had been steadily working the key on his wireless transmitter while Harold Bride wrote up the log and took messages to the captain. Other ships, including the
Baltic
and the
Virginian
, had responded to the distress call but the
Carpathia
remained the nearest ship of those that had responded. Phillips could already feel the wireless signal growing weaker when Captain Smith came in to say that the engine rooms were filling with water and that the electricity might not last much longer. At one-forty-five, Phillips sent his final message to the
Carpathia: Come as quickly as possible. Engine rooms filling up to the boilers
.

Shortly after this, the last of the
Titanic
’s rockets shot into the air and descended, emitting loud reports that sounded like cannon fire. It seemed astonishing to the
Titanic
’s senior officers that the nearby mystery ship would not both see and hear these rockets over a calm sea on such a clear night. “
She cannot help but see those signals and must steam over and pick everyone up,” Lightoller had said time and again to reassure anxious passengers. Now he had stopped saying it. On the steamer
Californian
, which is estimated to have been anywhere from eleven to twenty miles away, eight rockets were sighted but none were heard. A recent study has revealed that the unusually flat sea that night would have
acted like a mirror that reflected and thus deadened the sound, making it inaudible beyond five to six nautical miles. Yet the rockets were definitely seen if not heard by the
Californian
, and the fact that its captain, Stanley Lord, did not wake the ship’s wireless operator to find out why a ship was firing rockets in the middle of the night remains one of the most haunting “if only’s” of the
Titanic
story.

At approximately one-forty, Lightoller heard that Lifeboat 4, the boat he had lowered to A deck more than an hour before, was, at last, ready for boarding. A key had been found to unlock the promenade windows but a wooden spar protruded just below the windows and had to be chopped away. While this was being done, a contingent of the
Titanic
’s most prominent passengers—Astors, Wideners, Thayers, Carters, and Ryersons—had been kept waiting, first on A deck, then in the staircase foyer, and now on the boat deck. Emily Ryerson described them as “
quite a group of people we knew” and noted that “all were very quiet and self-possessed.” Yet when the order came that they were to return to A deck, an exasperated Marian Thayer snapped, “
Just tell us where to go and we will follow! You ordered us up here and now you’re sending us back!”

The Astor party joined the Thayers and the other Main Liners as they trooped down the narrow iron steps to A deck. John Jacob Astor had taken Madeleine into the gymnasium earlier to keep her warm and they had sat together on the exercise machines. He was feeling particularly protective of her since she had been feeling ill all afternoon. When they had first gone up to A deck together after midnight, Astor had sent his valet back to fetch a warmer dress and a fur coat for her, and she was
seen being dressed by her maid while sitting in a steamer chair. Astor had also made sure that
Madeleine’s pearls, engagement ring, and a few other valuable baubles were retrieved from her jewel case.

Madeleine Astor
(photo credit 1.78)

On A deck Lightoller stood on a ramp made of steamer chairs that led up to the opened windows beside Lifeboat 4. Colonel Gracie, who had been helping shepherd women into boats from the promenade, gently assisted Madeleine Astor toward Lightoller. After the second officer had placed her in the boat, Astor leaned through a nearby open window and asked Lightoller if he could accompany his wife on account of her “delicate condition.” When the second officer refused, Astor asked for the number of the boat and then tossed his gloves to Madeleine. As Emily Ryerson approached the boat with her two daughters and son Jack, Lightoller said, “
That boy can’t go!”

“Of course, that boy goes with his mother,” Arthur Ryerson insisted. “He is only thirteen!”

“Very well,” Lightoller was heard to mutter, “but no more boys.” On hearing this, Lucile Carter put her large hat on her eleven-year-old son’s head and there was no protest as he entered Boat 4 with his mother and sister. Meanwhile, up on the boat deck, Lifeboat 10 was also being loaded. Winnipeg real-estate mogul Mark Fortune stood by it with his nineteen-year-old son, Charles, saying good-bye to his wife, Mary, and their three daughters. He was wearing his massive buffalo coat, having finally found a use for what had been a family joke during their Mediterranean holiday. Alice and Mabel Fortune pulled jewelry out of their pockets and gave it to their brother for safekeeping. “
Look after Father, Charles,” they called out, still smiling over the sight of Papa in his ungainly prairie coat.

Also seeing his family off in Boat 10 was Bertram Dean, a London pub owner who was emigrating to Wichita, Kansas, to open a tobacconist’s shop. His wife, Eva, held their nine-week-old daughter, Millvina, in her arms, while two-year-old Bertram sat beside her. Other children were being grabbed and tossed into the boat with particular gusto by the
Titanic
’s chief baker, Charles Joughin, who was breathing whiskey-scented exhalations into the night air. Earlier, when he heard that the lifeboats were being uncovered, Joughin had mustered his thirteen assistants and filled their arms with loaves of bread to provision the boats. As the white-clad bakers processed up to the boat deck, it reminded Edith Rosenbaum of a festive parade she had once seen in Nice.

Once the bread was piled on the deck, Joughin thought that the occasion called for a drink, and so he had repaired to his cabin for a warming tipple. As the night went on, he had periodically stopped by for another nip or three. As he stood by Lifeboat 10 at one-forty-five, feeling well fortified from the cold, Joughin saw a woman in a black dress approach hesitantly, clearly nervous about having to jump across a gap of several feet, caused by the ship having developed a list to port. When at last she decided to jump, the woman screamed and fell headfirst between the ship and the boat. Instantly, Steward William Burke caught her by the ankles, saving her from a fifty-foot plunge into the sea. Several men on A deck then grabbed her shoulders and pulled the panicked woman down to the promenade as the boat began its descent. Whether she then got into another boat is unknown.

As he watched what seemed to be the last boat departing, the
Titanic
’s only Japanese passenger, Masabumi Hosono, a forty-two-year-old civil servant from Tokyo, thought of his wife and children and felt a strong urge to survive, though he did not want to do anything that would bring him disgrace. But when he saw a man jump from A deck into the lowering boat, Hosono leapt as well. Soon he and the other jumper, an Armenian named Neshan Krekorian, lay huddled together on the floor under the bow of Lifeboat 10, which now held fifty-seven people.

Boat 4 had also reached the water by this time, and Madeleine Astor could hear their Airedale, Kitty, barking from above. When she looked up as the boat pulled away, she saw the tall, stooping figure of her husband standing by the rail on the boat deck with Kitty beside him. It had taken the boat only a few minutes to reach the water since the sea was now only twenty feet below A deck. Boat 4 was then rowed aft since they had been ordered to pick up more men from an open gangway door near the stern. Emily Ryerson was shocked when she looked into the brightly lit windows and saw water washing around the legs of carved wooden bedsteads in the B-deck staterooms. From inside the ship came cracking noises that sounded like breaking china. They rowed past barrels, steamer chairs, and even doors that were being thrown down from above. There was no open gangway door to be found by the stern, but a group of stokers on the aft boat deck were watching the lifeboat’s approach with interest. Two of them grabbed the lines hanging from an empty davit and slid down, the ropes burning their hands as they went. One made it into the boat; the other fell in the water and was quickly picked up.

As Boat 4 pulled away from the stern, her passengers were shocked by the sight of the liner’s three massive bronze propellers slowly rising from the sea.

(photo credit 1.9)

As the liner’s deck slanted higher toward the stern, First Officer Murdoch struggled to load Collapsible C.
(photo credit 1.20)

G
et out of this, clear out of this!” William Murdoch shouted in his stern Scottish voice as a crowd of men began swarming into Collapsible C. The first officer then raised his revolver and fired two shots into the air. Crouching on the floor of the boat,
a panicked Daniel Buckley began to cry and a woman nearby threw her shawl over him and told him to lie low. Hugh Woolner saw Murdoch’s gun flash as he sprinted toward the scene with Björnström-Steffansson at his heels. For the last hour, the robust Englishman and his young Swedish friend had been aggressively rounding up women and children and bustling them into lifeboats. At Collapsible C the vigorous duo began grabbing men by the ankles and hauling them out of the boat. Daniel Buckley, however, managed to escape their notice in the dark, as did four Chinese sailors who crouched under the bow.

When most of the men had been cleared out, Woolner then turned to the “
Italian and other foreign women” waiting nearby (who were, in fact, mainly Lebanese) and started to hoist them into the boat, noticing how many of them went limp in his arms as he lifted them over the rail. When all the women on deck had been loaded, Woolner suggested to Steffansson that they go down to A deck in search of others. But on arriving on the promenade deck, they found it to be deserted with its ceiling lights glowing an eerie red as the power waned. No women were to be seen near Collapsible C either, according to William Carter and Bruce Ismay. Carter claimed that he and Ismay walked around calling “
Are there any more women here?” for several minutes but heard no answer. With no more female passengers to be found, the Philadelphia millionaire and the White Star managing director stepped over the rail and into Collapsible C as it was being lowered down the side.