Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World (38 page)

From the bridge, Captain Rostron also noted floating masses of insulating cork but was surprised by how little wreckage there was. He did see one body, a man floating on his side in a life preserver, his head half-submerged. But with the sea rising, Rostron was eager to be on his way to New York and signaled to the
Californian
, which had arrived an hour before, to continue the search. The Leyland steamer had heard the news by wireless early that morning and had slowly made its way through the ice to the scene. The
Californian
searched the area for an hour or more but saw only stray bits of wreckage and some of the
Titanic
’s lifeboats that Rostron had set adrift after taking thirteen of them on board.

That morning Captain Rostron had considered several places he might land his more than seven hundred unexpected passengers. He’d first considered the Azores so that he could continue to the Mediterranean as scheduled; then Halifax, which was the nearest port. But on seeing the survivors come aboard, many of them in a distressed state and some in need of medical attention, it soon became clear that he should take them directly to New York. Rostron decided to visit Bruce Ismay to discuss the decision with him but the shattered White Star chairman quickly gave his agreement to whatever the captain thought was best. It was Rostron who had earlier prompted a dazed Ismay to send a wireless message notifying the White Star Line’s New York office about the accident. To Philip Franklin, the U.S. vice president of White Star’s parent company, the International Mercantile Marine, Ismay had written:

Deeply regret advise you
Titanic
sank this morning after collision iceberg, resulting serious loss life. Full particulars later. Bruce Ismay.

“Captain, do you think that is all that I can tell him?” Ismay asked as he gave the note to Rostron.

“Yes,” said Rostron in reply.

By then Philip Franklin already knew that the
Titanic
was in trouble. He had been awakened just before 2 a.m. by a telephone call from a newspaper reporter informing him that the
Titanic
had struck an iceberg and had radioed for assistance. Franklin rang off and telephoned the White Star dock and was told that reporters had been calling there as well. On telephoning the Associated Press, Franklin was informed that a report on the
Titanic
’s distress calls had already gone out—in time for the morning papers. At 3 a.m. he cabled Captain Haddock of the
Olympic
, urging him to make every effort to contact the
Titanic
and advise him of her position. By 8 a.m. crowds had already started to gather outside the White Star offices on lower Broadway.

As the
Carpathia
turned its bow toward New York, the captain found that the ice field continued for many miles, stretching toward the horizon. While he proceeded slowly around its perimeter, the giant bergs caught the morning sun, a sight that stirred Rostron to wax poetic when he wrote of it later: “
Minarets like cathedral towers turned to gold in the distances … and some seemed to shape themselves like argosies under full sail.” Helen Candee, too, admired the stunning white vista as she reclined with her ankle bandaged, pondering what she called “
nature’s implacable strength.” Archibald Gracie, meanwhile, lay wrapped in blankets on a sofa in the lounge, feeling rather awkward without his clothes. Daisy and Frederic Spedden had looked after Gracie when he first arrived—“
half-frozen and completely unnerved,” in Daisy’s description—and had taken his clothes to be dried in a bake oven. But after a few hot brandies the colonel had rallied, and whenever Daisy drew near, he would ask plaintively for his trousers, saying he couldn’t possibly move without them. Gracie had suffered a blow to the head and there were cuts and bruises on his legs that would be sore to the touch for several days. Eventually his dry but salt-stained clothes were returned to him and he went off to nap in a borrowed cabin.

The Speddens spent the rest of the day tending to those in need and Daisy recalled heartrending scenes as women frantically sought their missing children. Margaret Brown tried to help a woman who kept screaming out for her child and she eventually asked the doctor to give the distraught woman a sedative since she was pulling out strands of her hair in panic. Soon the only children left unclaimed were the two French toddlers who had been put aboard Collapsible D by a “Mr. Hoffman.” Margaret Hays, the young New Yorker who had carried her little dog into Boat 7, was fluent in French and had taken charge of the two boys. The curly-haired waifs, aged three and two, were soon seen playing on deck with Margaret’s Pomeranian, one of three dogs to have survived.

After napping for almost an hour behind a stove in the galley, Norris Williams had awakened and gone out on deck just as the
Carpathia
was departing. But with his legs still feeling very numb and painful, he made his way to the ship’s hospital. A surgeon who was helping Dr. McGee examined Norris and expressed grave concern about the state of his legs. He thought that amputation might be necessary and cheerfully ventured that this could even be done on board before the ship reached New York. But there was a chance, he thought, that the young tennis player might be able to save his legs if he were to exercise them continually. Norris seized on this option and resolved to walk the decks day and night. First, however, he found a change of clothes and steeped himself in a hot bath.

Jack Thayer had been lent a pair of pajamas and a bunk and as he climbed into bed he was still aglow from the hot brandy given to him on arrival—his first-ever alcoholic drink. His mother was resting in Captain Rostron’s cabin, which she shared with Eleanor Widener and Madeleine Astor. René Harris was given the use of a stateroom along with two other women, one of them Ninette Aubart, whom she soon befriended. The distraught young Frenchwoman was grieving the loss of Ben Guggenheim and feeling afraid about landing in a strange country where she did not speak the language.

Captain Rostron paid another visit to Ismay’s room that morning. He had received a wireless message from the
Olympic
proposing that the
Titanic
’s passengers be transferred to her. Rostron thought that putting the survivors into boats for a second sea transfer was a very bad idea. Even the sight of a ship that so closely resembled the
Titanic
might stir up panic among the survivors. Ismay agreed emphatically—the
Olympic
should stay out of sight.

On board the sister liner, however, Frank Millet’s friend Daniel Burnham had been told that they were steaming to the rescue of the
Titanic
’s passengers, and he was preparing to give up his suite to Frank and Archie Butt. He could use the time on board with Frank to prepare him for the next meeting of the Lincoln Memorial Commission. In a letter waiting for Frank in New York, Burnham had written, “
The rats swim back and begin to gnaw at the same old spot the moment the dog’s back is turned,” the “rats” being several congressmen who were still pushing for John Russell Pope’s design over that of Henry Bacon. The letter had concluded, “I leave the thing confidently in your hand.”

When a list of the
Titanic
’s survivors was posted on the
Olympic
’s notice board the next morning, however, Burnham saw that Millet’s name was not on it. In his diary entry for April 16, the ailing architect recorded the news of the
Titanic
’s loss and noted that “
Frank D. Millet, whom I loved, was aboard of her … and probably [has] gone down.” Burnham himself would die two weeks later, but the classical white temple he had championed for the Lincoln Memorial would prevail—a tribute to the architect’s persistence and that of the friend he loved.

The
Olympic
’s Marconi operators were relaying all the messages from the
Carpathia
to stations onshore, due to the Cunard liner’s limited wireless range. Marconi forms had been distributed to the survivors that morning but many of their messages would not be sent for another day or two—if at all. Captain Rostron had instructed that the first priority was to transmit a list of the survivors. The
Carpathia
’s chief purser and his assistant were busy compiling the names of passengers while Lightoller worked on the list of the surviving crew and engine room staff and a senior steward gathered the names of the cooks and stewards. The grim tally would come to 712 people rescued from a ship that had held 2,209. Over two-thirds of those on board the
Titanic
had perished.

But this news had not yet reached New York. The morning edition of the
New York Herald
announced:
THE NEW TITANIC STRIKES ICEBERG AND CALLS FOR AID, VESSELS RUSH TO HER SIDE
. The
New York Times
went further and said that the liner was actually sinking. This sent anxious relatives down to White Star’s offices at No. 9 Broadway—among them Ben Guggenheim’s wife, Florette; John Jacob Astor’s son, Vincent; and J. P. Morgan’s son, John Pierpont Jr. (“
Have just heard fearful rumor about
Titanic
with iceberg,” the financier had wired his son from the spa in Aix. “Hope for God sake not true.”) Philip Franklin knew little more than was in the newspapers but he and his staff provided reassurances that the
Titanic
would not sink and her passengers were safe. Ismay’s “Deeply regret advise you” cable had not been received by him and, unaccountably, would not arrive till Wednesday morning. At 9:30 a.m. Franklin announced to the press that the
Titanic
was still afloat. At mid-morning there was a rumor out of Montreal that the damaged liner was slowly being towed to Halifax, and by noon White Star had arranged to send a train there to pick up passengers. That afternoon many newspapers ran stories headed
ALL SAVED FROM TITANIC AFTER COLLISION
. Philip Franklin meanwhile continued to send wireless messages to Captain Haddock of the
Olympic
, asking him to contact the
Titanic
and advise him regarding the landing of the passengers.

Philip Franklin reassured those making inquiries at the White Star offices in New York that the
Titanic
’s passengers were safe.
(photo credit 1.46)

By early afternoon the
Carpathia
had passed the last of the ice and could begin to pick up speed, but at 4:00 p.m its engines were stopped. Father Anderson then appeared on deck in his clerical garb, followed by
Carpathia
crewmen carrying four corpses sewn into canvas bags. These were the bodies of two male passengers, one fireman, and one seaman, that had been brought aboard from the lifeboats. Each of the canvas bags in turn was laid on a wide plank and covered with a flag. As the words “
Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the deep” were read aloud, the bodies were tipped into the sea one at a time. A large crowd stood nearby with heads bared. The canvas bags had been weighted so that the bodies would fall feet first but one of them struck the water flat. A
Carpathia
passenger wrote that he would never forget the sound of that splash.

One of those buried at sea was first-class passenger William F. Hoyt, the heavy man who had been pulled into Boat 14 and died shortly thereafter. When May Futrelle learned that a large man had been lifted into one of the lifeboats, she questioned the crew of Boat 14 but soon realized that the man they described could not have been her husband. She also heard that Archibald Gracie had been pulled under with the ship and worked up her courage to ask him if he had suffered as he was being dragged down. Gracie reassured her that if he had never come up, he would have had no more suffering, giving May some comfort that perhaps Jacques had not endured an agonizing death.

That afternoon Charles Lightoller had a serious talk with the three other surviving officers, Pitman, Boxhall, and Lowe, about what lay ahead. It was agreed that their best hope for escaping what Lightoller called “
the inquisition” that awaited in New York was to immediately board the
Cedric
, scheduled to sail for Liverpool on Thursday. Their case was taken to Bruce Ismay who sent a message to Philip Franklin suggesting that the
Cedric
be held for the
Titanic
’s crew and himself. Ismay also asked that clothes and shoes be put on board for him. The cable was signed “Yamsi,” his coded signature for personal messages.