The Loss of the S. S. Titanic - Its Story and Its Lessons (3 page)

Presently the work of transfer was ended, the tenders cast off, and at
1.30 P.M., with the screws churning up the sea bottom again, the
Titanic turned slowly through a quarter-circle until her nose pointed
down along the Irish coast, and then steamed rapidly away from
Queenstown, the little house on the left of the town gleaming white on
the hillside for many miles astern. In our wake soared and screamed
hundreds of gulls, which had quarrelled and fought over the remnants
of lunch pouring out of the waste pipes as we lay-to in the harbour
entrance; and now they followed us in the expectation of further
spoil. I watched them for a long time and was astonished at the ease
with which they soared and kept up with the ship with hardly a motion
of their wings: picking out a particular gull, I would keep him under
observation for minutes at a time and see no motion of his wings
downwards or upwards to aid his flight. He would tilt all of a piece
to one side or another as the gusts of wind caught him: rigidly
unbendable, as an aeroplane tilts sideways in a puff of wind. And yet
with graceful ease he kept pace with the Titanic forging through the
water at twenty knots: as the wind met him he would rise upwards and
obliquely forwards, and come down slantingly again, his wings curved
in a beautiful arch and his tail feathers outspread as a fan. It was
plain that he was possessed of a secret we are only just beginning to
learn—that of utilizing air-currents as escalators up and down which
he can glide at will with the expenditure of the minimum amount of
energy, or of using them as a ship does when it sails within one or
two points of a head wind. Aviators, of course, are imitating the
gull, and soon perhaps we may see an aeroplane or a glider dipping
gracefully up and down in the face of an opposing wind and all the
time forging ahead across the Atlantic Ocean. The gulls were still
behind us when night fell, and still they screamed and dipped down
into the broad wake of foam which we left behind; but in the morning
they were gone: perhaps they had seen in the night a steamer bound for
their Queenstown home and had escorted her back.

All afternoon we steamed along the coast of Ireland, with grey cliffs
guarding the shores, and hills rising behind gaunt and barren; as dusk
fell, the coast rounded away from us to the northwest, and the last we
saw of Europe was the Irish mountains dim and faint in the dropping
darkness. With the thought that we had seen the last of land until we
set foot on the shores of America, I retired to the library to write
letters, little knowing that many things would happen to us all—many
experiences, sudden, vivid and impressive to be encountered, many
perils to be faced, many good and true people for whom we should have
to mourn—before we saw land again.

There is very little to relate from the time of leaving Queenstown on
Thursday to Sunday morning. The sea was calm,—so calm, indeed,
that very few were absent from meals: the wind westerly and
southwesterly,—"fresh" as the daily chart described it,—but often
rather cold, generally too cold to sit out on deck to read or write,
so that many of us spent a good part of the time in the library,
reading and writing. I wrote a large number of letters and posted them
day by day in the box outside the library door: possibly they are
there yet.

Each morning the sun rose behind us in a sky of circular clouds,
stretching round the horizon in long, narrow streaks and rising tier
upon tier above the sky-line, red and pink and fading from pink to
white, as the sun rose higher in the sky. It was a beautiful sight to
one who had not crossed the ocean before (or indeed been out of sight
of the shores of England) to stand on the top deck and watch the swell
of the sea extending outwards from the ship in an unbroken circle
until it met the sky-line with its hint of infinity: behind, the wake
of the vessel white with foam where, fancy suggested, the propeller
blades had cut up the long Atlantic rollers and with them made a level
white road bounded on either side by banks of green, blue, and
blue-green waves that would presently sweep away the white road,
though as yet it stretched back to the horizon and dipped over the
edge of the world back to Ireland and the gulls, while along it the
morning sun glittered and sparkled. And each night the sun sank right
in our eyes along the sea, making an undulating glittering path way, a
golden track charted on the surface of the ocean which our ship
followed unswervingly until the sun dipped below the edge of the
horizon, and the pathway ran ahead of us faster than we could steam
and slipped over the edge of the skyline,—as if the sun had been a
golden ball and had wound up its thread of gold too quickly for us to
follow.

From 12 noon Thursday to 12 noon Friday we ran 386 miles, Friday to
Saturday 519 miles, Saturday to Sunday 546 miles. The second day's run
of 519 miles was, the purser told us, a disappointment, and we should
not dock until Wednesday morning instead of Tuesday night, as we had
expected; however, on Sunday we were glad to see a longer run had been
made, and it was thought we should make New York, after all, on
Tuesday night. The purser remarked: "They are not pushing her this
trip and don't intend to make any fast running: I don't suppose we
shall do more than 546 now; it is not a bad day's run for the first
trip." This was at lunch, and I remember the conversation then turned
to the speed and build of Atlantic liners as factors in their comfort
of motion: all those who had crossed many times were unanimous in
saying the Titanic was the most comfortable boat they had been on, and
they preferred the speed we were making to that of the faster boats,
from the point of view of lessened vibration as well as because the
faster boats would bore through the waves with a twisted, screw-like
motion instead of the straight up-and-down swing of the Titanic. I
then called the attention of our table to the way the Titanic listed
to port (I had noticed this before), and we all watched the sky-line
through the portholes as we sat at the purser's table in the saloon:
it was plain she did so, for the sky-line and sea on the port side
were visible most of the time and on the starboard only sky. The
purser remarked that probably coal had been used mostly from the
starboard side. It is no doubt a common occurrence for all vessels to
list to some degree; but in view of the fact that the Titanic was cut
open on the starboard side and before she sank listed so much to port
that there was quite a chasm between her and the swinging lifeboats,
across which ladies had to be thrown or to cross on chairs laid flat,
the previous listing to port may be of interest.

Returning for a moment to the motion of the Titanic, it was
interesting to stand on the boat-deck, as I frequently did, in the
angle between lifeboats 13 and 15 on the starboard side (two boats I
have every reason to remember, for the first carried me in safety to
the Carpathia, and it seemed likely at one time that the other would
come down on our heads as we sat in 13 trying to get away from the
ship's side), and watch the general motion of the ship through the
waves resolve itself into two motions—one to be observed by
contrasting the docking-bridge, from which the log-line trailed away
behind in the foaming wake, with the horizon, and observing the long,
slow heave as we rode up and down. I timed the average period occupied
in one up-and-down vibration, but do not now remember the figures. The
second motion was a side-to-side roll, and could be calculated by
watching the port rail and contrasting it with the horizon as before.
It seems likely that this double motion is due to the angle at which
our direction to New York cuts the general set of the Gulf Stream
sweeping from the Gulf of Mexico across to Europe; but the almost
clock-like regularity of the two vibratory movements was what
attracted my attention: it was while watching the side roll that I
first became aware of the list to port. Looking down astern from the
boat-deck or from B deck to the steerage quarters, I often noticed how
the third-class passengers were enjoying every minute of the time: a
most uproarious skipping game of the mixed-double type was the great
favourite, while "in and out and roundabout" went a Scotchman with his
bagpipes playing something that Gilbert says "faintly resembled an
air." Standing aloof from all of them, generally on the raised stern
deck above the "playing field," was a man of about twenty to
twenty-four years of age, well-dressed, always gloved and nicely
groomed, and obviously quite out of place among his fellow-passengers:
he never looked happy all the time. I watched him, and classified him
at hazard as the man who had been a failure in some way at home and
had received the proverbial shilling plus third-class fare to America:
he did not look resolute enough or happy enough to be working out his
own problem. Another interesting man was travelling steerage, but had
placed his wife in the second cabin: he would climb the stairs leading
from the steerage to the second deck and talk affectionately with his
wife across the low gate which separated them. I never saw him after
the collision, but I think his wife was on the Carpathia. Whether they
ever saw each other on the Sunday night is very doubtful: he would not
at first be allowed on the second-class deck, and if he were, the
chances of seeing his wife in the darkness and the crowd would be very
small, indeed. Of all those playing so happily on the steerage deck I
did not recognize many afterwards on the Carpathia.

Coming now to Sunday, the day on which the Titanic struck the iceberg,
it will be interesting, perhaps, to give the day's events in some
detail, to appreciate the general attitude of passengers to their
surroundings just before the collision. Service was held in the saloon
by the purser in the morning, and going on deck after lunch we found
such a change in temperature that not many cared to remain to face the
bitter wind—an artificial wind created mainly, if not entirely, by
the ship's rapid motion through the chilly atmosphere. I should judge
there was no wind blowing at the time, for I had noticed about the
same force of wind approaching Queenstown, to find that it died away
as soon as we stopped, only to rise again as we steamed away from the
harbour.

Returning to the library, I stopped for a moment to read again the
day's run and observe our position on the chart; the Rev. Mr. Carter,
a clergyman of the Church of England, was similarly engaged, and we
renewed a conversation we had enjoyed for some days: it had
commenced with a discussion of the relative merits of his
university—Oxford—with mine—Cambridge—as world-wide educational
agencies, the opportunities at each for the formation of character
apart from mere education as such, and had led on to the lack of
sufficiently qualified men to take up the work of the Church of
England (a matter apparently on which he felt very deeply) and from
that to his own work in England as a priest. He told me some of his
parish problems and spoke of the impossibility of doing half his work
in his Church without the help his wife gave. I knew her only slightly
at that time, but meeting her later in the day, I realized something
of what he meant in attributing a large part of what success he had as
a vicar to her. My only excuse for mentioning these details about the
Carters—now and later in the day—is that, while they have perhaps
not much interest for the average reader, they will no doubt be some
comfort to the parish over which he presided and where I am sure he
was loved. He next mentioned the absence of a service in the evening
and asked if I knew the purser well enough to request the use of the
saloon in the evening where he would like to have a "hymn sing-song";
the purser gave his consent at once, and Mr. Carter made preparations
during the afternoon by asking all he knew—and many he did not—to
come to the saloon at 8.30 P.M.

The library was crowded that afternoon, owing to the cold on deck: but
through the windows we could see the clear sky with brilliant sunlight
that seemed to augur a fine night and a clear day to-morrow, and the
prospect of landing in two days, with calm weather all the way to New
York, was a matter of general satisfaction among us all. I can look
back and see every detail of the library that afternoon—the
beautifully furnished room, with lounges, armchairs, and small writing
or card-tables scattered about, writing-bureaus round the walls of the
room, and the library in glass-cased shelves flanking one side,—the
whole finished in mahogany relieved with white fluted wooden columns
that supported the deck above. Through the windows there is the
covered corridor, reserved by general consent as the children's
playground, and here are playing the two Navatril children with their
father,—devoted to them, never absent from them. Who would have
thought of the dramatic history of the happy group at play in the
corridor that afternoon!—the abduction of the children in Nice, the
assumed name, the separation of father and children in a few hours,
his death and their subsequent union with their mother after a period
of doubt as to their parentage! How many more similar secrets the
Titanic revealed in the privacy of family life, or carried down with
her untold, we shall never know.

In the same corridor is a man and his wife with two children, and one
of them he is generally carrying: they are all young and happy: he is
dressed always in a grey knickerbocker suit—with a camera slung over
his shoulder. I have not seen any of them since that afternoon.

Close beside me—so near that I cannot avoid hearing scraps of their
conversation—are two American ladies, both dressed in white, young,
probably friends only: one has been to India and is returning by way
of England, the other is a school-teacher in America, a graceful girl
with a distinguished air heightened by a pair of
pince-nez
.
Engaged in conversation with them is a gentleman whom I subsequently
identified from a photograph as a well-known resident of Cambridge,
Massachusetts, genial, polished, and with a courtly air towards the
two ladies, whom he has known but a few hours; from time to time as
they talk, a child acquaintance breaks in on their conversation and
insists on their taking notice of a large doll clasped in her arms; I
have seen none of this group since then. In the opposite corner are
the young American kinematograph photographer and his young wife,
evidently French, very fond of playing patience, which she is doing
now, while he sits back in his chair watching the game and interposing
from time to time with suggestions. I did not see them again. In the
middle of the room are two Catholic priests, one quietly
reading,—either English or Irish, and probably the latter,—the
other, dark, bearded, with broad-brimmed hat, talking earnestly to a
friend in German and evidently explaining some verse in the open Bible
before him; near them a young fire engineer on his way to Mexico, and
of the same religion as the rest of the group. None of them were
saved. It may be noted here that the percentage of men saved in the
second-class is the lowest of any other division—only eight per cent.