The Loss of the S. S. Titanic - Its Story and Its Lessons (5 page)

One of the players, pointing to his glass of whiskey standing at his
elbow, and turning to an onlooker, said, "Just run along the deck and
see if any ice has come aboard: I would like some for this." Amid the
general laughter at what we thought was his imagination,—only too
realistic, alas! for when he spoke the forward deck was covered with
ice that had tumbled over,—and seeing that no more information was
forthcoming, I left the smoking-room and went down to my cabin, where
I sat for some time reading again. I am filled with sorrow to think I
never saw any of the occupants of that smoking-room again: nearly all
young men full of hope for their prospects in a new world; mostly
unmarried; keen, alert, with the makings of good citizens. Presently,
hearing people walking about the corridors, I looked out and saw
several standing in the hall talking to a steward—most of them ladies
in dressing-gowns; other people were going upstairs, and I decided to
go on deck again, but as it was too cold to do so in a dressing-gown,
I dressed in a Norfolk jacket and trousers and walked up. There were
now more people looking over the side and walking about, questioning
each other as to why we had stopped, but without obtaining any
definite information. I stayed on deck some minutes, walking about
vigorously to keep warm and occasionally looking downwards to the sea
as if something there would indicate the reason for delay. The ship
had now resumed her course, moving very slowly through the water with
a little white line of foam on each side. I think we were all glad to
see this: it seemed better than standing still. I soon decided to go
down again, and as I crossed from the starboard to the port side to go
down by the vestibule door, I saw an officer climb on the last
lifeboat on the port side—number 16—and begin to throw off the
cover, but I do not remember that any one paid any particular
attention to him. Certainly no one thought they were preparing to man
the lifeboats and embark from the ship. All this time there was no
apprehension of any danger in the minds of passengers, and no one was
in any condition of panic or hysteria; after all, it would have been
strange if they had been, without any definite evidence of danger.

As I passed to the door to go down, I looked forward again and saw to
my surprise an undoubted tilt downwards from the stern to the bows:
only a slight slope, which I don't think any one had noticed,—at any
rate, they had not remarked on it. As I went downstairs a confirmation
of this tilting forward came in something unusual about the stairs, a
curious sense of something out of balance and of not being able to put
one's feet down in the right place: naturally, being tilted forward,
the stairs would slope downwards at an angle and tend to throw one
forward. I could not see any visible slope of the stairway: it was
perceptible only by the sense of balance at this time.

On D deck were three ladies—I think they were all saved, and it is a
good thing at least to be able to chronicle meeting some one who was
saved after so much record of those who were not—standing in the
passage near the cabin. "Oh! why have we stopped?" they said. "We did
stop," I replied, "but we are now going on again.". "Oh, no," one
replied; "I cannot feel the engines as I usually do, or hear them.
Listen!" We listened, and there was no throb audible. Having noticed
that the vibration of the engines is most noticeable lying in a bath,
where the throb comes straight from the floor through its metal
sides—too much so ordinarily for one to put one's head back with
comfort on the bath,—I took them along the corridor to a bathroom and
made them put their hands on the side of the bath: they were much
reassured to feel the engines throbbing down below and to know we were
making some headway. I left them and on the way to my cabin passed
some stewards standing unconcernedly against the walls of the saloon:
one of them, the library steward again, was leaning over a table,
writing. It is no exaggeration to say that they had neither any
knowledge of the accident nor any feeling of alarm that we had stopped
and had not yet gone on again full speed: their whole attitude
expressed perfect confidence in the ship and officers.

Turning into my gangway (my cabin being the first in the gangway), I
saw a man standing at the other end of it fastening his tie. "Anything
fresh?" he said. "Not much," I replied; "we are going ahead slowly and
she is down a little at the bows, but I don't think it is anything
serious." "Come in and look at this man," he laughed; "he won't get
up." I looked in, and in the top bunk lay a man with his back to me,
closely wrapped in his bed-clothes and only the back of his head
visible. "Why won't he get up? Is he asleep?" I said. "No," laughed
the man dressing, "he says—" But before he could finish the sentence
the man above grunted: "You don't catch me leaving a warm bed to go up
on that cold deck at midnight. I know better than that." We both told
him laughingly why he had better get up, but he was certain he was
just as safe there and all this dressing was quite unnecessary; so I
left them and went again to my cabin. I put on some underclothing, sat
on the sofa, and read for some ten minutes, when I heard through the
open door, above, the noise of people passing up and down, and a loud
shout from above: "All passengers on deck with lifebelts on."

I placed the two books I was reading in the side pockets of my Norfolk
jacket, picked up my lifebelt (curiously enough, I had taken it down
for the first time that night from the wardrobe when I first retired
to my cabin) and my dressing-gown, and walked upstairs tying on the
lifebelt. As I came out of my cabin, I remember seeing the purser's
assistant, with his foot on the stairs about to climb them, whisper to
a steward and jerk his head significantly behind him; not that I
thought anything of it at the time, but I have no doubt he was telling
him what had happened up in the bows, and was giving him orders to
call all passengers.

Going upstairs with other passengers,—no one ran a step or seemed
alarmed,—we met two ladies coming down: one seized me by the arm and
said, "Oh! I have no lifebelt; will you come down to my cabin and help
me to find it?" I returned with them to F deck,—the lady who had
addressed me holding my arm all the time in a vise-like grip, much to
my amusement,—and we found a steward in her gangway who took them in
and found their lifebelts. Coming upstairs again, I passed the
purser's window on F deck, and noticed a light inside; when halfway up
to E deck, I heard the heavy metallic clang of the safe door, followed
by a hasty step retreating along the corridor towards the first-class
quarters. I have little doubt it was the purser, who had taken all
valuables from his safe and was transferring them to the charge of the
first-class purser, in the hope they might all be saved in one
package. That is why I said above that perhaps the envelope containing
my money was not in the safe at the bottom of the sea: it is probably
in a bundle, with many others like it, waterlogged at the bottom.

Reaching the top deck, we found many people assembled there,—some
fully dressed, with coats and wraps, well-prepared for anything that
might happen; others who had thrown wraps hastily round them when they
were called or heard the summons to equip themselves with
lifebelts—not in much condition to face the cold of that night.
Fortunately there was no wind to beat the cold air through our
clothing: even the breeze caused by the ship's motion had died
entirely away, for the engines had stopped again and the Titanic lay
peacefully on the surface of the sea—motionless, quiet, not even
rocking to the roll of the sea; indeed, as we were to discover
presently, the sea was as calm as an inland lake save for the gentle
swell which could impart no motion to a ship the size of the Titanic.
To stand on the deck many feet above the water lapping idly against
her sides, and looking much farther off than it really was because of
the darkness, gave one a sense of wonderful security: to feel her so
steady and still was like standing on a large rock in the middle of
the ocean. But there were now more evidences of the coming catastrophe
to the observer than had been apparent when on deck last: one was the
roar and hiss of escaping steam from the boilers, issuing out of a
large steam pipe reaching high up one of the funnels: a harsh,
deafening boom that made conversation difficult and no doubt increased
the apprehension of some people merely because of the volume of noise:
if one imagines twenty locomotives blowing off steam in a low key it
would give some idea of the unpleasant sound that met us as we climbed
out on the top deck.

But after all it was the kind of phenomenon we ought to expect:
engines blow off steam when standing in a station, and why should not
a ship's boilers do the same when the ship is not moving? I never
heard any one connect this noise with the danger of boiler explosion,
in the event of the ship sinking with her boilers under a high
pressure of steam, which was no doubt the true explanation of this
precaution. But this is perhaps speculation; some people may have
known it quite well, for from the time we came on deck until boat 13
got away, I heard very little conversation of any kind among the
passengers. It is not the slightest exaggeration to say that no signs
of alarm were exhibited by any one: there was no indication of panic
or hysteria; no cries of fear, and no running to and fro to discover
what was the matter, why we had been summoned on deck with lifebelts,
and what was to be done with us now we were there. We stood there
quietly looking on at the work of the crew as they manned the
lifeboats, and no one ventured to interfere with them or offered to
help them. It was plain we should be of no use; and the crowd of men
and women stood quietly on the deck or paced slowly up and down
waiting for orders from the officers. Now, before we consider any
further the events that followed, the state of mind of passengers at
this juncture, and the motives which led each one to act as he or she
did in the circumstances, it is important to keep in thought the
amount of information at our disposal. Men and women act according to
judgment based on knowledge of the conditions around them, and the
best way to understand some apparently inconceivable things that
happened is for any one to imagine himself or herself standing on deck
that night. It seems a mystery to some people that women refused to
leave the ship, that some persons retired to their cabins, and so on;
but it is a matter of judgment, after all.

So that if the reader will come and stand with the crowd on deck, he
must first rid himself entirely of the knowledge that the Titanic has
sunk—an important necessity, for he cannot see conditions as they
existed there through the mental haze arising from knowledge of the
greatest maritime tragedy the world has known: he must get rid of any
foreknowledge of disaster to appreciate why people acted as they did.
Secondly, he had better get rid of any picture in thought painted
either by his own imagination or by some artist, whether pictorial or
verbal, "from information supplied." Some are most inaccurate (these,
mostly word-pictures), and where they err, they err on the highly
dramatic side. They need not have done so: the whole conditions were
dramatic enough in all their bare simplicity, without the addition of
any high colouring.

Having made these mental erasures, he will find himself as one of the
crowd faced with the following conditions: a perfectly still
atmosphere; a brilliantly beautiful starlight night, but no moon, and
so with little light that was of any use; a ship that had come quietly
to rest without any indication of disaster—no iceberg visible, no
hole in the ship's side through which water was pouring in, nothing
broken or out of place, no sound of alarm, no panic, no movement of
any one except at a walking pace; the absence of any knowledge of the
nature of the accident, of the extent of damage, of the danger of the
ship sinking in a few hours, of the numbers of boats, rafts, and other
lifesaving appliances available, their capacity, what other ships were
near or coming to help—in fact, an almost complete absence of any
positive knowledge on any point. I think this was the result of
deliberate judgment on the part of the officers, and perhaps, it was
the best thing that could be done. In particular, he must remember
that the ship was a sixth of a mile long, with passengers on three
decks open to the sea, and port and starboard sides to each deck: he
will then get some idea of the difficulty presented to the officers of
keeping control over such a large area, and the impossibility of any
one knowing what was happening except in his own immediate vicinity.
Perhaps the whole thing can be summed up best by saying that, after we
had embarked in the lifeboats and rowed away from the Titanic, it
would not have surprised us to hear that all passengers would be
saved: the cries of drowning people after the Titanic gave the final
plunge were a thunderbolt to us. I am aware that the experiences of
many of those saved differed in some respects from the above: some had
knowledge of certain things, some were experienced travellers and
sailors, and therefore deduced more rapidly what was likely to happen;
but I think the above gives a fairly accurate representation of the
state of mind of most of those on deck that night.

All this time people were pouring up from the stairs and adding to the
crowd: I remember at that moment thinking it would be well to return
to my cabin and rescue some money and warmer clothing if we were to
embark in boats, but looking through the vestibule windows and seeing
people still coming upstairs, I decided it would only cause confusion
passing them on the stairs, and so remained on deck.

I was now on the starboard side of the top boat deck; the time about
12.20. We watched the crew at work on the lifeboats, numbers 9, 11,
13, 15, some inside arranging the oars, some coiling ropes on the
deck,—the ropes which ran through the pulleys to lower to the
sea,—others with cranks fitted to the rocking arms of the davits. As
we watched, the cranks were turned, the davits swung outwards until
the boats hung clear of the edge of the deck. Just then an officer
came along from the first-class deck and shouted above the noise of
escaping steam, "All women and children get down to deck below and all
men stand back from the boats." He had apparently been off duty when
the ship struck, and was lightly dressed, with a white muffler twisted
hastily round his neck. The men fell back and the women retired below
to get into the boats from the next deck. Two women refused at first
to leave their husbands, but partly by persuasion and partly by force
they were separated from them and sent down to the next deck. I think
that by this time the work on the lifeboats and the separation of men
and women impressed on us slowly the presence of imminent danger, but
it made no difference in the attitude of the crowd: they were just as
prepared to obey orders and to do what came next as when they first
came on deck. I do not mean that they actually reasoned it out: they
were the average Teutonic crowd, with an inborn respect for law and
order and for traditions bequeathed to them by generations of
ancestors: the reasons that made them act as they did were impersonal,
instinctive, hereditary.