The Loss of the S. S. Titanic - Its Story and Its Lessons (8 page)

One conversation took place that is, I think, worth repeating: one
more proof that the world after all is a small place. The ten months'
old baby which was handed down at the last moment was received by a
lady next to me—the same who shared her wraps and coats. The mother
had found a place in the middle and was too tightly packed to come
through to the child, and so it slept contentedly for about an hour in
a stranger's arms; it then began to cry and the temporary nurse said:
"Will you feel down and see if the baby's feet are out of the blanket!
I don't know much about babies but I think their feet must be kept
warm." Wriggling down as well as I could, I found its toes exposed to
the air and wrapped them well up, when it ceased crying at once: it
was evidently a successful diagnosis! Having recognized the lady by
her voice,—it was much too dark to see faces,—as one of my vis-à-vis
at the purser's table, I said,—"Surely you are Miss——?" "Yes,"
she replied, "and you must be Mr. Beesley; how curious we should find
ourselves in the same boat!" Remembering that she had joined the boat
at Queenstown, I said, "Do you know Clonmel? a letter from a great
friend of mine who is staying there at——
(giving the address)
came
aboard at Queenstown." "Yes, it is my home: and I was dining
at——just before I came away." It seemed that she knew my friend,
too; and we agreed that of all places in the world to recognize mutual
friends, a crowded lifeboat afloat in mid-ocean at 2 A.M. twelve
hundred miles from our destination was one of the most unexpected.

And all the time, as we watched, the Titanic sank lower and lower by
the head and the angle became wider and wider as the stern porthole
lights lifted and the bow lights sank, and it was evident she was not
to stay afloat much longer. The captain-stoker now told the oarsmen to
row away as hard as they could. Two reasons seemed to make this a wise
decision: one that as she sank she would create such a wave of suction
that boats, if not sucked under by being too near, would be in danger
of being swamped by the wave her sinking would create—and we all knew
our boat was in no condition to ride big waves, crowded as it was and
manned with untrained oarsmen. The second was that an explosion might
result from the water getting to the boilers, and dèbris might fall
within a wide radius. And yet, as it turned out, neither of these
things happened.

At about 2.15 A.M. I think we were any distance from a mile to two
miles away. It is difficult for a landsman to calculate distance at
sea but we had been afloat an hour and a half, the boat was heavily
loaded, the oarsmen unskilled, and our course erratic: following now
one light and now another, sometimes a star and sometimes a light from
a port lifeboat which had turned away from the Titanic in the opposite
direction and lay almost on our horizon; and so we could not have gone
very far away.

About this time, the water had crept up almost to her sidelight and
the captain's bridge, and it seemed a question only of minutes before
she sank. The oarsmen lay on their oars, and all in the lifeboat were
motionless as we watched her in absolute silence—save some who would
not look and buried their heads on each others' shoulders. The lights
still shone with the same brilliance, but not so many of them: many
were now below the surface. I have often wondered since whether they
continued to light up the cabins when the portholes were under water;
they may have done so.

And then, as we gazed awe-struck, she tilted slowly up, revolving
apparently about a centre of gravity just astern of amidships, until
she attained a vertically upright position; and there she
remained—motionless! As she swung up, her lights, which had shone
without a flicker all night, went out suddenly, came on again for a
single flash, then went out altogether. And as they did so, there came
a noise which many people, wrongly I think, have described as an
explosion; it has always seemed to me that it was nothing but the
engines and machinery coming loose from their bolts and bearings, and
falling through the compartments, smashing everything in their way. It
was partly a roar, partly a groan, partly a rattle, and partly a
smash, and it was not a sudden roar as an explosion would be: it went
on successively for some seconds, possibly fifteen to twenty, as the
heavy machinery dropped down to the bottom (now the bows) of the ship:
I suppose it fell through the end and sank first, before the ship. But
it was a noise no one had heard before, and no one wishes to hear
again: it was stupefying, stupendous, as it came to us along the
water. It was as if all the heavy things one could think of had been
thrown downstairs from the top of a house, smashing each other and the
stairs and everything in the way. Several apparently authentic
accounts have been given, in which definite stories of explosions have
been related—in some cases even with wreckage blown up and the ship
broken in two; but I think such accounts will not stand close
analysis. In the first place the fires had been withdrawn and the
steam allowed to escape some time before she sank, and the possibility
of explosion from this cause seems very remote. Then, as just related,
the noise was not sudden and definite, but prolonged—more like the
roll and crash of thunder. The probability of the noise being caused
by engines falling down will be seen by referring to Figure 2
^[3]
where the engines are placed in compartments 3, 4, and 5. As the
Titanic tilted up they would almost certainly fall loose from their
bed and plunge down through the other compartments.

No phenomenon like that pictured in some American and English papers
occurred—that of the ship breaking in two, and the two ends being
raised above the surface. I saw these drawings in preparation on board
the Carpathia, and said at the time that they bore no resemblance to
what actually happened.

When the noise was over the Titanic was still upright like a column:
we could see her now only as the stern and some 150 feet of her stood
outlined against the star-specked sky, looming black in the darkness,
and in this position she continued for some minutes—I think as much
as five minutes, but it may have been less. Then, first sinking back a
little at the stern, I thought, she slid slowly forwards through the
water and dived slantingly down; the sea closed over her and we had
seen the last of the beautiful ship on which we had embarked four days
before at Southampton.

And in place of the ship on which all our interest had been
concentrated for so long and towards which we looked most of the time
because it was still the only object on the sea which was a fixed
point to us—in place of the Titanic, we had the level sea now
stretching in an unbroken expanse to the horizon: heaving gently just
as before, with no indication on the surface that the waves had just
closed over the most wonderful vessel ever built by man's hand; the
stars looked down just the same and the air was just as bitterly cold.

There seemed a great sense of loneliness when we were left on the sea
in a small boat without the Titanic: not that we were uncomfortable
(except for the cold) nor in danger: we did not think we were either,
but the Titanic was no longer there.

We waited head on for the wave which we thought might come—the wave
we had heard so much of from the crew and which they said had been
known to travel for miles—and it never came. But although the Titanic
left us no such legacy of a wave as she went to the bottom, she left
us something we would willingly forget forever, something which it is
well not to let the imagination dwell on—the cries of many hundreds
of our fellow-passengers struggling in the ice-cold water.

I would willingly omit any further mention of this part of the
disaster from this book, but for two reasons it is not possible—
first, that as a matter of history it should be put on record;
and secondly, that these cries were not only an appeal for
help in the awful conditions of danger in which the drowning
found themselves,—an appeal that could never be answered,
—but an appeal to the whole world to make such conditions of
danger and hopelessness impossible ever again; a cry that called
to the heavens for the very injustice of its own existence; a cry
that clamoured for its own destruction.

We were utterly surprised to hear this cry go up as the waves closed
over the Titanic: we had heard no sound of any kind from her since we
left her side; and, as mentioned before, we did not know how many
boats she had or how many rafts. The crew may have known, but they
probably did not, and if they did, they never told the passengers; we
should not have been surprised to know all were safe on some
life-saving device.

So that unprepared as we were for such a thing, the cries of the
drowning floating across the quiet sea filled us with stupefaction: we
longed to return and rescue at least some of the drowning, but we knew
it was impossible. The boat was filled to standing-room, and to return
would mean the swamping of us all, and so the captain-stoker told his
crew to row away from the cries. We tried to sing to keep all from
thinking of them; but there was no heart for singing in the boat at
that time.

The cries, which were loud and numerous at first, died away gradually
one by one, but the night was clear, frosty and still, the water
smooth, and the sounds must have carried on its level surface free
from any obstruction for miles, certainly much farther from the ship
than we were situated. I think the last of them must have been heard
nearly forty minutes after the Titanic sank. Lifebelts would keep the
survivors afloat for hours; but the cold water was what stopped the
cries.

There must have come to all those safe in the lifeboats, scattered
round the drowning at various distances, a deep resolve that, if
anything could be done by them in the future to prevent the repetition
of such sounds, they would do it—at whatever cost of time or other
things. And not only to them are those cries an imperative call, but
to every man and woman who has known of them. It is not possible that
ever again can such conditions exist; but it is a duty imperative on
one and all to see that they do not. Think of it! a few more boats, a
few more planks of wood nailed together in a particular way at a
trifling cost, and all those men and women whom the world can so ill
afford to lose would be with us to-day, there would be no mourning in
thousands of homes which now are desolate, and these words need not
have been written.

All accounts agree that the Titanic sunk about 2:20 A.M.: a watch in
our boat gave the time as 2:30 A.M. shortly afterwards. We were then
in touch with three other boats: one was 15, on our starboard quarter,
and the others I have always supposed were 9 and 11, but I do not know
definitely. We never got into close touch with each other, but called
occasionally across the darkness and saw them looming near and then
drawing away again; we called to ask if any officer were aboard the
other three, but did not find one. So in the absence of any plan of
action, we rowed slowly forward—or what we thought was forward, for
it was in the direction the Titanic's bows were pointing before she
sank. I see now that we must have been pointing northwest, for we
presently saw the Northern Lights on the starboard, and again, when
the Carpathia came up from the south, we saw her from behind us on the
southeast, and turned our boat around to get to her. I imagine the
boats must have spread themselves over the ocean fanwise as they
escaped from the Titanic: those on the starboard and port sides
forward being almost dead ahead of her and the stern boats being
broadside from her; this explains why the port boats were so much
longer in reaching the Carpathia—as late as 8.30 A.M.—while some of
the starboard boats came up as early as 4.10 A.M. Some of the port
boats had to row across the place where the Titanic sank to get to the
Carpathia, through the debris of chairs and wreckage of all kinds.

None of the other three boats near us had a light—and we missed
lights badly: we could not see each other in the darkness; we could
not signal to ships which might be rushing up full speed from any
quarter to the Titanic's rescue; and now we had been through so much
it would seem hard to have to encounter the additional danger of being
in the line of a rescuing ship. We felt again for the lantern beneath
our feet, along the sides, and I managed this time to get down to the
locker below the tiller platform and open it in front by removing a
board, to find nothing but the zinc airtank which renders the boat
unsinkable when upset. I do not think there was a light in the boat.
We felt also for food and water, and found none, and came to the
conclusion that none had been put in; but here we were mistaken. I
have a letter from Second Officer Lightoller in which he assures me
that he and Fourth Officer Pitman examined every lifeboat from the
Titanic as they lay on the Carpathia's deck afterwards and found
biscuits and water in each. Not that we wanted any food or water then:
we thought of the time that might elapse before the Olympic picked us
up in the afternoon.

Towards 3 A.M. we saw a faint glow in the sky ahead on the starboard
quarter, the first gleams, we thought, of the coming dawn. We were not
certain of the time and were eager perhaps to accept too readily any
relief from darkness—only too glad to be able to look each other in
the face and see who were our companions in good fortune; to be free
from the hazard of lying in a steamer's track, invisible in the
darkness. But we were doomed to disappointment: the soft light
increased for a time, and died away a little; glowed again, and then
remained stationary for some minutes! "The Northern Lights"! It
suddenly came to me, and so it was: presently the light arched fanwise
across the northern sky, with faint streamers reaching towards the
Pole-star. I had seen them of about the same intensity in England some
years ago and knew them again. A sigh of disappointment went through
the boat as we realized that the day was not yet; but had we known it,
something more comforting even than the day was in store for us. All
night long we had watched the horizon with eager eyes for signs of a
steamer's lights; we heard from the captain-stoker that the first
appearance would be a single light on the horizon, the masthead light,
followed shortly by a second one, lower down, on the deck; if these
two remained in vertical alignment and the distance between them
increased as the lights drew nearer, we might be certain it was a
steamer. But what a night to see that first light on the horizon! We
saw it many times as the earth revolved, and some stars rose on the
clear horizon and others sank down to it: there were "lights" on every
quarter. Some we watched and followed until we saw the deception and
grew wiser; some were lights from those of our boats that were
fortunate enough to have lanterns, but these were generally easily
detected, as they rose and fell in the near distance. Once they raised
our hopes, only to sink them to zero again. Near what seemed to be the
horizon on the port quarter we saw two lights close together, and
thought this must be our double light; but as we gazed across the
miles that separated us, the lights slowly drew apart and we realized
that they were two boats' lanterns at different distances from us, in
line, one behind the other. They were probably the forward port boats
that had to return so many miles next morning across the Titanic's
graveyard.