The Night Lives On (10 page)

Then came the lucky break. Due to the coal strike, their sailing was canceled, and they were transferred to the new, glamorous
Titanic.
They were still in Third Class, but on the
Titanic
that was as good as First Class on most of the older, smaller liners. The Goodwins probably occupied two of the four-berth cabins at the very stern of the ship, which White Star reserved for single women and families traveling together. Single men were quartered in the bow, but during the day all Third Class passengers mingled on deck and in the various public rooms. They could go anywhere they liked, as long as they didn’t cross the various barriers and gates that barred access to Second and First Class space.

On White Star ships, Third Class was encouraged to retire by 10
P.M.,
and the Goodwins were undoubtedly in bed when that faint, grinding jar shook the
Titanic
at 11:40 on the night of April 14. Whether they were awakened by the jar no one knows, but they were certainly up shortly after midnight, when the Third Class bedroom stewards went through the long white corridors, banging on doors and telling everybody to put on their life belts.

Pouring into the hallways, the passengers tended to congregate at the foot of the main Third Class stairway on E Deck. Here they waited for instructions from
above, while the bedroom stewards adjusted the life belt straps and assured them that there was no need to worry. It’s easy to imagine the Goodwins, nervous but faintly amused by the odd sight of each other in their bulky life belts: Frederick, with arms folded as in the family photograph…Augusta, with her old-fashioned upswept hairdo…Lillie, 16, her dark hair hanging casually over her shoulders…Charles, 14, alert, erect, every inch the oldest brother…then William, Jessie, Harold, and Sydney, all under 12, good soldiers but uncomprehending.

Word gradually spread that the
Titanic
had hit an iceberg, but the first truly alarming development came when the single men, driven from the bow by the rising water, swarmed aft and joined the crowd milling around the stairs. Many of these men carried satchels and bundles, sopping wet from the seawater that had swirled into their quarters.

And so the crowd waited—restless, complaining, but certainly not rebellious. Their only clue to the condition of the ship was the definite forward tilt of the linoleum beneath their feet. The lights still burned brightly, and buried as they were on E Deck, they couldn’t see that the
Titanic’s
lifeboats were now dropping to the sea and rowing off into the night.

Shortly before 1
A.M.,
the long-awaited instructions came: “Pass the women and children up to the Boat Deck.” The order was by no means easy to carry out. Here and there, wives refused to leave their husbands, children clung to their fathers, and some of the women still refused to believe there was any serious danger. A few even went back to their bunks.

Somehow Steward John E. Hart managed to collect a
group of 30, and leading the way, he escorted them up the stairway to C Deck, across the open well deck, by the Second Class library, and into First Class space. Then on forward to the C Deck foyer, and finally up the grand staircase to the Boat Deck. The route seems to have been set in advance, for all the barriers were down, and here and there other stewards were posted to nudge them along.

It was now 1:10, and Boat 8 was about to leave. Hart handed over his charges to the men at the falls and headed back to steerage for another group.

By the time he reached the Third Class stairs again, matters had taken an ugly turn. The male passengers were now demanding to go up to the Boat Deck too, and it was all the stewards could do to hold them back. Finally, another convoy was organized, and Hart again set out. This time he had about 25 in tow and reached the Boat Deck around 1:35. As far as he could see, there were no boats left except No. 15, still in the davits but ready to be lowered.

Not a moment to lose. He bundled his people into the boat and made a lightning assessment: the
Titanic
was finished…no time to go back for one more group. With a nod from the officer standing by the davits, Hart too jumped into the boat.

In all, he had brought up some 55 women and children—nearly half the total number saved—but the Goodwins weren’t among them. Possibly the family refused to be parted. Possibly they remained below, waiting in vain for one more party to be escorted topside. Possibly they tired of the long wait, struck off on their own, but never made it to the Boat Deck until too late.

It’s difficult even to speculate, not because of any set
policy to hold back Third Class, but because there was no policy at all. Some gates were open; some were closed. Some passengers were assisted; others were stopped; others were left to shift for themselves.

Berk Pickard, a 32-year-old leather worker from London, found a door to Second Class wide open, easily made his way to an early boat. Kathy Gilnagh, a 15-year-old colleen had no such luck. When she and two friends tried to pass through the gate to Second Class from the after well deck, they found it closed and guarded. It took some powerful persuasion by Jim Farrell, a strapping lad from Kathy’s home county, to persuade the guard to open it long enough for the girls to slip through.

All the way forward, Daniel Buckley, another young Irishman, joined a group trying to force their way up the ladder leading from the well deck to First Class. Here, too, the gate was closed and guarded, and after a brief scuffle, the seaman on duty locked it as well. Undaunted, the leader of Buckley’s group stormed up the ladder again and smashed the gate open—lock and all—as the seaman fled.

Olaus Abelseth and four friends, all from Norway, waited for what seemed an eternity in the after well deck. The barriers leading to Second Class were closed, and they whiled away the time watching the more agile steerage passengers climb up a crane, crawl out on the boom, and drop safely into First Class, the ultimate goal of everyone. At last an officer opened the barrier and called for the women and children to go to the Boat Deck. A little later he called for “Everybody.” Abelseth and the rest of the men surged up, only to find that all the boats were gone.

And so it went: no set policy, but incident piled on incident, all combining to make a mockery of Mr. Harbinson’s assurances that there was “not an atom or a tittle of evidence” to substantiate a charge that any attempt was made to keep back the Third Class passengers. Even Steward Hart’s testimony, heavily relied on by the White Star Line, showed clearly that the men in steerage were held back and that the women had what amounted to an hour’s handicap in the race for the boats.

Oddly enough, while the Third Class passengers were having such a hard time, many of the lifeboats were leaving the
Titanic
only half-filled. Considering that at best there was room for only half those on board the ship, it seems incredible that the space available—good for 1,178 people—was occupied by only 705. There was room for another 473—far more than enough for all the women and children lost. Why wasn’t it used?

At the bottom of the trouble was the lack of organization that characterized the whole night. The
Titanic
had never held a boat drill, and few of the crew had any experience in handling the davits. They had boat assignments, but these had only been posted the day after leaving Queenstown. Few had bothered to look up their stations. The manning of the boats was hopelessly haphazard: No. 6 had a crew of only two; No. 3 had 15.

The passengers had no boat assignments at all. They simply milled around the decks waiting for someone to tell them what to do, but there were no clear lines of authority. Later it was said that First Officer Murdoch was in charge on the starboard side, Second Officer Lightoller on the port. But Lightoller never got aft of
the first four boats, nor had anything to do with the first boat, No. 2. The junior officers didn’t seem to have any assignments, and nobody even remembered to wake up Fifth-Officer Lowe. Finally aroused by some unusual noise on the Boat Deck, he looked out and saw passengers standing around in life belts.

There was no consistency in loading the boats. To Lightoller, “Women and children first” meant women and children only, even if that meant not filling a boat. Murdoch, on the other hand, put in men when there were no women. On the
Titanic
, a man’s life could depend on which side of the Boat Deck he happened to step out on.

Then there was the recurring problem of class distinction. At least some of the crew, and passengers too, believed that the boats were reserved for the class where they were located. When two Second Class ladies asked an officer if they could pass to the forward boats in First Class space, passenger Lawrence Beesley heard the officer reply, “No, madam, your boats are down on your deck.”

This basic lack of organization was especially apparent in the actual loading of the boats. No. 4 was the first one ready, and Captain Smith ordered Lightoller to fill it from the Promenade Deck, feeling that it would be easier and safer than the exposed Boat Deck for the women and children. The order was passed on to the passengers already waiting on the Boat Deck, and they obediently trooped below. Watching the scene, First Class passenger Hugh Woolner seems to have been the first person to realize that this wasn’t such a good idea. “Haven’t you forgotten, sir,” he politely asked Smith, “that all those glass windows are closed?”

“By God, you are right!” exclaimed the old captain. “Call those people back.” He had apparently forgotten that the forward end of the
Titanic’s
Promenade Deck was enclosed, confusing her with her sister ship the
Olympic,
where the deck was open for its full length.

So everyone was ordered up again, and the women and children quietly climbed back to the Boat Deck. But by this time Boat 4 had been lowered to the Promenade Deck as originally ordered, and Lightoller decided it would be easier to open the windows than to haul the boat back up. A couple of seamen were sent to do this, and the women and children were ordered back down. “Tell us where to go and we will follow,” exclaimed an exasperated Mrs. Thayer. “You ordered us up here and now you are taking us back.”

No firm procedure was ever followed. In the end, some of the boats were loaded from the Boat Deck, others from the Promenade Deck—meaning that the passengers were often not where the boats were.

Mrs. Thayer’s outburst was prompted by irritation, not fear. For the first hour, few of the
Titanic’s
passengers took the collision very seriously—which is another reason why the early boats, at least, didn’t contain more people. They far preferred the warmth and comfort of the brightly lit ship to the prospect of spending a dark, cold night bobbing about the Atlantic in a rowboat. When the first boat to be loaded, No. 7, was swung out and First Officer Murdoch called for passengers, only a trickle responded. He finally lowered the boat at 12:45 with just 28 persons aboard.

Murdoch now moved on to No. 5, the next boat aft, and again called for passengers. Hovering nearby was a small party of six, traveling together: Mr. and Mrs.
Richard Beckwith, Mr. and Mrs. E. N. Kimball, Miss Helen Newsom, and Karl H. Behr. They were reluctant to go, even after Bruce Ismay urged them to get into the boat. Finally, Mrs. Beckwith edged forward and asked Ismay if her whole party, men and women, could go together. “Of course, madam,” Ismay replied, “every one of you.”

So they all climbed in, and at 12:55, No. 5 was lowered with just 41 people…meaning there was still room for another 24. As the boat jerked down toward the sea 70 feet below, Karl Behr wondered whether this precaution he was taking was worth the risk. Any idea that the
Titanic
might sink was “preposterous.”

Not everyone was that confident. There was, for instance, “our coterie” in the smoking-room. Interrupted by the jar, they soon resumed their bridge game, but it wasn’t as jolly as before. After a hand or two, Hugh Woolner and Bjornstrom Steffanson excused themselves and went below to check on Mrs. Candee. They found her standing outside her stateroom door wondering what had happened, puzzled but all right. Steffanson apparently went back to the smoking room, but by now the ship had stopped, and Woolner invited Mrs. Candee for a walk “to see how things are going.”

They had spent an enchanting afternoon together exploring the vessel, and now they were doing it all over again—only this time things were different. The Boat Deck was dark and bitter cold; the funnels were blowing off steam with a deafening roar; the
Titanic
had a pronounced list to starboard. They nervously cracked a few jokes; touched on their personal troubles, and even talked of life and death. They drifted into the lounge, where they had enjoyed such a cozy tea that afternoon.
Now it was empty, but a cheerful young man suddenly appeared and handed Mrs. Candee a small chunk of ice. It was so cold she dropped it, and Woolner found himself at first chafing and then caressing her hand.

They moved to the Promenade Deck and heard the sailors above beginning to swing out the boats. Wandering by the entrance to the grand staircase, they saw passengers streaming up, all wearing life belts. “Is this orders?” Woolner asked a man by the door. “Orders,” the man briefly replied.

Back down to Mrs. Candee’s stateroom; Woolner found her life belt and tied it on her. Then he hurried off to get his own, promising to meet her in a few minutes topside.

As she started up the stairs, Edward A. Kent—another charter member of the coterie—dashed up. On impulse, she handed him a small ivory miniature of her mother, asking him to keep it for her. He had doubts about his own safety, but slipped it into his pocket. It was still there when his body was picked up a week later.

Woolner and Steffanson reappeared, and together they hurried Mrs. Candee into Boat 6, the first lifeboat lowered on the port side. Of the coterie, Colonel Gracie seems to have been the busiest. He had already offered his services to four other “unprotected ladies,” and now he was doing his best to see them all into the boats. It was after 1:00 before he began searching for Mrs. Candee. He finally ran into Kent, who assured him that she was safely off the ship.