The Night Lives On (4 page)

Covering the incident, the
Southampton Times and Hampshire Gazette
didn’t know why it had happened. The paper merely explained that the passing of the
Titanic
had caused the
New York
to break away “by some means or other.” But of one thing the editors were sure: the near-collision was not a case of bad shiphandling by Captain Smith of the
Titanic
: “From the moment she began to move from her berth she was under absolute control, and she passed out of the dock not only majestically, but also smoothly and calmly. If anything, she was proceeding more slowly than the
Olympic
usually does, and she turned her nose toward the sea with the greatest ease.”

It was only natural to rush to Captain Smith’s
support. He was at the pinnacle of a brilliant career. Going to sea as an apprentice on a clipper ship in 1869, he gradually worked his way up the ladder, joining White Star in 1880 as fourth officer on the old
Celtic.
By 1887 he was captain of the
Republic
, and since then he had commanded no fewer than 17 White Star vessels.

All the time he honed the qualities that made the trans-Atlantic captain such a unique breed. He was a superb seaman. He was a firm disciplinarian, but fair and popular with his crews. He was a splendid innkeeper, gradually building up a loyal clientele of devoted passengers. Here a personal note is perhaps revealing. Around the turn of the century my mother, torn by affairs of the heart, was urged by her father to take a trip abroad to “sort things out.” He didn’t care where she went, how long she stayed, or what ship she took—as long as she sailed with Captain Smith. On occasional business trips he himself had sailed with Smith and swore by the man.

Mother accordingly set off on the
Baltic
, which was Captain Smith’s ship at the time. She solved her problems before they were out of sight of Ambrose Lightship; so it was simply a trip across the ocean and back—still on the
Baltic;
still sailing with Captain Smith.

He was a big man, gray-bearded, barrel-chested, and with the autocratic look of an officer who might thunder orders from the bridge. Actually, he was extremely soft-spoken, rarely raised his voice, and smiled easily. His whole appeal was low-key. Bringing the
Adriatic
over on her maiden voyage in 1907, he told the New York press:

When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experiences of nearly 40 years at sea, I merely say “uneventful.” I have never been in an accident of any sort worth speaking about. I never saw a wreck and have never been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.

“Uneventful” paid off. Captain Smith was the obvious choice to command the great new
Olympic
when she entered service in 1911. She was nearly twice as big as any ship he had handled before, but it seemed only coincidence when an odd mishap occurred almost right away.

Arriving in New York, June 21, on her maiden voyage, the
Olympic
received the traditional welcome of whistle blasts and flag-dips as she moved up the North River to Pier 59, especially lengthened to receive her. Here 12 tugs took over, nursing her into her slip, with an occasional assist from the
Olympic’s
engines. The tug
O. L. Hallenbeck
was standing by near the liner’s stern, when a sudden reverse burst of the
Olympic’s
starboard propeller sucked it against the ship, cutting off the
Hallenbeck’s
stern frame, rudder, and wheel shaft.

Who gave the order to reverse the starboard engine? The
Olympic
was under the pilot’s control, but the captain is always responsible for his ship, and Captain Smith was no exception. Information is scanty. The press tended to treat the affair as good clean fun—the
Times
called the crash a “playful touch”—and only the tug’s owner seemed really annoyed. He sued White Star for $10,000, a significant sum in those days. White Star
responded with a countersuit, and ultimately both cases were dismissed for lack of evidence. Nobody saw the incident for what it really was: a disturbing lesson in the difficulty of managing a steamer of the
Olympic’s
unprecedented size. It turned even the most experienced seaman into an inexperienced novice.

Another incident drove home the point three months later. Shortly after noon, September 20, as the
Olympic
began her fifth voyage to New York, she fell in with the Royal Navy cruiser
Hawke
in the narrow channel of a tricky body of water called Spithead, off the Isle of Wight. The
Olympic
had seven times the tonnage of the
Hawke,
and was nearly three times as long.

The two vessels were going in roughly the same direction on courses that were at first converging, then parallel, with the
Hawke
off the
Olympic’s
starboard side. They were soon only 200 yards apart. Both were going at about 15 knots, with the
Hawke
at first overhauling the
Olympic
, then beginning to drop behind as the liner opened up her speed.

Suddenly, without warning, the
Hawke
veered hard to port and headed straight for the
Olympic’s
starboard quarter. It took only a few seconds. At 12:46
P.M.
there was a crash like a thunderclap as the cruiser rammed the liner’s hull. Luckily no one was killed, but the
Hawke’s
bow was badly crumpled, and the
Olympic
received a double gash toward the stern, flooding two compartments and damaging her starboard propeller. Her passengers were taken off by tender, and the liner limped back to Southampton and men to Belfast for six weeks of repairs.

The obvious villain was the
Hawke.
The
Olympic’s
passengers, interviewed by the press, were almost
unanimous in declaring that the cruiser suddenly and for no apparent reason turned and rammed their ship. The
Hawke’s
captain, some said, must have been “crazy.” As for Captain Smith, all agreed that he was “the best on the Atlantic.”

The case eventually went to court, where the Admiralty came up with a startling defense that went beyond such standard questions as who had the right of way, and whether the ships were on “parallel” or “converging” courses. Bolstered by experts who had experimented with small models in tanks, the Admiralty argued that far from being the transgressor, the
Hawke
was the innocent victim. She had been helplessly drawn into the side of the
Olympic
by hydrodynamic forces over which she had no control. When a ship’s hull is moving forward, the experts explained, it pushes out on either side a large amount of water. This displaced water then surges back toward the stern and into the vessel’s wake. In doing so, it draws or sucks in any smaller object that happens to be afloat nearby. The pull increases with the size, speed, and proximity of the larger moving hull. Here, the pull was irresistible. The 45,000-ton
Olympic
was much too close, considering the speed she was making as she began drawing ahead of the 7,500-ton
Hawke.

The Court listened and was convinced. The
Hawke
was cleared, and the
Olympic
held to blame for the collision.

“Thoroughly unsatisfactory” was the reaction of
Nautical Magazine,
the accepted spokesman for officers of the British merchant service. The editors were especially indignant about the experts’ use of models to prove the hydrodynamic forces at work. How could the
movement of “light toys” floating in a tank prove anything about two vessels “weighing thousands of tons” in the actual sea? “When all is said, the
practical
seaman will dismiss these model experiments as useless and only fit for the consideration of the Admiralty lawyers.”

The White Star Line evidently agreed. Arguably Captain Smith was off the hook anyhow, since the
Olympic
was under pilot at the time, but a captain is always responsible for his ship, and there were plenty of ways that the owners could have shown their displeasure, if they were unhappy about his performance.

Instead, they promoted him. Early in 1912, Captain Smith was named to command the new and even bigger
Titanic
, flagship of the fleet. He would take her over and back on her maiden voyage, and then retire. He was now 59, and this would be a way of thanking him for his years of loyal service.

Sailing day, and the
Titanic’s
near-collision with the
New York
showed that Captain Smith, too, had rejected the Court’s reasoning in the
Olympic-Hawke
case. After all, the two incidents were almost identical: the same captain, the same pilot, the same interaction of hulls, the same result. If Captain Smith had believed there was anything to the suction theory, he would hardly have let it happen twice.

This second episode convinced the whole shipping world that the suction theory was valid after all. Clearly those scientists experimenting with models weren’t just playing with bathtub toys “in pleasant remembrance of younger days,” as
Nautical Magazine
unkindly put it. Presumably Captain Smith got the message, too, but a nagging question remains: how much else was there to learn about these huge new liners mat were so different
from the ships he was used to?

Until 1911, Captain Smith’s largest ship had only half the tonnage of the
Olympic
and
Titanic.
For most of his career, his ships had been less than 500 feet long; the
Olympic
and
Titanic
were nearly 900 feet. Did he fully appreciate the difference? Did he realize how much longer it would take to stop a 46,000-ton ship going 22 knots? Or how many more seconds it would take one of these new giants to answer the helm? Or how much wider her turning circle would be?

Certainly the
Titanic’s
trials could not have been very helpful. They took up only half a day in Belfast Lough. During this time she never went at full speed. First, she spent several hours making twists and turns, then four more hours on a straight run down the Lough and back. She made only one test to see how fast she could stop. At 18 knots, with both engines in reverse, the time was 3 minutes, 15 seconds; the distance, 3,000 feet. She would have nothing like that 12 days later.

Returning to Belfast at dusk, the
Titanic
put all the Harland & Wolff technicians ashore, except for a lucky eight, who would be making the maiden voyage to help break the ship in. She now headed for Southampton to begin her regular service. The trials seem amazingly perfunctory when compared, for instance, to the trials of the liner
United States
, which lasted six weeks.

Captain Smith, too, seems to have felt that something more was needed. He did a surprising thing as the
Titanic
, after a brief stop at Cherbourg, steamed toward Queenstown early on the morning of April 11. In a little while there would be the hurly-burly of taking on hundreds of Irish emigrants, then the pressures of keeping schedule across the Atlantic. Now he had a free
moment to tie up a few loose ends. There were the compasses, for instance; they needed testing and adjustment. The
Titanic
began a series of lazy “S” turns, as Captain Smith continued to educate himself on the ways of his immense new command.

A
S THE
T
ITANIC
HEADED
out to sea, and the green hills of Ireland faded into the dusk astern, her First Class passengers busied themselves with the ritual that invariably opened every Atlantic voyage; they studied the Passenger List, looking for old friends or familiar names that might be worth cultivating. The list was neatly printed in booklet form and slipped under the stateroom door by the steward or “Buttons,” as the bellboys were called.

It makes as fascinating reading today as it did the first night out. Like stars in a Broadway production, the big names are all there: the Astors, of course, along with the Wideners, Thayers, and others prominent in Society. They would be enough to adorn any important occasion in 1912, but what made the
Titanic
special was the presence of leaders in so many different fields: the artist Frank Millet; the editor W. T. Stead; the writer Jacques Futrelle; the theatrical producer Henry B. Harris; President Taft’s military aide Archie Butt; the elderly philanthropist Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida. Also noted (but not named) were 31 personal maids and valets, just in case the ship’s army of stewards and stewardesses weren’t enough to satisfy every need.

What makes the list even more intriguing today are certain inaccuracies and omissions. It included, for instance, the name of at least one man who wasn’t on board at all. Frank Carlson was an American visiting France who hoped to catch the
Titanic
home. Driving to Cherbourg in his own car, he had the misfortune to break down, and by the time repairs were made, he had missed the boat. But his name remained on the Passenger List, and later on the casualty list, when he failed to answer the roll call of survivors. Sixty years afterward his family was still trying to correct the error.

Others were not on the Passenger List, but definitely on the
Titanic.
Mrs. Henry B. Cassebeer boarded the liner as a Second Class passenger. She was an impecunious young widow, but a very experienced traveler. Knowing that expensive cabins often went begging in the off-season, she visited the Purser’s Office. At the cost of a few pounds under the counter, she upgraded herself from Second Class to one of the best First Class staterooms on the ship.

Flushed with success, she ran into Chief Purser McElroy a little later and playfully suggested that she be seated at the captain’s table. “I’ll do better than that,” McElroy gallantly replied. “I’ll have you seated at
my
table!”

Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff Gordon were two other names missing from the Passenger List but definitely on the
Titanic.
For some reason they were traveling as “Mr. and Mrs. Morgan”—an odd decision, since Lady Duff Gordon was one of Society’s most important couturières and lived by publicity.