The Night Lives On (8 page)

But this was not the only damage to the sixth compartment. As Edward Wilding pointed out, the gash that ran from Boiler Room 6 into Boiler Room 5 couldn’t help but hurt the bulkhead that stood in between. Unlike the gash, this wound was not readily visible to the firemen and engineers, but it was there all the same, and about an hour after the collision the whole bulkhead seems to have given way. From somewhere forward, a great rush of water surged into Boiler Room 5, driving out the men still on duty there.

Nor was that all. There’s important, often-overlooked evidence that the next compartment aft, Boiler Room 4, suffered damage entirely independent of the gash. Initially, there was no sign of damage here, but an hour and 40 minutes after the crash, water began seeping over the floor plates from somewhere below. The flow was gradual, but more than the pumps could handle. For a while the firemen toiled on, still shutting down the boilers. The water was up to their knees when the welcome word finally came from the engine room, releasing them from duty. They quickly scrambled up the escape ladders to the temporary safety of the Boat Deck.

It must be emphasized that this water came from below, not above. The flooding of Boiler Room 4 was not part of the process of the forward compartments filling and overflowing into the next compartment aft. Rather, it came from a separate injury to the ship, probably to the double bottom, entirely apart from the familiar gash along the starboard side. In short, the ice did even more mischief than generally thought.

The water in this compartment should also end all theorizing about what might have happened if the bulk-
heads had been carried one deck higher. With Boiler Room 4 gone, the ship was doomed no matter how high the bulkheads might have been carried. At best, the sinking might have been delayed—perhaps until help came—but the ultimate loss of the
Titanic
was certain.

There’s no evidence of damage any farther aft than Boiler Room 4, and this poses an intriguing mystery. If, as the British Inquiry said, the
Titanic’s
bow was just beginning to swing to port when the collision occurred, then the stern would have tended to slue to starboard—toward the ice, rather than away from it. This should have led to some sort of contact with the berg along the whole length of the hull.

What caused the opposite to happen and the stern apparently to swing clear of the berg? One explanation might lie in the exchange between Captain Smith and First Officer Murdoch, when the Captain rushed from his quarters onto the bridge immediately after the impact.

“What have we struck?” asked Smith.

“An iceberg, sir,” replied Murdoch, “I hard-astarboarded and reversed the engines, and I was going to hard-aport around it, but she was too close. I could not do any more.”

Murdoch’s explanation has confused many an armchair navigator. It may help to point out that in 1912 a ship’s wheel was rigged so that the helmsman turned it to starboard in order to go to port—a holdover from the days when ships were steered by tillers. In 1924 the wheel was re-rigged to cater to the instincts of a generation raised on the automobile, but everyone on the
Titanic’s
bridge would have been used to the old way.

At least two survivors gave testimony indicating that
Murdoch did indeed try to “port around” the berg. Quartermaster Alfred Olliver, coming on the bridge right after the collision, said he definitely heard orders to put the helm hard aport. About the same time Able Seaman Joseph Scarrott, alarmed by the jar, rushed out of the forecastle onto the forward well deck in time to see the berg still passing alongside the ship. The
Titanic
at that moment seemed to be under port helm, her stern gliding away from the ice.

Scarrott undoubtedly reported what he thought he saw, but his account seems highly implausible. It would have been impossible for a ship the size of the
Titanic
to have responded to a change in helm so quickly. A motorboat yes; a 46,000-ton liner, no. Moreover, there’s strong evidence that Murdoch never did actually try to carry out his plan. He intended to “port around” the berg, but abandoned the idea when he saw “she was too close.” Quartermaster Hitchens, at the helm, testified that the last order he received was “hard-astarboard.” Fourth Officer Boxhall, approaching the bridge just before the crash, heard only the same order, followed by the ringing of engine room telegraph bells. Reaching the bridge seconds later, he noted that the telegraph was set at FULL SPEED ASTERN—which made no sense if Murdoch still intended to dodge the ice.

Then why
did
the afterpart of the
Titanic
escape damage? Perhaps the answer lies with the other protagonist in the drama. Much has been said about what the iceberg did to the
Titanic
, but very little about what the
Titanic
did to the iceberg. It is generally pictured as a great natural force, impervious to the assault of mere man, yet we do know that the jar sent chunks of ice tumbling down onto the forward well deck of the ship.
Edward Wilding, for one, thought that the same process was going on beneath the surface of the sea as the berg brushed by. If so, it seems reasonable that a large enough chunk may have broken off to end all further contact with the hull.

The first moments after the collision are among the most difficult to sort out. A series of rapidly changing orders jangled from the bridge to the engine room, but none of the surviving witnesses agreed on the exact sequence, the timing, or even the purpose. Greaser Fred Scott testified that immediately after the collision, the engine room telegraph bells rang STOP ENGINES…then, 10 or 15 minutes later, SLOW AHEAD…another 10 minutes and again, STOP ENGINES…another 10 minutes and SLOW ASTERN…5 more minutes and once again, STOP ENGINES. This time they stopped for good.

Trimmer Patrick Dillon, the only other survivor from the engine room, thought that the signal STOP ENGINES came immediately
before
the crash, that SLOW ASTERN came
before
SLOW AHEAD, and that the time intervals were much shorter—for instance, the ship went SLOW AHEAD for only two minutes, not ten. Neither man remembered the engines being set at FULL SPEED ASTERN, as recalled so clearly by Fourth Officer Boxhall on the bridge.

It is fruitless to turn to the bridge for clarification. Captain Smith, First Officer Murdoch, and Sixth Officer Moody were all lost; Fourth Officer Boxhall was off making a quick inspection; Quartermaster Hitchens was in the wheelhouse unable to see anything; Quartermaster Olliver was running errands most of the time. Olliver does remember the Captain telegraphing HALF
SPEED AHEAD sometime during the interval when the
Titanic
lay almost dead in the water.

Many passengers, too, recall the ship starting ahead again, mostly because it seemed so comforting. Second Class passenger Lawrence Beesley, for instance, took a couple of jittery ladies into a bathroom on D Deck and had them touch the tub, where the vibration of the engines was always noticeable. Reassured, the ladies went back to their cabin.

Why the
Titanic
started ahead again, how long and how fast she went, and which direction she took are all intriguing mysteries, important in fixing her correct position when she began calling for help. It has been suggested that Captain Smith was making for the light of another ship on the horizon, but this seems unlikely for two reasons. First, there’s no evidence that such a light had yet been sighted; and second, Captain Smith had no reason yet to suspect that his ship had been seriously injured. In fact, Fourth Officer Boxhall’s first, quick inspection (as far down and forward in the passengers’ quarters as he could go) brought the good news that he could find no damage at all.

The bad news came soon enough—from the carpenter, from Holds 1, 2, and 3, from the firemen’s quarters, from the mail room, from Boiler Rooms 5 and 6. If Smith still had any hope, it was dispelled by the arrival of Thomas Andrews on the bridge. As Managing Director of Harland & Wolff, Andrews knew the ship more intimately than anyone else on board. He gave the
Titanic
“from an hour to an hour and a half.”

Could anything have been done to save her? It’s a favorite subject for letter-writers, and over the years suggestions have ranged from stuffing the gash with
bedding to a headlong run for the light that glimmered most of the night on the horizon.

No amount of bedding could have stemmed the torrent pouring into the
Titanic,
but the possibility of using collisions mats was at least considered by the British Inquiry. After a brief discussion, Edward Wilding rejected the idea on two grounds: first, it was impossible to fix the exact location of the various holes to be plugged; and second, 50 to 60 men would have been needed to rig collision mats, and they couldn’t possibly be organized and deployed before it was too late to do any good.

Steaming for the light can be ruled out too, because it was not sighted soon enough. The light was first seen a few minutes after midnight, and by that time the funnels were blowing off great clouds of steam—a sure sign that the boilers had shut down for good. Even if the light had been sighted sooner, it’s highly doubtful that the
Titanic’s
shattered hull could have stood the strain of the dash.

Others contend that the watertight doors should have been reopened once the extent of the damage was known. This would have allowed the water to spread gradually throughout the hull, and the ship would have settled on an even keel. This way, the
Titanic
would have taken longer to sink than she actually took going down by the head. The British Inquiry agreed, but did not press the point. The damage was so overwhelming, it made little difference whether the doors were left open or shut.

Actually, there seemed to be only one moment when the
Titanic
really might have been saved, and that came at the very start of the crisis, when Lookout Fleet
reported the iceberg to the bridge. If First Officer Murdoch had steamed right at the berg instead of trying to miss it, he might have saved the ship. There would have been a fearful crash—passengers and crew in the first 100 feet would have been killed by the impact—but the
Titanic
would have remained afloat.

It would have been like the
Arizona
, 33 years earlier. Tumbling out on deck, her passengers found her crumpled bow pressed against the ice. Fearing the end, they clung to each other in tears. Yet it was not the end, and when they finally realized that the
Arizona’s
collision bulkhead would hold, they joined in a prayer of thanks and sang the hymn “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.”

The
Titanic
was not the
Arizona.
She hit the berg a glancing blow, not head on; but Murdoch could not be blamed for trying to miss it. He did what he had been trained to do—what any prudent officer would do—in the same circumstances. His great misfortune was that, in his own succinct words, “she was too close.”

Now that it had happened, there was only one course left open for Captain Smith. It was almost exactly midnight—the 12:00 to 4:00 watch was just coming on deck in a last display of normal shipboard routine—when he gave the order to take to the boats.

T
HE DECISION TO TAKE
to the boats brought Captain Smith face-to-face with a painful mathematical fact: there were lifeboats enough for only 1,178 of the 2,201 people on board the
Titanic.
Even if every boat got away filled to capacity, 1,023 individuals would be left behind with no chance of escape.

It could have been worse. The
Titanic
was certified to carry 3,547 passengers and crew, but due to the slack season and uncertainties of travel during the coal strike, she was only two-thirds full. Also, the Board of Trade regulations required her to carry boats for only 962 persons, but the White Star Line liked little flourishes and threw in space for an extra 216. In a “worst case” situation the
Titanic
might lawfully have gone to sea with lifeboats for only 27% of her passengers and crew.

Responsibility for this state of affairs went back to a regulatory body called the Board of Trade, which set the safety standards for British ships. The
Titanic
came under the Board’s regulations governing vessels of “10,000 tons and upwards,” the maximum category at the time the rules were issued in 1894. Since then the size and capacity of ships had increased dramatically—
the
Titanic
was nearly four times as large as any vessel of the 90’s—but the lifeboat requirements remained the same.

At the time of the disaster it was generally felt that the lag was due to a somnolent Board of Trade, full of sleepy figureheads and bureaucrats who failed to keep up to date. Actually, the problem was more complicated than that. The Board’s requirements were inadequate not only for the new breed of giants like the
Titanic
, but for ordinary vessels of the type they were written for. Of 39 British liners over 10,000 tons, 33 did not provide lifeboats for everybody, yet fully complied with the law. Some, like the
Megantic, Zeeland,
and
Saxonia
—all under 20,000 tons—had boats for less than 50% of those who might be aboard. The Cunarder
Carmania
could take care of only 29%.

Nor was the problem limited to vessels coming under Britain’s Board of Trade. The ships of other nations, too, rarely carried enough boats for all on board. The German liner
Amerika
could accommodate only 55%; the American liner
St. Louis,
54%. Based on a random sampling of ships on the North Atlantic run, only the French liner
La Provence
came anywhere near providing boats for all. She could provide space for 82% of her passengers and crew.

In brief, ships of all nationalities—and all sizes—fell short, yet sailed the North Atlantic with official blessing. Surely, all the regulators everywhere couldn’t have been asleep. There had to be a better explanation.

There was. The problem was not somnolence; it was subservience. The members of the Board of Trade itself knew little about ships or safety at sea. They were mostly decorative luminaries like the Archbishop of
Canterbury. On nautical matters they deferred to the professional staff of the Board’s Marine Department. But these men were bureaucrats—better at carrying out policy than making it. When it came to such questions as whether ships should provide lifeboats for all on board, these men deferred to the Department’s Merchant Shipping Advisory Committee. This group was dominated by the ship-owners themselves, and they were only too happy to make policy. They knew exactly where they stood, and they did not want boats for all.