The Other Side of the Night (18 page)

For some it was a disconcerting sight. One of the
Carpathia
’s passengers, Charles Hurd, an extraordinarily heavy sleeper who hadn’t been aroused by the ship’s thundering dash north, awoke to find her inexplicably stopped in the middle of the ocean with those whacking great chunks of ice floating nearby. He hunted up his stewardess to demand an explanation. The woman was weeping, and before Hurd could say anything, she pointed to a cluster of haphazardly-dressed women making their way into the Dining Saloon, and through her tears said, “They are from the
Titanic
. She’s at the bottom of the ocean.”

The sky was brilliantly clear, with the sun’s first golden rays now reaching above the horizon and fanning out across the blue; the pale sliver of a new moon appeared. As the growing dawn made it clear to those in the lifeboats that the
Carpathia
had indeed stopped to rescue the
Titanic
’s survivors, shouts of relief rose up from some of the boats. Others gave organized cheers as they began pulling for the liner. In Boat 13 they sang “Pull for the Shore, Sailor” as they rowed toward the
Carpathia
. But some boats were very, very quiet. In Boat 7, Lookout Hogg told his charges, “It’s all right, ladies, do not grieve. We are picked up.” The women, though, just sat there, speechless with relief.

There were no cheers from the freezing men on Collapsible B either—it took too much effort just to stay afloat. As dawn broke, Lightoller spotted Boats 4, 10, and 12, along with Collapsible D, tied together just as Fourth Officer Lowe had left them, about a third of a mile away. Concerted shouts of “Ship ahoy!” produced no results, but when Lightoller found an officer’s whistle in his pocket and gave it three sharp blasts, that got the attention of everyone.

Seaman Clinch in Boat 12 and Quartermaster Perkis in Boat 4 quickly cast off from the other two boats and pulled alongside Collapsible B. The overturned boat was wallowing badly now, the men almost knee deep in water, and when Boat 4 came alongside, it nearly washed everyone off. (One of them, Harold Bride, the
Titanic
’s junior wireless operator, would suffer for weeks from severe frostbite in both feet, caused by standing for hours in the icy water atop Collapsible B.) Lightoller, taking no chances, especially now that rescue was so close at hand, warned the men not to jump all at once. One by one, they scrambled into two waiting lifeboats, some afraid of losing their footing and being pitched into the water, others so cold that they were oblivious to everything and everyone around them. Lightoller was the last man off Collapsible B, carefully climbing into Boat 12, taking charge of the now dangerously overloaded boat, and guiding her toward the
Carpathia
.

Fifth Officer Lowe was busy as well. He had hoisted the sail aboard Boat 14 as soon as the
Carpathia
hove into view, taking advantage of the early morning breeze. Not every sailor could do that, for as he later explained at the Senate Inquiry, “Not all sailors are boatmen, and not all boatmen are sailors.” Lowe was both, and taking advantage of the skills he had learned sailing up and down the Gold Coast, he soon had Boat 14 cutting along at close to four knots. He noticed that Collapsible D was particularly low in the water, and swung his boat over toward her.

Thinking that the Fifth Officer was going to transfer more passengers to the already wallowing collapsible, one of those aboard called out to Lowe, “We have about all we want!” To the relief of everyone else in the collapsible, Lowe quickly told them to tie Boat 14’s painter to Collapsible D’s bow, and he would tow her to the
Carpathia
. They gratefully complied.

Lowe then spotted Collapsible A, almost a mile and a half off, looking like it could sink any minute. More than half the thirty people who had taken refuge in Collapsible A during the night had frozen to death and fallen overboard. Now only thirteen were left. Lowe wasted no time trying to take the boat in tow, instead getting its occupants into Boat 14 as quickly as possible, then putting about for the
Carpathia
.

The whole straggling flotilla of lifeboats was now converging on the Cunard ship. It was 4:45 when Boat 13 tied up at the portside gangway, a half hour after that when Boat 7 pulled alongside. At 6:00 survivors from Boat 3 began to climb aboard the
Carpathia
. Some used the rope ladders, children were hoisted up in mail sacks, and some of the women, not strong enough to negotiate the rope ladders, were lifted aboard in slings. As Elizabeth Shutes found herself swung up into the air, she heard a voice from somewhere on deck call out, “Careful fellows, she’s a lightweight!”

Henry Sleeper Harper stepped into the gangway, accompanied by his wife, his dragoman Hassan Hassah, and his prize Pekinese, only to be met by an old acquaintance, Louis Ogden. What occurred next was so surreal that it might have been lifted from a scene in a Durrenmat play. As if it were the most natural thing in the world to meet under such circumstances, Harper walked over to the astonished Ogden and said, “Louis, how do you keep yourself looking so young?” Ogden, stunned by the morning’s events and Harper’s sudden appearance, was speechless.

It was about this same time that Second Officer Bisset, still keeping a wary eye on the ice, caught sight of a four-masted ship with a single pale-red funnel some seven or eight miles to the north-northwest of the
Carpathia.
At almost the same moment, First Officer Dean, to whom Rostron had given the duty to scan the water for the rest of the
Titanic
’s lifeboats, spotted the same vessel. The
Carpathia
’s Third Officer, Eric Rees, and Fourth Officer, John Geoffrey Barnish, both saw her as well. She was just getting under way and heading west, into the icefield, and she was briefly brought to Captain Rostron’s attention. But there were more urgent matters immediately to hand, and Rostron, Bissett, Dean, and the other officers gave the ship little notice, apart from making note of her appearance and bearing.

Collapsible C tied up below the
Carpathia
’s gangway at 6:30, and Fifth Officer Lowe carefully brought Boat 14 alongside ship just before 7:00, with Collapsible D still in tow. By now the crew of the
Carpathia
had fallen into a routine while bringing the passengers and crewmen aboard, and the two lifeboats were quickly unloaded.

There was by now a lot of frantic activity on the small liner’s deck (although many of the
Carpathia’
s passengers and crew were later to remark how quiet the
Titanic’
s survivors seemed) as family members sought one another out, or peered anxiously over the railing as each boat came alongside, looking for familiar faces. Usually the outcome was predictable: the sought-after loved one wouldn’t be in any of the boats and the agonizing reality would set in. But sometimes there would be a happy reunion. Dr. Washington Dodge was reunited with his wife and son. They had been separated on the
Titanic
’s Boat Deck when Dr. Dodge insisted they get into a boat, but he remained on board himself; later, an officer ordered him into another boat to man an oar. Billy Carter, who had been in Collapsible C, stood staring down at Boat 4 as it came alongside, spotting his wife and daughter, but was still searching frantically for his son. Finally he called out, “Where’s my boy?”

Recognizing his father’s voice, ten-year-old William, Jr. lifted the brim of a girl’s hat he was wearing and looked up, saying, “Here I am, Father.”

Not all the reunions were as happy. When Mrs. John B. Thayer and her son, Jack, saw one another, they rushed into each other’s arms. After a minute though, Mrs. Thayer asked Jack, “Where’s Daddy?” All the young Thayer could say was, “I don’t know.” The elder Thayer had died on the
Titanic
’s Boat Deck.

Sadder still was the plight of an Italian woman, a steerage passenger, who broke down completely in the Third Class dining room, weeping hysterically, shouting out, “
Bambino!”
over and over again. Gradually it was realized that she was pleading for her baby, from whom she had been separated somehow in the lifeboat. The child was soon found and brought to her, but if anything the woman became more agitated as she held up two fingers to show that a second child was missing. This one was found, too—in the pantry, on the hot press. Someone had put it there so its little body would thaw out.

By 8:15 all the boats were alongside, except for Boat 12, which was still a quarter mile away and moving slowly. The breeze was freshening, and with the boat as overloaded as it was—seventy-four people in a boat designed to hold sixty-five—Lightoller wasn’t about to take any chances. Rostron nudged his engines to life and brought the
Carpathia
forward slowly, swinging his bows to starboard a bit to bring the boat into the ship’s lee. As he turned the wind kicked up a squall and a couple of waves crashed over the boat, covering everyone with spray. Gingerly, Lightoller put his tiller over, and Boat 12 slipped into the sheltered waters by the
Carpathia’
s side. At 8:30 she made fast to the ship and Lightoller began unloading his passengers. As he did so, he was startled to hear a voice above him sing out, “Hullo, Lights! What are you doing down there?” Looking up, Lightoller saw the smiling face of the
Carpathia
’s First Officer, Horace Dean, peering over the side of the ship. The two men were old friends—Dean had been the best man at the Second Officer’s wedding. No one could have anticipated that they would ever meet again under such circumstances.

By 9:00 a.m. all of the
Titanic
’s survivors were aboard the
Carpathia
. Now Captain Rostron had to figure out what to do with them. Though collecting and confirming the names of all the survivors would take most of the rest of the day, by 9:30 a.m. the Purser and his assistants were able to give Rostron a fairly accurate tally: 705 survivors had been brought aboard—meaning that more than fifteen hundred people had died with the
Titanic
. Heartsick, the deeply religious Rostron decided that while nothing could be done for those lost, a brief religious service—a combined memorial and thanksgiving—might go a long way toward helping the survivors begin to sort out their grief. Approaching the Reverend Father Roger Anderson, an Episcopalian minister who was one of the
Carpathia’
s passengers, Rostron broached the subject. Reverend Anderson thought it a noble idea and agreed to preside. The service would be held that afternoon in the First Class lounge.

While there is no way of knowing exactly what thoughts were in Rostron’s mind at those moments, it isn’t difficult to surmise what they might have been. While like most skippers on the North Atlantic run Rostron wasn’t much given over to being deeply introspective, he was quite capable of profound reflection. The remark he would make in the days ahead that “There was another Hand than mine on the helm” certainly showed that he was aware of how he, his crew, and his ship had become an integral part of what was far more than just a great ocean-going drama, but that instead was one of the great tragedies of the sea. He had no way of knowing exactly how many passengers and crewmen had been aboard the
Titanic
, but it would not have been difficult to calculate that the
Carpathia
had saved not even a third of the White Star liner’s capacity. Moreover, the number of boats his ship had recovered would have told him that there was little if any hope that there were still survivors unaccounted for.

Still, there would have been no self-recrimination, no dwelling on “what-ifs” and “might-have-beens.” Rostron would have wasted no time wondering what might have happened had the
Carpathia
heard the
Titanic
’s distress call sooner. He knew that he had acted with remarkable alacrity; he also knew the distance between the two ships. Even given the
Carpathia
’s heroic burst of speed, she would have never been able to arrive in time to save everyone. And even as he watched the rescue unfolding that morning, he would have understood that for the living, everything which could have been done had been done: not a single survivor was lost or injured being brought aboard the
Carpathia
. For those who had gone down with the
Titanic
, save for reverencing their memory at the memorial service later that day, there was nothing more that he or anyone else could do. Rostron’s duty now was as he always saw it: to the living.

A quick conference with the Purser and an inventory of the
Carpathia’
s supplies of food and linen told him that there was no way the ship could continue her voyage eastward across the Atlantic; Italy would have to wait. His only choice was to turn around and go back to New York. Reminding the Purser to do all he could to make the
Titanic
’s survivors as comfortable as possible, Rostron returned to the chartroom to work out his new course.

As the
Carpathia’
s crew set to work, her passengers did all they could, too: helping the crew wherever and however they could, finding extra clothes for the survivors, giving up their spare toiletries and toothbrushes. Some made room in their cabins for survivors, others doubled up with other passengers so that those families and fragments of families which survived could be together in some semblance of privacy. But there were some burdens that the
Carpathia
’s passengers, no matter how good their intentions, could never ease, never share. As Mrs. Ogden was taking a tray of coffee cups over to two women sitting by themselves in a corner of the
Carpathia
’s upper deck, they shook their heads and gently waved her off, never taking their eyes from the ice-littered sea. “Go away,” they murmured listlessly. “We’ve just seen our husbands drown.”