Titanic (13 page)

Back on the
Titanic
, as soon as word came that the
Carpathia
was on the way, Harold Bride went to find Captain Smith, who then returned with Bride to the radio room to check on the
Carpathia
’s position.

Maybe, just maybe, the
Carpathia
could get there in enough time to save more people.

But when he worked out the
Carpathia
’s position, Captain Smith realized that the rescue ship was fifty-eight miles away.

Fifty-eight miles. That meant the
Carpathia
wouldn’t arrive for about four hours.

We now know that the
Titanic
was about thirteen miles closer to the
Carpathia
than anyone realized at the time. In the end, though, that wouldn’t matter — the
Carpathia
simply couldn’t get there fast enough.

But the passengers on board the
Titanic
didn’t realize that. In fact, many of them assumed that rescue ships would be there at any moment.

(Preceding image)
A life preserver that was worn by one of the survivors of the
Titanic
, Ms. Laura Mabel Francatelli.

“To those who showed concern, a reassuring answer was forthcoming: ‘There are plenty of lifeboats in the vicinity; they’ll be with us any moment now.’”

— Violet Jessop

Stewardess Violet Jessop was dedicated to her passengers. She helped people into their bulky cork life belts and reminded them to put on warm coats, all without giving a thought to her own safety.

Most everyone seemed calm. And if people seemed worried, they were given a reassuring answer. Not only were there “plenty of boats” nearby, they would be there “any moment now.”

First class passenger Emily Ryerson heard the same rumor about rescue boats. After being ordered to go to the Boat Deck wearing her life belt, her chief thought was “not to make a fuss and to do as we were told.”

A little later, when she was ordered to go to the lifeboat without her husband, he told her to go along — he would stay back with his friend John Thayer (Jack’s father). They’d be fine and would just take another boat.

Everyone believed, as Emily Ryerson said later, that there was “a circle of ships around waiting.”

It is no wonder that passengers thought that rescue was close at hand. After all, some people could even see lights in the distance. Twenty-five-year-old third class passenger Olaus “Ole” Abelseth certainly noticed the lights of a ship not far away.

Ole had immigrated to South Dakota from Norway as a teen ten years before. He’d just been home visiting in Norway for the winter and was returning to America with his cousin and brother-in-law. Ole was a responsible young man. He’d volunteered to watch out for another immigrant, the teenage daughter of a neighbor in his hometown. And as the only one of the group who understood English, he knew his friends depended on him.

In fact, Ole had been trying to get answers to what was happening ever since his roommate had woken him shortly after the collision occurred. One officer had told him there wasn’t any danger. But Ole wasn’t satisfied with that, so he woke his traveling companions. They all put on overcoats and made their way up to the Poop Deck, the third class promenade area at the stern of the ship.

“We all went up on deck and stayed there. We walked over to the port side of the ship, and there were five of us standing, looking, and we thought we saw a light . . .” recalled Ole. “I said to my brother-in-law: ‘I can see it plain, now. It must be a light.’

“. . . it did not seem to be so very far. I thought I could see this mast light, the front mast light. That is what I thought I could see. A little while later there was one of the officers who came and said to be quiet, that there was a ship coming. That is all he said.”

Ole decided it was time to go down and get life belts for everyone. That tantalizing light from the ship in the distance never came closer.

A little while earlier, Lawrence Beesley had been roused to leave his cabin again. This time by a shout from above: “All passengers on deck with lifebelts on.”

He made his way to the starboard side of the Boat Deck. The noise of escaping steam made it hard to hear. He found that he was one of a crowd of people, standing around and watching the crew at work getting the lifeboats ready, arranging oars, and turning the cranks so the boats hung over the side of the
Titanic’
s
deck.

“We stood there quietly looking on at the work of the crew,” he said. It seemed pointless to offer to help, since the crew seemed to know what to do, turning the cranks so that the davits swung outward until the boats hung clear of the edge of the deck.

It was hard to believe there was any real danger. After all, Lawrence reflected, nothing seemed broken or out of place. It was a beautiful starry night. The ship “had come quietly to rest without any indication of disaster — no iceberg visible, no hole in the ship’s side through which water was coming in . . . no sound of alarm.”

All of that changed in an instant.

“Suddenly . . . a rocket leapt upwards to where the stars blinked and twinkled above us. Up it went, higher and higher, with a sea of faces upturned to watch it, and then an explosion that seemed to split the silent night in two, and a shower of stars sank slowly down and went out one by one.”

A gasp went up from the crowd: “‘Rockets!’”

“Anybody knows what rockets at sea mean,” Lawrence said. There could be no doubt: “Everyone knew without being told that we were calling for help. . . .”

But the distress signals would only work if there were other ships nearby to see — and understand — that the
Titanic
was in mortal danger.

And that was not to be.

Although the
Carpathia
would have had to travel for four hours to get to the
Titanic
, there was a closer ship: the
Californian
, a 6,223-ton liner, whose lights Ole Abelseth and others spotted — tantalizingly close but never coming closer — during the
Titanic
’s final hours.

The
Californian
had left Liverpool for Boston carrying cargo but no passengers on April 5. At about 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 14, her captain, Stanley Lord, who had been with the ship since 1911, sent a message to the
Antillian
warning of three large icebergs.

Captain Lord was extremely worried about the field ice ahead. On Sunday evening he doubled his lookouts and then ordered the
Californian
to stop completely because of the ice. Researchers now estimate that the
Californian
was between ten and twenty miles away from the
Titanic
.

Just before 11 p.m., Cyril Evans, the
Californian
’s wireless operator, sent a message to the
Titanic
, using the slang common among the Marconi operators: “Say, old man, we are stopped and surrounded by ice.” (“Old man,” often abbreviated as OM, was a common slang expression used by the operators to one another.)

But this message only made Jack Phillips, overworked by all the personal Marconigrams he still had to send, lose his patience at being interrupted. He replied, “Shut up! Shut up! I am busy. I am working Cape Race.”>

And, after all, Jack Phillips may have figured that by now this was old news: Hadn’t the
Titanic
been getting ice warnings all day?

At 11:35 p.m., before Phillips began to radio distress signals, Evans did stop. In fact, he turned off the wireless apparatus and went to bed. But while several of the
Californian
’s crew, including Second Officer Herbert Stone, Third Officer Charles Groves, and apprentice James Gibson all spotted the
Titanic
in the distance, they didn’t seem to recognize — or act correctly on — what they were seeing.

Both Stone and Gibson spotted the
Titanic
’s rockets, but Stone made the mistake of not presuming that these were distress signals — and acting decisively. At least one rocket was reported to Captain Lord, who was sleeping. He wondered if they were some sort of company, private signals. He instructed them to continue to try to make contact with the ship with a Morse lamp and let him know — yet he did not get up to check on the situation for himself or order the radio operator to be woken.

From the
Californian
, Gibson and Stone saw rockets from the unknown ship on the horizon, eight in all. They watched through binoculars as the
Titanic
disappeared, yet they seemed to think the stranger in the distance was steaming away. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

At 3:20 a.m. there was a new rocket — this time from the
Carpathia
. Captain Lord rose at 4:30 a.m. At 5:20 a.m., Cyril Evans was shaken awake and told to check the wireless, when he learned the truth about what had taken place that night. By 6:00 a.m. the
Californian
was on her way to the scene of the wreck. By then, there was nothing to be seen.

Would history have been changed if the men on the
Californian
had been more decisive? What might have happened if the
Californian
arrived on the scene after the first distress rocket was spotted?

Most researchers believe that while a few more lifeboats could have been lowered into the water for people to swim to, given the difficulties of rescue at sea and the frigid waters, even had she come in time, hundreds on board the
Titanic
would still have perished. But just possibly, more would have been saved.

No one can know for certain. What we do know is that everything seemed to go against the
Titanic
and her crew that night. The failure of the
Californian
to realize that a ship was sinking less than twenty miles away remains one more piece of the tragic story.