Titanic (20 page)

Lightoller tried to catch his breath, hanging on to a small piece of rope attached to Collapsible B. That’s where he was when the gigantic second funnel came crashing into the sea, barely missing him and the boat — and flinging them across the water.

He found himself clear, fifty yards away from the ship. “The piece of rope was still in my hand, with old friend Engelhardt upturned and attached to the other end, with several men by now standing on it.”

Somehow, Lightoller found the strength to scramble up onto the bottom of the lifeboat.

One of those clinging to that lifeboat was wireless operator Harold Bride. He’d been standing on the Boat Deck near Collapsible B during the final moments. Somehow he had grabbed and managed to hold on to an oarlock when the water rushed over the deck, and as the wood-bottomed lifeboat was swept off, he was carried along with it.

“The next I knew I was in the boat, and the boat was upside down, and I was under it,” said Harold. “And I remember realizing that I was wet through, and that whatever happened I must not breathe, for I was under water. I knew I had to fight for it, and I did. How I got out from under the boat I do not know, but I felt a breath of air at last.

“There were men all around me — hundreds of them. The sea was dotted with them . . .”

Harold Bride felt himself giving in to the cold when a hand reached down from the boat and pulled him aboard. “There was just room for me to roll on the edge,” he recalled.

“I lay there, not caring what happened. Somebody sat on my legs. They were wedged in between slats and were being wrenched, I had not the heart left to ask the man to move. It was a terrible sight all around. . . .”

After leaping from the ship, third class passenger Ole Abelseth felt the water close over his head. He didn’t think he would ever come up. When he did, he found that another man struggling in the water had grabbed hold of his neck. Ole wrenched himself away and began to swim. He didn’t see anyone he knew — his companions were gone.

He didn’t know how long he had been swimming when he saw something dark ahead and made toward it. It was Collapsible A.

“When I got on this raft or collapsible boat, they did not try to push me off and they did not do anything for me to get on. All they said when I got on there was, ‘Don’t capsize the boat.’ So I hung onto the raft for a little while before I got on.

“Some of them were trying to get up on their feet,” remembered Ole. “They were sitting down or lying down on the raft. Some of them fell into the water again. Some of them were frozen; and there were two dead, that they threw overboard.”

There was one woman on Collapsible A, the only woman to be plucked from the water into a lifeboat.

It was Rhoda Abbott. But she was alone. Her two boys had been torn from her arms in the sinking.

Colonel Archibald Gracie had been swept off the roof of the first class entrance. He felt himself going down, right along with the
Titanic
. He swam underwater with all his strength. At first he worried that he might be scalded by hot water from the ship’s boilers. But he needn’t have worried; the killer that night was the cold.

Gracie knew he had to hold his breath longer than he ever had. “Just at the moment I thought that for lack of breath I would have to give in, I seemed to have been provided with a second wind, and it was then that the thought that this was my last moment came upon me . . . finally I noticed by the increase of light that I was drawing near to the surface.”

Colonel Gracie was lucky. When he came to the surface he was near a wooden crate. He grabbed it eagerly. He thought that maybe he could find more debris and make a sort of raft.

All at once he heard a strange noise, a sort of huge gulp, from behind him. He turned his head to look for the ship.

(Preceding image)
Artists at the time of the disaster imagined the sinking in dramatic illustrations, not always accurate. Here, the
Titanic
’s stern rises into the air as the ship goes down; lifeboat passengers can only look on.

“I almost thought, as I saw her sink beneath the water, that I could see Jacques, standing where I had left him and waving at me.”

— May Futrelle

“We could see her very plainly, badly down by the head,” said Frankie Goldsmith. “All the lights seemed to be on when suddenly they all went out, and a loud explosion was heard.”

Frankie and his mother had escaped in Collapsible C, one of the last lifeboats. Once on the water, Frankie’s mother tried to keep him from looking back at the ship, forcing his head down so that he couldn’t see. Then some of the ladies in the lifeboat cried out, “‘Oh, it’s going to float!’

“Mother then released me, and now beginning to be fearful about my father, I lifted myself to look past her shoulder and saw the tail end of our ship aimed straight up toward the stars in the sky,” said Frankie.

“It seemed to stay that way for several minutes. Then another slight noise was heard, and it very slowly began to go lower . . .”

Lawrence Beesley, safe in a lifeboat, struggled to describe the sounds of the dying ship. “It was partly a roar, partly a groan, partly a rattle, and partly a smash . . . it was a noise no one had ever heard before, and no one wishes to hear again: it was stupefying, stupendous, as it came to us along the water,” he wrote.

“When the noise was over the
Titanic
was still upright like a column: we could see her now only as the stern and some 150 feet of her stood outlined against the star-specked sky, looming black in the darkness, and in this position she continued for some minutes . . .” he went on. “Then, first sinking back a little at the stern, I thought, she slid slowly forwards through the water . . .”

Charles Lightoller watched the final moments of the
Titanic
from his precarious perch on Collapsible B.

When the lights went out, “. . . the huge bulk was left in black darkness, but clearly silhouetted against the bright sky. Then, the next moment, the massive boilers left their beds and went thundering down with a hollow rumbling roar, through the bulkheads, carrying everything with them that stood in their way.”

He knew the end was near. “The huge ship slowly but surely reared herself on end and brought rudder and propellers clear of the water till, at last she assumed an
absolute perpendicular position
. In this amazing attitude she remained for the space of half a minute. Then . . . she silently took her last tragic dive to seek a final resting place in the unfathomable depth of the cold gray Atlantic,” he said.

Around him everyone breathed two words, “‘She’s gone.’”

It was 2:20 a.m.