Titanic (23 page)

As he balanced precariously with the others on the upturned bottom of Collapsible B, Second Officer Charles H. Lightoller began to think it would be a miracle if they survived until dawn.

The men were standing in their cold, wet clothes. They were in danger from hypothermia and exposure. Lightoller tried to do what he could to increase their chances and keep the boat from foundering. As the first faint streaks of dawn appeared, the only reason the men remained alive was that they had stayed huddled together.

In the early morning, the wind came up; the seas got rough. The waves lapped higher onto the top of the boat. The survivors shivered; the salt spray hurt their skin and eyes; their legs ached and their muscles strained to keep their balance. Their feet were freezing and numb.

At any moment, they could be thrown into the sea. To help keep the boat steady, Lightoller made everyone face one way, then another. He called out, “‘Lean to the right,’ ‘Stand upright,’ or ‘Lean to the left.’”

Radio operator Harold Bride’s feet screamed with pain. Unlike many others, he was lying down. He’d rolled onto the edge of the boat; someone was sitting on his legs. Icy salt water sprayed over his clothing. Toward morning, the waves were so high they covered his head, one after another. “I didn’t care what happened,” said Harold. “I just lay and gasped when I could and felt the pain in my feet.”

Lightoller would never forget that cold and miserable night. “If ever human endurance was taxed to the limit, surely it was during those long hours of exposure in a temperature below freezing, standing motionless in our wet clothes,” he said.

Charles Joughin, the
Titanic
’s baker, was also on Collapsible B. He did admit to having a tumbler of liquor after the collision. Whether that helped or not, he had incredible luck that night. He hung on to the outside rail of the
Titanic
’s Poop Deck until the moment the stern disappeared below the sea. He claimed to be in the water for over two hours, “just paddling and treading water.”

“Just as it was breaking daylight I saw what I thought was some wreckage and I started to swim towards it slowly,” the baker said. “When I got near enough, I found it was a collapsible . . . with an Officer and I should say about twenty or twenty-five men standing on the top of it.”

There was no room for Joughin. “A cook that was on the collapsible recognized me, and held out his hand and held me — a chap named Maynard [Isaac Maynard].” Joughin somehow managed to hold on to the side and stay alive.

But not everyone did. No one knows exactly how many men climbed onto Collapsible B, or like Joughin, clung to the side. Harold Bride believed that senior Marconi operator Jack Phillips, who’d worked so hard to get help for the ship, hung on for a time before losing his battle with cold and fatigue.

Lightoller said later, “Some quietly lost consciousness, subsided into the water, and slipped overboard, there being nothing on the smooth flat bottom of the boat to hold them. No one was in a condition to help . . .”

At about four in the morning, the men on Collapsible B spotted a faint light in the distance. A ship at last! “. . . glory be to God, we saw the steamer
Carpathia
about four or five miles away, with other
Titanic
lifeboats rowing towards her,” said Colonel Gracie.

But Lightoller wasn’t sure the men on Collapsible B could wait until the steamer reached them.

They needed help now.

(Preceding image)
Survivors in a lifeboat make their way to the rescuing ship, the
Carpathia
.

“Even through my numbness I began to realize that I was saved — that I would live.”

— Jack Thayer

Since the moment the distress signal arrived, the
Carpathia
had been steaming through the night toward the
Titani
c’s last known location. Captain Arthur Rostron wanted to go as fast as possible without endangering his own ship in an area he realized would be dangerous.

“Knowing that the
Titanic
had struck ice, of course I had to take extra care and every precaution to keep clear of anything that might look like ice,” Captain Rostron later told investigators. “. . . I went full speed, all we could . . .”

Captain Rostron had no way of knowing how many survivors he might have to take on — or what condition they would be in. He gave orders for the cooks to prepare warm beverages: tea, coffee, and hot soup. The crew gathered all the extra blankets they could find. All of the public rooms, and the cabins belonging to the officers and to Captain Rostron himself, would be turned over to the survivors. Third class passengers were moved into closer quarters so that the
Titanic
survivors could have their berths.

(Preceding image)
Captain Arthur Rostron of the
Carpathia
.

The Carpathia
’s wireless operator, Harold Cottam, had never gone to bed. He stayed in the radio room, monitoring messages from the stricken ship. The last one he was able to pick up came at 1:45 a.m., when Jack Phillips reported: “‘Engine room full up to the boilers.’”

In the early morning hours, Captain Rostron guessed he must be getting close to where the
Titanic
should be — though he had no idea what he might find when he got there.
In the distance he spied one of the green flares Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall had been sending off throughout the night from Lifeboat 2.

“Between 2:45 and 4 o’clock, the time I stopped my engines, we were passing icebergs on every side and making them ahead and having to alter our course several times to clear the bergs,” reported Captain Rostron. “At 4 o’clock I stopped. At 4:10 I got the first boat alongside.”

As the light broke, Captain Rostron and his crew scanned the waters. There was no sign of the
Titanic
. But they could see other lifeboats now, scattered over the area, with their loads of cold, shocked survivors.

One by one, the lifeboats began to make their way to the
Carpathia.

According to
Titanic
lore, the
Carpathia
covered fifty-eight miles in three hours and twenty-five minutes at an average speed of seventeen knots. With the discovery of the
Titanic
wreck in 1986 and further study of the
Carpathia
’s timing and course and the location of the lifeboats, we now know that was not the case. The
Carpathia
’s maximum speed was probably fourteen or fifteen knots. And the ship was probably thirteen miles closer than Rostron realized.

TO PREPARE THE CARPATHIA TO RECEIVE TITANIC SURVIVORS

REPORTED AT THE UNITED STATES SENATE INQUIRY

• English doctor, with assistants, to remain in first class dining room.
  
• Italian doctor, with assistants, to remain in second class dining room.
  
• Hungarian doctor, with assistants, to remain in third class dining room.
  
• Each doctor to have supplies of restoratives, stimulants, and everything to hand for immediate needs of probable wounded or sick.
  
• Purser, with assistant purser and chief steward, to receive the passengers, etc., at different gangways, controlling our own stewards in assisting Titanic passengers to the dining rooms, etc.; also to get Christian and surnames of all survivors as soon as possible to send by wireless.
  
• Inspector, steerage stewards, and master at arms to control our own steerage passengers and keep them out of the third class dining hall, and also to keep them out of the way and off the deck to prevent confusion.
  
• Have coffee, tea, soup, etc., in each saloon, blankets in saloons, at the gangways, and some for the boats.
  
• To see all rescued cared for and immediate wants attended to.
  
• My cabin and all officials’ cabins to be given up. Smoke rooms, library, etc., dining rooms, would be utilized to accommodate the survivors.
  
• All spare berths in steerage to be utilized for
  Titanic
  ’s passengers, and get all our own steerage passengers grouped together.
  
• Stewards to be placed in each alleyway to reassure our own passengers, should they inquire about noise in getting our boats out, etc., or the working of engines.
  
• To all I strictly enjoined the necessity for order, discipline and quietness and to avoid all confusion. Chief and first officers: All the hands to be called; get coffee, etc. Prepare and swing out all boats.