Titanic (3 page)

Carpathia
then backtracked to Cunard's pier to drop off its own passengers, followed by
Titanic'
s.

Meanwhile, the White Star office in Halifax, Nova Scotia, chartered the ship
Mackay-Bennett
to collect
Titanic'
s floating dead in the North Atlantic. The ship took on ice, coffins, embalming fluid, and about 40 volunteer funeral directors. It reached its destination April 20. A second chartered ship, the
Minia
, arrived April 26 to help. Sea and wind had withered the corpses, and many had been battered or disfigured. The ships brought aboard 323 bodies. More than 100 of the most mangled were buried at sea. That announcement upset some relatives waiting onshore, but the
Mackay-Bennett
captain ironically addressed the concerns by announcing, “No prominent man was recommitted to the deep.” Other ships later found five more floating dead.

Halifax authorities set up a morgue in a curling rink for 209 returned bodies.

Relatives of some victims had advance word of their loved ones' arrival. As recovery crews identified bodies at sea and prepared them for transport to Nova Scotia, they radioed lists of names to White Star, which shared them with newspaper reporters. Families scanned the lists for familiar names. Some appeared in print as just a surname or a garbled fraction—George D. Widener, for example, came through as “George D. Widen,” and another victim initially was identified only as “Hayter.” Relatives with solid information traveled to Halifax to identify and claim bodies and to collect anything that remained on the corpses. The body of millionaire John Jacob Astor IV, designated No. 124, was first to be claimed, by his son Vincent. Grieving relatives eventually put 58 other bodies aboard trains for burial elsewhere. The remaining 150 unclaimed bodies were interred in three Halifax cemeteries.

At the Halifax morgue, each corpse received a death certificate listing “accidental drowning, S.S.
Titanic
, at sea.”

Drawing
of Titanic
's First Class swimming pool

(Mary Evans Picture Library/ONSLOW AUCTIONS LIMITED)

The First Class grand dining room aboard
Titanic
's twin
, Olympic
(shown here), was identical to
Titanic
's
.

(Library of Congress, #LC-USZ62-99340)

Titanic
‘s grand staircase (accessible by First Class passengers only) descended five levels from the Boat Deck, past Reception and Dining Room levels, to First Class cabins. Natural light permeated through a massive dome of iron and glass
.

(Mary Evans Picture Library/ONSLOW AUCTIONS LIMITED)

J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line

(Mary Evans Picture Library/The National Archives, London, England)

Captain Edward John Smith (right) and Purser Hugh Walter McElroy both went down with the ship. McElroy's body was recovered and buried at sea. Captain Smith's body was never found
.

(© Everett Collection Inc./Alamy)

Headline of the Halifax, Nova Scotia
, Daily Echo
newspaper on April 15, 1912, declares: TITANIC IN DIRE STRAITS, PASSENGERS ARE BEING TAKEN OFF IN BOATS, SEVERAL STEAMERS STANDING BY

(From the collection of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, photo by Joseph H. Bailey/NG Image Collection)

Members of a rescue crew in a whaling boat attempt to retrieve the floating body of a
Titanic
victim
.

(From the collection of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, photo by Joseph H. Bailey/NG Image Collection)

P
eople aboard
Titanic
worked, played, and followed dreams in ways a 21st-century audience understands.

But they lived in a much more class-conscious world. Ocean travel required people from all walks of life to share physical space, yet each social class kept to itself except for relationships, such as master and servant, that followed carefully circumscribed rules.

Class just didn't mix or mingle in 1912. Such was true on British soil as well as on British ships—at least, until necessity downed the barriers for a fortunate few in
Titanic'
s democratic lifeboats.

A grand gap yawned between the elites in staterooms and the poorest travelers in steerage.

Being one of the 337 First Class passengers aboard
Titanic
meant being pampered. They enjoyed fresh oranges, fluffy pastries, and filet mignon on White Star china. They occupied the plushest spaces, including a Versailles-style lounge and a smoking room featuring carved mahogany paneling, marble-topped tables, etched mirrors, and floors covered with the new, miracle material of the day, linoleum. Most opulent: the Turkish bath's cooling room, furnished like a sultan's palace.

First Class staterooms rivaled continental hotels, each with an iron bedstead, a sofa, dressing table, and washbasin equipped with
hot and cold water pumped from cisterns. Room options included Queen Anne, Georgian, Empire, Jacobean, and Louis XIV, XV, and XVI. For those who didn't mind spending more, a First Class passenger could enjoy one of two exclusive parlor suites on B Deck, complete with private promenade, for about $4,350, one way—at a time when the average schoolteacher earned a couple of hundred dollars a year. This fare, if compared with today's dollar value using the consumer price index, would cost more than $100,000.

A bit of
Titanic'
s First Class splendor can be seen today at the White Swan Hotel in Alnwick, England. The hotel's owner bought and installed paneling and stained glass windows from the First Class lounge of
Olympic, Titanic'
s identical twin, when the ship was salvaged in the 1930s.

In contrast, the poorest steerage passengers included those who truly knew destitution. Some hailed from parts of the world where farm families lived in stone huts with animals. Some sold everything of value they possessed to purchase their tickets and had little left over to start new lives in America. For them, warm rooms, modern plumbing, and abundant food must have seemed luxurious.

In addition,
Titanic
accommodated hundreds somewhere between the top and bottom layers, representing all walks of life. Shopkeepers and musicians. Machinists and students. And, of course, hardworking officers and crew to whom
Titanic
acted as a second home.

Just over 700 lived to relate their own stories. With the death of the last survivor, Millvina Dean, in 2009 at her home in Southampton,
Titanic'
s story has passed to historians who comb archives, salvors who study recovered artifacts, and scientists who test new forensic evidence.

New research has added much.

Consider First Class passenger and perfume maker Adolphe Saalfeld,
whose leather case was plucked from the ocean floor in 2000 by RMS Titanic, Inc., the company that salvages
Titanic
and places restored artifacts on display. The case contained samples of perfume Saalfeld manufactured. When opened, one vial freed the scent of roses and violets and inspired a 21st-century perfume expert to create a similar scent called Night Star.