Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic (37 page)

Most of the survivors held themselves somewhat aloof from the passengers aboard the
Carpathia,
not from any sense of snobbery, but rather because most of them were in varying degrees of shock. The enormity of what they had experienced was such that no one aboard the Cunard ship, no matter how sympathetic, could ever understand. And so the
Titanic’s
survivors were polite and accepted the
Carpathia’s
passengers’ assistance with genuine gratitude, but the gulf remained throughout the trip.
¹

Somehow Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon managed to commit yet another blunder. This one would have been almost comical had it not been so tasteless. Apparently Lady Duff Gordon had what to her seemed a smashing idea: why not have a group picture taken of herself, her husband, Miss Francatelli, the other two passengers, and the seven crewmen who had manned Boat 1 for them? So, the day after they were rescued, all twelve gathered on the
Carpathia’s
foredeck, the crewmen conspicuous in their lifebelts. Other survivors stared in disbelief as Dr. McGhee, the
Carpathia’s
surgeon, prepared to take the picture with the words, “Now, smile everyone!”
²

In the wireless shack Cottam began the laborious task of transmitting the names of the survivors, along with some brief personal messages from them, to the White Star Line’s New York office. Once Harold Bride had gotten medical attention for his badly frostbitten feet and a few hours’ rest, he began to periodically relieve Cottam at the key, but it was a long process.

One of the first messages Cottam sent was to Philip A. S. Franklin, vice president of the White Star Line in New York:

“YAMSI” was of course a transposition of Ismay, though why the chairman of the line chose to employ such a transparent subterfuge is anyone’s guess: he always signed his cables that way. What Ismay didn’t know was that the contrived signature coupled with the contents of the message would cause an influential member of the U.S. Senate to suspect Ismay of duplicity, setting into motion a series of events that would ruin Bruce Ismay.

Philip A. S. Franklin had his hands full without worrying about the travel arrangements of the Line’s chairman. When Ismay’s message arrived, Franklin had an office full of reporters clamoring for news of the Titanic. A series of garbled wireless transmissions from ships in the vicinity of the Titanic had left the newspapers thoroughly confused. With the
Carpathia
refusing to answer any queries, there were few facts to go on, and the headlines the morning of April 15 were filled with speculation.

The New York Herald was typical:

The New York Times was prepared to announce in the last edition that the ship had sunk, based on the prolonged silence of her wireless, but no other editor was willing to follow Carr Van Anda’s lead. Consequently Franklin was besieged by reporters when he arrived at work in the morning.

At first, Franklin was confident, telling his questioners, “We place absolute confidence in the Titanic. We believe that the boat is unsinkable.” At the same time though, he was having messages sent addressed to Captain Smith, asking for information about the ship and its passengers.

By midmorning the story of the ship’s collision with the iceberg had broken, and now frantic friends and family members of passengers began to gather at the White Star offices: J. P Morgan, Jr.; W H. Force, father of Mrs. Astor; Ben Guggenheim’s wife; hundreds of others with unknown faces and names. They received the same reassurances that Franklin had given the press earlier in the morning: all was well; everyone would be safe; there was no need for alarm.

It all sounded so convincing. The myth of the
Titanic’s
unsinkability had been repeated so many times by so many different sources that it was inconceivable that any serious accident had happened to her. When the Evening Sun ran a banner-sized headline that declared “ALL SAVED FROM TITANIC AFTER COLLISION,” the paper was merely giving voice to what the public—and White Star officials—believed to be true. The latest story had it that the
Titanic’s
passengers were being transferred to the Parisian and the
Carpathia,
while the
Virginian
took the wounded liner in tow, bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The White Star Line’s positive posture was maintained all day. True, Franklin admitted to reporters, there were rumors that the Titanic had been sunk and the loss of life was heavy, but these were rumors, not reliable news. Wireless operators—in some cases amateurs—were catching snippets of transmissions and relaying them on. The news they were hearing wasn’t good. But the ships involved, the
Carpathia,
the
Virginian,
the Parisian, and others, weren’t within wireless range yet, so for news as important as this, Franklin wasn’t willing to settle for second- or thirdhand information.

When the official word came at 6:15 P M. that evening, it was like a body blow to Franklin: the Olympic, her transmission delayed for some hours, reported that the Titanic had sunk at 2:20 A.M. with more than 1,500 passengers still aboard; the survivors had been rescued by the
Carpathia
and were being brought to New York. Franklin waited three quarters of an hour before he was able to face the reporters. Visibly exerting every bit of self control he could muster, he told them, “Gentlemen, I regret to say that the Titanic sank at 2:20 this morning.”

That was all he would—or could—say at the moment. It is remarkable that he was able to hold onto his composure for so long, but gradually he admitted that the report “neglected to say that all the crew had been saved,” then later that “probably a number of lives had been lost,” which eventually became “we very much fear there has been a great loss of life.” At 9:00 P.M. Franklin broke down completely—sobbing, he told the stunned reporters that there had been a “horrible loss of life”—it would be possible, he said, to replace the ship, but “never the human lives.”
³

Within hours every major American newspaper carried the story, and the country reeled from the shock. For the next three days, as the papers engaged in endless speculation about what had actually happened, the Titanic seemed to be the sole topic of conversation. Invariably the discussion would end with the question “How?” How could a ship declared by expert marine engineers to be unsinkable go to the bottom of the Atlantic two hours after striking an iceberg? How could an iceberg sink a ship? How could a ship not avoid something that big and obvious? And most disturbing of all, how could 1,500 people die when the ship complied with or exceeded every safety regulation on the books? A few minds began thinking very seriously about these questions, and there was going to be hell to pay when they found out the answers.

But those answers would not be forthcoming until the
Carpathia
arrived in New York, and Cottam and Bride were concentrating exclusively on sending the names of the survivors and their personal messages to New York via Cape Race, refusing to answer any requests for information. This even included those of the cruiser USS
Chester,
dispatched by a worried President Taft. Distraught over the uncertainty of the fate of his friend and aide Archie Butt, Taft had sent out the
Chester
expressly to contact the
Carpathia,
whose wireless didn’t have the range to reach New York directly. But despite her repeated attempts, all in the name of the President, the
Chester’s
queries went unanswered, as did those of the various newspapers and wire services hungrily waiting for news.

Predictably, the New York press reacted with calculated petulance. The World, for example, proclaimed with an almost audible sniff, “CARPATHIA LETS NO SECRETS OF THE TITANIC’S LOSS ESCAPE BY WIRELESS.” The Evening
Mail’s
frustration was even more obvious: “WATCHERS ANGERED BY CARPATHIA’S SILENCE.” The Herald was miffed, while the Evening Sun pouted.

In reality, both Cottam and Bride had been advised by the Marconi office in New York that Guglielmo Marconi himself had concluded a deal with the New York Times on behalf of the two young operators that would reward them handsomely for providing an exclusive for the Times. For a couple of young men earning the equivalent of $20 a month, the promise of several thousand dollars in exchange for a few hours spent talking to a reporter was irresistible, so sending only survivors’ names and messages provided a convenient excuse for turning aside any other inquiries. Neither Bride nor Cottam, or Marconi himself for that matter, were aware that Marconi’s apparently benevolent action could appear to be a deliberate attempt to withhold information from an anxious public solely for the Times’ benefit. In any case, it soon became quite clear that nothing more would be learned from the little Cunarder until her arrival in New York, which was scheduled for Thursday night, April 18.
⁴

That Thursday night was cold and rain-filled in New York, the whole of New York Harbor shrouded in a thunderstorm. People began gathering on the Cunard pier around 6:00 P.M.—not many;at first, only a few hundred, but slowly the crowd began to grow until by 9:00, more than 30,000 were standing in the cold April rain, another 10,000 lining the battery. Peering through the gloom and mist, a few minutes past 9:00 they spotted a ship in the Ambrose Channel. It was the
Carpathia.
She was greeted by a fleet of steam launches, tugboats, ferry boats, and yachts, led by a large tug containing an official party of the mayor and several city commissioners. As the
Carpathia
hove into sight, the mayor’s tug let loose a shrill blast from its steam whistle. Every other boat in the harbor followed by sounding their bells, whistles, and sirens. Captain Rostron stood on the bridge, staring out at the flotilla of boats surrounding his ship and dimly making out the throng gathered at the Cunard pier awaiting the
Carpathia.
Until this moment he had no idea, as he put it later, of “the suspense and excitement in the world.”

At pierside, people began weeping quietly, but there was no hysteria. The most frenzied behavior was exhibited by the huge numbers of reporters who had gathered along with the crowd on the pier, or had gotten aboard one of the boats that had sailed into the channel to meet the
Carpathia.
When the liner stopped to pick up the pilot, five reporters clambered from their boat over the railing onto the pilot boat, then attempted to force their way past the pilot, up the boarding ladder, and onto the
Carpathia.

Captain Rostron, once he saw the reception awaiting his ship, anticipated such an eventuality, and had stationed Third Officer Rees at the foot of the boarding ladder. Rees watched in bemused fascination as the small craft gathered around the pilot boat, the reporters shouting questions up to the decks of the
Carpathia
through megaphones, the photographers setting off their magnesium flashes as they took picture after picture. But when one of the newsmen tried to shove the pilot aside and rush up the boarding ladder himself, Rees sprang into action. Grabbing the pilot by the arm, Rees hauled him onto the boarding ladder, then turned and punched the reporter in the mouth, sending him sprawling.

“Pilot only!” he said, in case the other newsmen hadn’t got the message. Apparently one missed it, for he immediately started raving about his sister, crying about how he had to see her; when Rees didn’t believe his story, he tried to bribe the third officer, offering him $200 to be allowed on board. Rees refused, the pilot was taken up to the bridge, and the journey up the channel resumed.

Somehow one reporter did slip aboard, but he was quickly cornered and brought to the bridge. Rostron, who had no time for such nonsense, informed the man that under no circumstances could he speak with any survivors before the
Carpathia
docked. The man was left on the bridge, after giving his word he would abide by the captain’s instructions. “I must say,” Rostron later admitted, somewhat astonished, “he was a gentleman.”

The crowd gasped with surprise when the
Carpathia
steamed past the Cunard pier toward the White Star dock and stopped. In the nearly continuous lightning and photographers’ flashes, the crew of the
Carpathia
could be seen manning several lifeboats and putting them into the water. After a moment the apprehensive crowd realized what was happening: they were the
Titanic’s
lifeboats, being duly returned to their rightful owners. It was a heartbreaking sight.

After a painfully slow turn, the
Carpathia
made her way back to the Cunard pier, and was carefully warped alongside and made fast. The canopied gangways were hauled into place, and a procession of passengers began to make their way down from the ship to the dock. After a few seconds, the stunned crowd realized that these neatly dressed people weren’t from the Titanic: Captain Rostron had decided that it would be unfair to his passengers to make them wait and wade through the tumult that would inevitably greet the survivors, so the
Carpathia’s
passengers disembarked first.

Then there appeared a young woman, hatless, eyes wide as she stared at the waiting crowd, the first of the
Titanic’s
survivors. At the foot of the gangway stood a solid phalanx of reporters, each one hungry for a story. Standing unrecognized among them was one man who was after the biggest story of them all: a diminutive figure flanked by two U.S. Marshals, he was Senator William Alden Smith.
⁶