Voices from the Titanic (48 page)

The White Star and Cunard Companies issued an announcement at Liverpool on Monday that they have standing instructions to their captains to ensure safety before speed. The Cunard rule reads:

The sympathy of every true woman must go out to the unhappy women and girls who have lost husbands and fathers in this heartrending accident to the
Titanic
. It must have made the catastrophe even more afflicting that every one of the passengers went on board with the conviction that the vessel was practically unsinkable. No one reckoned for a single instance on collision with an iceberg. The imagination vainly tries to picture the terrible scene when the women and children were handed first to the boats. The men were interrogated, ‘Married or unmarried?' The married men were given the first chance, but comparatively few of these could be saved, while the unmarried had to stand back with no smallest hope of rescue. Many of them were in the prime of life, others were youths seeking a livelihood and hoping to build a home in the great continent. What could their thoughts have been as they awaited the final sinking of the vessel? It completely beggars fancy when one tries to realize the scene and attempts to guess the feelings of husband and wife, mother and daughter, father and son, parting in the unspeakably harrowing circumstances.

(
Southampton Times and Hampshire Express
, 27 April 1912)

A hundred and sixty-seven survivors of the crew of the
Titanic
landed at Plymouth yesterday from the Red Star liner
Lapland
.

They told a large number of full and graphic stories of the disaster.

One of the chief facts brought to light is that Mr Murdoch, the Chief Officer, after working assiduously at getting the women and children into the boats and launching them, shot himself.

Captain Smith was on the bridge practically to the last. He was seen swimming in the water after the ship went down, with a child in his arms, which he vainly attempted to rescue. He after-wards disappeared.

Practically all the survivors agree that the band played hymns and not ‘ragtime tunes'. After all his fellow musicians had been washed away the solo violinist continued playing ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee', until he went under with the ship.

The
Titanic
broke in two between the funnels. There were explosions. The men believe that the machinery fell out of the hull when she split and the bow went down. The stern rose straight up in the air before the final plunge.

A great many of the passengers and crew lost their lives by the falling of one of the funnels when the ship broke. Others, when she dipped, were killed by being thrown violently into the well of the forecastle.

More lives might have been saved but for over-confidence in the unsinkability of the vessel.

Having varied her normal course to the extent of about 130 miles so as to keep more safely south, the Red Star liner
Lapland
arrived in Plymouth Sound yesterday morning almost on the stroke of eight o'clock. She was met by three G.W. tenders, one of which was entirely set apart for a party of 167 survivors of the crew of the ill-fated
Titanic
. This was the
Sir Richard Grenville
and on her were Messrs Harold and T. Wolferstan (Board of Trade solicitors), W. Woollven (collector of Customs and receiver of wreck), with other officials, who were present to collect the evidence of the survivors and sort it with a view to securing any vital statements for submission to the Royal Commission which opens its inquiry on Thursday.

It was generally known that unusual steps were contemplated to keep the survivors together so long as the Board of Trade officials needed them, and to prevent them being tampered with by unauthorized people, but the little army of journalists, who had assembled from all parts, were unprepared for the rigorous exclusion from even the dock premises to which they were subjected.

A number of them chartered boats, but were unable to get on board the liner. They had as colleagues two members of the British Seamen's Union, who called out and shouted to the men not to say anything ‘until you have seen us.' The immediate result of this was really to upset the plans of the authorities, and quite early in the afternoon the men were at liberty. There were thus plenty of opportunities for interviews, and some new light was thrown on the disaster. The men spoke with the utmost frankness and earnestness, though almost without exception they declined to consent to the publication of their names, fearing unpleasant consequences. In the main, however, the story secured from them may be accepted as quite authentic, even though it naturally concerns phases of the disaster rather than one entire memory.

The precautions taken to exclude Pressmen and visitors from the Docks and the tenders were elaborate to an extreme degree. Not only were the officials suspicious of everybody, but regular servants were kept out unless armed with a pass. Then at about ten minutes to six, a score of postal employees, mostly in uniform, and the rest comprising telegraph and postal clerks regularly in the docks and quite well known to the officials, were ‘held up' because they had not first called at the G.P.O. for a permit! When the tender which they used returned to the jetty members of the Dock staff were detailed to watch and ‘see if anything is thrown or passed overboard to a boat.' The brilliance of this order is revealed by the fact that half an hour later the postal gentlemen were all outside the docks, and had in no way been searched. As a matter of fact, few had ever left the tender for the
Lapland
, and none had caught more than a glimpse of the survivors as they transferred to the
Sir Richard Grenville
.

This special tender was fastened to a gangway in the fore part of the liner, while the other two were aft, one on either side. A flotilla of boats cruised about, but the London journalists who had chartered most of them were ill rewarded for their enterprise. The best off were the cinematograph operators, who succeeded in getting a clear, continuous view of the men of the
Titanic
passing from the liner to the
Grenville
, carrying their kit-bags with them. Ordinary cameras were numerous, and were ‘snapping' fairly continuously.

To revert to the earlier hours, a large crowd had gathered at the Millbay end of the docks by six o'clock, though most of them were dock porters. They were rigidly excluded until eight o'clock, much to their indignation, and threats to refuse to work were general, but after the last tender had cleared away badges were distributed, and a sufficiency of men accepted them readily enough. There were many in the crowd who had friends on board, and who chafed under the restrictions but the police on the gate were adamant. One petty officer came down from Dartmouth to meet his brother, but was not allowed to go off, although two other brothers were. For the rest the gathering was chiefly composed of journalists, bathers, and a number of towns-people, drawn together by the unusual occurrence and anxious to get a glimpse of those who had been saved from the disaster. They waited patiently enough in the broiling sun, and seemed to take great interest in the progress of the tenders, some of which were freely photographed from a terrace above Rusty Anchor.

There were some inevitable scenes of pathos at the dock gates during the morning, one of the most affecting being the distress of Mr Jewell and his wife, who were kept without. They had two sons on the
Titanic
. One was lost; the other was on the
Lapland
. Their reunion, which took place inside the waiting-room, was a saddening one, tragic in the extreme. Other relatives of survivors were present but the majority had their emotions well under control.

The
Grenville
had been watched for some hours very eagerly from the back of West Hoe Terrace, by several hundred people, and when she was seen to be steaming back to the dock, after an apparently aimless cruise around Jennycliffe Bay, there was a general move to the dock entry, but there was no relaxing of the restrictions keeping the public out. The
Grenville
was berthed about noon, and the men proceeded at once to the waiting-room for the meal which had been prepared. Many of them quickly found the windows which overlooked the thoroughfare, and had brief, jerky conversations with some of the assembled journalists. The stewardesses were accommodated in a long restaurant car on the railway siding.

It was at once apparent that many of the men resented the restrictions placed upon their freedom. As soon as they reached the rooms prepared for them several of them opened windows facing the road approach, and spoke to friends who were included in the hundreds of interested spectators assembled outside the premises.

‘They won't let me pass the gates,' announced a man, one of whose two brothers serving on the
Titanic
was drowned.

‘And we can't get out,' answered one of the crew from the window, ‘but we intend to do so even if we have to get out of this window.'

What happened afterwards was not apparent to those outside, but about half-past one Chief Constable Sowerby announced that those men who would obtain a pass might leave the docks till four o'clock. Naturally there was a rush for the necessary permission, and soon the men were free to have a stroll. It was then possible to interview many, the result being that some thrilling stories of heroism and hairbreadth escapes were obtained.

On the
Lapland
the survivors were kept very much to themselves, and only came in touch with a few of the ordinary passengers who were peculiarly interested, having crossed the Atlantic with some of them on previous trips, and become acquainted. There was no questioning, or endeavour to secure news, yet some of these passengers called attention to the haggard faces and wan condition of several of the men, as eloquent testimony of the horror and severity of their awful experience. Most of them wore ill-fitting clothes, their new ‘kits' having been hastily got together by warm-hearted Americans, for the bulk were saved in just their bare working attire.

Another member of the
Titanic
's crew had an experience almost as remarkable. He was carried down by the suction following the sinking of the vessel but struck a grating so violently as to secure a rebound, which sent him to the surface. He was able at once to secure a hold on floating wreckage and was one of the earliest to be picked up. Several members of the crew declared that just before the ship made her fatal dive, the foremost funnel broke off and fell into the sea, killing and injuring a number of men who were already in the water struggling and swimming towards the boats.

A
Lapland
passenger who knew one of the
Titanic
's crew and had talked with him, but who, like all the others, declined to give permission for the use of his name, said the crew were so confident that the ship was unsinkable that, even when they went about calling the passengers by the captain's orders, they had pipes in their mouths, and were quite unconcerned. Some of them, just before the vessel went down, had such faith in her stability that they ‘had a few bouts' in the ship's gymnasium! This fact was vouched for by several of the survivors.

One of our representatives, who was able to interview several of the firemen of the
Titanic
who were awaiting transference from Plymouth to Southampton, found that, according to their story, the news from America has not been unduly exaggerated.

Frank Dymond, fireman, of King's Lane, Southampton, said he was in charge of the last boat that left the ship. He gave a graphic account of what happened. He said that the day preceding the disaster was beautifully fine and a brilliant starlit night gave place to a day of warm sunshine. There was hardly a breath of air, and the water was as still as a miniature lake.

They were proceeding at 22½ knots, or about 29 miles an hour, and had entered the iceberg zone. Small clumps of ice could be seen in all directions, but there was no indication of large floes, or bergs.

The crew and passengers were calculating on a most enjoyable trip in probably record time. This fact was gathered by the general tone of the conversations carried on on all hands. Most of the passengers had retired by 11.30, and there were only a few moving about the vessel, enjoying the quietness of the scene which was of an inspiring character.

Mr Dymond had just looked at his watch, which indicated twenty minutes to midnight, when he suddenly heard a rasping sound. To give it in his own words, he said it was ‘like a knife being drawn over a rasp'. He ran up on deck to see what was the matter. No harm seemed to have been done, so he went back to the stokehold again.

It was not long, however, before water began to pour in, and it had reached his ankles when he saw that something serious must have happened. He was then about to come off duty.

When he came on deck again he saw the boats being taken off. In fact, they had all except one left the side of the vessel. He was told to man this boat, but just as he was getting into her something happened, and he was swept on one side. There was no eagerness to get into the boat, however, the difficulty really was to get sufficient persons to go away in her.