No other disaster at sea has ever resulted in such loss of human life
as did the sinking of the _Titanic_ on the night of April 15, 1912.
Moreover, no other disaster has ever included among its victims so many
people of high position and repute and real value to the world. The
_Titanic_ was on her first voyage, and this voyage had served to draw
together many notables. She was advertised as the largest steamer in
the world and as the safest; she was called "unsinkable." The ocean
thus struck its blow at no mean victim, but at the ship supposedly the
queen of all ships.
Through the might of the great tragedy, man was taught two lessons. One
was against boastfulness. He has not yet conquered nature; his
"unsinkable" masterpiece was torn apart like cardboard and plunged to
the bottom. The other and more solemn teaching was against the speed
mania, which seems more and more to have possessed mankind. His autos,
his railroads, even his fragile flying-machines, have been keyed up for
record speed. The _Titanic_ was racing for a record when she perished.
Her loss has created almost a revolution in ocean traffic. "Let us go
more slowly!" was the cry. Safety became the chief advertisement of the
big ship lines; and speed, Speed the adored, shriveled into the
dishonored god of a moment's madness.
The wreck of the steamship _Titanic_, of the White Star Line, the
newest and biggest and presumably the safest ship in the world, is the
greatest marine disaster known in the history of ocean traffic. She ran
into an iceberg off the Banks of Newfoundland at 11.40 Sunday night,
April 14th, and at twenty minutes past two sank in two miles of ocean
depth. More than fifteen hundred lives were lost and a few more than
seven hundred saved.
The _Titanic_ was a marvel of size and luxury. Her length was 882-1/2
feet--far exceeding the height of the tallest buildings in the
world--her breadth of beam was 92 feet, and her depth from topmost deck
to keel was 94 feet. She was of 45,000 tons register and 66,000 tons
displacement. Her structure was the last word in size, speed, and
luxury at sea. Her interior was like that of some huge hotel, with wide
stairways and heavy balustrades, with elevators running up and down the
height of nine decks out of her twelve; with swimming-pools, Turkish
baths, saloons, and music-rooms, and a little golf-course on the
highest deck. Her master was Capt. E. J. Smith, a veteran of more than
thirty years' able and faithful service in the company's ships, whose
only mishap had occurred when the giant _Olympic_, under his command,
collided with the British cruiser _Hawke_ in the Solent last September.
He was exonerated because the great suction exerted by the _Olympic_ in
a narrow channel inevitably drew the two vessels together.
There were over 2,200 people aboard the _Titanic_ when she left
Southampton on Wednesday for her maiden voyage--325 first-cabin
passengers, 285 second-cabin, 710 steerage, and a crew of 899. Among
that ship's company were many men and women of prominence in the arts,
the professions, and in business. Colonel John Jacob Astor and his
bride, who was Miss Madeleine Force, were among them; also Major
Archibald Butt, military aide to President Taft; Charles M. Hays,
president of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad, with his family; William
T. Stead, of the London _Review of Reviews_; Benjamin Guggenheim, of
the celebrated mining family; G. D. Widener, of Philadelphia; F. D.
Millet, the noted artist; Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Straus; J. Thayer,
vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad; J. Bruce Ismay, chairman
of the White Star Line's board of directors; Henry B. Harris,
theatrical manager; Colonel Washington Roebling, the engineer; Jacques
Futrelle, the novelist; and Henry Sleeper Harper, a grandson of Joseph
Wesley Harper, one of the founders of the house of Harper & Brothers.
As the _Titanic_ was leaving her pier at Southampton there came a sound
like the booming of artillery. The passengers thronging to the rail saw
the steamship _New York_ slowly drawing near. The movement of the
_Titanic's_ gigantic body had sucked the water away from the quay so
violently that the seven stout hawsers mooring the _New York_ to her
pier snapped like rotten twine, and she bore down on the giant ship
stern first and helpless. The _Titanic_ reversed her engines, and tugs
plucked the _New York_ away barely in time to avoid a bad smash. If any
old sailors regarded this accident as an evil omen, there is little
reason to think the thing affected the spirits of the passengers on the
great floating hotel. As the ship passed the time of day by wireless
with her distant neighbors out of sight beyond the horizon of the ocean
lanes, she reported good weather, machinery working smoothly, all going
well.
For some reason the great fleet of icebergs which drifts south of Cape
Race every summer moved down unusually early this year. The _Carmania_,
three days in advance of the _Titanic_, ran into the ice-field on
Thursday. The ship at reduced speed dodged about, avoiding enormous
bergs along her course, while far away on every hand glinted the
shining high white sides of many more of the menacing ice mountains.
Passengers photographed the brilliant monsters. The steamship
_Niagara_, many leagues astern, reported a slight collision, with no
great harm done. That was enough. Captain Dow retraced his course to
the northeast and, after an hour's steaming, laid a new course for Fire
Island buoy. The presence of the great bergs and accompanying masses of
field-ice so very early in the season was most unusual.
Into this desolate waste of sea came the _Titanic_ on Sunday evening.
She encountered fog, for the region is almost continuously swathed in
the mists raised by the contact of the Arctic current with the warm
waters of the Gulf Stream. Scattered far and wide in every direction
were many icebergs, shrouded in gray, invisible to the eyes of the
sharpest lookouts, lying in wait for their prey.
Not only were the bergs invisible to the keenest eyes, but the sudden
drop in the temperature of the ocean which ordinarily is the warning of
the nearness of a berg was now of no avail; for there were so many of
the bergs and so widely scattered that the temperature of the sea was
uniformly cold. Moreover, the submarine bell, which gives warning to
navigators of the neighborhood of shoal water, does not signify the
approach of icebergs. The newest ocean giant was in deadly peril,
though probably few of her passengers guessed it, so reassuring are the
huge bulk, the skilful construction, the watertight compartments, the
able captain and crew, to the mind of the landsman. Dinner was long
past, and many of the passengers doubtless turned to thoughts of supper
after hours of talk or music or cards; for there were not many
promenading the cold, foggy decks of the onrushing steamship.
The _Titanic_ was about eight hundred miles to the southeastward of
Halifax, three hundred and fifty miles southeast of treacherous Cape
Race, when her great body dashed, glancing, against an enormous berg.
The discipline and good order for which British captains and British
sailors have long been noted prevailed in this crisis; for it is proven
by the fact that the rescued were nearly all women and children.
From that rich, rushing, gay, floating world, with its saloons and
baths and music-rooms and elevators, now suddenly shattered into
darkness, only one utterance came. Phillips, the wireless operator,
seized his key and telegraphed in every direction the call "S O S!"
Gossiping among telegraphers hundreds of miles apart, messages of
business import, all the scores of things that fill the ocean air with
tremulous whisperings of etheric waves, began to give over their
chattering. Again and again Phillips repeated the letters which spell
disaster until the air for a thousand miles around was electrically
silent. Then he sent his message:
"Have struck an iceberg; badly damaged; rush aid; steamship _Titanic_;
41.46 N., 50.14 W."
There was no other ship in sight. Far as the eye could reach no spot of
light broke the gray darkness; yet other ships could hear and read the
cry for help, and, wheeling in their courses, they drove full speed
ahead for the wreck. The _Baltic_, two hundred miles to the eastward,
bound for Europe, turned back to the rescue; the _Olympic_, still
farther away, hastened to the aid of her sister ship; the _Cincinnati,
Prince Adelbert, Amerika,_ the _Prinz Friederich Wilhelm_, and many
others, abandoned all else to fly to help those in danger. Nearest of
all was the _Carpathia_, bound from New York for Mediterranean ports,
only sixty miles away. And as they all, with forced draft and every
possible device for adding to speed, dashed through the misty night on
their errand of mercy, Phillips, of the _Titanic_, kept wafting from
his key the story of disaster. The thing he repeated oftenest was:
"Badly damaged. Rush aid." Now and then he gave the ship's position in
latitude and longitude as nearly as it could be estimated by her
officers as she was carried southward by the current that runs swiftly
in this northern sea, so that the rescuers could keep their prows
accurately pointed toward the wreck. Soon he began to announce, "We are
down by the head and sinking rapidly." About one o'clock in the morning
the last words from Phillips rippled through the heavy air, "We are
almost gone."
The crew were summoned to their stations; the lifeboats and liferafts
were swiftly provisioned and furnished with water as well as could be
done. Yet this provision could hardly have been very extensive, since
it has long been an accepted axiom of the sea that the modern giant
ships are indestructible, or at least unsinkable.
"Women and children first," the order long enforced among all decent
men who use the sea, was the word passed from man to man as the boats
were filled, the boatfalls rattled, and the frail little cockleshells
were lowered into the calm sea. What farewells there were on those dark
and reeking decks between husbands and wives and all other men and
women of the same family one can hardly dare think about. Steadily the
work of filling the boats and lowering away went on until the last
frail craft had been dropped upon the ocean from the sides of the liner
and the whole little fleet rose and fell on the sea beside the great
black hulk. And when the last crowded boat had come down and there was
no possibility of removing one more human being from the wreck, there
were still more than fifteen hundred men on her decks. So far had
belief in the invulnerability of the modern ship curtailed sane and
proper provision for taking care of her people in time of calamity.
One can imagine with what frantic but impotent hope, as the sinking
decks and menacing plash of waters within told of the imminent last
plunge, those thousands of eyes strained at the misty wall of grayish
black that enclosed them on every hand. Not one gleam of light in any
quarter. The last horrible gurglings within the waterlogged shell of
steel that a little while before had been the proudest ship of all the
seas told unmistakably that the end was at hand. Down by the head went
the giant _Titanic_ at twenty minutes past two o'clock on Monday
morning, April 15th. And she took fifteen hundred people with her.
Four hours passed before the shivering people in the small boats heard
the siren whistle that announced the approach of a steamship from the
south. There was a heavy fog and they could not see one hundred fathoms
off over the clashing and grinding ice that floated in fields on every
side. Soon after seven o'clock in the morning the ship came in sight
and presently hove to among the fleet of boats and liferafts--the
steamship _Carpathia_, out of New York on April 11th for Mediterranean
ports. She began at once to take aboard the survivors, and in a few
hours had every boat hoisted aboard. The _Olympic_ and _Baltic_,
learning by wireless that the rescues had all been effected, proceeded
on their way.
The _Virginian_ and the _Parisian_, which arrived at the scene of the
disaster a few hours later, could find no sign of any living person
afloat, though they cruised for a long time among the wreckage before
standing away on their courses. The _Carpathia_ at first was headed for
Halifax, but upon learning by wireless that that harbor was ice-bound,
Mr. J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the Board of Directors of the White
Star Line, suggested that the ship head for New York. This was done.
The _Carpathia_, with nine hundred passengers of her own and the seven
hundred survivors, reached New York in safety.
The sad international tragedy of the sinking of the _Titanic_ touched
men's souls more deeply than any other disaster in many years. To
English-speaking races in particular the horror of the occasion pressed
close home; for here was the best of British ships bearing many of the
most prominent of America's people. To these seasoned voyagers,
crossing the Atlantic had become a mere pleasant trifle, seeming no
more dangerous than an afternoon's shopping in town. Then suddenly
there was thrust upon all of them that ancient, awful knowledge that
"in the midst of life we are in death."
Both American passengers and English crew lived up to the best
traditions of their race. There was no panic, no fighting for places in
the boats on the doomed ship. On the contrary, people refused to
believe in the imminence of danger. The idea that the ship was
unsinkable had been so borne in on them that even when summoned upon
deck and ordered to put on life-belts, many of them refused. In the
first boats gotten away from the ship, there were not many people. Some
refused to climb down through the deep blackness into the tiny craft.
They thought the tumult all an empty scare that would soon pass.
When the steady, ominous settling of the huge ship's bulk broke through
this shallow confidence, there was a solemn change. Grand and tender
scenes there were on those sinking decks; of husbands and wives parting
with the utterance of a hope, turned suddenly to terror, that they
would soon meet again; of other wives who refused to leave their
husbands and deliberately stayed to share their fate. Few of the more
noted passengers were among those saved. Bruce Ismay, director of the
steamship line, was one. The captain went down with his ship, as did
most of his officers, though some of the latter saved themselves by
clinging to the wreckage which rose after the vessel's plunge. While
she was sinking her band still played "Nearer, my God, to thee," and
other earnest hymns. Death did not find the old Saxon stock cringing
from him with hysteria and frenzy. Sudden as was his coming, wholly
unexpected as was his hideous visage, he was met with the calm courage
which is the best tradition of the race.
And what have been the consequences of this overwhelming tragedy? An
investigation was immediately begun in America by the United States
Government. Another, slower, dignified and ponderous, was afterward
undertaken by the British Government. Both of them in the end
attributed the disaster to practically the same cause, the speed mania
which has overtaken the nations, the heedlessness of man's
over-confidence which takes risks so many times successfully that it
grows to forget that risks exist.
The _Titanic's_ captain wanted to make a record on her maiden voyage.
His directors wanted him to make a record. That would mean increased
advertisement and increased traffic for their line. So in the face of
danger, knowing there were icebergs all around him, the captain rushed
his ship blindly ahead. The chance of his actually hitting an iceberg
was scarce one in a hundred. So he took the chance. The probability
that if he did strike an iceberg it could do irreparable damage to his
stout ship, was scarce one in a hundred. So he took that chance also.
He gambled with Death, as a thousand speed-driven captains had gambled
before. This time it was Death's turn to win.
A gamble even more reprehensible was that of the steamship companies,
who had grown so sure their ships would not sink that they no longer
provided sufficient means of escape from them. Why load a vessel down
with useless life-boats, which only hung the year in and year out,
blocking up space? Every foot of that space was valuable. It might make
room for an extra passenger, or provide an extra amusement to draw
traffic. What voyager ever counted life-boats, or worked out the awful
calculation, so obvious now, that there was only rescue space provided
for one-third of the number of souls aboard? Was not the ship
"unsinkable" after all?
The _Titanic_ is gone. Our sorrow for her is becoming but a memory. Our
ships carry lifeboats sufficient now; they are compelled to by law. And
our sea captains run on safer lines; that, too, the law has made
compulsory. But it will be long before man's overweening
self-confidence rises from the shock which has been given to his belief
in his mechanical ability. Nature is not conquered yet. Ocean has still
a strength beyond ours. Ships are not unsinkable; and Death will still
take his toll of bold men's lives in the future as he has done in the
past. We know that cowardice costs more than courage, but it is not so
tragically costly as blind foolhardiness.