XII

There is one other separate point of view from which we may look at the

ship during this fateful hour before all points of view become merged in

one common experience. Mr. Boxhall, the Fourth Officer, who had been on

the bridge at the moment of the impact, had been busy sending up rockets

and signals in the effort to attract the attention of a ship whose

lights could be seen some ten miles away; a mysterious ship which cannot

be traced, but whose lights appear to have been seen by many independent

witnesses on the _Titanic_. So sure was he of her position that Mr.

Boxhall spent almost all his time on the bridge signalling to her with

rockets and flashes; but no answer was received. He had, however, also

been on a rapid tour of inspection of the ship immediately after she had

struck. He went down to the steerage quarters forward and aft, and he

was also down in the deep forward compartment where the Post Office men

were working with the mails, and he had at that time found nothing

wrong, and his information contributed much to the sense of security

that was spread amongst the passengers.

Mr. Pitman, the Third Officer, was in his bunk at the time of the

collision, having been on duty on the bridge from six to eight, when the

Captain had also been on the bridge. There had been talk of ice among

the officers on Sunday, and they had expected to meet with it just

before midnight, at the very time, in fact, when they had met with it.

But very little ice had been seen, and the speed of the ship had not

been reduced. Mr. Pitman says that when he awoke he heard a sound which

seemed to him to be the sound of the ship coming to anchor. He was not

actually awake then, but he had the sensation of the ship halting, and

heard a sound like that of chains whirling round the windlass and

running through the hawseholes into the water. He lay in bed for three

or four minutes wondering in a sleepy sort of way where they could have

anchored. Then, becoming more awake, he got up, and without dressing

went out on deck; he saw nothing remarkable, but he went back and

dressed, suspecting that something was the matter. While he was dressing

Mr. Boxhall looked in and said: "We have struck an iceberg, old man;

hurry up!"

He also went down below to make an inspection and find out what damage

had been done. He went to the forward well deck, where ice was lying,

and into the fo'c's'le, but found nothing wrong there. The actual

damage was farther aft, and at that time the water had not come into the

bows of the ship. As he was going back he met a number of firemen coming

up the gangway with their bags of clothing; they told him that water was

coming into their place. They were firemen off duty, who afterwards were

up on the boat deck helping to man the boats. Then Mr. Pitman went down

lower into the ship and looked into No. 1 hatch, where he could plainly

see water. All this took time; and when he came back he found that the

men were beginning to get the boats ready, a task at which he helped

under Mr. Murdoch's orders. Presently Mr. Murdoch ordered him to take

command of a boat and hang about aft of the gangway. Pitman had very

little relish for leaving the ship at that time, and in spite of the

fact that she was taking in water, every one was convinced that the

_Titanic_ was a much safer place than the open sea. He had about forty

passengers and six of the crew in his boat, and as it was about to be

lowered, Mr. Murdoch leant over to him and shook him heartily by the

hand: "Good-bye, old man, and good luck," he said, in tones which rather

surprised Pitman, for they seemed to imply that the good-bye might be

for a long time. His boat was lowered down into the water, unhooked, and

shoved off, and joined the gradually increasing fleet of other boats

that were cruising about in the starlight.

There was one man walking about that upper deck whose point of view was

quite different from that of anyone else. Mr. Bruce Ismay, like so many

others, was awakened from sleep by the stopping of the engines; like so

many others, also, he lay still for a few moments, and then got up and

went into the passage-way, where he met a steward and asked him what was

the matter. The steward knew nothing, and Mr. Ismay went back to his

state-room, put on a dressing-gown and slippers, and went up to the

bridge, where he saw the Captain. "What has happened?" he asked. "We

have struck ice," was the answer. "Is the injury serious?" "I think so,"

said the Captain. Then Mr. Ismay came down in search of the Chief

Engineer, whom he met coming up to the bridge; he asked him the same

question, and he also said he thought the injury serious. He understood

from them that the ship was certainly in danger, but that there was hope

that if the pumps could be kept going there would be no difficulty in

keeping her afloat quite long enough for help to come and for the

passengers to be taken off. Whatever was to be the result, it was a

terrible moment for Mr. Ismay, a terrible blow to the pride and record

of the Company, that this, their greatest and most invulnerable ship,

should be at least disabled, and possibly lost, on her maiden voyage.

But like a sensible man, he did not stand wringing his hands at the

inevitable; he did what he could to reassure the passengers, repeating,

perhaps with a slight quaver of doubt in his voice, the old

word--unsinkable. When the boats began to be launched he went and tried

to help, apparently in his anxiety getting rather in the way. In this

endeavour he encountered the wrath of Mr. Lowe, the Fifth Officer, who

was superintending the launching of boat No. 5. Mr. Lowe did not know

the identity of the nervous, excited figure standing by the davits, nor

recognize the voice which kept saying nervously, "Lower away! lower

away!" and it was therefore with no misgivings that he ordered him away

from the boat, saying brusquely, "If you will kindly get to hell out of

this perhaps I'll be able to do something!"--a trifling incident, but

evidence that Mr. Ismay made no use of his position for his own personal

ends. He said nothing, and went away to another boat, where he succeeded

in being more useful, and it was not till afterwards that an

awe-stricken steward told the Fifth Officer who it was that he had

chased away with such language. But after that Mr. Ismay was among the

foremost in helping to sort out the women and children and get them

expeditiously packed into the boats, with a burden of misery and

responsibility on his heart that we cannot measure.

One can imagine a great bustle and excitement while the boats were being

sent away; but when they had all gone, and there was nothing more to be

done, those who were left began to look about them and realize their

position. There was no doubt about it, the _Titanic_ was sinking, not

with any plunging or violent movement, but steadily settling down, as a

rock seems to settle into the water when the tide rises about it.

Down in the engine-room and stokeholds, in conditions which can hardly

be imagined by the ordinary landsman, men were still working with a grim

and stoic heroism. The forward stokeholds had been flooded probably an

hour after the collision; but it is practically certain that the

bulkheads forward of No. 5 held until the last. The doors in those aft

of No. 4 had been opened by hand after they had been closed from the

bridge, in order to facilitate the passage of the engineering staff

about their business; and they remained open, and the principal bulkhead

protecting the main engine-room, held until the last. Water thus found

its way into some compartments, and gradually rose; but long after

those in charge had given up all hope of saving the ship, the stokehold

watch were kept hard at work drawing the fires from under the boilers,

so that when the water reached them there should be no steam. The duty

of the engine-room staff was to keep the pumps going as long as possible

and to run the dynamos that supplied the current for the light and the

Marconi installation. This they did, as the black water rose stage by

stage upon them. At least twenty minutes before the ship sank the

machinery must have been flooded, and the current for the lights and the

wireless supplied from the storage plant. No member of the engine-room

staff was ever seen alive again, but, when the water finally flooded the

stokeholds, the watch were released and told to get up and save

themselves if they could.

And up on deck a chilly conviction of doom was slowly but certainly

taking the place of that bland confidence in the unsinkable ship in

which the previous hour had been lightly passed. That confidence had

been dreadfully overdone, so much so that the stewards had found the

greatest difficulty in persuading the passengers to dress themselves and

come up on deck, and some who had done so had returned to their

state-rooms and locked themselves in. The last twenty minutes, however,

must have shown everyone on deck that there was not a chance left. On a

ship as vast and solid as the _Titanic_ there is no sensation of actual

sinking or settling. She still seemed as immovable as ever, but the

water was climbing higher and higher up her black sides. The sensation

was not that of the ship sinking, but of the water rising about her. And

the last picture we have of her, while still visible, still a firm

refuge amid the waters, is of the band still playing and a throng of

people looking out from the lamplit upper decks after the disappearing

boats, bracing themselves as best they might for the terrible plunge and

shock which they knew was coming. Here and there men who were determined

still to make a fight for life climbed over the rail and jumped over; it

was not a seventy foot drop now--perhaps under twenty, but it was a

formidable jump. Some were stunned, and some were drowned at once before

the eyes of those who waited; and the dull splashes they made were

probably the first visible demonstration of the death that was coming.

Duties were still being performed; an old deck steward, who had charge

of the chairs, was busily continuing to work, adapting his duties to the

emergency that had arisen and lashing chairs together. In this he was

helped by Mr. Andrews, who was last seen engaged on this strangely

ironic task of throwing chairs overboard--frail rafts thrown upon the

waters that might or might not avail some struggling soul when the

moment should arrive, and the great ship of his designing float no

longer. Throughout he had been untiring in his efforts to help and

hearten people; but in this the last vision of him, there is something

not far short of the sublime.

The last collapsible boat was being struggled with on the upper deck,

but there were no seamen about who understood its stiff mechanism;

unaccustomed hands fumbled desperately with it, and finally pushed it

over the side in its collapsed condition for use as a raft. Many of the

seamen and stewards had gathered in the bar-room, where the attendant

was serving out glasses of whiskey to any and all who came for it; but

most men had an instinct against being under cover, and preferred to

stand out in the open.

And now those in the boats that had drawn off from the ship could see

that the end was at hand. Her bows had gone under, although the stern

was still fairly high out of the water. She had sunk down at the forward

end of the great superstructure amidships; her decks were just awash,

and the black throng was moving aft. The ship was blazing with light,

and the strains of the band were faintly heard still playing as they had

been commanded to do. But they had ceased to play the jolly rag-time

tunes with which the bustle and labour of getting off the boats had been

accompanied; solemn strains, the strains of a hymn, could be heard

coming over the waters. Many women in the boats, looking back towards

that lighted and subsiding mass, knew that somewhere, invisible among

the throng, was all that they held dearest in the world waiting for

death; and they could do nothing. Some tried to get the crews to turn

back, wringing their hands, beseeching, imploring; but no crew dared

face the neighbourhood of the giant in her death agony. They could only

wait, and shiver, and look.