The _Californian_ had come up while the _Carpathia_ was taking the
survivors on board, and it was arranged that she should remain and
search the vicinity while the _Carpathia_ made all haste to New York.
And the other ships that had answered the call for help either came up
later in the morning and stayed for a little cruising about in the
forlorn hope of finding more survivors, or else turned back and resumed
their voyages when they heard the _Carpathia's_ tidings.
In the meantime the shore stations could get no news. Word reached New
York and London in the course of the morning that the _Titanic_ had
struck an iceberg and was badly damaged, but nothing more was known
until a message, the origin of which could not be discovered, came to
say that the _Titanic_ was being towed to Halifax by the _Virginian_,
and that all her passengers were saved. With this news the London
evening papers came out on that Monday, and even on Tuesday the early
editions of the morning papers had the same story, and commented upon
the narrow escape of the huge ship. Even the White Star officials had on
Monday no definite news; and when their offices in New York were
besieged by newspaper men and relatives of the passengers demanding
information, the pathetic belief in the _Titanic's_ strength was allowed
to overshadow anxieties concerning the greater disaster. Mr. Franklin,
the vice-president of the American Trust to which the White Star Company
belongs, issued the following statement from New York on Monday:
"We have nothing direct from the _Titanic_, but are perfectly
satisfied that the vessel is unsinkable. The fact that the
Marconi messages have ceased means nothing; it may be due to
atmospheric conditions or the coming up of the ships, or
something of that sort.
"We are not worried over the possible loss of the ship, as she
will not go down, but we are sorry for the inconvenience
caused to the travelling public. We are absolutely certain
that the _Titanic_ is able to withstand any damage. She may be
down by the head, but would float indefinitely in that
condition."
Still that same word, "unsinkable," which had now indeed for the first
time become a true one: for it is only when she lies at the bottom of
the sea that any ship can be called unsinkable. On Tuesday morning when
the dreadful news was first certainly known, those proud words had to be
taken back. Again Mr. Franklin had to face the reporters, and this time
he could only say:
"I must take upon myself the whole blame for that statement. I
made it, and I believed it when I made it. The accident to the
_Olympic_, when she collided with the cruiser _Hawke_,
convinced me that these ships, the _Olympic_ and _Titanic_,
were built like battleships, able to resist almost any kind of
accident, particularly a collision. I made the statement in
good faith, and upon me must rest the responsibility for
error, since the fact has proved that it was not a correct
description of the unfortunate _Titanic_."
And for three days while the _Carpathia_ was ploughing her way, now
slowly through ice-strewn seas, and now at full speed through open
water, and while England lay under the cloud of an unprecedented
disaster, New York was in a ferment of grief, excitement, and
indignation. Crowds thronged the streets outside the offices of the
White Star Line, while gradually, in lists of thirty or forty at a time,
the names of the survivors began to come through from the _Carpathia_.
And at last, when all the names had been spelled out, and interrogated,
and corrected, the grim total of the figures stood out in appalling
significance--seven hundred and three saved, one thousand five hundred
and three lost.
It is not possible, nor would it be very profitable, to describe the
scenes that took place on these days of waiting, the alternations of
hope and grief, of thankfulness and wild despair, of which the shipping
offices were the scene. They culminated on the Thursday evening when
the _Carpathia_ arrived in New York. The greatest precautions had been
taken to prevent the insatiable thirst for news from turning that solemn
disembarkation into a battlefield. The entrance to the dock was
carefully guarded, and only those were admitted who had business there
or who could prove that they had relations among the rescued passengers.
Similar precautions were taken on the ship; she was not even boarded by
the Custom officials, nor were any reporters allowed on board, although
a fleet of steam launches went out in the cold rainy evening to meet
her, bearing pressmen who were prepared to run any risks to get a
footing on the ship. They failed, however, and the small craft were left
behind in the mist, as the _Carpathia_ came gliding up the Hudson.
Among the waiting crowd were nurses, doctors, and a staff of ambulance
men and women; for all kinds of wild rumours were afloat as to the
condition of those who had been rescued. The women of New York had
devoted the days of waiting to the organization of a powerful relief
committee, and had collected money and clothing on an ample scale to
meet the needs of those, chiefly among the steerage passengers, who
should find themselves destitute when they landed. And there, in the
rain of that gloomy evening, they waited.
At last they saw the _Carpathia_ come creeping up the river and head
towards the White Star pier. The flashlights of photographers were
playing about her, and with this silent salute she came into dock.
Gateways had been erected, shutting off the edge of the pier from the
sheds in which the crowd was waiting, and the first sight they had of
the rescued was when after the gangway had been rigged, and the brief
formalities of the shore complied with, the passengers began slowly to
come down the gangway. A famous English dramatist who was looking on at
the scene has written of it eloquently, describing the strange varieties
of bearing and demeanour; how one face had a startled, frightened look
that seemed as if it would always be there, another a set and staring
gaze; how one showed an angry, rebellious desperation, and another
seemed merely dazed. Some carried on stretchers, some supported by
nurses, and some handed down by members of the crew, they came, either
to meetings that were agonizing in their joy, or to blank loneliness
that would last until they died. Five or six babies without mothers,
some of them utterly unidentified and unidentifiable, were handed down
with the rest, so strangely preserved, in all their tenderness and
helplessness, through that terrible time of confusion and exposure.
And in the minds of those who looked on at this sad procession there was
one tragic, recurrent thought: that for every one who came down the
gangway, ill perhaps, maimed perhaps, destitute perhaps, but alive and
on solid earth again, there were two either drifting in the slow Arctic
current, or lying in the great submarine valley to which the ship had
gone down. They were a poor remnant indeed of all that composite world
of pride, and strength, and riches; for Death winnows with a strange
fan, and although one would suit his purpose as well as another, he
often chooses the best and the strongest. There were card-sharpers, and
orphaned infants, and destitute consumptives among the saved; and there
were hundreds of heroes and strong men among the drowned. There were
among the saved those to whom death would have been no great enemy, who
had no love for life or ties to bind them to it; and there were those
among the drowned for whom life was at its very best and dearest; lovers
and workers in the very morning of life before whom the years had
stretched forward rich with promise.
And when nearly all had gone and the crowd in the docks was melting
away, one man, who had until then remained secluded in the ship came
quietly out, haggard and stricken with woe: Bruce Ismay, the
representative and figure-head of that pride and power which had given
being to the _Titanic_. In a sense he bore on his own shoulders the
burden of every sufferer's grief and loss; and he bore it, not with
shame, for he had no cause for shame, but with reticence of words and
activity in such alleviating deeds as were possible, and with a dignity
which was proof against even the bitter injustice of which he was the
victim in the days that followed. There was pity enough in New York,
hysterical pity, sentimental pity, real pity, practical pity, for all
the obvious and patent distress of the bereaved and destitute; but there
was no pity for this man who, of all that ragged remnant that walked
back to life down the _Carpathia's_ gangway, had perhaps the most need
of pity.