BELIEVED SHIP UNSINKABLE.
Shots and Hymn Mingle--Titanic Settled Slowly--Best Traditions Upheld
by Passengers and Crew--Boiler Explosions Tore Ship Apart--Anguish
in the Boats--Survivors Carried to Carpathia--Not Enough Provision
Against Accident.
Outside of great naval battles no tragedy of the sea ever claimed so
many victims as did the loss of the Titanic. The pitiful part of it is
that all on board the Titanic might have been saved had there been a
sufficient number of lifeboats aboard to accommodate the passengers and
crew.
Only sixteen lifeboats were launched, one of these, a collapsible boat,
the last to be launched, was overturned, but was used as a raft and
served to save the lives of many men and women.
Many women went down with the ship--steerage women, unable to get
to the upper decks where the boats were launched; maids, who were
overlooked in the confusion; cabin passengers, who refused to desert
their husbands, or who reached the decks after the last of the
lifeboats was gone and the ship was settling for her final plunge to
the bottom of the Atlantic.
Confidence in the ability of the Titanic to remain afloat led many of
the passengers to death. The theory that the great ship was unsinkable
remained with hundreds who had entrusted themselves to the gigantic
hulk long after the officers knew that the vessel could not long remain
above the surface.
That so many of the men passengers and members of the crew were saved,
while such a large majority of females drowned was due to the fact that
the women had not appeared about the lifeboats in sufficient numbers
to fill them when they first were launched. Dozens of male survivors
assert they were forced into the first boats lowered against their will
by officers who insisted that the boats should go overboard filled to
their capacity.
From a rather calm, well ordered sort of leaving of passengers over
the side when the disaster was young the departure of survivors became
a riot as the last boats were lowered and it was apparent that the
Titanic would sink.
Steerage passengers fought their way to the upper decks and struggled
with brutal ferocity against cabin passengers who were aimlessly trying
to save themselves. Officers of the ship shot down men who sought to
jump into already overcrowded boats. The sound of the pistol shots
mingled with the strains of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” played by the
ship’s orchestra as the Titanic took her final plunge.
MURDOCK SHOOTS HIMSELF.
Murdock, the first officer, who was on the bridge in charge of the
Titanic when she struck the iceberg, shot himself when convinced the
vessel was doomed. The report that Captain Smith shot himself is
contradicted by survivors, who say they saw him swept from the ship as
she went down.
The Titanic settled into the sea gently. The greater part of her bulk
was under water when she slipped beneath the waves. No trace of suction
was felt by those in lifeboats only a few hundred yards away.
Colonel John Jacob Astor died a hero and went down with the ship. Had
he leaped into the water as she made her final plunge, he might have
been picked up by one of the lifeboats, but he remained on the deck and
was swept under by the drawing power of the great bulk, bound for the
bottom.
All the officers who died and most of the members of the crew upheld
the traditions of heroism held sacred by seamen. They did their duty
to the end and died with their ship. Not a man in the engine room was
saved; not one of them was seen on deck after the collision. They
remained at their posts, far down in the depths of the stricken vessel,
until the waves closed over what was at once their pride and their
burial casket.
A boiler explosion tore the Titanic apart shortly before she sank. This
occurred when the sea water, which had been working its way through
the forward compartments, invaded the fireroom. After the explosion
the Titanic hung on the surface, upheld only by the water-tight
compartments, which had not been touched by the collision.
Although the officers of the Titanic had been warned of the proximity
of ice, she was steaming at the rate of twenty-three knots an hour when
she met her end. The lookouts in the crow’s nest saw an iceberg ahead
and telephoned the bridge. The vessel swung slightly in response to her
rudder, and the submerged part of the iceberg tore out her plates along
the starboard quarters below the water.
COMPARTMENT WALL GIVES WAY.
Water rushed into several of the compartments. The ship listed to
starboard. Captain Smith hurried to the bridge. It was thought the ship
would float, until a shudder, that vibrated throughout the great frame,
told that a compartment wall had given away. Then a definite order
was given to man the lifeboats, and stewards were sent to instruct
passengers to put on life preservers.
So thoroughly grounded was the belief of the cabin passengers that the
Titanic was unsinkable that few of them took the accident seriously.
Women in evening dress walked out of the magnificent saloons and joked
about the situation. Passengers protested against getting into the
lifeboats, although the ship was then sinking by the head.
Mr. and Mrs. H. J. Allison and their little daughter remained on the
ship and were lost, after the infant son of the Allison family had been
placed in a lifeboat in charge of a nurse.
Isidor Straus and his wife did not appear on deck until an order had
been issued that only women and children should be allowed in the
lifeboats. Mrs. Straus clung to her husband and refused to leave him.
They died in each other’s arms.
Those who escaped in the first lifeboats were disposed to look on
their experience as a lark. The sailors manning the oars pulled away
from the Titanic. The sound of music floated over the starlit waves.
The lights of the Titanic were burning.
Like simultaneous photographs of the same tragedy etched on the brains
of 745 persons, survivors of the Titanic tell of their experiences and
what they saw in those pitifully few hours between the great ship’s
impact on the iceberg and the appalling moment when she disappeared.
As the survivors came, half fainting, half hysterical, down the
Carpathia’s gang plank, they began to relate these narratives. Many of
these were disjointed, fragmentary--a picture here, a frightful flash
of recollection there, some bordered on hallucination, some were more
connected as one of those who are now beginning to realize the horror
through which they came. A few strangely enough, are calm and lucid.
But every one thrills with some part of the awful truth as its narrator
saw it.
INDIVIDUALLY CONFLICTING STORIES OF THE WRECK.
Each tale is like another view of the same many-sided shield. Sometimes
they seem to contradict each other, but that is because those who
witness such scenes see them as individuals. There is not a survivor
but has something new and startling and dramatic to tell.
Taken altogether their accounts are a composite picture of 700 separate
experiences.
The shock of the collision had barely jarred the ship. One man who was
directing letters in his cabin kept on with his work until he felt a
sudden shift in the position of the ship and rushed to the deck in time
to leap into a lifeboat. Some of the passengers had returned to their
berths.
Nothing occurred to indicate to the passengers aboard the Titanic or
moving away from the ship in lifeboats that the vessel would not remain
afloat until help should arrive, until the boilers exploded. Then the
end was apparent to all.
Men with life-preservers strapped about their waists, jumped overboard
by scores and some were picked up by boats which had not got far from
the ship.
As the last three lifeboats were launched the restriction as to women
and children was removed. It was a free-for-all then on the deck, where
unskilled men, principally stewards, were trying to get the cumbersome
boats overboard. Nearly all those who took part in that struggle for
life are dead. Those who survived are not anxious to talk about it.
Just before the Titanic disappeared from view men and women leaped from
the stern. As the portion of vessel remaining above water swung up
to an almost perpendicular position hundreds on the upper decks were
thrown into the sea and were pulled down in the vortex. The biggest,
most thrilling moments of the wreck were those last moments when the
air-tight compartments in the after part of the Titanic were supporting
the balance of the ship.
KEPT TOGETHER BY GREEN LIGHT.
None are alive to tell the tale of that short period. Toward 2 o’clock
on Monday morning a green light aboard one of the lifeboats kept the
fleet of craft carrying the survivors together. Through the hours
until dawn the men in charge of the boats hovered about that green
light. Occasionally bodies of men slipped by the lifeboats. A few men,
more dead than alive, were pulled aboard the boats, that were now
overcrowded.
The weather became bitterly cold and the survivors suffered physical
pain as well as mental anguish. Benumbed by the extent of the
catastrophe most of the women sat motionless in their places. The
Carpathia appeared soon after dawn. Not until the big Cunarder was
close by did the realization of what had happened reach the women
survivors.
Many of them became temporarily insane. It was necessary to use force
to place them in swings in which they were hoisted to the Carpathia’s
decks. The officers of the Carpathia knowing the Titanic had gone down,
were prepared for an emergency. Passengers on the Cunarder gave their
cabins to the Titanic sufferers. The captain surrendered his room for
hospital purposes. Stewardesses were compelled to cut the clothing from
some of the women who had jumped into the water and been picked up by
the lifeboats.
Among the survivors picked up by the Carpathia were several babies.
These little ones were tossed overboard by their parents and rescued by
the boats. The identity of these orphans may never be determined. When
the list of persons aboard the Carpathia was checked up it was found
that among the survivors were thirty women who had been widowed by the
disaster.
Nearly all these women, bereft of their life partners, were reassured
by the hope that those who had been left behind had been picked up
by another vessel until they reached New York. For some reason the
impression prevailed on the Carpathia that the Californian had picked
up a number of survivors floating in the sea upheld by life-preservers.
EVERY HUSBAND SAVED SAVES HIS WIFE.
As against the thirty widows stands the record of every married man who
was saved. Each of these men saved his wife also. No wife was left on
the Titanic by a husband who had reached a lifeboat.
Narratives of the various survivors, assembled in a consecutive
narrative, makes one of the most thrilling tales of modern life. It
is a narrative filled with heroism unparalleled--bravery and heroism
performed by American business men. They were men of millions who had
everything to live for and yet, in that crisis at sea, they worked
coolly, steadfastly to save women and children. Then they went down
with the White Star liner Titanic, the greatest ship afloat.
When the Carpathia came into port carrying the more than 700 survivors
of the disaster, the curtain, which had hidden the story of the tragedy
since the first word of it was flashed to a startled world, was drawn
aside. Here is the real tale of the sinking of the Titanic.
The Titanic was athrob with the joy of life on Sunday night, when
without warning, the great liner was jammed against a partly submerged
iceberg. The blow, which was a glancing one, did not cause much of a
jar and there were some on board who did not know that an accident had
happened until later. The liner struck the berg on the starboard side
amidships.
Only Captain E. J. Smith, the commander, realized that there might
be grave danger, and even he did not regard the collision as fatal.
Going to the wireless cabin in which Phillips, the operator, was in
conversation with Cape Race on traffic matters, he gave orders to the
wireless man to hold himself in readiness to flash out a distress
signal.
At the time there was a great throng in the main saloon, where the
ship’s orchestra was giving a concert. Despite the bitterly cold
weather, some of the passengers were taking advantage of the bright
moonlight to stroll upon the decks. Survivors, who were upon the
starboard side, said that the ice mountain which the vessel struck was
at least 150 feet high where exposed.
UNDER FULL HEAD OF STEAM.
At the time the ship was steaming ahead under nearly a full head of
steam, at about twenty-one knots. If she had been going slowly the
disaster probably would never have happened.
Acting under orders from Captain Smith, the ship’s officers passed
among the passengers, reassuring them as the rumor that the ship had
struck spread.
“Keep cool; there is no danger,” was the message which, repeated over
and over, gradually became monotonous. The warning was hardly necessary
for none, save the highest officers of the ship, who were in Captain
Smith’s confidence, knew the real gravity of the situation.
Captain Smith immediately went below and began an examination. This
showed that quick action was necessary. Within fifteen minutes of his
first warning the captain again entered the wireless cabin and told
Phillips to flash the distress signal.
“Send the international call for help, so they will understand.”
Captain Smith said.
Bride, the assistant operator, who had been asleep, was standing at
Phillips’ side.
Some of the passengers who had been sleeping were aroused and left
their berths. Many hastened on deck to get a glimpse of the berg,
but, so swiftly was it moving in the gulf stream current, that,
within twenty minutes after the vessel struck it, the ice mountain
had disappeared from view. At 11.50 P. M., fifteen minutes after the
collision, the first intimation of impending danger was given. Officers
passed among the passengers warning them to put on life belts. The
tarpaulins were cast off, the lifeboats and the life rafts and the
davit guys loosened so that the boats could be swiftly swung over the
side.
Members of the crew also donned life preservers; but, with studied
forethought, Captain Smith ordered the principal officers not to don
their belts. They were told, however, to be ready to do so in an
emergency.
PHILLIPS POUNDS OUT THE S. O. S.
The ship soon had begun to list. The wireless masts were sputtering a
blue streak of sparks. Phillips at his key pounded out one “S. O. S.”
call after another. He alternated between the “S. O. S.” and the “C. Q.
D.” so that there might be no chance of the signal being misunderstood.
The first ship to respond to the Titanic was the Frankfurt; the second
was the Carpathia. Phillips told the Carpathia’s wireless man that the
accident was serious and that the White Star liner was sinking by the
head.
“We are putting about and coming to your aid,” was the reply flashed by
the Cunarder.
About 12.15 o’clock the officers began warning the women to get into
the boats. Even at this time no one realized that there was any danger.
Many of the women refused to get into the boats and had to be placed in
them forcibly by the crew.
Colonel and Mrs. John Jacob Astor were walking upon the deck. They
were approached by Captain H. D. Steffason, of the Swedish Embassy, at
Washington. Captain Steffason advised Mrs. Astor to leave the ship.
She demurred, saying there was no danger. Finally Colonel Astor said:
“Yes, my dear, it is better for you to go; I will follow in another
boat after all the women have been taken off.”
They kissed and parted. It was a beautiful parting.
Mrs. Washington Dodge, of San Francisco, wife of another prominent
passenger, was asleep in her stateroom. She was aroused by her husband,
who urged her to get in a boat. So certain were both that the measures
were only precautionary and not necessary that they did not even kiss
each other good-bye. Mr. Dodge embarked in another boat.
These incidents are given because they are typical. They show how
little the passengers knew that they were standing at the brink of
death.
THE GAP INCREASES.
The riven plates under the water increased the gap, allowing more and
more water to pour into the hold. The steel frame had been buckled by
the impact of the collision and water was rushing into the supposedly
water-tight compartments around the doors. The dynamo supplying the
ship’s searchlight and the wireless outfit were put out of commission.
Officers hurried hither and thither, reporting to Captain Smith. This
master mariner, hero of the White Star Line, knew that he was doomed to
death by all the traditions of the sea, but did not flinch. He was the
coolest man on board. As lifeboat after lifeboat was filled and swung
over the side it pulled off some distance and stood by.
When the officers began to load the women of the steerage into the
boats trouble started. Men refused to be separated from the wives.
Families clamored to get into life boats together. The ship’s officers
had a hard time subduing some of the steerage passengers. The survivors
say that some of the men of the steerage were shot by the ship’s
officers.
As the officers were loading the women of the first cabin list into the
boat they came upon Mrs. Isador Straus, the elderly wife of the noted
philanthropist. She started to get into a boat, but held back, waiting
for her husband to follow. Mr. Straus tenderly took her in his arms,
bade her farewell and explained that he must abide by the inexorable
rule of the sea, which says women and children must be saved first.
“If you do not go I don’t go,” exclaimed the devoted wife. She clung to
her husband’s arm, and, despite his efforts and the efforts of officers
to persuade her to get into one of the boats, she refused. The devoted
couple went to death together.
While the vessel was going down the call for help was picked up and
acknowledged by the White Star liners Olympic and Baltic. They turned
their heads toward the Titanic, but were too far away to render aid.
STRAINS OF MUSIC DROWNS ALL CRIES.
The band, which had been playing incessantly in the main saloon, moved
out to the open deck and the strains of music rose above the shouts of
the officers and the cries of the passengers. By 1 o’clock even those
who knew nothing of seamanship began to realize by the angle at which
the giant liner careened that she was in grave danger. By this time
more than half of the life boats had been sent away and they formed a
ring in the darkness about the great vessel.
Excitement began to run high. Major A. W. Butt, U. S. A., military aide
to President Taft; William T. Stead, the famous journalist; Colonel
Aster, and others of the passengers volunteered their services to
Captain Smith. They helped the officers hold back other male passengers
who by this time had become thoroughly frightened.
As one of the lifeboats was being swung over the ship’s side, a frantic
mother who had been separated from her eight-year-old boy, cried out
hysterically. Colonel Astor was standing by the boat, assisting the
officers. The little boy, in fright and despair, stretched out his arms
appealingly to his mother, but the officer in command of the boat said
that it would not be safe for another to enter.
Colonel Astor, seeing a girl’s hat lying upon the deck, stealthily
placed it upon the boy’s head. Lifting up the child, he called out:
“Surely you will not leave a little girl behind.” The ruse worked and
the child was taken on board.
Up in the wireless room, Bride had placed a life preserver upon his
companion, Phillips, while Phillips sat at his key. Upon returning
from Captain Smith’s cabin with a message, Bride saw a grimy stoker
of gigantic proportions bending over Phillips removing the life belt.
Phillips would not abandon his key for an instant to fight off the
stoker. Bride is a little man (he was subsequently saved) but plucky.
Drawing his revolver he shot down the intruder and the wireless work
went on as though nothing had happened.
J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the International Mercantile
Marine Company, owners of the White Star Line, was sitting in the cafe
chatting to some friends when the liner ran upon the berg. He was the
first one informed by Captain Smith. Ismay rushed to the deck to look
at the berg.
“THE SHIP CANNOT SINK.”
“The ship cannot sink,” was the reply which he gave, with smiling
assurance, to all inquirers.
Nevertheless, there are survivors who say that Ismay was one of the
passengers of the lifeboats which put off. They saw him enter the boat.
By 1.30 o’clock the great vessel, which only a short time before had
been the marvel of the twentieth century, was a water-logged hulk.
Panic was steadily growing. The word had been passed around that the
ship was doomed. The night continued calm. The sea was smooth. The moon
was brilliant in the sky.
Into one of the last of the lifeboats that were launched two Chinamen,
employed in the galley, had hidden themselves. They were stretched in
the bottom of the boat, face downward, and made no sound. So excited
were the women that they did not notice the presence of the Chinese
until the boat had pulled off from the Titanic. Then the officer
in charge drew his revolver and shot both to death. The bodies were
tumbled overboard.
The weather was very cold and the sea was filled with floating ice.
All were warned before getting into the boats to dress as warmly as
possible. By the time the boats were filled the water had entered the
engine-room and the ship was drifting helplessly. About 2 o’clock
Captain Smith, who had been standing upon the bridge with a megaphone
to his mouth, again went to the wireless cabin.
“Men,” he said to Phillips and Bride, with a break in his voice, “you
have done your full duty. You can do no more. Abandon your cabin, for
it is now every man for himself.”
Bride left the cabin, but Phillips still clung to his key. He perished.
The saving of Bride, the second wireless man, was only one of a series
of thrilling escapes. Wearing a life belt, Bride went upon deck. He saw
a dozen men passengers tugging at a collapsible boat trying to work it
to the edge of the deck.
BRIDE SWEPT OVERBOARD.
The wireless man went to their assistance and they had got it nearly to
the point from which they could swing it over, when a wave rolled over
the deck. Bride, who had hold of an oar lock, was swept overboard with
the boat. The next thing he knew he was struggling in the water beneath
the boat.
The icy water struck a chill through him. He realized that unless he
got from beneath the boat he would drown. Diving deeply, he came up on
the outside of the gunwale and grasped it. On every hand was wreckage
of all kinds and struggling men who had been washed overboard by the
submerging comber. Bride clung to the craft until he saw another boat
near by. Exerting all his strength, he swam to this boat and was pulled
in it more dead than alive.
By this time all the boats and life rafts had been taken from the ship.
The boats were ringed about the ship from 150 feet to 1,000 yards
distant. Their occupants could see the lights burning on the vessel
which had settled low in the water.
Suddenly as they looked great billows of live sparks rose up through
the four funnels. These were followed by billowing clouds of smoke and
steam. The rush of water had reached the boiler rooms and the boilers
had exploded. After this the great vessel sank more rapidly and within
less than twenty minutes had plunged to her grave, two miles beneath
the surface.
In the meantime, however, those upon the sinking ship, who knew that
they had only a few hours at most to live, lived up to the most
splendid example of Anglo-Saxon courage. As the ship sank lower those
on board climbed higher, prolonging life to the last minute. Frenzied
search was made of every part of the decks by those who hoped that the
sailors had overlooked a life raft or small boat which might be used.
Their search was vain.
Colonel Astor, Major Butt, C. M. Hays, W. M. Clark and other friends
stood together. Astor and Butt were strong swimmers. When the water
reached the ship’s rail, Butt and Astor jumped and began swimming
rapidly away. There was little suction despite the bulk of the
foundering craft.
SHIP DISAPPEARS FROM VIEW.
There was a dreadful cry as the ship disappeared from view. Instantly
the water was filled with hundreds of struggling men. The spot just
above the grave of the liner was strewn with wreckage. Some tried to
climb upon the ice cakes. But the cold air and the cold water soon
numbed the fingers of the men in the water. Even the most powerful of
the refugees soon gave out. Exhausted by their effort and numb from
exposure they dropped one by one.
There are survivors, however, among them Dr. Henry J. Frauenthal, of
this city, who said that they heard cries from the water for two hours
after the Titanic sank. Amidst the acres and acres of wreckage hundreds
of dead bodies floated. Many of them were among the first cabin
passengers, still dressed in their evening clothes which they had worn
when the ship struck the iceberg.