officers stood ready with revolvers, lest the passion for life seize
the men and send them rushing towards the boats. There was only one
rush; some poor steerage passengers, foreigners, who had been near
enough to the point of impact with the iceberg to realise the terror
of it all, charged down upon one boat. An officer stopped them with
a couple of shots, and strong hands pulled them back. Their places
were taken in the boat by their wives and children, for, in this time
of disaster, social distinctions were forgotten, cast aside like the
trappings of life that they are, and rich women and poor, ragged
and well dressed, old and young, were herded together in the same
boat--companions in distress. The rich man’s child was cuddled to some
poor woman’s bosom; the offspring of some “down and out” nestled in the
arms of a bejewelled dame of high society.
The work went on, the heartrending scene in this tragedy of the sea was
played through to the accompaniment of the noise of escaping steam, the
sobbing of wives and children as they said farewell to husbands and
fathers, and the peculiar noise that a crowd makes in circumstances
of stress; while from various parts of the ship there were the sounds
of rockets being fired, brilliant appeals for help which cast strange
lights round and about the doomed vessel. And more, this drama had
its own music; floating up from below came the sounds of piano and
orchestra playing lively tunes, which cheered the leaving women and the
staying men, who cried to each other: “Au revoir! We’ll meet in New
York!”
Down, down, down, seventy feet or more the boats were lowered, some
having to pass the exhaust of the condensers, and running the risk of
being swamped. An incident connected with one of these boats is worth
mentioning. It was described by Mr. Beezley, a schoolmaster, who was in
her as helper. There were no officers on board to help them work the
boat, and no petty officer or member of the crew to take charge; and
when it was seen that the boat was in danger of being swamped by the
water from the exhaust, one of the stokers cried: “Someone find the pin
which releases the boat from the ropes and pull it up!” No one knew
where it was. “We felt,” said Mr. Beezley, “as well as we could on the
floor and along the sides, but found nothing. It was difficult to move
among so many people. We had sixty or seventy on board. Down we went,
and presently we were floating with our ropes still holding us, and the
stream of water from the exhaust washing us away from the side of the
vessel, while the swell of the sea urged us back against the side again.
“The result of all these forces was that we were carried parallel to
the ship’s side, and directly under Boat 14, which had filled rapidly,
and was coming down on us in a way that threatened to submerge our boat.
“‘Stop lowering 14!’ our crew shouted; and the crew of No. 14, now
only twenty feet above, cried out the same. The distance to the top,
however, was some seventy feet, and the creaking of the pulleys must
have deadened all sound to those above, for down she came, fifteen
feet, ten feet, five feet, and a stoker and I reached up and touched
the bottom of the swinging boat above our heads. The next drop would
have brought her on our heads. Just before she dropped another stoker
sprang to the ropes with open knife in hand. ‘One,’ I heard him say;
and then ‘Two,’ as the knife cut through the pulley ropes.”
Almost immediately the exhaust stream carried the boat clear, and the
other boat slipped into the water, on exactly the same spot that the
first one had occupied. It was indeed a narrow shave, for the two boats
almost rubbed gunwales.
Leaving the boats as they are being got away, let us go to some other
part of the ship to see what is happening.
Down below, in the engine-room and stokeholds, begrimed heroes were
working hard at their duty. The black squad always occupies the most
dangerous place in a ship at such times; and to the credit of these
men, who are hidden from the gaze of the people who stroll leisurely
about decks, or while away the hours in concert room or card room,
let it be said that they rarely fail in the moment of danger. On
the _Titanic_, those men whose engine-rooms and stokeholds had not
been flooded, and who knew they would be wanted, stayed below; the
engines in the principal engine-room, which was still protected by its
bulkhead, must be run to keep the pumps working and the dynamos running
which supplied the electricity for light and the wireless. If the pumps
could be kept going, then the vessel could float long enough for help
to come; if the wireless could be kept working, then help could be
appealed for across the ether waves; and while the men below strove,
some at drawing fires to prevent explosions, others at stoking fires
that were safe, up in the Marconi cabin two men were sticking to their
posts. The men, Phillips and Bride, were heroes, and their names will
be remembered while men remember the story of the _Titanic_.
They had sent out the first messages for assistance--SOS, the new call
for ships at sea, changing it occasionally to CQD, the old signal.
Then, when things grew more serious than ever, and the news was brought
down to them, the instruments began to buzz out longer messages,
that told ships scores of miles away what had happened, and what was
happening. And now and again there came a voice from the ether through
the apparatus on the operators’ heads, telling them that the signals
had been caught, and that this ship and that ship was coming at full
speed. From seventy miles away the _Carpathia’s_ operator sent such
a message; from 300 miles away the _Olympic_ also sent her message
saying that she was coming. And thus it went on, this long-distance
conversation on which so much depended, and which might stop at any
moment, for the captain had told Phillips and Bride that the dynamos
might not be able to hold out very long. It was the last quarter of an
hour, and Phillips, forgetting all about himself, refusing to think of
escape, stood to his work, tapping out the messages, urging the rushing
ships to put on every ounce of steam. And Bride, no less a hero,
bethought him of Phillips’s safety. He went and got their lifebelts,
put one on Phillips and one on himself.
Captain Smith looked in just then, and said: “Men, you have done your
full duty; you can do no more! Abandon your cabin now. It is every man
for himself. Look out for yourselves. I release you.”
“But Phillips clung on,” said Bride, “sending, sending. He clung on for
about ten minutes after the captain released him. The water was then
coming into our cabin.”
A hero? Every inch a hero and a man! But what of another man? The one
who, creeping silently into that cabin, where a man stood hazarding
his life, juggling with death, lest haply he might do some good for
that helpless crowd above, tried to slip the lifebelt from the hero’s
back? What of that man? He had had a lifebelt himself, but, too scared
to fetch it, had thought of an easier way. Bride, catching him in the
act, had a desire for blood. “I suddenly felt a passion not to let that
man die a decent sailor’s death,” he said. “I wished he might have
stretched a rope or walked a plank. I did my duty. I hope I finished
him; but I do not know.”
Phillips went down with the ship he had tried to save. Bride, more
fortunate, came through alive, as will be seen. He reached the deck
just as the end came. The last boat had gone--and there remained on
the ship some fifteen hundred souls, hundreds of them clinging now in
terror to each other. The gay tunes of the orchestra changed to the
solemn strains of a hymn. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the starboard
was sinking, dipping deeper and deeper, the stern rising higher and
higher, hundreds of people being clustered there, waiting for they
dared not think what. The full terror of it all was now beginning to
sink into minds that had refused to accept the possibility of disaster.
The water lapped up higher and higher, and men scrambled up the sloping
deck, seeking to outrace the water, which soon covered the bridge and
carried the captain away from the ship, holding in his arm some poor,
lonely babe who had been forgotten in the hurly-burly. “Boys!” he had
cried lustily ere he went, unwillingly, for he would have stayed by his
boat but for that wave that washed him overboard. “Boys, you can do no
more! Look-out for yourselves!” And men prepared to cast themselves
into the sea, realising now that there was no hope to be found in this
ship on which so many hopes had been set. But, instead of jumping, they
now found themselves compelled to hang on like grim death to anything
that was at hand--rails, stanchions, deck-houses, ropes--to save
themselves from being washed away, for the stern was now towering high
above the water, and the deck seemed like a sheer precipice, down which
one might slip--to death.
Imagine the sight. A massive hulk, gleaming with a thousand lights,
belching forth showers of sparks from a solitary funnel; a crowd of
clinging figures; a crowd of figures, unable to cling, sliding down
that steel road to death. Imagine the sounds. Hear the thud and the
crash of the engines as, overbalanced, they tore themselves from
their beds and hurled themselves across the ship, to pound against
the steel sides and burst them with a deadening explosion; hear the
horrific cracks as the decks bend; hear, from under water, a mighty
explosion, followed quickly by another and another; hear the roar as
the fire-spouting funnel tumbles into the sea; hear, above all, the cry
torn from a thousand throats as the people on the stern of the boat
felt the last tremors, the death-struggles of the leviathan! Imagine
this sight and these sounds, and if you have the imagination of a Poe
you will not have glimpsed a hundredth part of the terrors of that last
two minutes of the life of the _Titanic_.
And the next minute there was no _Titanic_ afloat; but the sea was
dotted about with hundreds of black dots, each dot a soul struggling
for life, each striving to reach something that might be floating near
it--deck-chairs, gratings, wreckage of all sorts, and every little bit
worth its weight in gold to him who might be so fortunate as to get it.
To follow all these people in their efforts for life is, of course,
impossible. And there is no need, for each was but a picture of the
other.
Mr. Lightoller, the second officer, had a remarkable experience. As the
ship took her final plunge he had dived, to be drawn down against the
grating that covered the blower of the exhaust. An explosion hurled
him up to the surface again, where, having barely filled his lungs, he
was sucked down again, and drawn to the side of the sinking ship, near
the funnel draught pipes. Yet once more was he blown upwards by the
force of a terrific explosion, and when he came to the surface he found
himself near a collapsible boat; Lightoller clung to this, to which
Bride himself and half a dozen other people were also hanging. It was
capsized; but it provided some sort of refuge.
The gallant captain, who had gone overboard with the baby in his arms,
fought his way through the swimming crowd, making for one of the boats
which were still in the vicinity, hoping to effect some rescues. He
went, not to save himself, but the child. He reached the boat, cried
“Take the child,” handed it up to the willing hands outstretched for
it, and then, refusing to be taken into the boat, cried “Let me go!”
and swam back to where the ship had disappeared.
There were many acts of heroism in that dreadful sea. A man swam up to
the capsized lifeboat, now overladen. “Will it hold another?” he asked.
Those men on the boat knew, positively, that if one more man were on
her, she would pitch them all off, and they said so, not jealously,
not selfishly. And as unselfishly, the man who wanted to live cried:
“All right! Good-bye! God bless you all!” And turned away, only to sink
almost immediately.
Another man, clinging to a crate, heard someone ask: “Will it hold
another?” He did not know; all he knew was that here was a man who
loved life as he himself loved it; and the crate might offer a chance.
“Try it!” he cried; “we’ll live or die together!”
The story of the great disaster is told, and yet there are some things
which cannot be recounted--horrors, endings and partings. Into the
Great Unknown many hundreds had gone. Fewer hundreds were saved by
those giant ships rushing to their aid, brought by the call out of the
vast silences of the night.
The appalling horror of it all staggered the world; but the great fact
stood out that Man the Ingenious is no match for Nature the Mighty!
MYSTERIES OF THE SEA
Strange Disappearances of Ships at Sea
It is only to be expected that the sea, with all its glory and wonders,
its tragedies and its romances, should have its mysteries too. Some of
them have been cleared up; others remain unsolved to this day, despite
all the ingenious attempts at explanation that have been made. Some
of them go back to the distant past, such as the _Gloriana_ mystery.
She was a British brig, and in 1775 the captain of a Greenland whaler
ran across her amidst the ice-fields at 77 degrees north latitude. She
was a weird spectacle as she picked her way through a narrow channel
between two great icebergs, which seemed to be closing in to crush her,
with no one making an attempt to steer her safely through the danger.
The Greenlander looked in amazement. The _Gloriana’s_ sails were torn
to shreds and frozen hard, her rigging was a tangled mass that had not
been trimmed for Heaven knew how long; on her decks great mountains of
snow were reared, and her sides glistened with ice; she was a spectral
ship of the icy seas, a sight to strike fear into the heart of any
superstitious sailor. For a while the captain of the whaler did not
know what to do; the strange spectacle awed him; but clearly it was his
duty to look into the matter, and at last, summoning up courage, he
lowered a boat and rowed over to the _Gloriana_.
If he had been amazed before, he was staggered now. Clambering up the
ice-cold side, he glanced in at a porthole and saw a man sitting at the
cabin table, holding a pen as though about to write in the log-book
that lay open before him. But there was no sign of life about the man.
He was stiff, cold, dead! The Greenlander, stiffening himself up to the
task before him, got aboard, walked gingerly, awesomely into the cabin
and found himself standing by the side of a dead man, frozen hard.
Peering over the dead man’s shoulder, he found that the last entry in
the log was dated Nov. 11, 1762--thirteen long years before! What had
happened? How came it that this man sitting in his cabin, writing, had
met death so suddenly that he could not finish entering his log? The
Greenlander could not say; no one could ever tell; and the mystery was
made no clearer when it was found that there were several other dead
bodies about, one of them being a woman. And not one showed any sign
that would lead to the solution of the mystery of how they had met
their death.
Then take the _Marie Celeste_, which, leaving New York on Nov. 7, 1872,
with a cargo of petroleum and alcohol, was met a month later off the
Azores by the brig _Dei Gratia_. Hailing her, the captain of the latter
ship received no answer, and something arousing his curiosity, he went
aboard--to find not a soul on her. To heighten the mystery, there were
no evidences of mutiny, panic or disorder of any kind; the log showed
nothing that could have caused the desertion of the ship, the last
entry being dated ten days before the _Dei Gratia_ came up with her.
One boat was missing, and that alone showed how the crew, five men, and
the captain and his wife and child had gone. All the gear was in order,
her rigging being properly made fast, her companion-ways were open.
Down in the cabin a little organ had open music lying in front of it, a
sewing-machine had a piece of unfinished work in it, the men’s chests
in the fo’c’sle were unopened and not ransacked, the captain’s dinner
was half cooked in the galley.
And all was silent. Though a score or more theories have been advanced,
no one has yet cleared up the mystery of what tragic happening had
taken place on the _Marie Celeste_ to make her crew desert her.
These mysteries of the sea are not all of an early date; even recent
years have them on record. Thus in 1910 the _Inverness-shire_, which
left Hamburg in March, bound for Saint Rosalia, in California, was met
off the Falkland Islands in June by the Italian steamer _Verina_, with
no living being aboard except a few cats. She, too, was in perfect
order so far as arrangement went. Food was in a pot on the galley fire,
an open copy of the “Ancient Mariner” lay on the captain’s table, as
though he had been interrupted in his reading of the weird tale of the
sea. Perhaps he could tell a weirder one than that. The sails were set,
the deck shipshape, the cargo intact, and from the pack of cards which
lay scattered about the mess-room table it would seem that the crew had
been disturbed in a quiet game. And the explanation of it all? It was
said that the crew, thirty of them, had become obsessed with the idea
that the ship was unlucky; they broke out into mutiny, refused to obey
orders, and the ship was deserted. In due course the _Verina_ towed
her into Port Stanley, where, of course, she received her share in the
salvage.
In 1913 the tank steamer _Roumanian_ came across a ship which was
acting so queerly that the captain decided to investigate. It was ten
days out from Port Arthur. The strange ship was a sailing vessel, but
though some of her sails were set, they answered no useful purpose, for
she was buffeted about at the will of the fickle winds. It took the
_Roumanian_ an hour or two to catch up with the erratic ship, and when
she did so her captain boarded and found that she was the _Remittent_,
a Norwegian barque. She was crewless, and the explanation of her queer
actions was that the rudder was unlashed and was banging about as the
vessel swung to the waves. There was nothing missing; her papers were
all intact, her cargo was there, her water was fresh, her provisions
plenty; and yet there wasn’t a man aboard, and no indication as to why
there wasn’t. And all her lifeboats swung at the davits. Inquiries
later showed that the _Remittent_ had left Rio Grande do Sul on Oct.
25, 1912, with a captain and a crew of six men. The _Roumanian_ towed
her for many days, and then, a gale breaking upon them, had to cast her
adrift, a danger to all shipping.
It is this aspect of the unmanned ship that makes her a thing to be
disposed of. Whether derelict or simply deserted, she is a menace to
other ships; she may loom out of the darkest night and crash into
another vessel, to the danger of all aboard. On the other hand, she
may voyage for months--nay, years--and never come into collision. For
instance, the _Fannie E. Woolsten_, an American ship, was wrecked in
1891 off the United States coast, whence her battered hulk drifted
across the Atlantic, passed down the coasts of Europe, and then swung
out across the Atlantic again, going ashore a hundred or so miles north
of the place where she had been wrecked, having covered 10,000 miles in
her strange cruise.
PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.
F 35.415
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.