ILLUSTRIOUS CAREER OF CAPTAIN E. J. SMITH--BRAVE TO THE
LAST--MAINTENANCE OF ORDER AND DISCIPLINE--ACTS OF HEROISM--ENGINEERS
DIED AT POSTS--NOBLE-HEARTED BAND
IN the anxious hours of uncertainty, when the air cracked and flashed
with the story of disaster, there was never doubt in the minds of men
ashore about the master of the Titanic. Captain Smith would bring his
ship into port if human power could mend the damage the sea had wrought,
or if human power could not stay the disaster he would never come to
port. There is something Calvinistic about such men of the old-sea
breed. They go down with their ships, of their own choice.
Into the last life-boat that was launched from the ship Captain Smith
with his own hand lifted a small child into a seat beside its mother.
As the gallant, officer performed his simple act of humanity several who
were already in the boat tried to force the captain to join them, but he
turned away resolutely toward the bridge.
That act was significant. Courteous, kindly, of quiet demeanor and soft
words, he was known and loved by thousands of travelers.
When the English firm, A. Gibson & Co.9 of Liverpool, purchased the
American clipper, Senator Weber, in 1869, Captain Smith, then a boy,
sailed on her. For seven years he was an apprentice on the Senator
Weber, leaving that vessel to go to the Lizzie Fennell, a square rigger,
as fourth officer. From there he went to the old Celtic of the White
Star Line as fourth officer and in 1887 he became captain of that
vessel. For a time he was in command of the freighters Cufic and Runic;
then he became skipper of the old Adriatic. Subsequently he assumed
command of the Celtic, Britannic, Coptic (which was in the Australian
trade), Germanic, Baltic, Majestic, Olympic and Titanic, an illustrious
list of vessels for one man to have commanded during his career.
It was not easy to get Captain Smith to talk of his experiences. He had
grown up in the service, was his comment, and it meant little to him
that he had been transferred from a small vessel to a big ship and then
to a bigger ship and finally to the biggest of them all.
"One might think that a captain taken from a small ship and put on a big
one might feel the transition," he once said. "Not at all. The skippers
of the big vessels have grown up to them, year after year, through all
these years. First there was the sailing vessel and then what we would
now call small ships--they were big in the days gone by--and finally the
giants to-day."
{illust. caption = VESSEL WITH BOTTOM OF HULL RIPPED OPEN
A view of the torpedo destroyer Tiger, taken in drydock after her
collision with the Portland Breakwater last September; the damage to
the Tiger, which is plainly shown in the photograph, is of the same
character, though on a smaller scale, as that which was done to the
Titanic.}
{illust. caption = A VIEW OF THE OLYMPIC
The sister-ship of the Titanic, showing the damage done to her hull in
the collision with British war vessel, Hawke, in the British Channel.}
DISASTER TO OLYMPIC
Only once during all his long years of service was he in trouble, when
the Olympic, of which he was in command, was rammed by the British
cruiser Hawke in the Solent on September 20, 1911. The Hawke came
steaming out of Portsmouth and drew alongside the giantess. According to
some of the passengers on the Olympic the Hawke swerved in the direction
of the big liner and a moment later the bow of the Hawke was crunching
steel plates in the starboard quarter of the Olympic, making a
thirty-foot hole in her. She was several months in dry dock.
The result of a naval court inquiry was to put all the blame for the
collision on the Olympic. Captain Smith, in his testimony before the
naval court, said that he was on the bridge when he saw the Hawke
overhauling him. The Olympic began to draw ahead later or the Hawke drop
astern, the captain did not know which. Then the cruiser turned very
swiftly and struck the Olympic at right angles on the quarter. The pilot
gave the signal for the Olympic to port, which was to minimize the force
of the collision. The Olympic's engines had been stopped by order of the
pilot.
Up to the moment the Hawke swerved, Captain Smith said, he had no
anxiety. The pilot, Bowyer, corroborated the testimony of Captain
Smith. That the line did not believe Captain Smith was at fault,
notwithstanding the verdict of the board of naval inquiry, was shown by
his retention as the admiral of the White Star fleet and by his being
given the command of the Titanic.
Up to the time of the collision with the Hawke Captain Smith when asked
by interviewers to describe his experiences at sea would say one word,
"uneventful." Then he would add with a smile and a twinkle of his eyes:
"Of course there have been winter gales and storms and fog and the like
in the forty years I have been on the seas, but I have never been in an
accident worth speaking of. In all my years at sea (he made this comment
a few years ago) I have seen but one vessel in distress. That was a brig
the crew of which was taken off in a boat by my third officer. I
never saw a wreck. I never have been wrecked. I have never been in a
predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort."
THE CAPTAIN'S LOVE OF THE SEA
Once the interviewer stopped asking personal questions, Captain Smith
would talk of the sea, of his love for it, how its appeal to him as a
boy had never died.
"The love of the ocean that took me to sea as a boy has never died." he
once said. "When I see a vessel plunging up and down in the trough of
the sea, fighting her way through and over great waves, and keeping her
keel and going on and on--the wonder of the thing fills me, how she
can keep afloat and get safely to port. I have never outgrown the wild
grandeur of the sea."
When he was in command of the Adriatic, which was built before the
Olympic, Captain Smith said he did not believe a disaster with loss of
life could happen to the Adriatic.
"I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to the Adriatic," he
said. "Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that. There will be bigger
boats. The depth of harbors seems to be the great drawback at present. I
cannot say, of course, just what the limit will be, but the larger
boat will surely come. But speed will not develop with size, so far as
merchantmen are concerned.
"The traveling public prefers the large comfortable boat of average
speed, and anyway that is the boat that pays. High speed eats up money
mile by mile, and extreme high speed is suicidal. There will be high
speed boats for use as transports and a wise government will assist
steamship companies in paying for them, as the English Government is
now doing in the cases of the Lusitania and Mauretania, twenty-five knot
boats; but no steamship company will put them out merely as a commercial
venture."
Captain Smith believed the Titanic to be unsinkable.
BRAVE TO THE LAST
And though the ship turned out to be sinkable, the captain, by many acts
of bravery in the face of death, proved that his courage was equal to
any test.
Captain Inman Sealby, commander of the steamer Republic, which was the
first vessel to use the wireless telegraph to save her passengers in a
collision, spoke highly of the commander of the wrecked Titanic, calling
him one of the ablest seamen in the world.
"I am sure that Captain Smith did everything in his power to save
his passengers. The disaster is one about which he could have had no
warning. Things may happen at sea that give no warning to ships' crews
and commanders until the harm comes. I believe from what I read that
the Titanic hit an iceberg and glanced off, but that the berg struck her
from the bottom and tore a great hole."
Many survivors have mentioned the captain's name and narrated some
incident to bring out his courage and helpfulness in the emergency; but
it was left to a fireman on board the Titanic to tell the story of his
death and to record his last message. This man had gone down with the
White Star giantess and was clinging to a piece of wreckage for about
half an hour before he finally joined several members of the Titanic's
company on the bottom of a boat which was floating about among other
wreckage near the Titanic.
Harry Senior, the fireman, with his eight or nine companions in
distress, had just managed to get a firm hold in the upturned boat when
they saw the Titanic rearing preparatory to her final plunge. At that
moment, according to the fireman's story, Captain Smith jumped into the
sea from the promenade deck of the Titanic with a little girl clutched
in his arms. It took only a few strokes to bring him to the upturned
boat, where a dozen hands were stretched out to take the little child
from his arms and drag him to a point of safety.
"Captain Smith was dragged onto the upturned boat," said the fireman.
"He had a life-buoy and a life-preserver. He clung there for a moment
and then he slid off again. For a second time he was dragged from the
icy water. Then he took off his life-preserver, tossed the life-buoy
on the inky waters, and slipped into the water again with the words: "I
will follow the ship."
OTHER FAITHFUL MEN
Nor was the captain the only faithful man on the ship. Of the many
stories told by survivors all seem to agree that both officers and crew
behaved with the utmost gallantry and that they stuck by the ship nobly
to the last.
"Immediately after the Titanic struck the iceberg," said one of
the survivors, "the officers were all over the ship reassuring the
passengers and calming the more excitable. They said there was no cause
for alarm. When everything was quieted they told us we might go back to
bed, as the ship was safe. There was no confusion and many returned to
their beds.
"We did not know that the ship was in danger until a comparatively short
time before she sank. Then we were called on deck and the life-boats
were filled and lowered.
"The behavior of the ship's officers at this time was wonderful. There
was no panic, no scramble for places in the boats."
Later there was confusion, and according to most of the passengers'
narratives, there were more than fifty shots fired upon the deck by
officers or others in the effort to maintain the discipline.
FIFTH OFFICER LOWE
A young English woman who requested that her name be omitted told a
thrilling story of her experience in one of the collapsible boats which
had been manned by eight of the crew from the Titanic. The boat was in
command of the fifth officer, H. Lowe, whose actions she described as
saving the lives of many people. Before the life-boat was launched he
passed along the port deck of the steamer, commanding the people not
to jump in the boats, and otherwise restraining them from swamping
the craft. When the collapsible was launched Officer Lowe succeeded
in putting up a mast and a small sail. He collected the other boats
together, in some cases the boats were short of adequate crews, and he
directed an exchange by which each was adequately manned. He threw lines
connecting the boats together, two by two, and thus all moved together.
Later on he went back to the wreck with the crew of one of the boats and
succeeded in picking up some of those who had jumped overboard and were
swimming about. On his way back to the Carpathia he passed one of
the collapsible boats which was on the point of sinking with thirty
passengers aboard, most of them in scant night-clothing. They were
rescued just in the nick of time.
ENGINEERS DIED AT POSTS
There were brave men below deck, too. "A lot has been printed in the
papers about the heroism of the officers," said one survivor, "but
little has been said of the bravery of the men below decks. I was told
that seventeen enginemen who were drowned side by side got down on their
knees on the platform of the engine room and prayed until the water
surged up to their necks. Then they stood up, clasped hands so as to
form a circle and died together. All of these men helped rake the fires
out from ten of the forward boilers after the crash. This delayed the
explosion and undoubtedly permitted the ship to remain afloat nearly an
hour longer, and thus saved hundreds of lives."
In the list of heroes who went down on the Titanic the names of her
engineers will have a high place, for not a single engineer was saved.
Many of them, no doubt, could not get to the deck, but they had equally
as good a chance as the firemen, sixty-nine of whom were saved.
The supposition of those who manned the Titanic was that the engineers,
working below, were the first to know the desperate character of the
Titanic's injury. The watch called the others, and from that time until
the vessel was ready for her last plunge they were too hard at work to
note more than that there was a constant rise of water in the hull, and
that the pumps were useless.
It was engineers who kept the lights going, saw to the proper closing of
bulkhead doors and kept the stoke hole at work until the uselessness of
the task was apparent. Most of them probably died at their post of duty.
The Titanic carried a force of about sixty engineers, and in addition
she had at least twenty-five "guarantee" engineers, representatives of
Harland and Wolff, the builders, and those who had the contract for the
engineering work. This supplementary force was under Archie Frost, the
builders' chief engineer, and the regular force was under Chief Engineer
William Bell, of the White Star Line.
On the line's ships there is the chief engineer, senior and junior
second, senior and junior third, and senior and junior fourth engineers.
The men are assigned each to his own task. There are hydraulic,
electric, pump and steam packing men, and the "guarantee" engineers,
representing the builders and the contractors.
The duty of the "guarantee" engineers is to watch the working of the
great engines, and to see that they are tuned up and in working order.
They also watch the working of each part of the machinery which had
nothing to do with the actual speed of the ship, principally the
electric light dynamos and the refrigerating plant.
NOBLE-HEARTED BAND
"But what of the bandsmen? Who were they?"
This question was asked again and again by all who read the story of
the Titanic's sinking and of how the brave musicians played to the last,
keeping up the courage of those who were obliged to go down with the
ship.
Many efforts were made to find out who the men were, but little was
made public until the members of the orchestra of the steamship Celtic
reached shore for the first time after the disaster. One of their
first queries was about the musicians of the Titanic. Their anxiety was
greater than that of any New Yorker, for the members of the band of the
Celtic knew intimately the musicians of the ill-fated liner.
"Not one of them saved!" cried John S. Carr, 'cellist on the Celtic. "It
doesn't seem possible they have all gone.
"We knew most of them well. They were Englishmen, you know--every one of
them, I think. Nearly all the steamship companies hire their musicians
abroad, and the men interchange between the ships frequently, so we get
a chance to know one another pretty well. The musicians for the Titanic
were levied from a number of other White Star ships, but most of the men
who went down with the Titanic had bunked with us at some time."
"The thing I can't realize is that happy 'Jock' Hume is dead," exclaimed
Louis Cross, a player of the bass viol. "He was the merriest, happiest
young Scotchman you ever saw. His family have been making musical
instruments in Scotland for generations. I heard him say once that they
were minstrels in the old days. It is certainly hard to believe that he
is not alive and having his fun somewhere in the world."
At least he helped to make the deaths of many less cruel.