A Night to Remember

7. ‘There is Your Beautiful Nightdress Gone’

As the sea closed over the Titanic, Lady Cosmo Duff Gordon in boat 1 remarked to her secretary Miss Francatelli, ‘There is your beautiful nightdress gone.’

A lot more than Miss Francatelli’s nightgown vanished that April night. Even more than the largest liner in the world, her cargo and the lives of 1,502 people.

Never again would men fling a ship into an ice field, heedless of warnings, putting their whole trust in a few thousand tons of steel and rivets. From now on Atlantic liners took ice messages seriously, steered clear, or slowed down. Nobody believed in the ‘unsinkable ship’.

Nor would icebergs any longer prowl the seas untended. After the Titanic sank, the American and British governments established the International Ice Patrol, and today Coast Guard cutters shepherd errant icebergs that drift towards the steamer lanes. The winter lane itself was shifted further south, as an extra precaution.

And there were no more liners with only part-time wireless. Henceforth every passenger ship had a twenty-four-hour radio watch. Never again could the world fall apart while a Cyril Evans lay sleeping off duty only ten miles away.

It was also the last time a liner put to sea without enough lifeboats. The 46,328-ton Titanic sailed under hopelessly outdated safety regulations. An absurd formula determined lifeboat requirements: all British vessels over 10,000 tons must carry sixteen lifeboats with a capacity of 5,500 cubic feet, plus enough rafts and floats for seventy-five per cent of the capacity of the lifeboats.

For the Titanic this worked out at 9,625 cubic feet. This meant she had to carry boats for only 962 people. Actually, there were boats for 1,178—the White Star Line complained that nobody appreciated their thoughtfulness. Even so, this took care of only fifty-two per cent of the 2,207 people on board, and only thirty per cent of her total capacity. From now on the rules and formulas were simple indeed—lifeboats for everybody.

And it was the end of class distinction in filling the boats. The White Star Line always denied anything of the kind—and the investigators backed them up—yet there’s overwhelming evidence that the steerage took a beating: Daniel Buckley kept from going into first class… Olaus Abelseth released from the poop deck as the last boat pulled away… steward Hart convoying two little groups of women topside, while hundreds were kept below… steerage passengers crawling along the crane from the well deck aft… others climbing vertical ladders to escape the well deck forward.

Then there were the people Colonel Gracie, Lightoller and others saw surging up from below, just before the end. Until this moment Gracie was sure the women were all off—they were so hard to find when the last boats were loading. Now, he was appalled to see dozens of them suddenly appear. The statistics suggest who they were—the Titanic’s casualty list included four of 143 first-class women (three by choice)… fifteen of ninety-three second-class women… and eighty-one of 179 third-class women.

Not to mention the children. Except for Lorraine Allison, all twenty-nine first- and second-class children were saved, but only twenty-three out of seventy-six steerage children.

Neither the chance to be chivalrous nor the fruits of chivalry seemed to go with a third-class passage.

It was better, but not perfect, in second class. Lawrence Beesley remembered an officer stopping two ladies as they started through the gate to first class. ‘May we pass to the boats?’ they asked.

‘No, madam; your boats are down on your own deck.’

In fairness to the White Star Line, these distinctions grew not so much from set policy as from no policy at all. At some points the crew barred the way to the boat deck; at others they opened the gates but didn’t tell anyone; at a few points there were well-meaning efforts to guide the steerage up. But generally third class was left to shift for itself. A few of the more enterprising met the challenge, but most milled helplessly about their quarters—ignored, neglected, forgotten.

If the White Star Line was indifferent, so was everybody else. No one seemed to care about third class—neither the Press, the official inquiries, nor even the third-class passengers themselves.

In covering the Titanic, few reporters bothered to ask the third-class passengers anything. The New York Times was justly proud of the way it handled the disaster. Yet the famous issue covering the Carpathia’s arrival in New York contained only two interviews with third-class passengers. This apparently was par for the course—of forty-three survivor accounts in the New York Herald, two again were steerage experiences.

Certainly their experiences weren’t as good copy as Lady Cosmo Duff Gordon (one New York newspaper had her saying, ‘The last voice I heard was a man shouting, “My God, my God!”’). But there was indeed a story. The night was a magnificent confirmation of ‘women and children first’, yet somehow the loss rate was higher for third-class children than first-class men. It was a contrast which would never get by the social consciousness (or news sense) of today’s Press.

Nor did Congress care what happened to third class. Senator Smith’s Titanic investigation covered everything under the sun, including what an iceberg was made of (‘Ice’, explained Fifth Officer Lowe), but the steerage received little attention. Only three of the witnesses were third-class passengers. Two of these said they were kept from going to the boat deck, but the legislators didn’t follow up. Again, the testimony doesn’t suggest any deliberate hush-up—it was just that no one was interested.

The British Court of Inquiry was even more cavalier. Mr W. D. Harbinson, who officially represented the third-class interests, said he could find no trace of discrimination, and Lord Mersey’s report gave a clean bill of health—yet not a single third-class passenger testified, and the only surviving steward stationed in steerage freely conceded that the men were kept below decks as late as 1.15 a.m.

Even the third-class passengers weren’t bothered. They expected class distinction as part of the game. Olaus Abelseth, at least, regarded access to the boat deck as a privilege that went with first- and second-class passage… even when the ship was sinking. He was satisfied as long as they let him stay above decks.

A new age was dawning, and never since that night have third-class passengers been so philosophical.

At the opposite extreme, it was also the last time the special position of first class was accepted without question. When the White Star liner Republic went down in 1908, Captain Sealby told the passengers entering the lifeboats, ‘Remember! Women and children go first; then the First Cabin, then the others!’ There was no such rule on the Titanic, but the concept still existed in the public mind, and at first the Press tended to forestall any criticism over what a first-class passenger might do. When the news broke that Ismay was saved, the New York Sun hastened to announce, ‘Ismay behaved with exceptional gallantry… no one knows how Mr Ismay himself got into a boat; it is assumed he wished to make a presentation of the case to his company.’

Never again would first class have it so good. In fact, almost immediately the pendulum swung the other way. Within days Ismay was pilloried; within a year a prominent survivor divorced her husband merely because, according to gossip, he happened to be saved. One of the more trying legacies left by those on the Titanic has been a new standard of conduct for measuring the behaviour of prominent people under stress.

It was easier in the old days… for the Titanic was also the last stand of wealth and society in the centre of public affection. In 1912 there were no movie, radio or television stars; sports figures were still beyond the pale; and café society was completely unknown. The public depended on socially prominent people for all the vicarious glamour that enriches drab lives.

This preoccupation was fully appreciated by the Press. When the Titanic sailed, the New York Times listed the prominent passengers on the front page. After she sank, the New York American broke the news on 16 April with a leader devoted almost entirely to John Jacob Astor; at the end it mentioned that 1,800 others were also lost.

In the same mood, the 18 April New York Sun covered the insurance angle of the disaster. Most of the story concerned Mrs Widener’s pearls.

Never again did established wealth occupy people’s minds so thoroughly. On the other hand, never again was wealth so spectacular. John Jacob Astor thought nothing of shelling out 800 dollars for a lace jacket some dealer displayed on deck when the Titanic stopped briefly at Queenstown. To the Ryersons there was nothing unusual about travelling with sixteen trunks. The 190 families in first class were attended by twenty-three handmaids, eight valets and assorted nurses and governesses—entirely apart from hundreds of stewards and stewardesses. These personal servants had their own lounge on C deck, so that no one need suffer the embarrassment of striking up a conversation with some handsome stranger, only to find he was Henry Sleeper Harper’s dragoman.

Or take the survivors’ arrival in New York. Mrs Astor was met by two automobiles, carrying two doctors, a trained nurse, a secretary and Vincent Astor. Mrs George Widener was met not by automobile but by a special train—consisting of a private Pullman, another car for ballast, and a locomotive. Mrs Charles Hays was met by a special train too, including two private cars and two coaches.

It was a reception in keeping with people who could afford as much as 4,350 dollars—and these were 1912 dollars—for a de luxe suite. A suite like this had even a private promenade deck, which figured out at something like forty dollars a front foot for six days.

This kind of life, of course, wasn’t open to everybody—in fact it would take Harold Bride, who made twenty dollars a month, eighteen years to earn enough to cross in style—so those who enjoyed it gradually became part of a remarkably tightly knit little group, which also seemed to vanish with the Titanic.

There was a wonderful intimacy about this little world of Edwardian rich. There was no flicker of surprise when they bumped into each other, whether at the Pyramids (a great favourite), the Cowes Regatta, or the springs at Baden-Baden. They seemed to get the same ideas at the same time, and one of these ideas was to make the maiden voyage of the largest ship in the world.

So the Titanic’s trip was more like a reunion than an ocean passage. It fascinated Mrs Henry B. Harris, wife of the theatrical producer, who certainly wasn’t part of this world. Twenty years later she still recalled with awe, ‘There was a spirit of camaraderie unlike any I had experienced on previous trips. No one consulted the passenger list, to judge from the air of good fellowship that prevailed among the cabin passengers. They met on deck as one big party.’

This group knew the crew almost as well as each other. It was the custom to cross with certain captains rather than on particular ships, and Captain Smith had a personal following which made him invaluable to the White Star Line. The captain repaid the patronage with little favours and privileges which kept them coming. On the last night John Jacob Astor got the bad news direct from Captain Smith before the general alarm, and others learned too.

But the other end of the bargain was to respect the privilege. Nobody took advantage of the captain’s confidence—hardly a man in the group was saved.

The stewards and waiters were on equally close terms with the group. They had often looked after the same passengers. They knew just what they wanted and how they liked things done. Every evening steward Samuel Etches would enter A-36 and lay out Thomas Andrews’ dress clothes just the way Mr Andrews liked. Then at 6.45 he would return and help Andrews dress. It happened all over the ship.

And when the Titanic was going down, it was with genuine affection that steward Etches made Mr Guggenheim wear his sweater… that steward Crawford laced Mr Stewart’s shoes… that second steward Dodd tipped off John B. Thayer that his wife was still on board, long after Thayer thought she had left. In the same spirit of devotion, dining-room steward Ray pushed Washington Dodge into boat 13—he had persuaded the Dodges to take the Titanic and now felt he had to see them through.

The group repaid this loyalty with an intimacy and affection they gave few of their less-known fellow passengers. In the Titanic’s last hours men like Ben Guggenheim and Martin Rothschild seemed to see more of their stewards than the other passengers.

The Titanic somehow lowered the curtain on this way of living. It never was the same again. First the war, then income tax, made sure of that.

With this lost world went some of its prejudices—especially a firm and loudly voiced opinion of the superiority of Anglo-Saxon courage. To the survivors all stowaways in the lifeboats were ‘Chinese’ or ‘Japanese’; all who jumped from the deck were ‘Armenians’, ‘Frenchmen’ or ‘Italians’.

‘There were various men passengers,’ declared steward Crowe at the US inquiry, ‘probably Italians, or some foreign nationality other than English or American, who attempted to rush the boats.’ Steward Crowe, of course, never heard the culprits speak and had no way of knowing who they were. At the inquiry things finally grew so bad that the Italian ambassador demanded and got an apology from Fifth Officer Lowe for using ‘Italian’ as a sort of synonym for ‘coward’.

In contrast, Anglo-Saxon blood could do no wrong. When Bride described the stoker’s attack on Phillips, some newspapers made the stoker a Negro for better effect. And in a story headlined, ‘Desirable Immigrants Lost’, the New York Sun pointed out that, along with the others, seventy-eight Finns were lost who might have done the country some good.

But along with the prejudices, some nobler instincts also were lost. Men would go on being brave, but never again would they be brave in quite the same way. These men on the Titanic had a touch—there was something about Ben Guggenheim changing to evening dress… about Howard Case flicking his cigarette as he waved to Mrs Graham… or even about Colonel Gracie panting along the decks, gallantly if ineffectually searching for Mrs Candee. Today nobody could carry off these little gestures of chivalry, but they did that night.

An air of noblesse oblige has vanished too. During the agonizing days of uncertainty in New York, the Astors, the Guggenheims and others like them were not content to sit by their phones or to send friends and retainers to the White Star Line offices. They went themselves. Not because it was the best way to get information, but because they felt they ought to be there in person.

Today families are as loyal as ever, but the phone would probably do. Few would insist on going themselves and braving the bedlam of the steamship office. Yet the others didn’t hesitate a minute. True, Vincent Astor did get better information than the rest—and some even spoke to General Manager Franklin himself—but the point is that these people didn’t merely keep in touch—they were there.

Overriding everything else, the Titanic also marked the end of a general feeling of confidence. Until then men felt they had found the answer to a steady, orderly, civilized life. For 100 years the Western world had been at peace. For 100 years technology had steadily improved. For 100 years the benefits of peace and industry seemed to be filtering satisfactorily through society. In retrospect, there may seem fewer grounds for confidence, but at the time most articulate people felt life was all right.

The Titanic woke them up. Never again would they be quite so sure of themselves. In technology especially, the disaster was a terrible blow. Here was the ‘unsinkable ship’—perhaps man’s greatest engineering achievement—going down the first time it sailed.

But it went beyond that. If this supreme achievement was so terribly fragile, what about everything else? If wealth meant so little on this cold April night, did it mean so much the rest of the year? Scores of ministers preached that the Titanic was a heaven-sent lesson to awaken people from their complacency, to punish them for top-heavy faith in material progress. If it was a lesson, it worked—people have never been sure of anything since.

The unending sequence of disillusionment that has followed can’t be blamed on the Titanic, but she was the first jar. Before the Titanic, all was quiet. Afterwards, all was tumult. That is why, to anybody who lived at the time, the Titanic more than any other single event marks the end of the old days, and the beginning of a new, uneasy era.

There was no time for such thoughts at 2.20 a.m., Monday 15 April 1912. Over the Titanic’s grave hung a thin, smoky vapour, soiling the clear night. The glassy sea was littered with crates, deck chairs, planking, pilasters and cork-like rubbish that kept bobbing to the surface from somewhere now far below.

Hundreds of swimmers thrashed the water, clinging to the wreckage and each other. Steward Edward Brown, gasping for breath, dimly noticed a man tearing at his clothes. Third-class passenger Olaus Abelseth felt a man’s arm clamp around his neck. Somehow he wriggled loose, spluttering, ‘Let go!’ But the man grabbed him again, and it took a vigorous kick to free himself for good.

If it wasn’t the people, it was the sea itself that broke a man’s resistance. The temperature of the water was twenty-eight degrees—well below freezing. To Second Officer Lightoller it felt like ‘a thousand knives’ driven into his body. In water like this, lifebelts did no good.

Yet a few dozen managed to keep both their wits and their stamina. For these, two hopes of safety loomed in the littered water—collapsibles A and B. Both had floated off the sinking boat deck, A swamped and B upside down. Then the falling funnel washed both boats further clear of the crowd. Now the strongest and luckiest swimmers converged upon them.

After about twenty minutes Olaus Abelseth splashed alongside A. Perhaps a dozen others already lay half-dead in the wallowing boat. They neither helped nor hindered him as he scrambled over the gunwale. They just mumbled, ‘Don’t capsize the boat.’

One by one others arrived, until some two dozen people slumped in the hulk. They were a weird assortment—tennis star R. Norris Williams II, lying beside his waterlogged fur coat… a couple of Swedes… fireman John Thompson with badly burned hands… a first-class passenger in underpants… steward Edward Brown… third-class passenger Mrs Rosa Abbott.

Gradually boat A drifted further away; the swimmers arrived at less frequent intervals. Finally they stopped coming altogether, and the half-swamped boat drifted silent and alone in the empty night.

Meanwhile other swimmers were making for overturned collapsible B. This boat was much closer to the scene. Many more people swarmed around its curved white keel, and they were much louder, much more active.

‘Save one life! Save one life!’ Walter Hurst heard the cry again and again as he joined the men trying to board the collapsible.

Wireless operator Harold Bride was of course there from the start, but under the boat. Lightoller also arrived before the Titanic sank. He was treading water alongside when the forward funnel fell. The wave almost washed him away and at the same time pushed young Jack Thayer right up against the boat. By now Hurst and three or four others were crouching on the keel. Lightoller and Thayer scrambled aboard too. Bride was still under the boat, lying on his back, bumping his head against the seats, gulping for air in the stuffy darkness.

Then came A. H. Barkworth, a Yorkshire Justice of the Peace. He wore a great fur coat over his lifebelt, and this daring arrangement surprisingly helped buoy him up. Fur coat and all, he too clambered on to the upturned collapsible, like some bedraggled, shaggy animal.

Colonel Gracie arrived later. Dragged down with the Titanic, he tried first a plank, then a large wooden crate, before he spied the overturned collapsible. When he finally drew alongside, more than a dozen men were lying and kneeling on the bottom.

No one offered a helping hand. With each new man, the collapsible sagged lower into the sea; already the water slopped over the keel from time to time. But Gracie hadn’t come this far for nothing. He grabbed the arm of a man already lying on the boat, and hauled himself on to the keel. Next, assistant cook John Collins swam up and managed to get on too. Then Bride dived out from underneath and scrambled on to the stern.

By the time steward Thomas Whiteley arrived, collapsible B wallowed under the weight of thirty men. As he tried to climb aboard, someone swatted him with an oar, but he made it anyhow. Fireman Harry Senior was beaten off by an oar, but he swam around to the other side and finally persuaded them to let him on too.

All the time men straddling the stern and the bow flayed the water with loose boards, paddling to get away from the scene and steer clear of the swimmers.

‘Hold on to what you have, old boy. One more would sink us all,’ the men in the boat shouted to those in the water.

‘That’s all right, boys; keep cool,’ one of the swimmers replied when they asked him to stay clear. Then he swam off, calling back, ‘Good luck, God bless you.’

Another swimmer kept cheering them on: ‘Good boy; good lads!’ He had the voice of authority and never asked to climb aboard. Even though they were dangerously overcrowded, Walter Hurst couldn’t resist holding out an oar. But the man was too far gone. As the oar touched him, he spun about like a cork and was silent. To this day Hurst thinks it was Captain Smith.

As they moved off into the lonely night, away from the wreckage and the swimmers, one of the seamen lying on the keel hesitantly asked, ‘Don’t the rest of you think we ought to pray?’

Everybody agreed. A quick poll showed Catholics, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists all jumbled together; so they compromised on the Lord’s Prayer, calling it out in chorus with the man who suggested it as their leader.

It was not the only sound that drifted over the water. All the time while collapsibles A and B were filling up and painfully struggling away from the scene, hundreds of swimmers were crying for help. Individual voices were lost in a steady, overwhelming clamour. To fireman George Kemish, tugging at his oar in boat 9, it sounded like a hundred thousand fans at a British football cup final. To Jack Thayer, lying on the keel of boat B, it seemed like the high-pitched hum of locusts on a midsummer night in the woods back home in Pennsylvania.