A Night to Remember

Facts about the Titanic

‘There will never be another like her,’ says baker Charles Burgess, who ought to know. In forty-three years on the Atlantic run he has seen them all—Olympic… Majestic… Mauretania… and so on. Today, as carver in the kitchen of the Queen Elizabeth, Burgess is probably the last Titanic crewman on active service.

‘Like the Olympic, yes, but so much more elaborate,’ he reflects. ‘Take the dining-saloon. The Olympic didn’t even have a carpet, but the Titanic—ah, you sank in it up to your knees. Then there’s the furniture: so heavy you could hardly lift it. And that panelling …

‘They can make them bigger and faster, but it was the care and effort that went into her. She was a beautiful, wonderful ship.’

Burgess’s reflections are typical. The Titanic has cast a spell on all who built and sailed her. So much so that, as the years go by, she grows ever more fabulous. Many survivors now insist she was ‘twice as big as the Olympic’—actually they were sister ships, with the Titanic just 1,004 tons larger. Others recall golf courses, regulation tennis courts, a herd of dairy cows and other little touches that exceeded even the White Star Line’s penchant for luxury.

The Titanic was impressive enough without embellishment. Her weight—46,328 gross tons… 66,000 tons displacement. Her dimensions—882.5 feet long… 92.5 feet wide… 60.5 feet from waterline to boat deck, or 175 feet from keel to the top of her four huge funnels. She was, in short, eleven storeys high and a sixth of a mile long.

Triple screw, the Titanic had two sets of four-cylinder reciprocating engines, each driving a wing propeller, and a turbine driving the centre propeller. This combination gave her 50,000 registered horsepower, but she could easily develop at least 55,000 horsepower. At full speed she could make 24 to 25 knots.

Perhaps her most arresting feature was her watertight construction. She had a double bottom and was divided into sixteen watertight compartments. These were formed by fifteen watertight bulkheads running clear across the ship. Curiously, they didn’t extend very far up. The first two and the last five went only as high as D deck, while the middle eight were carried only up to E deck. Nevertheless, she could float with any two compartments flooded, and since no one could imagine anything worse than a collision at the conjuncture of two compartments, she was labelled ‘unsinkable’.

The ‘unsinkable’ Titanic was launched at the Belfast shipyards of Harland & Wolff on 31 May 1911. The next ten months were spent in fitting her out. She completed her trials on 2 April 1912, and arrived in Southampton on 3 April. A week later she sailed for New York. Here is a reconstructed log of the main events of her maiden voyage:

10 April 1912 12 noon Leaves Southampton dock; narrowly escapes collision with American liner New York . 7.00 p.m. Stops at Cherbourg for passengers. 9.00 p.m. Leaves Cherbourg for Queenstown. 11 April 1912 12.30 p.m. Stops at Queenstown for passengers and mail. One crewman deserts. 2.00 p.m. Leaves Queenstown for New York, carrying 1,316 passengers and 891 crew. 14 April 1912 9.00 a.m. Caronia reports ice Latitude 42º N from Longitude 49º to 51º W. 1.42 p.m. Baltic reports ice Latitude 41º 51´ N, Longitude 40º 52´ W. 1.45 p.m. Amerika reports ice Latitude 41º 27´ N, Longitude 50º 8´ W. 7.00 p.m. Temperature 43º. 7.30 p.m. Temperature 39º. 7.30 p.m. Californian reports ice Latitude 42º 3´ N, Longitude 49º 9´ W. 9.00 p.m. Temperature 33º. 9.30 p.m. Second Officer Lightoller warns carpenter and engine room to watch fresh water supply—may freeze up; warns crow’s-nest to watch for ice. 9.40 p.m. Mesaba reports ice Latitude 42º N to 41º 25´ N, Longitude 49º to 50º 30´ W. 10.00 p.m. Temperature 32º. 10.30 p.m. Temperature of sea down to 31º. 11.00 p.m. Californian warns of ice, but cut off before she gives location. 11.40 p.m. Collides with iceberg Latitude 41º 46´ N, Longitude 50º 14´ W. 15 April 1912 12.05 a.m. Orders are given to uncover the boats, muster the crew and passengers. 12.15 a.m. First wireless call for help. 12.45 a.m. First rocket fired. First boat, No. 7, lowered. 1.40 a.m. Last rocket fired. 2.05 a.m. Last boat, collapsible D, lowered. 2.10 a.m. Last wireless signals sent. 2.18 a.m. Lights fail. 2.20 a.m. Ship founders. 3.30 a.m. Carpathia ’s rockets sighted by boats. 4.10 a.m. First boat, No. 2, picked up by Carpathia . 8.30 a.m. Last boat, No. 12, picked up. 8.50 a.m. Carpathia heads for New York with 705 survivors.

So much for the basic facts. Beyond these, much is a mystery. Probably nothing will ever equal the Titanic for the number of unanswered questions she left behind. For instance:

How many lives were lost? Some sources say 1,635… the American Inquiry, 1,517… the British Board of Trade, 1,503… the British Inquiry, 1,490. The British Board of Trade figure seems most convincing, less fireman J. Coffy, who deserted at Queenstown.

How did various people leave the ship? Nearly every woman survivor who was asked replied firmly, ‘in the last boat’. Obviously, all these women didn’t go in the same boat, yet to question the point is like questioning a lady’s age—one simply doesn’t do it. Careful sifting of the testimony at the British and American hearings shows pretty clearly how the ship was abandoned, but even here there’s conflicting evidence. At the British Inquiry each witness was asked how many people were lowered in his lifeboat. The minimum estimates were then added. The results show a good deal of wishful thinking:

Lowered in the boats according to minimum estimates of survivors Lowered in the boats according to actual figures of those saved Crew 107 139 Men passengers 43 119 Women and children 704 393 Total 854 651

In short, about seventy per cent more men and forty-five per cent fewer women went in the boats than even the most conservative survivors estimated. Plus the fact that the boats pulled away with twenty-five per cent fewer people than estimated.

What time did various incidents happen? Everyone agrees that the Titanic hit the iceberg at 11.40 p.m. and sank at 2.20 a.m.—but there’s disagreement on nearly everything that happened in between. The times given in this book are the honest estimates of people intimately involved, but they are far from foolproof. There was simply too much pressure. Mrs Louis M. Ogden, passenger on the Carpathia, offers a good example. At one point, while helping some survivors get settled, she paused long enough to ask her husband the time. Mr Ogden’s watch had stopped, but he guessed it was 4.30 p.m. Actually, it was only 9.30 in the morning. They were both so engrossed, they had lost all track of time.

What did different people say? There are no reconstructed conversations in this book. The words quoted are given exactly as people remembered them being spoken. Yet there is margin for error. The same conversations are often reported with slight variations. For instance, there are at least four versions of the exchange between Captain Rostron and Fourth Officer Boxhall as boat 2 edged alongside the Carpathia. The gist is always the same, but the words vary slightly.

What did the band play? The legend is, of course, that the band went down playing ‘Nearer My God to Thee’. Many survivors still insist this was so, and there’s no reason to doubt their sincerity. Others maintain the band played only ragtime. One man says he clearly remembers the band in its last moments, and they were not playing at all. In this maze of conflicting evidence, junior wireless operator Harold Bride’s story somehow stands out. He was a trained observer, meticulously accurate, and on board to the last. He clearly recalled that, as the boat deck dipped under, the band was playing the Episcopal hymn ‘Autumn’.

Did a man get off dressed as a woman? While material was being gathered for this book, four first-class passengers were specifically named as the famous man who escaped in woman’s clothes. There is not one shred of evidence that any of these men were guilty, and considerable evidence to the contrary. For instance, investigation suggests that one was the target of a vindictive reporter shoved aside while trying for an interview. Another, prominent in local politics, was the victim of opposition mudslinging. Another was the victim of society gossip; he did happen to leave the Titanic before his wife. In the search for bigger game, no one bothered about third-class passenger Daniel Buckley, who freely acknowledged that he wore a woman’s shawl over his head. He was only a poor, frightened Irish lad, and nobody was interested.

The answer to all these Titanic riddles will never be known for certain. The best that can be done is to weigh the evidence carefully and give an honest opinion. Some will still disagree, and they may be right. It is a rash man indeed who would set himself up as final arbiter on all that happened the incredible night the Titanic went down.