The Loss of the S. S. Titanic - Its Story and Its Lessons (11 page)

On the other hand, if he decided to withhold all definite knowledge of
danger from all passengers and at the same time persuade—and if it
was not sufficient, compel—women and children to take to the boats,
it might result in their all being saved. He could not foresee the
tenacity of their faith in the boat: there is ample evidence that he
left the bridge when the ship had come to rest and went among
passengers urging them to get into the boat and rigorously excluding
all but women and children. Some would not go. Officer Lowe testified
that he shouted, "Who's next for the boat?" and could get no replies.
The boats even were sent away half-loaded,—although the fear of their
buckling in the middle was responsible as well for this,—but the
captain with the few boats at his disposal could hardly do more than
persuade and advise in the terrible circumstances in which he was
placed.

How appalling to think that with a few more boats—and the ship was
provided with that particular kind of davit that would launch more
boats—there would have been no decision of that kind to make! It
could have been stated plainly: "This ship will sink in a few hours:
there is room in the boats for all passengers, beginning with women
and children."

Poor Captain Smith! I care not whether the responsibility for such
speed in iceberg regions will rest on his shoulders or not: no man
ever had to make such a choice as he had that night, and it seems
difficult to see how he can be blamed for withholding from passengers
such information as he had of the danger that was imminent.

When one reads in the Press that lifeboats arrived at the Carpathia
half full, it seems at first sight a dreadful thing that this should
have been allowed to happen; but it is so easy to make these
criticisms afterwards, so easy to say that Captain Smith should have
told everyone of the condition of the vessel. He was faced with many
conditions that night which such criticism overlooks. Let any
fair-minded person consider some few of the problems presented to
him—the ship was bound to sink in a few hours; there was lifeboat
accommodation for all women and children and some men; there was no
way of getting some women to go except by telling them the ship was
doomed, a course he deemed it best not to take; and he knew the danger
of boats buckling when loaded full. His solution of these problems was
apparently the following:—to send the boats down half full, with such
women as would go, and to tell the boats to stand by to pick up more
passengers passed down from the cargo ports. There is good evidence
that this was part of the plan: I heard an officer give the order to
four boats and a lady in number 4 boat on the port side tells me the
sailors were so long looking for the port where the captain personally
had told them to wait, that they were in danger of being sucked under
by the vessel. How far any systematic attempt was made to stand by the
ports, I do not know: I never saw one open or any boat standing near
on the starboard side; but then, boats 9 to 15 went down full, and on
reaching the sea rowed away at once. There is good evidence, then,
that Captain Smith fully intended to load the boats full in this way.
The failure to carry out the intention is one of the things the whole
world regrets, but consider again the great size of the ship and the
short time to make decisions, and the omission is more easily
understood. The fact is that such a contingency as lowering away boats
was not even considered beforehand, and there is much cause for
gratitude that as many as seven hundred and five people were rescued.
The whole question of a captain's duties seems to require revision. It
was totally impossible for any one man to attempt to control the ship
that night, and the weather conditions could not well have been more
favourable for doing so. One of the reforms that seem inevitable is
that one man shall be responsible for the boats, their manning,
loading and lowering, leaving the captain free to be on the bridge to
the last moment.

But to return for a time to the means taken to attract the notice of
other ships. The wireless operators were now in touch with several
ships, and calling to them to come quickly for the water was pouring
in and the Titanic beginning to go down by the head. Bride testified
that the first reply received was from a German boat, the Frankfurt,
which was: "All right: stand by," but not giving her position. From
comparison of the strength of signals received from the Frankfurt and
from other boats, the operators estimated the Frankfurt was the
nearest; but subsequent events proved that this was not so. She was,
in fact, one hundred and forty miles away and arrived at 10.50 A.M.
next morning, when the Carpathia had left with the rescued. The next
reply was from the Carpathia, fifty-eight miles away on the outbound
route to the Mediterranean, and it was a prompt and welcome
one—"Coming hard," followed by the position. Then followed the
Olympic, and with her they talked for some time, but she was five
hundred and sixty miles away on the southern route, too far to be of
any immediate help. At the speed of 23 knots she would expect to be up
about 1 P.M. next day, and this was about the time that those in boat
13 had calculated. We had always assumed in the boat that the stokers
who gave this information had it from one of the officers before they
left; but in the absence of any knowledge of the much nearer ship, the
Carpathia, it is more probable that they knew in a general way where
the sister ship, the Olympic, should be, and had made a rough
calculation.

Other ships in touch by wireless were the Mount Temple, fifty miles;
the Birma, one hundred miles; the Parisian, one hundred and fifty
miles; the Virginian, one hundred and fifty miles; and the Baltic,
three hundred miles. But closer than any of these—closer even than
the Carpathia—were two ships: the Californian, less than twenty miles
away, with the wireless operator off duty and unable to catch the
"C.Q.D." signal which was now making the air for many miles around
quiver in its appeal for help—immediate, urgent help—for the
hundreds of people who stood on the Titanic's deck.

The second vessel was a small steamer some few miles ahead on the port
side, without any wireless apparatus, her name and destination still
unknown; and yet the evidence for her presence that night seems too
strong to be disregarded. Mr. Boxhall states that he and Captain Smith
saw her quite plainly some five miles away, and could distinguish the
mast-head lights and a red port light. They at once hailed her with
rockets and Morse electric signals, to which Boxhall saw no reply, but
Captain Smith and stewards affirmed they did. The second and third
officers saw the signals sent and her lights, the latter from the
lifeboat of which he was in charge. Seaman Hopkins testified that he
was told by the captain to row for the light; and we in boat 13
certainly saw it in the same position and rowed towards it for some
time. But notwithstanding all the efforts made to attract its
attention, it drew slowly away and the lights sank below the horizon.

The pity of it! So near, and so many people waiting for the shelter
its decks could have given so easily. It seems impossible to think
that this ship ever replied to the signals: those who said so must
have been mistaken. The United State Senate Committee in its report
does not hesitate to say that this unknown steamer and the Californian
are identical, and that the failure on the part of the latter to come
to the help of the Titanic is culpable negligence. There is undoubted
evidence that some of the crew on the Californian saw our rockets; but
it seems impossible to believe that the captain and officers knew of
our distress and deliberately ignored it. Judgment on the matter had
better be suspended until further information is forthcoming. An
engineer who has served in the trans-Atlantic service tells me that it
is a common practice for small boats to leave the fishing smacks to
which they belong and row away for miles; sometimes even being lost
and wandering about among icebergs, and even not being found again. In
these circumstances, rockets are part of a fishing smack's equipment,
and are sent up to indicate to the small boats how to return. Is it
conceivable that the Californian thought our rockets were such
signals, and therefore paid no attention to them?

Incidentally, this engineer did not hesitate to add that it is
doubtful if a big liner would stop to help a small fishing-boat
sending off distress signals, or even would turn about to help one
which she herself had cut down as it lay in her path without a light.
He was strong in his affirmation that such things were commonly known
to all officers in the trans-Atlantic service.

With regard to the other vessels in wireless communication, the Mount
Temple was the only one near enough from the point of distance to have
arrived in time to be of help, but between her and the Titanic lay the
enormous ice-floe, and icebergs were near her in addition.

The seven ships which caught the message started at once to her help
but were all stopped on the way (except the Birma) by the Carpathia's
wireless announcing the fate of the Titanic and the people aboard her.
The message must have affected the captains of these ships very
deeply: they would understand far better than the travelling public
what it meant to lose such a beautiful ship on her first voyage.

The only thing now left to be done was to get the lifeboats away as
quickly as possible, and to this task the other officers were in the
meantime devoting all their endeavours. Mr. Lightoller sent away boat
after boat: in one he had put twenty-four women and children, in
another thirty, in another thirty-five; and then, running short of
seamen to man the boats he sent Major Peuchen, an expert yachtsman, in
the next, to help with its navigation. By the time these had been
filled, he had difficulty in finding women for the fifth and sixth
boats for the reasons already stated. All this time the passengers
remained—to use his own expression—"as quiet as if in church." To
man and supervise the loading of six boats must have taken him nearly
up to the time of the Titanic's sinking, taking an average of some
twenty minutes to a boat. Still at work to the end, he remained on the
ship till she sank and went down with her. His evidence before the
United States Committee was as follows: "Did you leave the ship?" "No,
sir." "Did the ship leave you?" "Yes, sir."

It was a piece of work well and cleanly done, and his escape from the
ship, one of the most wonderful of all, seems almost a reward for his
devotion to duty.

Captain Smith, Officers Wilde and Murdock were similarly engaged in
other parts of the ship, urging women to get in the boats, in some
cases directing junior officers to go down in some of them,—Officers
Pitman, Boxhall, and Lowe were sent in this way,—in others placing
members of the crew in charge. As the boats were lowered, orders were
shouted to them where to make for: some were told to stand by and wait
for further instructions, others to row for the light of the
disappearing steamer.

It is a pitiful thing to recall the effects of sending down the first
boats half full. In some cases men in the company of their wives had
actually taken seats in the boats—young men, married only a few weeks
and on their wedding trip—and had done so only because no more women
could then be found; but the strict interpretation by the particular
officer in charge there of the rule of "Women and children only,"
compelled them to get out again. Some of these boats were lowered and
reached the Carpathia with many vacant seats. The anguish of the young
wives in such circumstances can only be imagined. In other parts of
the ship, however, a different interpretation was placed on the rule,
and men were allowed and even invited by officers to get in—not only
to form part of the crew, but even as passengers. This, of course, in
the first boats and when no more women could be found.

The varied understanding of this rule was a frequent subject of
discussion on the Carpathia—in fact, the rule itself was debated with
much heart-searching. There were not wanting many who doubted the
justice of its rigid enforcement, who could not think it well that a
husband should be separated from his wife and family, leaving them
penniless, or a young bridegroom from his wife of a few short weeks,
while ladies with few relatives, with no one dependent upon them, and
few responsibilities of any kind, were saved. It was mostly these
ladies who pressed this view, and even men seemed to think there was a
good deal to be said for it. Perhaps there is, theoretically, but it
would be impossible, I think, in practice. To quote Mr. Lightoller
again in his evidence before the United States Senate Committee,—when
asked if it was a rule of the sea that women and children be saved
first, he replied, "No, it is a rule of human nature." That is no
doubt the real reason for its existence.

But the selective process of circumstances brought about results that
were very bitter to some. It was heartrending for ladies who had lost
all they held dearest in the world to hear that in one boat was a
stoker picked up out of the sea so drunk that he stood up and
brandished his arms about, and had to be thrown down by ladies and sat
upon to keep him quiet. If comparisons can be drawn, it did seem
better that an educated, refined man should be saved than one who had
flown to drink as his refuge in time of danger.

These discussions turned sometimes to the old enquiry—"What is the
purpose of all this? Why the disaster? Why this man saved and that man
lost? Who has arranged that my husband should live a few short happy
years in the world, and the happiest days in those years with me these
last few weeks, and then be taken from me?" I heard no one attribute
all this to a Divine Power who ordains and arranges the lives of men,
and as part of a definite scheme sends such calamity and misery in
order to purify, to teach, to spiritualize. I do not say there were
not people who thought and said they saw Divine Wisdom in it all,—so
inscrutable that we in our ignorance saw it not; but I did not hear it
expressed, and this book is intended to be no more than a partial
chronicle of the many different experiences and convictions.