The Loss of the S. S. Titanic - Its Story and Its Lessons (18 page)

Life-rafts are said to be much inferior to lifeboats in a rough sea,
and collapsible boats made of canvas and thin wood soon decay under
exposure to weather and are danger-traps at a critical moment.

Some of the lifeboats should be provided with motors, to keep the
boats together and to tow if necessary. The launching is an important
matter: the Titanic's davits worked excellently and no doubt were
largely responsible for all the boats getting away safely: they were
far superior to those on most liners.

Pontoons

After the sinking of the Bourgogne, when two Americans lost their
lives, a prize of 4000 Pounds was offered by their heirs for the best
life-saving device applicable to ships at sea. A board sat to consider
the various appliances sent in by competitors, and finally awarded the
prize to an Englishman, whose design provided for a flat structure the
width of the ship, which could be floated off when required and would
accommodate several hundred passengers. It has never been adopted
by any steamship line. Other similar designs are known, by which the
whole of the after deck can be pushed over from the stern by a ratchet
arrangement, with air-tanks below to buoy it up: it seems to be a
practical suggestion.

One point where the Titanic management failed lamentably was to
provide a properly trained crew to each lifeboat. The rowing was in
most cases execrable. There is no more reason why a steward should be
able to row than a passenger—less so than some of the passengers who
were lost; men of leisure accustomed to all kinds of sport (including
rowing), and in addition probably more fit physically than a steward
to row for hours on the open sea. And if a steward cannot row, he has
no right to be at an oar; so that, under the unwritten rule that
passengers take precedence of the crew when there is not sufficient
accommodation for all (a situation that should never be allowed to
arise again, for a member of the crew should have an equal opportunity
with a passenger to save his life), the majority of stewards and cooks
should have stayed behind and passengers have come instead: they could
not have been of less use, and they might have been of more. It will
be remembered that the proportion of crew saved to passengers was 210
to 495, a high proportion.

Another point arises out of these figures—deduct 21 members of the
crew who were stewardesses, and 189 men of the crew are left as
against the 495 passengers. Of these some got on the overturned
collapsible boat after the Titanic sank, and a few were picked up by
the lifeboats, but these were not many in all. Now with the 17 boats
brought to the Carpathia and an average of six of the crew to man each
boat,—probably a higher average than was realized,—we get a total of
102 who should have been saved as against 189 who actually were. There
were, as is known, stokers and stewards in the boats who were not
members of the lifeboats' crews. It may seem heartless to analyze
figures in this way, and suggest that some of the crew who got to the
Carpathia never should have done so; but, after all, passengers took
their passage under certain rules,—written and unwritten,—and one is
that in times of danger the servants of the company in whose boats
they sail shall first of all see to the safety of the passengers
before thinking of their own. There were only 126 men passengers saved
as against 189 of the crew, and 661 men lost as against 686 of the
crew, so that actually the crew had a greater percentage saved than
the men passengers—22 per cent against 16.

But steamship companies are faced with real difficulties in this
matter. The crews are never the same for two voyages together: they
sign on for the one trip, then perhaps take a berth on shore as
waiters, stokers in hotel furnace-rooms, etc.,—to resume life on
board any other ship that is handy when the desire comes to go to sea
again. They can in no sense be regarded as part of a homogeneous crew,
subject to regular discipline and educated to appreciate the morale of
a particular liner, as a man of war's crew is.

Searchlights

These seem an absolute necessity, and the wonder is that they have not
been fitted before to all ocean liners. Not only are they of use in
lighting up the sea a long distance ahead, but as flashlight signals
they permit of communication with other ships. As I write, through the
window can be seen the flashes from river steamers plying up the
Hudson in New York, each with its searchlight, examining the river,
lighting up the bank for hundreds of yards ahead, and bringing every
object within its reach into prominence. They are regularly used too
in the Suez Canal.

I suppose there is no question that the collision would have been
avoided had a searchlight been fitted to the Titanic's masthead: the
climatic conditions for its use must have been ideal that night. There
are other things besides icebergs: derelicts are reported from time to
time, and fishermen lie in the lanes without lights. They would not
always be of practical use, however. They would be of no service in
heavy rain, in fog, in snow, or in flying spray, and the effect is
sometimes to dazzle the eyes of the lookout.

While writing of the lookout, much has been made of the omission to
provide the lookout on the Titanic with glasses. The general opinion
of officers seems to be that it is better not to provide them, but to
rely on good eyesight and wide-awake men. After all, in a question of
actual practice, the opinion of officers should be accepted as final,
even if it seems to the landsman the better thing to provide glasses.

Cruising lightships

One or two internationally owned and controlled lightships, fitted
with every known device for signalling and communication, would rob
those regions of most of their terrors. They could watch and chart the
icebergs, report their exact position, the amount and direction of
daily drift in the changing currents that are found there. To them,
too, might be entrusted the duty of police patrol.

No one can pass through an event like the wreck of the Titanic without
recording mentally many impressions, deep and vivid, of what has been
seen and felt. In so far as such impressions are of benefit to mankind
they should not be allowed to pass unnoticed, and this chapter is an
attempt to picture how people thought and felt from the time they
first heard of the disaster to the landing in New York, when there was
opportunity to judge of events somewhat from a distance. While it is
to some extent a personal record, the mental impressions of other
survivors have been compared and found to be in many cases closely in
agreement. Naturally it is very imperfect, and pretends to be no more
than a sketch of the way people act under the influence of strong
emotions produced by imminent danger.

In the first place, the principal fact that stands out is the almost
entire absence of any expressions of fear or alarm on the part of
passengers, and the conformity to the normal on the part of almost
everyone. I think it is no exaggeration to say that those who read of
the disaster quietly at home, and pictured to themselves the scene as
the Titanic was sinking, had more of the sense of horror than those
who stood on the deck and watched her go down inch by inch. The fact
is that the sense of fear came to the passengers very slowly—a result
of the absence of any signs of danger and the peaceful night—and as
it became evident gradually that there was serious damage to the ship,
the fear that came with the knowledge was largely destroyed as it
came. There was no sudden overwhelming sense of danger that passed
through thought so quickly that it was difficult to catch up and
grapple with it—no need for the warning to "be not afraid of sudden
fear," such as might have been present had we collided head-on with a
crash and a shock that flung everyone out of his bunk to the floor.
Everyone had time to give each condition of danger attention as it
came along, and the result of their judgment was as if they had said:
"Well, here is this thing to be faced, and we must see it through as
quietly as we can." Quietness and self-control were undoubtedly the
two qualities most expressed. There were times when danger loomed more
nearly and there was temporarily some excitement,—for example when
the first rocket went up,—but after the first realization of what it
meant, the crowd took hold of the situation and soon gained the same
quiet control that was evident at first. As the sense of fear ebbed
and flowed, it was so obviously a thing within one's own power to
control, that, quite unconsciously realizing the absolute necessity of
keeping cool, every one for his own safety put away the thought of
danger as far as was possible. Then, too, the curious sense of the
whole thing being a dream was very prominent: that all were looking on
at the scene from a near-by vantage point in a position of perfect
safety, and that those who walked the decks or tied one another's
lifebelts on were the actors in a scene of which we were but
spectators: that the dream would end soon and we should wake up to
find the scene had vanished. Many people have had a similar experience
in times of danger, but it was very noticeable standing on the
Titanic's deck. I remember observing it particularly while tying on a
lifebelt for a man on the deck. It is fortunate that it should be so:
to be able to survey such a scene dispassionately is a wonderful aid
inn the destruction of the fear that go with it. One thing that helped
considerably to establish this orderly condition of affairs was the
quietness of the surroundings. It may seem weariness to refer again to
this, but I am convinced it had much to do with keeping everyone calm.
The ship was motionless; there was not a breath of wind; the sky was
clear; the sea like a mill-pond—the general "atmosphere" was
peaceful, and all on board responded unconsciously to it. But what
controlled the situation principally was the quality of obedience and
respect for authority which is a dominant characteristic of the
Teutonic race. Passengers did as they were told by the officers in
charge: women went to the decks below, men remained where they were
told and waited in silence for the next order, knowing instinctively
that this was the only way to bring about the best result for all on
board. The officers, in their turn, carried out the work assigned to
them by their superior officers as quickly and orderly as
circumstances permitted, the senior ones being in control of the
manning, filling and lowering of the lifeboats, while the junior
officers were lowered in individual boats to take command of the fleet
adrift on the sea. Similarly, the engineers below, the band, the
gymnasium instructor, were all performing their tasks as they came
along: orderly, quietly, without question or stopping to consider what
was their chance of safety. This correlation on the part of
passengers, officers and crew was simply obedience to duty, and it was
innate rather than the product of reasoned judgment.

I hope it will not seem to detract in any way from the heroism of
those who faced the last plunge of the Titanic so courageously when
all the boats had gone,—if it does, it is the difficulty of
expressing an idea in adequate words,—to say that their quiet heroism
was largely unconscious, temperamental, not a definite choice between
two ways of acting. All that was visible on deck before the boats left
tended to this conclusion and the testimony of those who went down
with the ship and were afterwards rescued is of the same kind.

Certainly it seems to express much more general nobility of character
in a race of people—consisting of different nationalities—to find
heroism an unconscious quality of the race than to have it arising as
an effort of will, to have to bring it out consciously.

It is unfortunate that some sections of the press should seek to
chronicle mainly the individual acts of heroism: the collective
behaviour of a crowd is of so much more importance to the world and so
much more a test—if a test be wanted—of how a race of people
behaves. The attempt to record the acts of individuals leads
apparently to such false reports as that of Major Butt holding at bay
with a revolver a crowd of passengers and shooting them down as they
tried to rush the boats, or of Captain Smith shouting, "Be British,"
through a megaphone, and subsequently committing suicide along with
First Officer Murdock. It is only a morbid sense of things that would
describe such incidents as heroic. Everyone knows that Major Butt was
a brave man, but his record of heroism would not be enhanced if he, a
trained army officer, were compelled under orders from the captain to
shoot down unarmed passengers. It might in other conditions have been
necessary, but it would not be heroic. Similarly there could be
nothing heroic in Captain Smith or Murdock putting an end to their
lives. It is conceivable men might be so overwhelmed by the sense of
disaster that they knew not how they were acting; but to be really
heroic would have been to stop with the ship—as of course they
did—with the hope of being picked up along with passengers and crew
and returning to face an enquiry and to give evidence that would be of
supreme value to the whole world for the prevention of similar
disasters. It was not possible; but if heroism consists in doing the
greatest good to the greatest number, it would have been heroic for
both officers to
expect
to be saved. We do not know what they
thought, but I, for one, like to imagine that they did so. Second
Officer Lightoller worked steadily at the boats until the last
possible moment, went down with the ship, was saved in what seemed a
miraculous manner, and returned to give valuable evidence before the
commissions of two countries.

The second thing that stands out prominently in the emotions produced
by the disaster is that in moments of urgent need men and women turn
for help to something entirely outside themselves. I remember reading
some years ago a story of an atheist who was the guest at dinner of a
regimental mess in India. The colonel listened to his remarks on
atheism in silence, and invited him for a drive the following morning.
He took his guest up a rough mountain road in a light carriage drawn
by two ponies, and when some distance from the plain below, turned the
carriage round and allowed the ponies to run away—as it
seemed—downhill. In the terror of approaching disaster, the atheist
was lifted out of his reasoned convictions and prayed aloud for help,
when the colonel reined in his ponies, and with the remark that the
whole drive had been planned with the intention of proving to his
guest that there was a power outside his own reason, descended quietly
to level ground.