The Night Lives On (25 page)

Collapsible A. Seemed as if the bow had broken off. (Brown, Br 10553, 10557)

Collapsible B. Bow was in the water, stern up. Then she exploded, throwing stern up out of the water. Stern floats for at least a minute, lights out. Then, “she turned over again and down she went.” (Collins, US 630-631)

Collapsible B. Ship did not break in two. (Lightoller, Br 14075; US 69)

Collapsible B. Near perpendicular, then simply glided away. (Joughin, Br 6251-6266)

Collapsible D. Broke in two, after part briefly righted itself, then down. (Bright, US 839, 841)

Standing on poop. Gave a plunge and righted herself again. Then, as starts down again, after funnel seems to cant up and fall aft toward well deck. (Dillon, Br 3858-3869, 3883-3885)

T
HEY ARE NEARLY ALL
gone now. Of the 60-plus
Titanic
survivors who contributed so much to
A Night to Remember
, only a handful remain. Happily, Eva Hart still serves the best tea in Chadwell Heath; while across the Atlantic, Frank Aks is as chipper as ever in Norfolk, Virginia.

Gone, too, are most of the survivors I was never lucky enough to find 30 years ago, but who have since been such a pleasure to meet—for instance, Ruth Blanchard of Santa Barbara, California, and Marshall Drew of Westerly, Rhode Island.

Despite the erosions of time, there is still no lack of helpful people with fresh information on the
Titanic.
In some cases the families of survivors have come forward with letters and accounts retrieved from long-forgotten files. R. de Roussy de Sales has made available a fascinating letter from his uncle George Rheims that throws much light on the final minutes of the lost ship. Mary C. Barker has supplied a richly detailed manuscript by her vivacious grandmother, Helen Churchill Candee. Sally Behr Pettit has made available two accounts by her father, Karl Behr. Robert Maguire was no relative of
Laura Mabel Francatelli, but he kindly sent me from his collection a typescript of a 19-page letter written by Miss Francatelli shortly after the
Carpathia’s
arrival in New York. Austin M. Fox has generously shared his extensive knowledge of Edward A Kent, the Buffalo architect who went down with the ship.

Some of my most fruitful sources had no direct connection with the
Titanic
at all, but through the years have accumulated a great deal of information which they have placed at my disposal. A special salute goes to Rustie Brown, Edward de Groot, Roland Hauser, Ken Marschall, Alasdair McCrimmon, Patrick Stenson, and Tim Trower.

The dedicated officers of the
Titanic
Historical Society rate a paragraph of their own: Charlie Haas, President; Ed Kamuda, Secretary; and Jack Eaton, the Society’s Historian. Even the lowliest stoker seems to have a welcome place in Mr. Eaton’s archives.

Other persons have been helpful on specific aspects of the story. Their specialized knowledge, together with the written material I’ve been able to gather, form the backbone of my own research. The late David Watson, for instance, provided a penciled journal that gives a vivid picture of Harland & Wolff at the time the
Titanic
was built. He clearly felt the ship’s plating was too thin. But for flaws in the
Titanic’s
design, I depended most of all on J. Bernard Walker’s
An Unsinkable Titanic
(Dodd, Mead, 1912). The actual building of the ship is covered in the “Special Number” of the magazine
Shipbuilder
, midsummer 1911 (reprint, Patrick Stephens, Ltd., 1983). The launching is described in the contemporary Belfast press and in “The Story of Harland & Wolff” by George Lavery and Alan Hedgley in the Fall
1980 issue of the
Titanic Commutator
, the lively quarterly of the
Titanic
Historical Society.

On Captain Smith’s qualifications, I’ve benefited greatly from long discussions with marine historian John Maxtone-Graham, especially with regard to the
Olympic-Hawke
collision and the
Titanic’s
near-collision with the liner
New York.
For details on the
Olympic’s
encounter with the tug
O. L. Hallenbeck
, I’m indebted to Thomas Thacher, who retrieved the court record from some long-buried file in Hoboken, New Jersey. The superficial nature of the
Titanic’s
trials is clear from testimony at the British Inquiry. Jack Eaton of the
Titanic
Historical Society has also provided helpful material on the trials.

For details on the
Titanic’s
maiden voyage up to the moment of collision, I’m grateful to various relatives and friends of survivors already mentioned. On the activities of “our coterie,” I have also depended on Mrs. Candee’s haunting account in the May 4, 1912, issue of
Collier’s
magazine. The gamblers on board formed a world of their own, and it’s fitting that they have an affectionate chronicler who has devoted himself to the subject. See George M. Behe’s two-part article, “Fate Deals a Hand,” in the
Commutator
, Fall and Winter, 1982.

There is no one left to interview on how the bridge handled the various wireless warnings of ice, but the testimony at the hearings gives a depressing picture of extreme casualness. Some mystery has surrounded the warning allegedly flashed by signal lamp from the steamer
Rappahannock
that last night. No one on the
Titanic
ever mentioned such an incident. The mystery is apparently cleared up by a story in the
The New York
Times
on April 27, 1912. It all happened on the 13th, not the 14th of April.

On the actual collision and First Officer Murdoch’s last-second attempt to avoid it, I benefited greatly from a discussion with Fred M. Walker, Curator of Naval Architecture and Shipbuilding at the National Maritime Museum in England. On the damage suffered by the
Titanic
and the subsequent flooding of the vessel, I’m especially grateful to Alasdair McCrimmon of Toronto, Canada. I’m convinced that no member of the
Titanic’s
“black gang” knew his way around the bowels of the ship better than Mr. McCrimmon does today.

The shortage of lifeboats was an integral part of the tragedy. Recently it served as a basis for a major television documentary,
Titanic
—
a Question of Murder
, produced by Peter Williams. While I feel that the evidence does not support Mr. Williams’s conclusions, I have the highest admiration for his generosity in putting me in touch with his sources, letting me draw my own conclusions. He has set a perfect example of professional courtesy.

In this connection, a special word of thanks to Dr. Alan Scarth of the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool for the sharp reproduction of a plan uncovered by Mr. Williams proposing 16 additional life boats. Unfortunately, the plan is not dated, nor is there any clue as to how hard the idea was pushed.

In piecing together the story of the Frederick Goodwin family, I received generous assistance from the Reverend David Shacklock of Fulham, London. Additional information came from the contemporary press of Niagara Falls, New York. There’s some confusion over the exact names and ages of various members of me
family. I’ve depended on the Board of Trade files at the Public Record Office in London.

The
Titanic’s
band continues to intrigue students of the disaster, and I’m especially grateful to the hymnologists who I feel have set me straight on at least one part of the story. They include Roland Hind, Jessica M. Kerr, Merrill Knapp, and David Shaddock. The most helpful information of all came from a series of letters I received from Fred G. Vallance in 1957. Mr. Vallance was leader of the band on the Cunarder
Laconia
at the time of the disaster. He knew several of the
Titanic’s
musicians personally and, more than anyone else, he knew what they were likely to play under the circumstances. Colonel Gracie’s remarks on how long the band played were contained in a lecture he gave at the University Club in Washington. Strangely, he left this information out of his well-known
The Truth About the Titanic.

The troubles suffered by the bandsmen’s families after the disaster run through the magazine
Musicians’ Report and Journal
for much of 1912. I’m grateful to the Musicians’ Union for the use of their file of this magazine. Finally, I’m indebted to Patrick Stenson for tapping some memories regarding the agents who represented the ships’ musicians during this period.

On the
Californian
, I’ve benefited greatly from an interview and correspondence with the late Captain Charles Victor Groves, then Third Officer of that ship; from correspondence with Sir Ivan Thompson, former Commodore of the Cunard Line, who personally knew several of those involved; from interviews with Jac Weller, a recognized expert witness on ballistics; and from a long, interesting letter from A. Brian
Mainwaring, who served as a navigating officer with the White Star Line during the 1920’s, and who also knew some of the individuals involved. I have also learned much from an engrossing manuscript written by Leslie Reade, who has devoted years to researching the
Californian.
If an unpublished book can be a
tour de force
, this is it.

The letter from Gerard J. G. Jensen to the President of the Board of Trade, which really opened up the
Californian
affair, can be found in the six boxes of Board of Trade material on the disaster at the Public Record Office in London (see MT 9/920, Item No. M12148). For Captain Lord’s letter conceding “a certain amount of slackness” on the ship, see same file, Item No. M31921.

But as valuable as all these sources are, the most important evidence of all is readily accessible to anybody: It is the testimony given at the British Inquiry by the five men on the
Californian’s
bridge that night.

The defenders of the
Californian
are entitled to their say, too. They have written bushels on the subject. A sampling of their work might include Peter Padfield’s
The Titanic and the Californian
(Hodder and Stoughton, 1965); John C. Carrother’s “Lord of the
Californian
,”
United States Naval Institute Proceedings
, March 1968; Leslie Harrison’s “The
Californian
Incident,”
Merchant Navy Journal
, March 1962; petitions to the Board of Trade filed by the Mercantile Marine Service Association in February 1965 and in March 1968; and finally, almost any article on the ship in the
Titanic Commutator.

Not surprisingly, the legal joustings over the
Titanic
went on for years. I’m grateful to the present Lord Mersey for giving me the opportunity to spend a day at
Bignor Park examining his great-grandfather’s
Titanic
file. For background on the U.S. Senate’s investigation, I depended mainly on Wyn Craig Wade’s fine book
The Titanic: the End of a Dream
(Rawson Wade, 1979). The claims of passengers were well covered by
The New York Times
throughout 1912-1913; and the legal decisions, as the case wound its way through the courts, are all summarized by the Supreme Court in
Oceanic Steam Navigation Company
v.
Mellor,
233 US 718. The parallel British case is
Ryan
v.
Oceanic Steam Navigation Company,
3 K.B. 731, affirmed by the Court of Appeals, February 9, 1914. For guiding me through the whole labyrinth of “limited liability,” I’m indebted to Eliot Lumbard, who is not only a member of the bar but a former third mate of the liner
Oriente.

Details on the later years of various
Titanic
survivors come from a variety of sources, including personal friendships. Bruce Ismay’s troubled life is described in numerous obituaries and in Wilton J. Oldham’s
The Ismay Line
(Journal of Commerce, 1961). The Ben Hecht poem originally appeared in the
Chicago Daily Journal,
April 17, 1912. Craganour’s disqualification is thoroughly explored in Sidney Galtrey’s
Memoirs of a Racing Journalist
(Hutchinson, 1934). The Carter divorce was fully aired in the Philadelphia press. William T. Sloper’s ordeal is covered in Sloper’s privately published biography of his father, reprinted in the Spring1984 issue of
Ship to Shore
, the magazine of the Oceanic Navigation Research Society.

The Duff Gordons are covered by a good roundup that appeared in the
New York Sunday News
, April 15, 1934. Details on confidence man George Brayton’s return to business-as-usual were provided by survivor
Edith Russell, who was falsely accused of complicity. The White Star Line’s treatment of the
Titanic’s
surviving officers is touched on in Geoffrey Marcus’s
Maiden Voyage
, paperback edition (Woodhill Press, 1977); and Commander Lightoller’s heroism at Dunkirk is described in Patrick Stenson’s
The Odyssey of C. H. Lightoller
(Norton, 1984). The letter quoted was made available through the courtesy of Sharon Rutman and Sylvia Sue Steell.

The discovery of the
Titanic
was one of the major news stories of 1985. I’m grateful to Cathy Offinger (then Scheer), who was a navigator on the expedition, for clarifying many points that have puzzled me. I have also benefited from informal conversations with Bob Ballard, who led the expedition. For written accounts of the discovery, I’ve depended mainly on
National Geographic
, December 1985;
Oceanus
magazine, Winter 1985; and the
Titanic Commutator
, Fall 1985. The
Knorr’s
brief side trip to photograph the submarine
Scorpion
is related in the September 23, 1985, issue of the
Navy Times.

For information on Ballard’s expedition in 1986, I have depended mainly on subsequent articles in
National Geographic
,
Oceanus
, and
Titanic Commutator.
I am also grateful to Charles Pellegrino for unpublished interviews dealing with this expedition.

Throughout my research, the librarians, as always, stood ready to help. A special bow to the Earl W. Brydges Public Library of Niagara Falls, New York; the New York Society Library; the Newberry Library of Chicago; the Southhampton Public Libraries; and the Temple University Library.