The Night Lives On (9 page)

In the luxury trade, “boats for all” meant less room on the upper decks for the suites, the games and sports, the verandahs and palm courts, and the glass-enclosed observation lounges that lured the wealthy travelers from the competition. On the
Titanic
, for instance, it would sacrifice that vast play area amidships and instead clutter the Boat Deck with (of all things) boats.

In steerage, the other place where there was big money to be made, “boats for all” would be even more costly. In calculating the number of lifeboats needed, the Board of Trade used a simple rule of thumb: each person took up ten cubic feet of space. Hence 1,134 steerage passengers—the number the
Titanic
was certified to carry—would require 11,340 cubic feet of space. This translated into 19 lifeboats required for steerage alone…or nearly 60 boats, counting everybody. Almost any owner would prefer to use most of this space in some revenue-producing way—if he could persuade himself that the boats weren’t really necessary.

This proved easy to do. The new superliners could easily ride out the storms and heavy seas that sometimes engulfed steamers of the past. Increased compartmentalization seemed safer, since no one could imagine
anything worse than being rammed at the point where two compartments joined. The development of wireless should end the days when ships simply disappeared. In the future, lifeboats would only be used to ferry passengers and crew to the gathering fleet of rescue ships, and nobody needed “boats for all” to do that.

It didn’t take long for the owners to convince themselves that the concept was positively dangerous. Piling all that gear on the upper decks would make a vessel top-heavy, or “tender,” as nautical men put it. Also, the top decks would be so congested that the crew would have no room to work, if it did indeed become necessary to abandon ship.

Finally, there was the weather. The stormy Atlantic was no place to float the 50 to 60 lifeboats required for a ship the size of the
Titanic,
if “boats for all” was the rule. Nineteen times out of 20, estimated White Star’s general manager Harold Sanderson, the boats could not be lowered safely. Once afloat, passengers would be subject to additional dangers as they bobbed around waiting for rescue. “They could avoid all this by drowning at once,” dryly observed the magazine
Fairplay
, when Sanderson persisted in his views even after the disaster.

The utter speciousness of the owners’ arguments became clear within days of the sinking. All the obstacles to “boats for all” suddenly vanished. “The lifeboat capacity of these steamers will be ample to provide
for every person aboard,” the Hamburg-American Line assured the public. Despite Mr. Sanderson’s views, White Star fell in step with the rest. When the
Olympic
sailed from New York, April 25, the line’s announcement emphasized that she would have “boat and life raft capacity for every person on board, including both passengers and crew.”

But that came later. Until the
Titanic
, the public seemed perfectly willing to accept the owners’ arguments. Like air travelers today, a liner’s passengers understood that if the ship went down, they might well go with it. As White Star’s Sanderson put it, “There are certain risks connected with going to sea which it is impossible to eliminate.”

One man saw through this nonsense—and was in a perfect position to do something about it. The Right Honourable Alexander M. Carlisle was Managing Director of Harland & Wolff in 1909, while the
Olympic
and
Titanic
were on the stocks. A big, hulking man, he ran the shipyard with tyrannical discipline, and was accustomed to getting his way. Nor did it hurt that he was the brother-in-law of Lord Pirrie, Harland & Wolff’s Chairman.

For some time Carlisle had been uneasy about the small number of lifeboats to be carried by the two new giants. There were only 16, which met the 1894 regulations, but seemed too few for the size of the ships. Since the contract with White Star clearly left such matters to Harland & Wolff, he asked the Welin Davit Company in Sweden to design for him new davits that would hold up to 64 boats, although he felt that 48 would be enough.

Later, much would be made of Carlisle’s unsuccessful efforts to achieve his goal. First intimations came three days after the disaster, when the newspaper
Daily Mail
carried an interview with him on April 18, 1912. Asked whether he felt the Board of Trade requirement on lifeboats was sufficient, Carlisle replied, “No, I do not think it is sufficient for big ships, and I never did.
As ships grew bigger, I was always in favor of increasing the lifeboat accommodation.” He went on to explain that, feeling as he did, he had fitted the
Olympic
and
Titanic
with davits that could handle “over 40 boats,” but he didn’t say why the boats themselves were never included.

The closest he came was a curious observation later in the interview: “If any ships had been fitted with the full number of boats I proposed, it would no doubt have set up an invidious situation with respect to the steamers of all lines now trading in the North Atlantic. It would have drawn attention.” In other words, enough lifeboats on one or two liners might start people worrying about the lack of boats on all the others. This ostrichlike approach was overlooked in the general applause that greeted at least one man in the shipping business who appreciated lifeboats.

Seventy-one years later Carlisle again became the hero who had fought in vain for more boats. In 1983 a British television documentary, “The
Titanic
—A Question of Murder,” described how Carlisle “conducted a lengthy campaign to increase by two or even three times the number of lifeboats carried by the great liner.” According to the script, he “argued” and “recommended” in vain, opposed by an intransigent Bruce Ismay, head of the White Star Line.

Such a dramatic conflict is the stuff that great TV shows are made of, but in real life this clash never happened. Carlisle did indeed think the
Titanic
should have had more lifeboats—he wanted 48 altogether—but he never told Bruce Ismay so. He merely proposed special
davits
that could carry additional boats, pointing out that this would save money if the Board of Trade later
tightened its regulations. His point was economy, not safety.

When the British Inquiry asked why he didn’t recommend more boats as well as the special davits, Carlisle replied that there were limits to what he could, with all propriety, propose to White Star. It was not his position to make such an expensive recommendation.

When asked why Harland & Wolff’s cost-plus contract with White Star didn’t allow the yard to act on its own, Carlisle patiently explained that there were limits here too. True, White Star boasted that the agreement gave the builders free rein to turn out the best-equipped ship regardless of expense, yet it wasn’t quite that simple. Whatever the contract said, there was a tacit understanding that Harland & Wolff mustn’t go too far. If they loaded the
Olympic
and
Titanic
with lifeboats, that would leave White Star in an embarrassing position with the rest of its fleet. They might be expected to give those ships enough boats too—and that could get very expensive.

Feeling unable either to recommend or act on his own, Carlisle merely showed the plans of the ship to Bruce Ismay, leaving Ismay to discover for himself that the Boat Deck provided for 48 boats, if White Star thought that desirable. It was almost like a valentine being slipped under the door by a faint-hearted suitor.

Not surprisingly, Ismay never approved the idea. In fact, he later claimed that he never even saw the plan for the lifeboat arrangements. Since the subject of boats took up only five or ten minutes in each of two all-day conferences, he may have been telling the truth.

Certainly, Carlisle didn’t push the point. The roaring lion—so accustomed to getting his own way at the shipyard—turned into a pussycat when it came to dealing with the client.

Yet “Big Alec” still had a chance. If he was reluctant to press his views on a client, he had another opportunity under entirely different circumstances in May 1911. The occasion was a meeting of the Board of Trade’s Merchant Shipping Advisory Committee, called to reconsider the whole question of lifeboats. By now Carlisle had retired from Harland & Wolff, but was added to the Committee because of his special expertise on the subject.

Behind closed doors, he argued strongly for more boats on the great new liners. Not surprisingly, the Committee—dominated as always by the owners—turned a deaf ear to his advice. Then the unexpected twist: Carlisle not only remained silent at the rebuff, but signed a set of recommendations that actually reduced the number of lifeboats required on a ship like the
Titanic.

“Was that your view?” an incredulous Lord Mersey later asked at the Inquiry.

“It was not,” replied Carlisle.

“Why on earth did you sign it?”

“I don’t know why I did. I am not generally soft.”

“Well, I should not have thought so,” broke in the Attorney General, apparently trying to ease the strain.

“But I must say,” continued Carlisle, “I was very soft the day I signed that.”

So much for the hero. By the time the
Titanic
sailed, April 10 the following year, Carlisle was no longer directly concerned. He said he didn’t even know how many boats she was carrying.

Captain Smith knew. At midnight, April 14-15, he was all too well aware that his ship had only 16 wooden boats in the davits—the same number originally planned before Alexander Carlisle played his hesitant
role. In addition, there were four “Englehardt collapsibles,” semirafts with wooden bottoms and canvas sides. They were not in davits, but stowed flat on deck, upside down with the sides folded in. If they were ever needed, the idea was to assemble them and fit them into the davits of boats already lowered. This must have been considered a remote possibility, for two of them were stowed on the roof of the officers’ quarters, with no way to get them down to the Boat Deck.

Now it was up to Captain Smith to make the best of this small fleet, with an untried crew, uninformed passengers, and a ship that had never held a proper boat drill.

A
T MIDNIGHT,
A
PRIL 14-15,
the shortage of lifeboats on the
Titanic
was academic; the question was, who would get to use them. The White Star Line always claimed that the only rule was, “Women and children first”; there was absolutely no distinction, the line insisted, between First, Second, and Third Class passengers.

Both the American and British investigations agreed, and Mr. W. D. Harbinson, who officially represented Third Class at the British Inquiry, emphatically concurred:

I wish to say distinctly that no evidence has been given in the course of this case that would substantiate a charge that any attempt was made to keep back the third class passengers. There is not an atom or a tittle of evidence upon which any such allegation could be based….

Yet there remained those uncomfortable statistics: 53% of First and Second Class passengers saved, but
only 25% of Third Class…94% of First and Second Class women and children saved, but only 42% of those in Third Class. In First Class just one child was lost—little Lorraine Allison, whose family decided to stick together—while in Third Class, 52 out of 79 children were lost—about the same percentage as First Class men.

The White Star Line was full of explanations: the Third Class passengers were more reluctant to leave the ship…They didn’t want to part with their luggage…It was hard to get them up from their quarters. At the British Inquiry one member of the crew after another assured the Court that there was no discrimination whatsoever—but not a single Third Class passenger was called as a witness.

The Court accepted all of White Star’s explanations, and seemed especially impressed by the point that many of the steerage passengers were foreign and couldn’t understand the crew’s instructions.

How, then, to explain the loss of the entire Goodwin family—father, mother, and six children? There was no “language barrier” here; they were from London. Nor is there any reason to suppose they were unwilling to leave the ship, or especially reluctant to part with their luggage.

Frederick Goodwin was no ordinary, uneducated emigrant. He was a 40-year-old electrical engineer who lived with his wife, Augusta, and their six children in a small but neat row house in Fulham. As the family grew, Mr. Goodwin began looking around for new opportunities. His brother Thomas had already left the old country and settled in Niagara Falls, New York; so when Thomas wrote of an opening at the big power
station there, Frederick jumped at the chance.

He got rid of the house in Fulham, paused briefly at Marcham, and booked passage for himself and family on one of the more modest steamers operating out of Southampton. These were the days before new employers paid relocation costs, and since the Goodwins had little in the way of savings, they would be traveling Third Class.