The Other Side of the Night (13 page)

By now there were precious few lifeboats left, and the situation began to get ugly. Earlier, a wave of male passengers had tried to force their way into Boat 14, and one of the
Titanic
’s seamen used the boat’s tiller bar like a club to drive them back. Furious, Fifth Officer Lowe drew his revolver and shouted at the malefactors, “If anyone else tries that this is what he’ll get!” then fired three times along the side of the ship. Near the bridge a scuffle broke out around Collapsible C when a mob of stewards and Third Class passengers rushed the boat, trying to climb aboard. Purser McElroy drew his revolver and fired twice into the air to hold the rest of the crowd back, while First Officer Murdoch and two men from First Class began dragging the culprits out of the boat.

A few moments later, Second Officer Lightoller discovered a large group of men—passengers and crewmen—already huddled in Boat 2. Furious, Lightoller drew his revolver and leveled it at them, shouting, “Get out of there, you damned cowards! I’d like to see every one of you overboard!” There was a mad scramble as the men fled the lifeboat: they had no way of knowing that Lightoller’s gun wasn’t even loaded—and they had all heard shots fired further down the deck just a few minutes before. Not wanting to press his luck, Lightoller turned over Boat 2 to Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall, who had been firing off distress rockets in the hope of attracting the attention of a ship sighted nearby not long after the collision. In short order Boxhall loaded the boat with twenty-five women, one male passenger from steerage, and three crewmen, and then had Boat 2 lowered to the sea below.

Aboard the
Carpathia
, Rostron’s concern about the passengers getting underfoot during the crew’s preparations for the rescue were well founded. Not that any of them would have deliberately gotten in the way or interfered with the crew’s activities, but the
Carpathia
, for all of her lack of glamor, was a popular ship: many of her passengers had sailed on her many times, and had come to know the rhythms and routines of her Atlantic crossings. So when Mrs. Annie Crain awoke at 1:00 a.m. to the smell of fresh-brewed coffee wafting down the passageway outside her cabin, it aroused her curiosity, though not her apprehensions.

A few doors down from Mrs. Crain’s cabin, it was different. There Mrs. Louis Ogden shook her husband awake, disturbed by the lack of heat in the cabin and the vibration that was shaking the entire ship. The Ogdens were experienced travelers, and Mrs. Ogden knew the
Carpathia
well enough to know that the liner was steaming as hard as she could, something which had rarely before happened. Once awake, Mr. Ogden agreed with his wife that it
was
an unusual situation—and the sounds from overhead didn’t do much to reassure him. Various bumps, thumps, and creakings from machinery told him that the crew was doing
something
with the
Carpathia
’s lifeboats; Ogden didn’t know just what, but when he opened his cabin door and peered down the corridor, the sight of stewards and stewardesses carrying blankets and mattresses didn’t inspire much confidence.

On the other side of the ship, up on A-Deck, Howard M. Chapin had a similar experience. Awakened by a series of unfamiliar noises coming from the deck directly over his bunk, it took Chapin a few minutes to recall that a cleat used to tie off the falls of one of the
Carpathia
’s lifeboats was located in that exact spot: Chapin had idly made a mental note of it as he was walking the upper deck the day before. Now, he realized, someone was working the line tied off on that cleat. Looking about him, he noticed other details—the mattress of his bunk, which always seemed to vibrate gently in rhythm with the engines, was shaking harder than it ever had before, while the wash-stand basin and the glasses sitting beside it rattled in their brackets. All through the ship the plates creaked, the woodwork groaned, and the decks and bulkheads hummed as the
Carpathia
drove through the night.

All the lifeboats were gone by now and the
Titanic
was clearly only moments away from going under. There was one last, painful duty for Captain Smith to perform. Sometime around 2:10 a.m. he walked up the port side of the Boat Deck to the wireless shack, where he found Phillips still hunched over his key, tapping away. Quietly, Smith told Phillips and Bride, “Men, you have done your full duty. You can do no more. Abandon your cabin. Now it’s every man for himself.” Phillips glanced up at him, then went back to Morsing. The Captain continued: “You look out for yourselves; I release you. That’s the way of it at this kind of time.” Then he turned and left the wireless shack for the last time. Without a word, Phillips continued to tap out his distress call. The lights were starting to take on an orange glow as the power began slowly fading. Phillips was tinkering with the set, trying to adjust the spark to make it stronger. At 2:10 he tapped out two “V”s as a test; at 2:17, the
Virginian
heard a faint “CQD…CQ —” that ended abruptly. They were the last transmission anyone heard from the
Titanic
.

Aboard the
Carpathia
, little groups of passengers began huddling in obscure corners of the upper decks and superstructure. The crew had done their best to keep them in their cabins and out of the way, but the more resourceful among them managed to eventually elude the watchful eyes of their stewards and stewardesses and slipped out of their rooms. Some, like the Ogdens, had made fanciful leaps of logic about the ship’s condition, which added to their desire to reach the open decks.

Ogden had seen some of the
Carpathia
’s stewards and stewardesses moving blankets and bedding down the corridors of the ship, but failed to receive an explanation for their unusual actions. In fairness to those crewmen, they didn’t yet know why they were doing it either—Chief Steward Henry Hughes hadn’t yet had time to explain to his staff why all of the bustle and urgency was necessary. It wasn’t until almost an hour after Cottam had picked up the
Titanic
’s “CQD” that Hughes was able to call his people together and break the news to them. Hughes thought his people could do a better job if they had an idea of what was happening, so at 1:15 a.m. he gathered them in the main dining saloon, and quickly, quietly, told them about the
Titanic
. He explained how the rescue was up to the
Carpathia
, then paused dramatically, eyeing each man directly, and solemnly intoned: “Every man to his post and let him do his duty like a true Englishman. If the situation calls for it, let us add another glorious page to British history.” The stewards immediately set to work, determined that when they arrived at the
Titanic
’s side, they would be ready for anything.

But Louis Ogden knew nothing of this. When he tried to leave his cabin, he encountered the
Carpathia
’s surgeon, Dr. McGhee, who urged him to remain in his room. When Ogden pressed the doctor for details, the physician simply replied, “An accident, but not to our ship. Now, please go back to your room.” A hasty conference between Mr. and Mrs. Ogden produced the slightly bizarre conclusion that the ship was on fire, and their only chance for safety lay in reaching the open decks. Quickly dressing, Ogden slipped into the corridor and out a side door onto the upper deck, where he encountered a quartermaster he knew from his frequent passages on the ship. Pressing the man for an answer, Ogden was finally told about the
Titanic
. He was frankly disbelieving, replying to the crewman, “You’ll have to do better than that! We are on the southern route and the
Titanic
is on the northern!”

“We’re going north like hell!” the quartermaster replied sharply. “Now, get back to your cabin!”

Subdued but undaunted, Odgen returned to once again confer with his wife, who, like her husband, refused to believe the quartermaster’s story. Dressing as warmly as they could, they reached the upper deck and found a handful of other passengers gathered there in the shelter of the Promenade Deck. Huddling together, the little knot of passengers quickly pooled their meager amount of knowledge, and soon realized that they had all been told the same story—unbelievable as it may have seemed. The
Carpathia
was rushing to the aid of the stricken
Titanic.
Beyond that they knew nothing, but simply stood quietly, peering into the incredibly star-filled sky and the black water surrounding their ship.

The
Titanic
was gone now, slipping beneath the surface at 2:20 a.m. Now the stars that had watched her sink shone down on a scene of almost unbelievable horror. The sea around the spot where the
Titanic
had disappeared was covered with a mass of tangled wreckage, and struggling in the midst of it were hundreds of helpless passengers and crew, swept off the ship as she took her final plunge. Over everything hung a grey mist, just a few feet overhead. The water where the ship had gone under was still troubled, as every few seconds a bubble of air released from the wreck welled up from below, or more wreckage and debris popped to the surface.

The temperature of the water was only 28 degrees, cold enough to sap the life out of a human being in less than twenty minutes. Survivors would liken the sensation of being suddenly plunged into the water to that of “a thousand knives.” One crewman was still shuddering and sucking in his breath years later when he described what he called the “stabbing cold.” Hundreds of swimmers struggled in the water, clutching at the wreckage—and sometimes each other—desperately trying to stay afloat and fight off the insidious chill.

Twenty boats bobbed in the slowly rising swell, as across the water came the mingled cries of those struggling amid the wreckage. With the exceptions of Collapsible B, which had overturned as it was being launched, and where now more than fifty men were standing on its keel in a desperate gamble to survive, and Collapsible C, which was dangerously overloaded, there was room in the
Titanic
’s lifeboats for hundreds more people. Over and over again the cry “Save one life! Save one life!” was heard, rising above the nearly continuous pleadings of people in distress.

And yet, in what was probably the greatest tragedy of that terrible night, only one boat went back in an attempt to pluck swimmers from the freezing water. Fifth Officer Lowe ordered the boat under his command, No. 14, to return to the spot where the
Titanic
had gone under, but sadly accomplished little, pulling only three survivors from the water. The cold had taken the rest.

For them, death had come quickly. The cold swiftly numbed their hands, their feet, their heads, and within minutes they lost consciousness. The icy sea continued to sap the warmth from their bodies until after fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes at the most, their hearts could take no more, and, giving up the unequal struggle, finally stopped. Bodies floated motionless and silent, slowly being swept off by the current, away from the great ice floe, into the open waters of the North Atlantic.

Around 2:40, while talking to Dr. McGhee, the
Carpathia
’s Captain Rostron had caught a glimpse of green light—clearly a flare of some sort—on the horizon just off the port bow. “There’s his light!” Rostron exclaimed. “He must still be afloat!” It would prove to be an optical illusion, however, as the light—actually a flare being set off in one of the
Titanic
’s lifeboats—was much farther away than Rostron surmised. The exceptional conditions of this night—the remarkable visibility coupled with near total darkness—had deceived him, as it caused any light to carry farther than it would have normally. On the other hand, the unusually good visibility was also now working to Rostron’s advantage, as the
Carpathia
was now entering the edge of the icefield where the
Titanic
had come to grief.

A few minutes after Rostron saw the green flare, Second Officer Bisset spotted the first iceberg, dimly lit by the reflected light of a star. Moments later a second berg was sighted close by, then a third. The precaution Rostron had taken in posting extra lookouts was paying remarkable dividends, as the men in the bow and on the bridge were able to spot the bergs and growlers before the
Carpathia
approached dangerously near, allowing the ship to be maneuvered around them without any slackening of speed.

It was just one more irony on a night filled with them, because had Captain Smith posted extra lookouts in the same positions on the
Titanic
that Rostron placed his on the
Carpathia
, the little Cunarder’s mission of mercy would have been unnecessary. Seamen had long known that at night, the closer a lookout was posted to the level of the sea, the better he could spot approaching objects—the occlusion of stars and sky by an object against the horizon was usually all that was needed to give away its position. Thus a man at deck level in the bow stood a much better chance of seeing danger ahead of the ship than lookouts posted high above the deck in the crows’ nest. From that elevated position, a watcher would be looking down toward the sea as much as out toward the horizon, hoping to spot a black object against equally black water in time to warn the bridge of approaching danger. It had happened to the
Titanic
— Rostron, though he didn’t know it yet, had taken precisely the precaution that would prevent such an accident from overtaking the
Carpathia
.

Carefully timing his helm orders, Rostron began working the
Carpathia
through the fringes of the ice field—but he never slowed down. Occasionally another flare would be seen, but no sign of the
Titanic
herself. A little after 3:00, hoping to give some hope to those aboard the sinking ship, Rostron gave orders to begin firing colored rockets, interspersed with Cunard Roman candles, every fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, word that the sinking ship’s lights had been seen quickly filtered through the crew. Down below in the boiler room, the stokers and firemen worked with renewed vigor; pressure gauges were pegged on every boiler. In the engine room, the big pistons of the
Carpathia
’s reciprocating engines still pounded up and down in a blur, crankshaft-throws spun in a flash of polished steel, linkheads rocked to and fro, and eccentric rods flicked back and forth, steam belching from the cylinder heads with every stroke of the pistons. Every plate, frame, and rivet in the ship shook with the exertion as the
Carpathia
thundered on. As one crewman later quipped, “The old boat was as excited as any of us.”