The Other Side of the Night (21 page)

Critics would be quick to point out that a greater percentage of First Class men were saved than Third Class women, raising a great cry of indignation that a third of the men in First Class survived the disaster. But statistics can be misleading and manipulative: if one-third of the First Class men lived, that can only mean that two-thirds of them died with the ship. Nearly all of the First Class men who got away left the ship in the first four or five boats, when there was little sense of urgency or danger and only a handful of officers knew that there weren’t enough lifeboats for everyone on board. Even as the awful truth slowly became apparent, most of them stayed on board the
Titanic
voluntarily. And though it is true that none of the First Class men who made it into a lifeboat would later relinquish his place to another passenger, it is significant, perhaps, that not one of the First Class men would demand that someone else give up a seat in deference to him.

These are the facts, and for the truly detached observer there is no need to attempt to burnish the image of the First Class men. They left their own unique memorial, in a handful of unforgettable vignettes. There was Daniel Marvin, reassuring his eighteen-year-old bride of two weeks, “It’s all right, little girl,” as he helped her into the lifeboat; or Colonel Archibald Gracie, working as hard as any crewman to help launch the last two lifeboats. There were Bjorn Steffanson and Hugh Woolner helping Purser McElroy stop a rush of passengers on Collapsible C. There was John Jacob Astor, meekly standing aside from Lifeboat No. 4 when Second Officer Lightoller refused to make an exception to “Women and children only” for him. Astor’s final words to his wife, who was three months pregnant, were, “To please me, get in the boat. The ship is fully equipped and everyone will be saved. I’ll see you in the morning.” He then turned away, knowing he would never see his unborn child.

There was Isidor Strauss, refusing to get into a boat before any other man; and Benjamin Guggenheim, who after standing for some moments on the Boat Deck, returned to his cabin and doffed the heavy sweater, winter coat, and homburg hat his steward had insisted on his wearing. Reappearing on the Boat Deck dressed in evening clothes, complete to white tie, tails, and silk hat, his secretary at his side similarly attired, he stopped a passing steward and gave the man a farewell message to pass on to his wife: “I am willing to remain and play the man’s game if there are not enough boats for more than the women and children…. No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward. We’ve dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.”

The last anyone saw of John B. Thayer, Arthur Ryerson, Clarence Moore, Charles Hayes, George Widener, or Walter Douglas—six of the wealthiest and most influential men in North America—was of them standing in a small group near the portside railing on the forward Boat Deck, none of them going anywhere near a lifeboat. It was almost as if they had come to some collective conclusion that part of the price for living well was an obligation to die well. It might be too much to call their action heroism, but it would be cruel and wrong to pretend that their
sang froid
was not admirable.

And yet, the discrepancy between the percentage of First Class men and Third Class women who were saved existed. Though it would become the recurring theme of egalitarian social critics and levelers for more than nine decades, simple class discrimination was not responsible—far more subtle and insidious influences were at work. Wynn Craig Wade, a clinical psychologist from Michigan State University, wrote of the fate of Third Class with rare insight in
Titanic: The End of a Dream
: “Undoubtedly, the worst barriers were the ones within the steerage passengers themselves. Years of conditioning as third-class citizens led a great many of them to give up hope as soon as the crisis became evident.”

It was this apparent helplessness that August Wennerstrom, a Third Class passenger himself, had observed and about which he later made the bitter observation: “Hundreds were in a circle with a preacher in the middle, praying, crying, asking God and Mary to help them. They lay there, still crying, till the water was over their heads. They just prayed and yelled, never lifting a hand to help themselves. They had lost their own willpower and expected God to do all their work for them.”

Generations of being at the bottom of the social strata, being told where to go, what to do, and when to do it, had produced a mentality almost bereft of initiative among many of the people who comprised Third Class.

This doesn’t mean that the steerage passengers simply stood by and let themselves be drowned because they couldn’t think of anything better to do. Third Class never got the chance to show their own peculiar brand of courage and self-sacrifice. Unlike the crew, they lacked leadership and an example to action, because no one inside or outside Third Class provided it for them. A handful of men and women in Third Class did succeed in reaching the Boat Deck on their own, but they were lucky—when they left Third Class they had no clear idea where they were going or how they would get there. No one will ever know how many others who tried to do the same got lost inside the ship or were trapped in dead ends and taken down with the
Titanic
when she sank. As for the rest, they fell back on old habits, and simply waited in vain for someone “in charge” to come along and lead them to safety.

Their sacrifice, then, would be measured in different coin from those of the officers and crew or the men in First Class who stayed behind, terms far less glamorous, far more harsh. They had put their trust, however misplaced, in the belief that their “betters”—the people in charge, whoever they might be—knew what they were doing. It had always been thus, and they had been raised to believe it would always be so. The steerage passengers didn’t know, couldn’t know until it was too late, that the circumstances had overwhelmed the very people they were relying on to protect them.

And somehow, amidst all the hue and cry over the respective plights of the First and Third Class passengers, the men and women in Second Class are all to often overlooked or, worse, ignored. Of the 285 Second Class passengers aboard the Titanic, only 118 survived. Among them were only 14 men—154 men from Second Class had down with the ship. There had never been a more dramatic expression of “Women and children first!” since the troopship
Birkenhead
ran on the rocks off the South African coast in 1852. As that ship foundered, the soldiers’ commanding officer, Colonel Seton, ordered his men to “Stand fast!” in close-formed ranks and allow the women and children aboard to take to what few lifeboats there were. The troops’ ranks held steady even as the ship went under. Nine officers, three hundred forty-nine other ranks, and eighty-seven of
Birkenhead
’s crewmen were lost: all the women and children survived. Aboard the
Titanic
, nine of every ten men in Second Class died with the ship, a fact which would all too often be overlooked by social critics in the years to follow.

Yet what was perhaps the greatest tragedy of the
Titanic
disaster was one of which most Americans were unaware, and would remain so. What is so often overlooked in the telling of tales of the
Titanic
is the loss of so many of the crew, and the price paid by their families. Out of 891 crewmen aboard the ship, only 207 survived—684 were lost with the ship. More than three quarters of the
Titanic
’s crew died when the ship went down, a greater loss, proportionately, than suffered by any of the passenger classes. But what that number doesn’t tell—cannot tell—is the overwhelming burden of grief it brought to a single city in England. It is here that the genuine tragedy of the
Titanic
disaster is seen in full measure, and the guilt of those who ignored the sinking liner’s calls for help is shown in all its clarity.

Four out of every five crewmen aboard the
Titanic
came from the city of Southampton, a proud old seafaring town whose ties to ships and the sea date back to Roman times. Entire streets were hung with black crepe in the weeks following April 15, whole rows of houses bereaved. That afternoon a crowd began to gather outside Ocean House, the White Star Line’s offices in Southampton, just a few score yards from the Ocean Dock, from which the liner had departed only a few days before. It consisted almost entirely of women: young women with bright-eyed babies in their arms; middle-aged women with hands red and worn from work; old women, wrinkled and gray; all of them waiting for news of their menfolk, husbands, fathers, sons. Names were posted as quickly as they came in, but all too often, when one of the women would leave to go home, she would be sobbing, leaning on the arm of a friend, a daughter, a mother-in-law. Sometimes, saddest of all, she left alone. In the April 23 issue of the London
Daily Mail
an unsigned article described how those anxious days closed:

The story went on to tell of the working class streets in Southampton and the loss they had suffered. It told of Mrs. Allen, whose husband George was a trimmer on the
Titanic
; of a woman on Union Street with three small children; of Mrs. Barnes, who lost a brother; of Mr. Saunders, whose two boys were firemen; of an old man on Cable Street who had four sons aboard the ship; of a young girl, half-mad with grief, whose husband had been a steward—they had been married only a month; of Mrs. Gosling, who lost a son; of Mrs. Preston, a widow, who lost her son as well. But the most heartbreaking may have been Mrs. May, whose husband Arthur and eldest son, Arthur, Jr., had both gone down with the
Titanic
. There were ten children left behind to care for, as well as young Arthur’s wife and six-week-old baby. The oldest of her children was nineteen, the youngest was six months old.

Not a hint of this despair would have reached the
Carpathia
, of course. There, a grimly determined Cottam and Bride continued to send out lists of survivors’ names, along with any personal messages they might have. The two wireless operators steadfastly refused to answer any requests for information, no matter what the source, not even those from the cruiser USS
Chester
, dispatched by a worried President Taft. Taft had sent out the
Chester
expressly to contact the
Carpathia
, whose wireless didn’t have the range to reach New York directly. But despite her repeated attempts, all in the name of the President, the
Chester
’s queries went unanswered, as did those of the various newspapers and wire services hungrily waiting for news.

Both wireless operators aboard the
Carpathia
would later claim that the wireless man aboard the
Chester
was so ham-handed that his signaling was almost unintelligible—he also used American Morse, which neither of the British operators said they knew. Before long, though, it would be revealed that there were other reasons for their reluctance to respond to the
Chester
or any of the New York press’ inquires.

Deprived of information, the New York papers quickly turned their ire on the
Carpathia
. The
World
, for example, proclaimed with calculated petulance, “CARPATHIA LETS NO SECRETS OF THE TITANIC’S LOSS ESCAPE BY WIRELESS.” The
Evening Mail
’s frustration was even more obvious: “WATCHERS ANGERED BY CARPATHIA’S SILENCE.” The tone of the other New York papers were similar.

In reality, both Cottam and Bride had been advised by the Marconi office in New York that Guglielmo Marconi himself had concluded a deal with the
New York Times
on behalf of the two young operators that would reward them handsomely for providing an exclusive for the
Times
. For a couple of young men earning the equivalent of $40 a month or less, the promise of several thousand dollars in exchange for a few hours spent talking to a reporter was irresistible, so sending only survivors’ names and messages provided a convenient excuse for turning aside any other inquiries.

Neither Bride nor Cottam, nor Marconi himself for that matter, were aware that Marconi’s apparently benevolent action could appear to be a deliberate attempt to withhold information from an anxious public solely for the
Times
’ benefit. It would take some weeks before the whole story would be sorted out, though in the end it was shown that Marconi himself received nothing from the
Times
and had indeed been looking out for the best interests of his two young operators. Still, it was an awkward situation that resulted in some embarrassing moments for Marconi, including an appearance before a Senate Subcommittee. He would be chastised for exercising poor judgment, but cleared of any wrongdoing. In any case, it soon became quite clear that in the meantime nothing more would be learned from the little Cunarder until her arrival in New York, which was scheduled for Thursday night, April 18.