Titanic (17 page)

(Preceding image)
An illustration showing lifeboats being lowered along the side of the
Titanic
and into the freezing waters below.

“Surely it is all a dream.”

— Violet Jessop

A little after midnight, the
Titanic
’s designer, Thomas Andrews, had given the ship about an hour and a half to live. At two in the morning, she had survived past that estimate.

But time was running out. By 2 a.m., the seawater that had been pouring into the forward section of the ship since 11:40 p.m. had caused the bow of the ship to dip beneath the surface. This caused a slant to the deck, which was worsening minute by minute.

The decks in the forward part of the ship had gradually been filling, one after another: G, F, E, D, C. It’s likely that the flooding had reached at least the bottom of the stairs on B Deck before 2 a.m. A Deck would soon be next — and then the Boat Deck. And it wouldn’t take much longer.

Together the
Titanic
’s officers and crew members had launched lifeboats 8, 6, 16, 14, 12, 2, 10, and 4 on the port side, and 7, 5, 3, 1, 9, 11, 13, and 15 on the starboard side.

Four boats remained: Collapsibles A, B, C, and D. Collapsible C was stored so that it could be lowered from the davits where Lifeboat 1 had been, and Collapsible D, on the port side, could be attached to the davits Lifeboat 2 had used. But Collapsibles A and B were harder to reach. They were lashed right side up but out of the way, on the roof of the officers’ quarters.

The chances of getting these boats down to the sloping deck, loaded with people, and safely away were dwindling with each passing minute.

Four small boats. More than 1,500 people still on board.

Twenty minutes to go. Two a.m. on the
Titanic
was the beginning of the end.

Nine-year-old Frankie Goldsmith had woken up to find his mother rushing to get him dressed. His father told him they needed to put on life belts and get into a boat.

Far from being scared, Frankie was excited. The last few days had been an amazing adventure. He’d been able to climb on the rigging and catch glimpses of the
Titanic
’s heart, where men toiled nonstop, feeding the furnaces to keep the lights on and make the ship run.

And now here was another new experience — a chance to be lowered way, way down to the water in a lifeboat. Frankie was too young to realize that what was about to happen would change his life forever.

“We young kids had experienced such a good and exciting time the past several days all over the ship where young third-class lads had been permitted to go, that being allowed into one of those lifeboats, at last, was GREAT!

“‘If we are going out in a lifeboat we’d better take something with us,’” he told his parents excitedly. So he stuffed his overcoat pockets with some of the fruit candies they’d brought along for seasickness.

From their third class cabin, Frankie and his parents made their way to the spot where a crewman stood by a gate leading up to the Boat Deck. Here was a surprise: Frankie learned that only women and children were being let through; his father would have to stay behind.

“Dad put his arm around mother, kissing her,” said Frankie. “He then reached down, hugged my shoulders and said . . . ‘So long, Frankie. I’ll see you later.’”

Frankie didn’t realize what that good-bye must have meant to his father. And like Jack Thayer, Frankie would never see his dad again.

Alfred Rush, who’d been traveling with them, was proud to have turned sixteen on Sunday. He felt grown up now. And perhaps that’s why, although this crewman would have let him through with the women and children, Alfred jerked his arm out of the sailor’s hand.

“‘No! I’m staying here with the MEN!’” he cried.

Frankie’s mother pleaded with him, but he would not go. Alfred Rush died in the sinking. His body was never found.

Frankie and his mother began to make their way as best they could to the lifeboats. It was not an easy route.

“Mother and I were then led with the other ladies and children to a steel ladder located just to the rear of the ship’s fourth funnel. We all climbed it, and upon reaching the floor of the deck on the port side, the group moved forward, carefully, so as not to be tripped up by ropes and things lying on the deck, apparently left from previous launchings of the lifeboats.”

As they approached the lifeboat, Frankie and his mother found themselves in a crowd of panicking passengers. Many from third class were just beginning to realize that almost all the lifeboats were gone. Men were blocking their way, crowding around Collapsible C.

Hearing shouts, a first class passenger named Hugh Woolner and a Swedish friend named Mauritz Björnström-Steffanson, whom he’d met on board, ran over and began helping the officers pull men out of the lifeboat to make room for women and children.

“I got hold of them by their feet and legs,” Hugh said.

Caught up in the confusion, Emily Goldsmith wasn’t going to let anything happen to her little boy. When a man pushed in front of them and blocked their way, she dropped Frankie’s hand and pushed the man aside.

“Seconds later, we were helped aboard the almost-full lifeboat,” said Frankie.

Frankie’s mother, Emily, acted in the only way she knew to save her child. The two escaped in Collapsible C, the last lifeboat to actually be launched from davits on the starboard side.

As she watched Collapsible C being loaded, another mother, Emily Goldsmith’s new friend, Rhoda Abbott, made a fateful decision. Rhoda and her two sons, Rossmore and Eugene, had also managed to make their way to the Boat Deck, climbing a steel ladder onto the stern and walking on the slanting deck over ropes still left from the boats already launched. But only women and children were being loaded. Since her boys were teenagers, she felt sure they would be considered too old and not let through. She didn’t want to take that chance. Rhoda Abbot stepped back to be with her sons.

The boat was lowered without them. Then, all at once, J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line, jumped into it.

People would question Ismay’s decision to save himself — when more than a thousand passengers, including boys like Alfred, Rossmore, and Eugene, would die — for the rest of his life.

After Jack Thayer lost his parents in the crowd, he and Milton Long wandered over to A Deck on the starboard side. They watched as the crew finished launching the lifeboats; Jack could make out some of the boats in the water beside the ship. They could hear the music of the band, which was still playing.

The two young men realized they needed to come up with a plan. “Long and I debated whether or not we should fight our way into one of the last two boats. We could almost see the ship slowly going down by the head. There was so much confusion, we did not think they would reach the water right side up, and decided not to attempt it,” said Jack. “I do not know what I thought could happen but we had not given up hope.”

So they continued to wait, sharing what they knew might be their last moments together. They gave each other messages to be delivered to the other’s family.

“So many thoughts passed so quickly through my mind!” Jack said. “I thought of all the good times I had had, and of all the future pleasures I would never enjoy; of my father and mother; of my sisters and brother. I looked at myself as though from some far-off place . . .”

Still, Jack was young and strong. He figured that they would still have a chance if they could keep away from the crowd and any suction that might occur as the ship sank.

Looking back on these moments, Jack had one regret.

“I only wish I kept on looking for my Father,” he said. “I should have realized that he would not have taken a boat, leaving me behind.”

While the officers and crew focused on getting women and children into lifeboats, belowdecks the engine room crew was still hard at work, trying to keep the lights burning for as long as possible.

Lawrence Beesley remembered the bravery of those men, who knew they had no chance of reaching the surface, let alone getting into a lifeboat. “. . . to know all these things and yet to keep the engines going that the decks might be lighted to the last moment, required sublime courage.”

Alfred White was one of the crew on duty in the main light room, or electric engine room, of the
Titanic
, located at the Tank Top level. While he knew the ship had struck something, he had no idea of the seriousness of the situation. Then, sometime after 1:40 a.m., he was sent up to get a report on how things were going. Getting that job was the luckiest moment of his life.

When he reached the Boat Deck, Alfred was shocked. “The sight I saw I can hardly realize it. The second funnel was under water and all the boats had left the ship,” he said. It was too late to tell the others he had left below. “I could not get back as the boat was sinking fast. We did not know they were all at boat stations.”

Second Officer Lightoller had been working so hard that he was sweating, though he wore only a sweater in the cold night air. With all the regular lifeboats away, Lightoller turned his attention to Collapsible D.

This boat had been stored under Lifeboat 2, which had been launched at 1:45 a.m. It was easy to pull up and lock the canvas sides and swing it out over the railing along the side of the ship.

By now, flooding had reached A Deck, and was beginning to make its way up the stairway under the Boat Deck. The Boat Deck itself was a scene of confusion. Panic had begun to set in among passengers who realized that almost all the boats were gone, the ship was sinking, and no help was in sight.

At first Lightoller could find no women, and he found his boat being rushed by men. So he had crew members form a chain around the boat and was eventually able to fill it. As people broke through, he fired a warning shot with his pistol.

May Futrelle was one of the women in first class who had hung back, not wanting to leave her novelist husband, Jacques. Even now, when it was clear that time was running short, she still hesitated. In the end it was her husband who realized the moment had come.