Titanic (2 page)

Sink? In the previous 40 years of North Atlantic travel, only four passengers had died. Disasters had become obsolete.

Sink? Even
Titanic'
s captain once announced he could envision no scenario in which a modern ship might go down.

Shipbuilder
magazine had examined
Titanic
and pronounced it
“virtually unsinkable.” Over time, the adverb evaporated.

And yet sink it did, in a perfect storm of human error and hubris. Like the Titans themselves, the word was Greek. It meant extreme pride or arrogance. Never again after April 1912 would humanity feel so smug.

Hubris inserted itself into
Titanic'
s story at the ship's conception. That occurred over Napoleon brandy and Cuban cigars in the London home of Lord Pirrie on a summer night in 1907.

Enjoying their drinks and smokes were J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line, and Lord Pirrie, chairman of the shipbuilding company Harland & Wolff. White Star had amassed a fortune ferrying emigrants to America as well as shuttling wealthy passengers across the Atlantic.

But White Star had competition. Rivals sought to build faster, more comfortable ships. American and German lines fought for control against British counterparts, including Cunard. In 1906 and 1907, Cunard introduced
Lusitania
and
Mauretania
, two passenger ships that seemed the last word in speed and luxury.

Ismay refused to be outdone. He wanted Harland & Wolff to build White Star a fleet of ships that would dwarf the competition. So, while relaxing after dinner, Lord Pirrie sketched the ships Ismay wanted.

There would be three, all alike. They would be 120 feet longer and 12,000 tons heavier than Cunard's biggest. They would have three-story engines fired by 29 coal-burning boilers. Their lines would be elegant, their capacity astounding, their safety beyond question. First to be built would be
Olympic
, followed by
Titanic
, then
Gigantic
(later renamed
Britannic
).

More than 15,000 workers teemed through the Harland & Wolff gates in Belfast, Ireland, every morning to produce ships of iron and steel. They laid
Titanic'
s keel on March 31, 1909, next to that of its twin,
Olympic
. Over the next two years, about 3,000 workers
devoted themselves to
Titanic
. They riveted overlapping steel plates to shape the hull and prepared the shell for its decks.

Thomas Andrews, Harland & Wolff's chief designer, supervised construction. He felt proud of his work. On a night in 1910, Andrews brought his pregnant wife to the shipyard to show off his other children,
Olympic
and
Titanic
. Halley's comet blazed overhead.

Launch day, May 31, 1911, broke clear and bright. Lord Pirrie, Ismay, and American millionaire J. P. Morgan, who had acquired financial control of White Star, joined a crowd of about 100,000 to watch
Titanic
slide into the River Lagan on greased wooden skids. Support poles fell away. Lord Pirrie gave a signal to release the final restraints, and
Titanic
moved for the first time. Overhead, signal flags on the gantry spelled “Good Luck.”

Titanic
floated, but only as skeleton and skin. The process of “fitting out” required nearly a year. It included framing and furnishing rooms, raising four funnels, and doing everything necessary to prepare for sailing.

Not a shilling was spared.
Titanic
boasted a heated swimming pool, Turkish bath, cafés with palm trees, a First Class dining saloon that could seat 554, a gymnasium, a squash court, and a Marconi radio room intended not only to send safety messages at sea but also to please rich passengers who wanted to communicate with the shore.

Workers rushed to finish applying final bits of paint and polish by March 31, 1912, the day 62-year-old Edward John Smith, captain on all White Star maiden voyages, came aboard to oversee
Titanic'
s sea trials. Smith announced this would be his last Atlantic crossing; upon his return to England, he would happily retire.

Titanic
passed its sea tests and received certification from the British Board of Trade. It sailed to Southampton to take on coal and passengers.

Passengers converged on Southampton's docks on the morning of April 10. Crowds gawked at the giant, seemingly invulnerable ship. Passenger Sylvia Caldwell asked a deckhand, “Is this ship really nonsinkable?” He replied, “Yes, lady. God himself could not sink this ship.”

Titanic
set sail at noon just as seven stokers, who had been drinking in a pub and lost track of time, ran for the ship but failed to get aboard. No doubt they felt disappointment.

As the ship moved along Southampton's River Test, it passed the berthed liner
New York
. Suction from
Titanic
yanked
New York
from the dock and snapped its mooring lines. Just before the smaller ship could be pulled into
Titanic
, Smith ordered a blast from his ship's port propeller, opening a space between the two.
Titanic
narrowly avoided a collision.

Titanic
then zipped to Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland. More passengers got on. Some got off.

As the ship bid goodbye to Queenstown on April 11, debarking passenger Francis Browne snapped the last picture of
Titanic
afloat. With its stern to the camera, the lines of its decks and funnels converged toward the vanishing point of America. A crowd jammed the poop deck for a last look at the Old World.

The ship then headed west and out of sight as a Third Class passenger played the sad Irish song “Erin's Lament” on bagpipes.

On April 14, the third day of the voyage, Captain Smith kept his normal Sunday routine by inspecting the ship but declined to conduct the boat drill that normally followed. He led a worship service and then met with his officers to fix the ship's position. According to their calculations,
Titanic
averaged a sprightly 25 miles an hour.

The setting sun lowered the temperature to freezing, and the sea's surface shone like glass. A flat sea seemed safe, but it hid danger. Icebergs, common to the North Atlantic in spring, would be hard to spot without waves to break against their sides. Nevertheless,
Smith kept the ship at full speed. He believed the crew could react in time to any bergs.

Icebergs indeed lay ahead. By 7:30 p.m.,
Titanic
received five radio messages from nearby ships that warned of ice. Marconi wireless operator Jack Phillips took down a detailed ship's message pinpointing the location of “heavy pack ice and a great number of bergs,” but Phillips, busy sending passengers' personal messages, apparently did not show it to any officer. At 10:55 p.m., another ship,
Californian
, radioed to say it had come to a full stop amid dense field ice. Neither message began with the crucial code that would have required Phillips to show it to the captain, and Phillips was not in the mood for interruptions.
Californian'
s electric signal was so close it nearly deafened Phillips. “Shut up, shut up!” he radioed back. “I am busy!” A while later,
Californian'
s radio operator shut down for the night.

Minutes ticked by, and
Titanic
surged onward. High in the foremast, lookouts Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee peered into the darkness. Just before 11:40, Fleet noticed something blacker than sea lying directly ahead. At first, it seemed just a raw shape the size of two tables. But as the ship drew closer, recognition dawned. He rang a warning bell three times and phoned the bridge.

“What did you see?” came the voice through the receiver.

“Iceberg right ahead,” replied Fleet.

On the bridge, First Officer William Murdoch yanked the handle of the engine room telegraph to “stop” and barked an order to steer left. Murdoch also ordered “full speed astern” to try to slip around the ice. Then he pushed a button to close doors in the watertight bulkheads.

For more than 30 seconds, deck crew and lookouts held their breath. At the last moment,
Titanic'
s bow swung to port and the mountain of ice slid along the starboard side. Fleet figured the ship had escaped.

But there's more to an iceberg than meets the eye. Nine-tenths lies hidden. As
Titanic
passed, the berg's underwater bulk punched the starboard hull plates. Passenger Ella White, just getting ready for sleep, likened the din to rolling over “a thousand marbles.” The sound faded at the stern, passing unnoticed by many. But in the bow, passengers knew they had bumped an iceberg because chunks fell in the well deck.

Below, in the forward boilers and mailrooms, the crew worried. Water gushed into the first five compartments.

“She's making water fast!” announced the ship's carpenter, J. Hutchinson. Captain Smith summoned ship designer Thomas Andrews to survey the damage.

Andrews found water flooding the forward compartments from the forepeak to Boiler No. 6. He had his answer. The “watertight” bulkheads would do no good. They rose only as high as E Deck—above the surface in a sound ship, but useless if the ship's bow began to sink and seawater lapped the bulkheads' top edges. Andrews figured the weight of seawater entering the first five compartments would pull
Titanic
deep enough to let water spill into the sixth. The added weight in the sixth would pull even deeper, causing spillover into the seventh. Inevitably, each compartment would fill and flood the next.
Titanic
had two hours or so to live.

Smith gave orders to send a radio call for help, fire distress rockets, and fill lifeboats.

A cruel snag of bureaucracy became evident. According to out-of-date yet still standard Board of Trade regulations, all ships exceeding 10,000 tons had to have at least 16 lifeboats plus additional rafts and floats. Those numbers worked fine for old-style passenger liners in 1896, the year of their adoption, but proved shamefully inadequate as shipbuilders produced behemoths such as
Titanic
, which registered more than 46,000 tons. The Board of Trade also believed that stronger ships of recent construction likely could not
sink, rendering the issue of lifeboat capacity moot.

Titanic'
s board-approved lifeboats, spread among 16 wooden craft and 4 canvas-sided Engelhardts, could seat only half aboard. At least 1,050 must die.

At first, few passengers reacted. Some hesitated to leave their warm rooms for the cold of the open sea, believing they likely would return and reboard. Some never found their way to the lifeboats, foiled by the twists and turns of the ship's interior and American laws that required Third Class passengers to be physically separated from First and Second classes. And some held back for personal reasons. Isidor Straus, part owner of Macy's department store, refused to get in a boat before others. His wife, Ida, refused to go without him. “I've always stayed with my husband; so why should I leave him now?” she said.

Titanic'
s officers knew how many the lifeboats could seat. They did not fill them to capacity for two reasons. First, Second Officer Charles Lightoller testified the crew doubted that the lowering mechanisms could bear the weight of the full 70 passengers per boat. Second, crew members knew they could not waste time before launching; to do so would risk the ship sinking before all lifeboats and Engelhardts could be fitted into davits and lowered to the sea. Time ran out on the final two boats, both Engelhardts. One dropped into the sea before the crew could complete the launch, and waves swept another overboard, upside down.

All told, lifeboats left
Titanic
with more than 400 empty seats. Relatively few occupants were men. When Smith ordered lifeboats filled, he hoisted a megaphone and barked, “Women and children first!” On the port side, Lightoller filled the boats with women and children
only
, except for one passenger with sailing experience. In contrast, First Officer Murdoch on the starboard side interpreted the order differently. He boarded as many women and children as were available, then gave remaining seats to men.

Titanic'
s stern rose out of the water as the bow plunged. Passengers in lifeboats watched in horror as those still aboard scrambled up the sloping aft deck to gain a few final seconds before sliding or jumping into the ocean.

At 2:20 a.m.,
Titanic
disappeared. All who had failed to find a lifeboat seat went into the frigid water. A life jacket did virtually no good. Smith, Murdoch, Andrews, Phillips, and hundreds of others ranging from millionaires to dirt-poor immigrants drowned or froze.

Miles away, Cunard liner
Carpathia
received
Titanic'
s distress calls and got under way—straight into the ice field surrounding the stricken ship's final radioed position. Normally,
Carpathia
topped out at 14.5 knots, but Captain Arthur Rostron rerouted every ounce of energy to the engines. At 17.5 knots,
Carpathia
zipped forward as extra lookouts scanned nervously for bergs. Rostron ordered rockets to be fired every 15 minutes to give hope to survivors, told his medical staff to set up three makeshift hospitals, had chefs prepare hot soup and drinks, and readied the ship for traumatized passengers. Rostron then did one last thing: He stood on the bridge, closed his eyes, and prayed.

Guided by a green flare fired by Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall and burning papers held aloft,
Carpathia
arrived on the scene at 3:30 a.m. Lifeboat No. 2 came alongside at 4:10 a.m., followed by the 15 other lifeboats and 4 collapsible Engelhardts, including one carrying survivors precariously perched atop the overturned bottom. Not one survivor came directly out of the water. Loading took just over four hours.

About 40,000 people assembled in a cold rainstorm April 18 to witness
Carpathia'
s arrival in New York. The ship steamed to the White Star Line pier and returned
Titanic'
s lifeboats to the company's agents. What happened to the boats remains something of a mystery.