Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic (9 page)

Equally well stocked were the
Titanic’s
cellars, holding some 20,000 bottles of beer, ale, and stout; 1,500 bottles of wine; 15,000 bottles of mineral water; and 850 bottles of spirits.

To serve the splendid meals that would be prepared from this vast array of foodstuffs, an equally impressive volume of glassware, tableware, cutlery, and crystal was taken aboard. Included were such items as 3,000 tea cups; 2,500 breakfast plates; 1,500 souffle dishes; 8,000 dinner forks; 2,500 water bottles; 2,000 wine glasses; 12,000 dinner plates; 300 claret jugs; 2,000 egg spoons; 400 toast racks; 1,000 oyster forks; 8,000 cut tumblers; and 100 grape scissors.
¹²

While all these items and more were being brought aboard, the messy business of coaling was taking place. Ordinarily coaling was a routine if tiresome affair, but in April 1912 it was a far from routine procedure. The Great Coal Strike was now in its sixth week, and supplies were growing short. In order to avoid delaying the
Titanic’s
maiden voyage again, the White Star Line decided that she would sail with full bunkers (she burned 650 tons a day), even if it meant taking coal from other White Star ships and leaving them tied up at their piers. That is exactly what happened; the Oceanic and Adriatic had their crossings canceled and their passengers transferred to the Titanic. The coaling was completed at almost the last minute, the last few tons being loaded on the morning of April 10. In all the haste to get the coal aboard, the crew hadn’t had time to properly wet the coal down. Dry coal and coal dust were a perpetual fire hazard, and a smoldering fire broke out in the starboard bunker of Boiler Room No. 6. Despite the best efforts of the boiler room crew to put the fire out, the bunker would continue to smoke throughout the voyage.
¹³

For most of the passengers transferred from other ships this was a happy exchange, since they were sailing on a brand new vessel, the biggest and most luxurious in the world, but had only paid for.passage on the smaller, older vessels. But some of them felt a certain apprehension about the whole affair, resulting in a few last-minute cancellations among those passengers who were to be transferred.

Similarly there were notable absences among those who had made reservations for the
Titanic’s
maiden voyage. The most prominent was J. P. Morgan, who had every intention of making the trip until he had come down with an illness remarkably similar to influenza a few weeks prior. His physician subsequendy decided that the old man was too weak to make the crossing.

Also absent on the Titanic would be Jack Binns, probably the best-known wireless operator in the world. Back in 1906 when the White Star’s Republic, caught in a heavy fog, had been rammed by the small steamer Florida, Binns, the Republic’s wireless operator, sent out a distress call within minutes. For the next thirty-six hours Binns stayed at his post, helping to coordinate the efforts of the rescue vessels. Although the Republic eventually sank, all of her passengers and crew, except for the four unfortunates who were killed in the collision, were safely transferred to the flotilla of vessels that had rushed to the stricken liner’s side in response to the wireless call Binns had sent out. Binns subsequently spent two years on the Adriatic under Captain Smith, and had intended to sail on the Titanic, but he had a job waiting for him in New York and he didn’t want to wait until April 10 to depart, so he sailed on the Minnesota on April 6.

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, one of the few men in the world whose net worth rivaled that of John Jacob Astor, had also booked passage on the Titanic, but changed his mind at the last minute. It would prove to be a short-lived reprieve, though, for Vanderbilt would go to a watery grave on the deck of the
Lusitania
little more than three years later.
¹⁴

While the coaling was still underway, Capt. Maurice H. Clarke of the Board of Trade began the mandatory surveys of the ship. Distress rockets, flares, and other “fireworks” were examined and approved; lifeboats and floats were tested; charts and instruments were inspected. Second Officer Charles Lightoller recalled ruefully:

Captain Clarke passed the Titanic as being in compliance in all particulars with Board of Trade regulations.
¹⁵

Chief among these were regulations concerning lifeboats, and though the idea that she was unsinkable had become so firmly entrenched in the public’s mind that it was believed that lifeboats were no longer necessary, the Titanic still had to comply. The Board of Trade had concocted a complicated formula for determining the lifeboat requirements of British registered vessels. Specifically this stated that any ship over 10,000 tons must carry sixteen lifeboats with a capacity of 5,500 cubic feet, that is, space for 550 people, plus enough rafts and floats to equal 75 percent of the capacity of the lifeboats. For the Titanic this worked out to a required capacity of 9,625 cubic feet, room for 962 persons. Actually, the Titanic’s lifeboat capacity exceeded the Board of Trade requirements, since the White Star Line had added four Englehardt collapsibles, wooden keels with folding canvas sides, to the ship’s complement of boats. Together with the required sixteen boats they gave the Titanic a capacity of 11,780 cubic feet, room for 1,178 people. Nobody at the time seemed to realize the discrepancy between the number of people the Titanic could carry—over 3,000—and the number of people she had lifeboats for. Unfortunately the regulations had been written for ships a quarter of the
Titanic’s
size and had never been revised.
¹⁶

When the ship was being built, Alexander Carlisle, one of the managing directors at Harland and Wolff, had pointed out that the new geared Welin davits the Titanic was being fitted with could each handle up to three lifeboats, giving the ship the potential to carry up to forty-eight boats. Carlisle himself recommended that the number of boats be doubled, but he didn’t press the point, so the suggestion was turned down by the White Star Line as being too expensive. Besides, the Titanic not only complied with the Board of Trade regulations, but by being “unsinkable,” she had made them obsolete.
¹⁷

Just how firmly this was believed Mrs. Albert Caldwell learned firsthand that morning when she was watching a group of deck hands carrying luggage aboard the Titanic. Impulsively, she stopped one of the men and asked him, “Is this ship really nonsinkable?”

“Yes, lady,” he replied, “God Himself couldn’t sink this ship.”
¹⁸

These deckhands were under the supervision of the chief bosun, Alfred “Big Neck” Nichols, who seemed to be everywhere, watching everything. At the same time, the marine superintendent was making his rounds, inspecting hatches, winches, derricks, and fenders. The arrival of the Boat Train meant that sailing time was not far off, and the deck crew did everything they could to shepherd the latest arrivals into the ship.

For First and Second Classes the first stop was the Purser’s Office. The duties of a purser on any large passenger vessel were much like those of the manager of a large hotel ashore and required many of the same talents: a good head for business; tact, charm, and diplomacy for dealing with temperamental passengers; and the ability to delegate authority without relinquishing responsibility among subordinates. All these qualities the
Titanic’s
purser had in abundance. Hugh McElroy was a tall, well-built man, who had become so popular among frequent travelers on the North Atlantic—that some passengers made a point of traveling on ships he was assigned to. His table in the First Class Dining Saloon was often as popular as that of the captain, for McElroy was one of those rare individuals who seemed to know everybody and everything, from the latest shipboard gossip to the current stock market tips. The very soul of discretion, he was often the confidant of passenger and crewman alike. As the passengers quickly passed through his office to have their tickets processed, he managed to have a smile or a kind word for each of them.
¹⁹

The procedures for Third Class were somewhat different. At the head of each Third Class gangway was posted a team of surgeons under the direction of the
Titanic’s
Chief Surgeon, Dr. F. W N. O‘Loughlin. Like Purser McElroy, O’Loughlin was an Irish Catholic, and the two men had served together for many years, beginning on the Oceanic, then the Baltic, the Adriatic, the Olympic, and now the Titanic. The purpose of the surgeons Dr. O’Loughlin posted at the gangways was to conduct a quick but thorough examination of every steerage passenger attempting to board. Every immigrant was checked for signs of trachoma, a highly infectious and potentially blinding disease of the eye. By folding back the upper eyelid of each Third Class passenger boarding, the doctors could quickly spot the white scar tissue that invariably indicated presence of the disease. Anyone showing such signs was instantly and summarily turned back—American immigration laws forbade admission of anyone with trachoma into the country. (One other requirement of American law was that locked barricades be set up between steerage and the other passengers—originally intended to prevent the spread of disease, like the out-of-date lifeboat regulations this provision had never been modified, and as in every other particular the Titanic complied fully.)
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Once admitted by the surgeons, the steerage passengers were handled as expeditiously as possible. R. A. Fletcher left a description of the process in his book Travelling Palaces:

Noon was rapidly approaching when the Trinity House pilot, George Bowyer, came aboard and had the pilot’s flag hoisted at the foremast. Bowyer had been the pilot at Southampton Harbour for nearly forty years, the latest of a long line of Bowyers who had been harbor pilots at Southampton since the time of the Napoleonic Wars. The ship’s whistle gave a series of short sharp blasts, a warning for the visitors, friends of passengers, and assorted vendors and reporters to begin making their way ashore. One by one the gangways were pulled away as the harbor tugs began moving into position. Just as the last gangway was being lowered, a half dozen stokers, who had slipped ashore earlier to pay one last visit to a nearby pub, came rushing up, trying to get back aboard. The
Titanic’s
master-at-arms barred the way, turning them back, and the stokers missed the boat, so to speak
²²

At noon exactly, one long, deep-throated blast from the
Titanic’s
whistles signaled the nearby tugs to stand by. “Make fast the tugs!” George Bowyer’s booming voice rang out across the bridge. There was a jangle of ringing bells as the brass engine room telegraph rang down to signal “Slow Ahead,” and the water at the stern of the ship began to churn as the three great screws began to turn.

Pilot Bowyer quickly checked to make sure that all the ship’s officers were properly stationed: Chief Officer Wilde in the fo’c’s’le (forecastle) head in charge of moorings, with Second Officer Lightoller assisting him as well as seeing to the forward spring lines; First Officer Murdoch aft at the auxiliary bridge on the poop deck, in charge of the moorings there, assisted by Third Officer Pitman; standing beside Murdoch was Fourth Officer Boxhall, who would be passing the telegraph orders down to the engine room, while at the same time recording all movements in the log; Fifth Officer Lowe was on the bridge with Pilot Bowyer, manning the telephones; Sixth Officer Moody was supervising the removal of the last gangway. As soon as that gangway was clear, Bowyer began to call out a rapid series of orders: “Let go the stern ropes! ... Let go your head rope! ... Let go your after spring! ... Tow her off aft! ... Let go your for’ard spring!” The tugs began to pull the ship away from the side of the dock, and the passengers and crowd watching on the quay let out a cheer as a gap began to open up between the Titanic and the side of the quay. Bowyer called for the after tug to let go, and the huge liner slowly moved forward into the River Test.

In the First Class Dining Saloon the ship’s orchestra played an air from the musical “The Chocolate Soldier,” while Pilot Bowyer gradually worked the ship up to a speed of six knots as she moved down the channel. The immense bulk of the liner displaced an incredible volume of water in the narrow channel, creating a powerful suction in her wake. As she approached the entrance to the channel, the Titanic drew abreast of the small American liner New York, which was moored side by side to the White Star’s Oceanic. Both ships had been immobilized by the coal strike, and neither had steam up. As the Titanic passed, the suction of her wake drew the two smaller vessels away from the dock where they were tied up. The strain on the six lines mooring the New York to the Oceanic grew too great, and with a series of loud cracks they parted in rapid succession as the New York was pulled helplessly toward the Titanic. For a moment a nasty collision seemed inevitable as the stern of the New York swung to within three or four feet of the bigger liner’s hull.