Voices from the Titanic (41 page)

(
New York Call,
20 April 1912)

Stoker
William Jones
was quoted as claiming that many passengers and crew were killed on impact.

Little Arthur Olsen, eight years old, the only
Titanic
child left unclaimed after the
Carpathia
's arrival Thursday night, said yesterday that America was a pretty good place, and that he was going to like it.

Arthur came to that conclusion because so many people had been good to him. First there was Fritzjof Madsen, one of the survivors, who took care of him in the lifeboat. Then Miss Jean Campbell gave him hot coffee and sandwiches and propped him comfortably against some clothing while she busied herself with others.

Mrs William K. Vanderbilt Jnr next appeared with two nice big men, put him in a taxi with Miss Campbell and sent him to a hot bath and bed at the Lisa Day Nursery, No. 458 West 20th Street. And the next morning Miss Florence Hayden taught him kindergarten songs and dances with her class.

Later Arthur's stepmother, Mrs Esther Olsen, of No. 978 Hart Street, Brooklyn, appeared and clasped him in her arms. Her husband, Arthur's father, Charlie Olsen, perished in the wreck.

Mrs Olsen had never seen Arthur, because after Charlie Olsen's first wife died in Trondhjem, Norway, leaving the little baby Arthur, he had come to America, where he married again. A while ago Olsen crossed to see about the settlement of his estate and to bring his son home. He and the boy were in the steerage of the
Titanic
.

Arthur is a sturdy, quiet-faced little chap with red hair, freckles and a ready smile. He speaks only Norwegian, but Mrs Olsen translated for him when he told his story.

The largest ship in the world went to sea from Southampton harbour on the tenth of April, 1912. People spoke of the tenth of April as a great day in the history of Southampton, for many fathers of families had found employment on the
Titanic
, many women's faces were lightened because the shadow of need and poverty had been banished from their homes.

It was a day that no one who stood upon the quayside will ever forget. We who saw it saw a sight that will be unforgettable until our eyes are turned to dust. We saw the sight of the mightiest vessel in the world upon her solitary and uncompleted voyage. She was named
Titanic
and she has been
Titanic
in her sorrow. We saw her, the mightiest, finest product of human brains in the matter of ships to sail the sea, a gigantic vessel that realized in her being a floating city of treasured glories, riches, and luxury, as she first ploughed the grey fields of the ocean.

And her displacement of water, the foam, and the rush of her passage was so tremendous that the stern ropes of another mighty liner parted and the
New York
, but for the ready aid of holding tugs, would have swung out aimlessly into the fairway.

We paused in our cheering then, chilled to a sudden silence at this first evidence of the great ship's untested powers for evil as for good. And our cheering now is hushed into sobbing, for within a week of her majestic passage from Southampton harbour, the displacement of the
Titanic
has been so tremendous that she has drenched the bosom of the world in an ocean of tears.

Those of us who had come to wish the vessel ‘Good speed' – in the dark wisdom of Providence to wish ‘Good speed' and ‘a fair journey' to those loved ones who were going out upon the longest and loneliest voyage in Eternity – were up ‘by times' on that pleasant Wednesday morning, long before the stroke of noon when we knew Captain Smith would climb into his lofty perch on the navigating bridge and give the order to ‘let go' from the Trafalgar landing stage.

The air was busy with chatter, with ‘goodbye for the present' and good wishes. We lived that morning in an atmosphere of pride. All these happy-faced Southampton women were proud that their men had entered into service on the greatest vessel ever built by man. They prattled of the
Titanic
with a sort of suggestion of proprietorship.

Rumours and legends and tales of her glories and luxuries and powers were bandied about in every street in Southampton. She was a caravanserai of marvels; a mighty treasure house of beauty and luxurious ease. In the phrase of the people, she was ‘the last word'. The phrases of the people are often true, because they are double edged.

Another phrase sticks now in the puzzle of a darkening mind: ‘They're breaking all records this time.' And so they were. It had been determined that the
Titanic
should excel in luxury and equipment her sister vessel, the
Olympic
, which had sailed for New York a week before.

And in a sort of desperate endeavour to achieve this we who had come to take temporary parting from dear ones and friends were shown a new and latest marvel on the promenade deck of the
Titanic
. It was called the Café Parisien. Its walls were covered with a delicate trellis work around which trailed cool foliage. We looked at the soft-cushioned chairs, we regarded the comfort of the whole scene, and, feeling the suggestive atmosphere of the place, thought of those who would be taking coffee there after dinner with music lulling every sense, melting into the gentle roll and rhythm of the open sea. What a place in which to dream! – perhaps if one were young to hold a little romantic dalliance – what a place in which to forget the trials and harass of the world! What a place in which to sleep!

Some of us looked into the private suites that were to cost a mere trifle of £870 a voyage, and here we found snug dining rooms, bedrooms that looked in themselves like little enchanted palaces of slumberous rest, and private promenade decks.

Let us note that everyone spoke of ‘dining rooms' and ‘bedrooms'. The word ‘cabin' would have been an anachronism in this floating citadel of luxurious beauty. We examined the delicate glass and napery, the flowers and the fruit, the baths and the playing-courts, and the innumerable mechanical appliances that seemed to make personal effort or discomfort the only human impossibility on board.

There was one thing that no one looking even for a brief half-hour on this cushioned lap of luxury ever thought of giving a cursory glance or a thought. No one looked at the boats.

Punctually at noon Captain E. J. Smith, a typical figure of an English sailor as we knew him and imagined him in pre-
Titanic
days, took up his post of captainship on the navigating bridge. And as the bells sounded, the cheers of the multitudes went upward and hands and handkerchiefs were waved from quay and ship's side, and kisses were blown across and last familiar greetings exchanged.

So she went away with her human freight of 2,208 souls. We cheered to the last and waved our salutations, and that night I think there was not an unhappy woman in all Southampton. And tonight – who is to count the tear-stained faces or to cast a reckoning over the travail of these broken hearts, some here, some 2,000 miles away, but all united beyond the cleavage of the pitiless seas, by the sacred companionship of sorrow!

So the
Titanic
went her way, and we went ours, and thought perhaps little about her, save thoughts of remembered joy in her strength and beauty, until on Tuesday morning came the news that smote our hearts with the thunder of doom. These were, of course, the first indefinite rumblings that woke fear in every human breast.

She had struck an iceberg; she had been rent; but she was unsinkable. She was heading slowly for shore, a great giant wounded thing in the wake of the
Virginian
. How our hopes died down until it seemed that the heart was burnt into a heap of dead cold ashes, only to rise, Phoenix-like, in jubilant and hopeful expectancy. Human lips have sobbed out strange prayers before today, but what volume of prayer went up to heaven in thankfulness to the Lord of Hosts who had brought the new wonder of wireless telegraphy out of the slow womb of time.

We thought of that unforgettable message speeding through the viewless air that is marked upon the chart sheets SOS. We picked up the common phrase of the operator and repeated to ourselves: ‘Save Our Souls', and thanked Providence for their salvation.

We pictured the scene. The lonely operator, composed with that old English valiance that has turned the blood of history into wine, calmly tapping out the cry of help. We saw the realization of that message in the operator's cabin on other vessels. We saw the wonderful chain composed of those three words, stronger than wind or sea, suddenly dragging all the vessels within the sphere of hearing away from their allotted course, and sending them on the great adventure of succour and mercy. We pictured them racing along the railless roads of the open sea, rushing with insensate speed towards the spot of the catastrophe. We had leisure to imagine the scene, because we were told there had been a great deliverance; because we felt that man had fought his battle with the ocean and had won.

Then we knew that we had lost.

All the world knows how slowly those confessions of defeat came in upon us, how slowly the last flicker of an expiring hope was beaten down within our breasts, with what dilatory hands the veils were drawn from the implacable face of doom. Gradually the hush laid hold upon us, gradually a realisation of what had happened sank into our souls.

We knew that nothing but a miserable residue of the great human freightage had been saved to us. We knew that the enchanted floating palace, conceived by the brain of man and wrought by his hands, with all its mighty scheme of luxurious ease, health, and comfort, lay somewhere tangled in an old sea forest, two miles beneath the quiet surface of the sea. Little more do we know as I write. We can only hear the sobbing of the women at the street corners of Southampton, and find in them an eternal echo of the cheers with which we sent the
Titanic
out on her first, her last, her only voyage.

(
Daily Graphic
, 20 April 1912)

Mr W. C. Chambers, one of the
Titanic
's survivors, interviewed by a Central News reporter, said the
Titanic
struck the iceberg head on. The passengers came running out on deck, but believing that the ship could not sink, and being assured that this was so by the liner's officers, they went back to their state rooms again.

After about two hours, however, the alarm was sent round, and the passengers started to enter the lifeboats. There was nothing in the way of a panic at first, as everybody believed there were plenty of lifeboats to go around.

After the lifeboat in which he was seated had gone about four hundred yards from the ship they saw the
Titanic
begin to settle down very quickly. It was then that there was a rush for the remaining boats, and one was swamped.

So far as his own boat was concerned, she created no suction. No shots were fired. There was nothing of that kind. Of those who were rescued from the
Titanic
, seven were subsequently buried at sea, four being sailors and three passengers. Two rescued women had gone insane.

As the liner continued to gradually recede into the trough of the sea the passengers marched towards the stern. The orchestra belonging to the first cabin assembled on deck as the liner was going down and played ‘Nearer My God to Thee'.

Mr and Mrs Isidor Straus were drowned together, Mrs Straus refusing to leave her husband's side. They went to their deaths together, standing arm in arm on the first cabin deck of the
Titanic
.

Mr C. H. Stengel, a first class passenger, said that when the
Titanic
struck the iceberg the impact was terrific, and great blocks of ice were thrown on the deck, killing a number of people. The stern of the vessel rose in the air, and people ran shrieking from their berths below.