The Loss of the S.S. Titanic by Lawrence Beesley (readnow .txt) 📖

the Titanic from a short distance. She was absolutely still—indeed

from the first it seemed as if the blow from the iceberg had taken all

the courage out of her and she had just come quietly to rest and was

settling down without an effort to save herself, without a murmur of

protest against such a foul blow. For the sea could not rock her: the

wind was not there to howl noisily round the decks, and make the ropes

hum; from the first what must have impressed all as they watched was

the sense of stillness about her and the slow, insensible way she sank

lower and lower in the sea, like a stricken animal.

 

The mere bulk alone of the ship viewed from the sea below was an

awe-inspiring sight. Imagine a ship nearly a sixth of a mile long, 75

feet high to the top decks, with four enormous funnels above the

decks, and masts again high above the funnels; with her hundreds of

portholes, all her saloons and other rooms brilliant with light, and

all round her, little boats filled with those who until a few hours

before had trod her decks and read in her libraries and listened to

the music of her band in happy content; and who were now looking up in

amazement at the enormous mass above them and rowing away from her

because she was sinking.

 

I had often wanted to see her from some distance away, and only a few

hours before, in conversation at lunch with a fellow-passenger, had

registered a vow to get a proper view of her lines and dimensions when

we landed at New York: to stand some distance away to take in a full

view of her beautiful proportions, which the narrow approach to the

dock at Southampton made impossible. Little did I think that the

opportunity was to be found so quickly and so dramatically. The

background, too, was a different one from what I had planned for her:

the black outline of her profile against the sky was bordered all

round by stars studded in the sky, and all her funnels and masts were

picked out in the same way: her bulk was seen where the stars were

blotted out. And one other thing was different from expectation: the

thing that ripped away from us instantly, as we saw it, all sense of

the beauty of the night, the beauty of the ship’s lines, and the

beauty of her lights,—and all these taken in themselves were

intensely beautiful,—that thing was the awful angle made by the level

of the sea with the rows of porthole lights along her side in dotted

lines, row above row. The sea level and the rows of lights should have

been parallel—should never have met—and now they met at an angle

inside the black hull of the ship. There was nothing else to indicate

she was injured; nothing but this apparent violation of a simple

geometrical law—that parallel lines should “never meet even if

produced ever so far both ways”; but it meant the Titanic had sunk by

the head until the lowest portholes in the bows were under the sea,

and the portholes in the stern were lifted above the normal height. We

rowed away from her in the quietness of the night, hoping and praying

with all our hearts that she would sink no more and the day would find

her still in the same position as she was then. The crew, however, did

not think so. It has been said frequently that the officers and crew

felt assured that she would remain afloat even after they knew the

extent of the damage. Some of them may have done so—and perhaps, from

their scientific knowledge of her construction, with more reason at

the time than those who said she would sink—but at any rate the

stokers in our boat had no such illusion. One of them—I think he was

the same man that cut us free from the pulley ropes—told us how he

was at work in the stoke-hole, and in anticipation of going off duty

in quarter of an hour,—thus confirming the time of the collision as

11.45,—had near him a pan of soup keeping hot on some part of the

machinery; suddenly the whole side of the compartment came in, and the

water rushed him off his feet. Picking himself up, he sprang for the

compartment doorway and was just through the aperture when the

watertight door came down behind him, “like a knife,” as he said;

“they work them from the bridge.” He had gone up on deck but was

ordered down again at once and with others was told to draw the fires

from under the boiler, which they did, and were then at liberty to

come on deck again. It seems that this particular knot of stokers must

have known almost as soon as any one of the extent of injury. He added

mournfully, “I could do with that hot soup now”—and indeed he could:

he was clad at the time of the collision, he said, in trousers and

singlet, both very thin on account of the intense heat in the

stoke-hole; and although he had added a short jacket later, his teeth

were chattering with the cold. He found a place to lie down underneath

the tiller on the little platform where our captain stood, and there

he lay all night with a coat belonging to another stoker thrown over

him and I think he must have been almost unconscious. A lady next to

him, who was warmly clad with several coats, tried to insist on his

having one of hers—a fur-lined one—thrown over him, but he

absolutely refused while some of the women were insufficiently clad;

and so the coat was given to an Irish girl with pretty auburn hair

standing near, leaning against the gunwale—with an “outside berth”

and so more exposed to the cold air. This same lady was able to

distribute more of her wraps to the passengers, a rug to one, a fur

boa to another; and she has related with amusement that at the moment

of climbing up the Carpathia’s side, those to whom these articles had

been lent offered them all back to her; but as, like the rest of us,

she was encumbered with a lifebelt, she had to say she would receive

them back at the end of the climb, I had not seen my dressing-gown

since I dropped into the boat, but some time in the night a steerage

passenger found it on the floor and put it on.

 

It is not easy at this time to call to mind who were in the boat,

because in the night it was not possible to see more than a few feet

away, and when dawn came we had eyes only for the rescue ship and the

icebergs; but so far as my memory serves the list was as follows: no

first-class passengers; three women, one baby, two men from the second

cabin; and the other passengers steerage—mostly women; a total of

about 35 passengers. The rest, about 25 (and possibly more), were crew

and stokers. Near to me all night was a group of three Swedish girls,

warmly clad, standing close together to keep warm, and very silent;

indeed there was very little talking at any time.

 

One conversation took place that is, I think, worth repeating: one

more proof that the world after all is a small place. The ten months’

old baby which was handed down at the last moment was received by a

lady next to me—the same who shared her wraps and coats. The mother

had found a place in the middle and was too tightly packed to come

through to the child, and so it slept contentedly for about an hour in

a stranger’s arms; it then began to cry and the temporary nurse said:

“Will you feel down and see if the baby’s feet are out of the blanket!

I don’t know much about babies but I think their feet must be kept

warm.” Wriggling down as well as I could, I found its toes exposed to

the air and wrapped them well up, when it ceased crying at once: it

was evidently a successful diagnosis! Having recognized the lady by

her voice,—it was much too dark to see faces,—as one of my vis-�-vis

at the purser’s table, I said,—“Surely you are Miss––?” “Yes,”

she replied, “and you must be Mr. Beesley; how curious we should find

ourselves in the same boat!” Remembering that she had joined the boat

at Queenstown, I said, “Do you know Clonmel? a letter from a great

friend of mine who is staying there at–– [giving the address] came

aboard at Queenstown.” “Yes, it is my home: and I was dining

at––just before I came away.” It seemed that she knew my friend,

too; and we agreed that of all places in the world to recognize mutual

friends, a crowded lifeboat afloat in mid-ocean at 2 A.M. twelve

hundred miles from our destination was one of the most unexpected.

 

And all the time, as we watched, the Titanic sank lower and lower by

the head and the angle became wider and wider as the stern porthole

lights lifted and the bow lights sank, and it was evident she was not

to stay afloat much longer. The captain-stoker now told the oarsmen to

row away as hard as they could. Two reasons seemed to make this a wise

decision: one that as she sank she would create such a wave of suction

that boats, if not sucked under by being too near, would be in danger

of being swamped by the wave her sinking would create—and we all knew

our boat was in no condition to ride big waves, crowded as it was and

manned with untrained oarsmen. The second was that an explosion might

result from the water getting to the boilers, and d�bris might fall

within a wide radius. And yet, as it turned out, neither of these

things happened.

 

At about 2.15 A.M. I think we were any distance from a mile to two

miles away. It is difficult for a landsman to calculate distance at

sea but we had been afloat an hour and a half, the boat was heavily

loaded, the oarsmen unskilled, and our course erratic: following now

one light and now another, sometimes a star and sometimes a light from

a port lifeboat which had turned away from the Titanic in the opposite

direction and lay almost on our horizon; and so we could not have gone

very far away.

 

About this time, the water had crept up almost to her sidelight and

the captain’s bridge, and it seemed a question only of minutes before

she sank. The oarsmen lay on their oars, and all in the lifeboat were

motionless as we watched her in absolute silence—save some who would

not look and buried their heads on each others’ shoulders. The lights

still shone with the same brilliance, but not so many of them: many

were now below the surface. I have often wondered since whether they

continued to light up the cabins when the portholes were under water;

they may have done so.

 

And then, as we gazed awe-struck, she tilted slowly up, revolving

apparently about a centre of gravity just astern of amidships, until

she attained a vertically upright position; and there she

remained—motionless! As she swung up, her lights, which had shone

without a flicker all night, went out suddenly, came on again for a

single flash, then went out altogether. And as they did so, there came

a noise which many people, wrongly I think, have described as an

explosion; it has always seemed to me that it was nothing but the

engines and machinery coming loose from their bolts and bearings,