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

falling through the compartments, smashing everything in their way. It

was partly a roar, partly a groan, partly a rattle, and partly a

smash, and it was not a sudden roar as an explosion would be: it went

on successively for some seconds, possibly fifteen to twenty, as the

heavy machinery dropped down to the bottom (now the bows) of the ship:

I suppose it fell through the end and sank first, before the ship. But

it was a noise no one had heard before, and no one wishes to hear

again: it was stupefying, stupendous, as it came to us along the

water. It was as if all the heavy things one could think of had been

thrown downstairs from the top of a house, smashing each other and the

stairs and everything in the way. Several apparently authentic

accounts have been given, in which definite stories of explosions have

been related—in some cases even with wreckage blown up and the ship

broken in two; but I think such accounts will not stand close

analysis. In the first place the fires had been withdrawn and the

steam allowed to escape some time before she sank, and the possibility

of explosion from this cause seems very remote. Then, as just related,

the noise was not sudden and definite, but prolonged—more like the

roll and crash of thunder. The probability of the noise being caused

by engines falling down will be seen by referring to Figure 2, page

116, where the engines are placed in compartments 3, 4, and 5. As the

Titanic tilted up they would almost certainly fall loose from their

bed and plunge down through the other compartments.

No phenomenon like that pictured in some American and English papers

occurred—that of the ship breaking in two, and the two ends being

raised above the surface. I saw these drawings in preparation on board

the Carpathia, and said at the time that they bore no resemblance to

what actually happened.

When the noise was over the Titanic was still upright like a column:

we could see her now only as the stern and some 150 feet of her stood

outlined against the star-specked sky, looming black in the darkness,

and in this position she continued for some minutes—I think as much

as five minutes, but it may have been less. Then, first sinking back a

little at the stern, I thought, she slid slowly forwards through the

water and dived slantingly down; the sea closed over her and we had

seen the last of the beautiful ship on which we had embarked four days

before at Southampton.

And in place of the ship on which all our interest had been

concentrated for so long and towards which we looked most of the time

because it was still the only object on the sea which was a fixed

point to us—in place of the Titanic, we had the level sea now

stretching in an unbroken expanse to the horizon: heaving gently just

as before, with no indication on the surface that the waves had just

closed over the most wonderful vessel ever built by man’s hand; the

stars looked down just the same and the air was just as bitterly cold.

There seemed a great sense of loneliness when we were left on the sea

in a small boat without the Titanic: not that we were uncomfortable

(except for the cold) nor in danger: we did not think we were either,

but the Titanic was no longer there.

We waited head on for the wave which we thought might come—the wave

we had heard so much of from the crew and which they said had been

known to travel for miles—and it never came. But although the Titanic

left us no such legacy of a wave as she went to the bottom, she left

us something we would willingly forget forever, something which it is

well not to let the imagination dwell on—the cries of many hundreds

of our fellow-passengers struggling in the ice-cold water.

I would willingly omit any further mention of this part of the

disaster from this book, but for two reasons it is not possible—

first, that as a matter of history it should be put on record;

and secondly, that these cries were not only an appeal for

help in the awful conditions of danger in which the drowning

found themselves,—an appeal that could never be answered,

—but an appeal to the whole world to make such conditions of

danger and hopelessness impossible ever again; a cry that called

to the heavens for the very injustice of its own existence; a cry

that clamoured for its own destruction.

We were utterly surprised to hear this cry go up as the waves closed

over the Titanic: we had heard no sound of any kind from her since we

left her side; and, as mentioned before, we did not know how many

boats she had or how many rafts. The crew may have known, but they

probably did not, and if they did, they never told the passengers; we

should not have been surprised to know all were safe on some

lifesaving device.

So that unprepared as we were for such a thing, the cries of the

drowning floating across the quiet sea filled us with stupefaction: we

longed to return and rescue at least some of the drowning, but we knew

it was impossible. The boat was filled to standing-room, and to return

would mean the swamping of us all, and so the captain-stoker told his

crew to row away from the cries. We tried to sing to keep all from

thinking of them; but there was no heart for singing in the boat at

that time.

The cries, which were loud and numerous at first, died away gradually

one by one, but the night was clear, frosty and still, the water

smooth, and the sounds must have carried on its level surface free

from any obstruction for miles, certainly much farther from the ship

than we were situated. I think the last of them must have been heard

nearly forty minutes after the Titanic sank. Lifebelts would keep the

survivors afloat for hours; but the cold water was what stopped the

cries.

There must have come to all those safe in the lifeboats, scattered

round the drowning at various distances, a deep resolve that, if

anything could be done by them in the future to prevent the repetition

of such sounds, they would do it—at whatever cost of time or other

things. And not only to them are those cries an imperative call, but

to every man and woman who has known of them. It is not possible that

ever again can such conditions exist; but it is a duty imperative on

one and all to see that they do not. Think of it! a few more boats, a

few more planks of wood nailed together in a particular way at a

trifling cost, and all those men and women whom the world can so ill

afford to lose would be with us to-day, there would be no mourning in

thousands of homes which now are desolate, and these words need not

have been written.