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

easy to make these

criticisms afterwards, so easy to say that Captain Smith should have

told everyone of the condition of the vessel. He was faced with many

conditions that night which such criticism overlooks. Let any

fair-minded person consider some few of the problems presented to

him—the ship was bound to sink in a few hours; there was lifeboat

accommodation for all women and children and some men; there was no

way of getting some women to go except by telling them the ship was

doomed, a course he deemed it best not to take; and he knew the danger

of boats buckling when loaded full. His solution of these problems was

apparently the following:—to send the boats down half full, with such

women as would go, and to tell the boats to stand by to pick up more

passengers passed down from the cargo ports. There is good evidence

that this was part of the plan: I heard an officer give the order to

four boats and a lady in number 4 boat on the port side tells me the

sailors were so long looking for the port where the captain personally

had told them to wait, that they were in danger of being sucked under

by the vessel. How far any systematic attempt was made to stand by the

ports, I do not know: I never saw one open or any boat standing near

on the starboard side; but then, boats 9 to 15 went down full, and on

reaching the sea rowed away at once. There is good evidence, then,

that Captain Smith fully intended to load the boats full in this way.

The failure to carry out the intention is one of the things the whole

world regrets, but consider again the great size of the ship and the

short time to make decisions, and the omission is more easily

understood. The fact is that such a contingency as lowering away boats

was not even considered beforehand, and there is much cause for

gratitude that as many as seven hundred and five people were rescued.

The whole question of a captain’s duties seems to require revision. It

was totally impossible for any one man to attempt to control the ship

that night, and the weather conditions could not well have been more

favourable for doing so. One of the reforms that seem inevitable is

that one man shall be responsible for the boats, their manning,

loading and lowering, leaving the captain free to be on the bridge to

the last moment.

 

But to return for a time to the means taken to attract the notice of

other ships. The wireless operators were now in touch with several

ships, and calling to them to come quickly for the water was pouring

in and the Titanic beginning to go down by the head. Bride testified

that the first reply received was from a German boat, the Frankfurt,

which was: “All right: stand by,” but not giving her position. From

comparison of the strength of signals received from the Frankfurt and

from other boats, the operators estimated the Frankfurt was the

nearest; but subsequent events proved that this was not so. She was,

in fact, one hundred and forty miles away and arrived at 10.50 A.M.

next morning, when the Carpathia had left with the rescued. The next

reply was from the Carpathia, fifty-eight miles away on the outbound

route to the Mediterranean, and it was a prompt and welcome

one—“Coming hard,” followed by the position. Then followed the

Olympic, and with her they talked for some time, but she was five

hundred and sixty miles away on the southern route, too far to be of

any immediate help. At the speed of 23 knots she would expect to be up

about 1 P.M. next day, and this was about the time that those in boat

13 had calculated. We had always assumed in the boat that the stokers

who gave this information had it from one of the officers before they

left; but in the absence of any knowledge of the much nearer ship, the

Carpathia, it is more probable that they knew in a general way where

the sister ship, the Olympic, should be, and had made a rough

calculation.

 

Other ships in touch by wireless were the Mount Temple, fifty miles;

the Birma, one hundred miles; the Parisian, one hundred and fifty

miles; the Virginian, one hundred and fifty miles; and the Baltic,

three hundred miles. But closer than any of these—closer even than

the Carpathia—were two ships: the Californian, less than twenty miles

away, with the wireless operator off duty and unable to catch the

“C.Q.D.” signal which was now making the air for many miles around

quiver in its appeal for help—immediate, urgent help—for the

hundreds of people who stood on the Titanic’s deck.

 

The second vessel was a small steamer some few miles ahead on the port

side, without any wireless apparatus, her name and destination still

unknown; and yet the evidence for her presence that night seems too

strong to be disregarded. Mr. Boxhall states that he and Captain Smith

saw her quite plainly some five miles away, and could distinguish the

masthead lights and a red port light. They at once hailed her with

rockets and Morse electric signals, to which Boxhall saw no reply, but

Captain Smith and stewards affirmed they did. The second and third

officers saw the signals sent and her lights, the latter from the

lifeboat of which he was in charge. Seaman Hopkins testified that he

was told by the captain to row for the light; and we in boat 13

certainly saw it in the same position and rowed towards it for some

time. But notwithstanding all the efforts made to attract its

attention, it drew slowly away and the lights sank below the horizon.

 

The pity of it! So near, and so many people waiting for the shelter

its decks could have given so easily. It seems impossible to think

that this ship ever replied to the signals: those who said so must

have been mistaken. The United State Senate Committee in its report

does not hesitate to say that this unknown steamer and the Californian

are identical, and that the failure on the part of the latter to come

to the help of the Titanic is culpable negligence. There is undoubted

evidence that some of the crew on the Californian saw our rockets; but

it seems impossible to believe that the captain and officers knew of

our distress and deliberately ignored it. Judgment on the matter had

better be suspended until further information is forthcoming. An

engineer who has served in the trans-Atlantic service tells me that it

is a common practice for small boats to leave the fishing smacks to

which they belong and row away for miles; sometimes even being lost

and wandering about among icebergs, and even not being found again. In

these circumstances, rockets are part of a fishing smack’s equipment,

and are sent up to indicate to the small boats how to return. Is it

conceivable that the Californian thought our rockets were such

signals, and therefore paid no attention to them?

 

Incidentally, this engineer did not hesitate to add that it is

doubtful if a big liner would stop to help a small fishing-boat

sending off distress signals, or even would turn about to help one

which she herself had cut down as it lay in her path without a light.

He was strong in his affirmation that such things were commonly known

to all officers in the trans-Atlantic service.

 

With regard to the other vessels in wireless communication, the Mount

Temple was the only one near enough from the point of distance to have

arrived in time to be of help, but between her and the Titanic lay the

enormous ice-floe, and icebergs were near her in addition.

 

The seven ships which caught the message started at once to her help

but were all stopped on the way (except the Birma) by the Carpathia’s

wireless announcing the fate of the Titanic and the people aboard her.

The message must have affected the captains of these ships very

deeply: they would understand far better than the travelling public

what it meant to lose such a beautiful ship on her first voyage.

 

The only thing now left to be done was to get the lifeboats away as

quickly as possible, and to this task the other officers were in the

meantime devoting all their endeavours. Mr. Lightoller sent away boat

after boat: in one he had put twenty-four women and children, in

another thirty, in another thirty-five; and then, running short of

seamen to man the boats he sent Major Peuchen, an expert yachtsman, in

the next, to help with its navigation. By the time these had been

filled, he had difficulty in finding women for the fifth and sixth

boats for the reasons already stated. All this time the passengers

remained—to use his own expression—“as quiet as if in church.” To

man and supervise the loading of six boats must have taken him nearly

up to the time of the Titanic’s sinking, taking an average of some

twenty minutes to a boat. Still at work to the end, he remained on the

ship till she sank and went down with her. His evidence before the

United States Committee was as follows: “Did you leave the ship?” “No,

sir.” “Did the ship leave you?” “Yes, sir.”

 

It was a piece of work well and cleanly done, and his escape from the

ship, one of the most wonderful of all, seems almost a reward for his

devotion to duty.

 

Captain Smith, Officers Wilde and Murdock were similarly engaged in

other parts of the ship, urging women to get in the boats, in some

cases directing junior officers to go down in some of them,—Officers

Pitman, Boxhall, and Lowe were sent in this way,—in others placing

members of the crew in charge. As the boats were lowered, orders were

shouted to them where to make for: some were told to stand by and wait

for further instructions, others to row for the light of the

disappearing steamer.

 

It is a pitiful thing to recall the effects of sending down the first

boats half full. In some cases men in the company of their wives had

actually taken seats in the boats—young men, married only a few weeks

and on their wedding trip—and had done so only because no more women

could then be found; but the strict interpretation by the particular

officer in charge there of the rule of “Women and children only,”

compelled them to get out again. Some of these boats were lowered and

reached the Carpathia with many vacant seats. The anguish of the young

wives in such circumstances can only be imagined. In other parts of

the ship, however, a different interpretation was placed on the rule,

and men were allowed and even invited by officers to get in—not only

to form part of the crew, but even as passengers. This, of course, in

the first boats and when no more women could be found.

 

The varied understanding of this rule was a frequent subject of

discussion on the Carpathia—in fact, the rule itself was debated with

much heart-searching. There were not wanting many who doubted the

justice of its rigid enforcement, who could not think it well that a

husband should be separated from his wife and family, leaving them

penniless, or a young bridegroom from his wife of a few short weeks,

while ladies with few relatives, with no one dependent upon them, and

few responsibilities of any kind, were saved. It was mostly these

ladies who pressed this view, and even men seemed to think there was a

good deal to be said for it. Perhaps there is, theoretically, but