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

Smith or Murdock putting an end to their

lives. It is conceivable men might be so overwhelmed by the sense of

disaster that they knew not how they were acting; but to be really

heroic would have been to stop with the ship—as of course they

did—with the hope of being picked up along with passengers and crew

and returning to face an enquiry and to give evidence that would be of

supreme value to the whole world for the prevention of similar

disasters. It was not possible; but if heroism consists in doing the

greatest good to the greatest number, it would have been heroic for

both officers to expect to be saved. We do not know what they

thought, but I, for one, like to imagine that they did so. Second

Officer Lightoller worked steadily at the boats until the last

possible moment, went down with the ship, was saved in what seemed a

miraculous manner, and returned to give valuable evidence before the

commissions of two countries.

 

The second thing that stands out prominently in the emotions produced

by the disaster is that in moments of urgent need men and women turn

for help to something entirely outside themselves. I remember reading

some years ago a story of an atheist who was the guest at dinner of a

regimental mess in India. The colonel listened to his remarks on

atheism in silence, and invited him for a drive the following morning.

He took his guest up a rough mountain road in a light carriage drawn

by two ponies, and when some distance from the plain below, turned the

carriage round and allowed the ponies to run away—as it

seemed—downhill. In the terror of approaching disaster, the atheist

was lifted out of his reasoned convictions and prayed aloud for help,

when the colonel reined in his ponies, and with the remark that the

whole drive had been planned with the intention of proving to his

guest that there was a power outside his own reason, descended quietly

to level ground.

 

The story may or may not be true, and in any case is not introduced as

an attack on atheism, but it illustrates in a striking way the frailty

of dependence on a man’s own power and resource in imminent danger. To

those men standing on the top deck with the boats all lowered, and

still more so when the boats had all left, there came the realization

that human resources were exhausted and human avenues of escape

closed. With it came the appeal to whatever consciousness each had of

a Power that had created the universe. After all, some Power had made

the brilliant stars above, countless millions of miles away, moving in

definite order, formed on a definite plan and obeying a definite law:

had made each one of the passengers with ability to think and act;

with the best proof, after all, of being created—the knowledge of

their own existence; and now, if at any time, was the time to appeal

to that Power. When the boats had left and it was seen the ship was

going down rapidly, men stood in groups on the deck engaged in prayer,

and later, as some of them lay on the overturned collapsible

boat, they repeated together over and over again the Lord’s

Prayer—irrespective of religious beliefs, some, perhaps, without

religious beliefs, united in a common appeal for deliverance from

their surroundings. And this was not because it was a habit, because

they had learned this prayer “at their mother’s knee”: men do not do

such things through habit. It must have been because each one saw

removed the thousand and one ways in which he had relied on human,

material things to help him—including even dependence on the

overturned boat with its bubble of air inside, which any moment a

rising swell might remove as it tilted the boat too far sideways, and

sink the boat below the surface—saw laid bare his utter dependence on

something that had made him and given him power to think—whether he

named it God or Divine Power or First Cause or Creator, or named it

not at all but recognized it unconsciously—saw these things and

expressed them in the form of words he was best acquainted with in

common with his fellow-men. He did so, not through a sense of duty to

his particular religion, not because he had learned the words, but

because he recognized that it was the most practical thing to do—the

thing best fitted to help him. Men do practical things in times like

that: they would not waste a moment on mere words if those words were

not an expression of the most intensely real conviction of which they

were capable. Again, like the feeling of heroism, this appeal is

innate and intuitive, and it certainly has its foundation on a

knowledge—largely concealed, no doubt—of immortality. I think this

must be obvious: there could be no other explanation of such a general

sinking of all the emotions of the human mind expressed in a thousand

different ways by a thousand different people in favour of this single

appeal.

 

The behaviour of people during the hours in the lifeboats, the landing

on the Carpathia, the life there and the landing in New York, can all

be summarized by saying that people did not act at all as they were

expected to act—or rather as most people expected they would act, and

in some cases have erroneously said they did act. Events were there to

be faced, and not to crush people down. Situations arose which

demanded courage, resource, and in the cases of those who had lost

friends most dear to them, enormous self-control; but very wonderfully

they responded. There was the same quiet demeanour and poise, the same

inborn dominion over circumstances, the same conformity to a normal

standard which characterized the crowd of passengers on the deck of

the Titanic—and for the same reasons.

 

The first two or three days ashore were undoubtedly rather trying to

some of the survivors. It seemed as if coming into the world

again—the four days shut off from any news seemed a long time—and

finding what a shock the disaster had produced, the flags half-mast,

the staring head-lines, the sense of gloom noticeable everywhere, made

things worse than they had been on the Carpathia. The difference in

“atmosphere” was very marked, and people gave way to some extent under

it and felt the reaction. Gratitude for their deliverance and a desire

to “make the best of things” must have helped soon, however, to

restore them to normal conditions. It is not at all surprising that

some survivors felt quieter on the Carpathia with its lack of news

from the outside world, if the following extract from a leading New

York evening paper was some of the material of which the “atmosphere”

on shore was composed:—“Stunned by the terrific impact, the dazed

passengers rushed from their staterooms into the main saloon amid the

crash of splintering steel, rending of plates and shattering of

girders, while the boom of falling pinnacles of ice upon the broken

deck of the great vessel added to the horror…. In a wild

ungovernable mob they poured out of the saloons to witness one of the

most appalling scenes possible to conceive…. For a hundred feet the

bow was a shapeless mass of bent, broken and splintered steel and

iron.”

 

And so on, horror piled on horror, and not a word of it true, or

remotely approaching the truth.

 

This paper was selling in the streets of New York while the Carpathia

was coming into dock, while relatives of those on board were at the

docks to meet them and anxiously buying any paper that might contain

news. No one on the Carpathia could have supplied such information;

there was no one else in the world at that moment who knew any details

of the Titanic disaster, and the only possible conclusion is that the

whole thing was a deliberate fabrication to sell the paper.

 

This is a repetition of the same defect in human nature noticed in the

provision of safety appliances on board ship—the lack of

consideration for the other man. The remedy is the same—the law: it

should be a criminal offence for anyone to disseminate deliberate

falsehoods that cause fear and grief. The moral responsibility of the

press is very great, and its duty of supplying the public with only

clean, correct news is correspondingly heavy. If the general public is

not yet prepared to go so far as to stop the publication of such news

by refusing to buy those papers that publish it, then the law should

be enlarged to include such cases. Libel is an offence, and this is

very much worse than any libel could ever be.

 

It is only right to add that the majority of the New York papers were

careful only to report such news as had been obtained legitimately

from survivors or from Carpathia passengers. It was sometimes

exaggerated and sometimes not true at all, but from the point of

reporting what was heard, most of it was quite correct.

 

One more thing must be referred to—the prevalence of superstitious

beliefs concerning the Titanic. I suppose no ship ever left port with

so much miserable nonsense showered on her. In the first place, there

is no doubt many people refused to sail on her because it was her

maiden voyage, and this apparently is a common superstition: even the

clerk of the White Star Office where I purchased my ticket admitted it

was a reason that prevented people from sailing. A number of people

have written to the press to say they had thought of sailing on her,

or had decided to sail on her, but because of “omens” cancelled the

passage. Many referred to the sister ship, the Olympic, pointed to the

“ill luck” that they say has dogged her—her collision with the Hawke,

and a second mishap necessitating repairs and a wait in harbour, where

passengers deserted her; they prophesied even greater disaster for the

Titanic, saying they would not dream of travelling on the boat. Even

some aboard were very nervous, in an undefined way. One lady said she

had never wished to take this boat, but her friends had insisted and

bought her ticket and she had not had a happy moment since. A friend

told me of the voyage of the Olympic from Southampton after the wait

in harbour, and said there was a sense of gloom pervading the whole

ship: the stewards and stewardesses even going so far as to say it was

a “death-ship.” This crew, by the way, was largely transferred to the

Titanic.

 

The incident with the New York at Southampton, the appearance of the

stoker at Queenstown in the funnel, combine with all this to make a

mass of nonsense in which apparently sensible people believe, or which

at any rate they discuss. Correspondence is published with an official

of the White Star Line from some one imploring them not to name the

new ship “Gigantic,” because it seems like “tempting fate” when the

Titanic has been sunk. It would seem almost as if we were back in the

Middle Ages when witches were burned because they kept black cats.

There seems no more reason why a black stoker should be an ill omen

for the Titanic than a black cat should be for an old woman.

 

The only reason for referring to these foolish details is that a

surprisingly large number of people think there may be “something in

it.” The effect is this: that if a ship’s company and a number of

passengers get imbued with that undefined dread of the unknown—the

relics no doubt of the savage’s fear of what he does not

understand—it has an unpleasant effect on