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

on the

lifebelt. As I came out of my cabin, I remember seeing the purser’s

assistant, with his foot on the stairs about to climb them, whisper to

a steward and jerk his head significantly behind him; not that I

thought anything of it at the time, but I have no doubt he was telling

him what had happened up in the bows, and was giving him orders to

call all passengers.

 

Going upstairs with other passengers,—no one ran a step or seemed

alarmed,—we met two ladies coming down: one seized me by the arm and

said, “Oh! I have no lifebelt; will you come down to my cabin and help

me to find it?” I returned with them to F deck,—the lady who had

addressed me holding my arm all the time in a vise-like grip, much to

my amusement,—and we found a steward in her gangway who took them in

and found their lifebelts. Coming upstairs again, I passed the

purser’s window on F deck, and noticed a light inside; when halfway up

to E deck, I heard the heavy metallic clang of the safe door, followed

by a hasty step retreating along the corridor towards the first-class

quarters. I have little doubt it was the purser, who had taken all

valuables from his safe and was transferring them to the charge of the

first-class purser, in the hope they might all be saved in one

package. That is why I said above that perhaps the envelope containing

my money was not in the safe at the bottom of the sea: it is probably

in a bundle, with many others like it, waterlogged at the bottom.

 

Reaching the top deck, we found many people assembled there,—some

fully dressed, with coats and wraps, well-prepared for anything that

might happen; others who had thrown wraps hastily round them when they

were called or heard the summons to equip themselves with

lifebelts—not in much condition to face the cold of that night.

Fortunately there was no wind to beat the cold air through our

clothing: even the breeze caused by the ship’s motion had died

entirely away, for the engines had stopped again and the Titanic lay

peacefully on the surface of the sea—motionless, quiet, not even

rocking to the roll of the sea; indeed, as we were to discover

presently, the sea was as calm as an inland lake save for the gentle

swell which could impart no motion to a ship the size of the Titanic.

To stand on the deck many feet above the water lapping idly against

her sides, and looking much farther off than it really was because of

the darkness, gave one a sense of wonderful security: to feel her so

steady and still was like standing on a large rock in the middle of

the ocean. But there were now more evidences of the coming catastrophe

to the observer than had been apparent when on deck last: one was the

roar and hiss of escaping steam from the boilers, issuing out of a

large steam pipe reaching high up one of the funnels: a harsh,

deafening boom that made conversation difficult and no doubt increased

the apprehension of some people merely because of the volume of noise:

if one imagines twenty locomotives blowing off steam in a low key it

would give some idea of the unpleasant sound that met us as we climbed

out on the top deck.

 

But after all it was the kind of phenomenon we ought to expect:

engines blow off steam when standing in a station, and why should not

a ship’s boilers do the same when the ship is not moving? I never

heard any one connect this noise with the danger of boiler explosion,

in the event of the ship sinking with her boilers under a high

pressure of steam, which was no doubt the true explanation of this

precaution. But this is perhaps speculation; some people may have

known it quite well, for from the time we came on deck until boat 13

got away, I heard very little conversation of any kind among the

passengers. It is not the slightest exaggeration to say that no signs

of alarm were exhibited by any one: there was no indication of panic

or hysteria; no cries of fear, and no running to and fro to discover

what was the matter, why we had been summoned on deck with lifebelts,

and what was to be done with us now we were there. We stood there

quietly looking on at the work of the crew as they manned the

lifeboats, and no one ventured to interfere with them or offered to

help them. It was plain we should be of no use; and the crowd of men

and women stood quietly on the deck or paced slowly up and down

waiting for orders from the officers. Now, before we consider any

further the events that followed, the state of mind of passengers at

this juncture, and the motives which led each one to act as he or she

did in the circumstances, it is important to keep in thought the

amount of information at our disposal. Men and women act according to

judgment based on knowledge of the conditions around them, and the

best way to understand some apparently inconceivable things that

happened is for any one to imagine himself or herself standing on deck

that night. It seems a mystery to some people that women refused to

leave the ship, that some persons retired to their cabins, and so on;

but it is a matter of judgment, after all.

 

So that if the reader will come and stand with the crowd on deck, he

must first rid himself entirely of the knowledge that the Titanic has

sunk—an important necessity, for he cannot see conditions as they

existed there through the mental haze arising from knowledge of the

greatest maritime tragedy the world has known: he must get rid of any

foreknowledge of disaster to appreciate why people acted as they did.

Secondly, he had better get rid of any picture in thought painted

either by his own imagination or by some artist, whether pictorial or

verbal, “from information supplied.” Some are most inaccurate (these,

mostly word-pictures), and where they err, they err on the highly

dramatic side. They need not have done so: the whole conditions were

dramatic enough in all their bare simplicity, without the addition of

any high colouring.

 

Having made these mental erasures, he will find himself as one of the

crowd faced with the following conditions: a perfectly still

atmosphere; a brilliantly beautiful starlight night, but no moon, and

so with little light that was of any use; a ship that had come quietly

to rest without any indication of disaster—no iceberg visible, no

hole in the ship’s side through which water was pouring in, nothing

broken or out of place, no sound of alarm, no panic, no movement of

any one except at a walking pace; the absence of any knowledge of the

nature of the accident, of the extent of damage, of the danger of the

ship sinking in a few hours, of the numbers of boats, rafts, and other

lifesaving appliances available, their capacity, what other ships were

near or coming to help—in fact, an almost complete absence of any

positive knowledge on any point. I think this was the result of

deliberate judgment on the part of the officers, and perhaps, it was

the best thing that could be done. In particular, he must remember

that the ship was a sixth of a mile long, with passengers on three

decks open to the sea, and port and starboard sides to each deck: he

will then get some idea of the difficulty presented to the officers of

keeping control over such a large area, and the impossibility of any

one knowing what was happening except in his own immediate vicinity.

Perhaps the whole thing can be summed up best by saying that, after we

had embarked in the lifeboats and rowed away from the Titanic, it

would not have surprised us to hear that all passengers would be

saved: the cries of drowning people after the Titanic gave the final

plunge were a thunderbolt to us. I am aware that the experiences of

many of those saved differed in some respects from the above: some had

knowledge of certain things, some were experienced travellers and

sailors, and therefore deduced more rapidly what was likely to happen;

but I think the above gives a fairly accurate representation of the

state of mind of most of those on deck that night.

 

All this time people were pouring up from the stairs and adding to the

crowd: I remember at that moment thinking it would be well to return

to my cabin and rescue some money and warmer clothing if we were to

embark in boats, but looking through the vestibule windows and seeing

people still coming upstairs, I decided it would only cause confusion

passing them on the stairs, and so remained on deck.

 

I was now on the starboard side of the top boat deck; the time about

12.20. We watched the crew at work on the lifeboats, numbers 9, 11,

13, 15, some inside arranging the oars, some coiling ropes on the

deck,—the ropes which ran through the pulleys to lower to the

sea,—others with cranks fitted to the rocking arms of the davits. As

we watched, the cranks were turned, the davits swung outwards until

the boats hung clear of the edge of the deck. Just then an officer

came along from the first-class deck and shouted above the noise of

escaping steam, “All women and children get down to deck below and all

men stand back from the boats.” He had apparently been off duty when

the ship struck, and was lightly dressed, with a white muffler twisted

hastily round his neck. The men fell back and the women retired below

to get into the boats from the next deck. Two women refused at first

to leave their husbands, but partly by persuasion and partly by force

they were separated from them and sent down to the next deck. I think

that by this time the work on the lifeboats and the separation of men

and women impressed on us slowly the presence of imminent danger, but

it made no difference in the attitude of the crowd: they were just as

prepared to obey orders and to do what came next as when they first

came on deck. I do not mean that they actually reasoned it out: they

were the average Teutonic crowd, with an inborn respect for law and

order and for traditions bequeathed to them by generations of

ancestors: the reasons that made them act as they did were impersonal,

instinctive, hereditary.

 

But if there were any one who had not by now realized that the ship

was in danger, all doubt on this point was to be set at rest in a

dramatic manner. Suddenly a rush of light from the forward deck, a

hissing roar that made us all turn from watching the boats, and a

rocket leapt upwards to where the stars blinked and twinkled above us.

Up it went, higher and higher, with a sea of faces upturned to watch

it, and then an explosion that seemed to split the silent night in

two, and a shower of stars sank slowly down and went out one by one.

And with a gasping sigh one word escaped the lips of the crowd:

“Rockets!” Anybody knows what rockets at sea mean. And presently

another, and then a third. It is no use denying the dramatic intensity

of the scene: separate it if you can from all the terrible events that

followed, and picture the calmness of the night, the sudden light on

the decks crowded with people