The Loss of the S.S. Titanic, Lawrence Beesley [best romantic novels to read TXT] 📗

had been

in dock and we had rowed up to join her in a somewhat unusual way.

Some of them have related that we were very quiet as we came aboard:

it is quite true, we were; but so were they. There was very little

excitement on either side: just the quiet demeanour of people who are

in the presence of something too big as yet to lie within their mental

grasp, and which they cannot yet discuss. And so they asked us

politely to have hot coffee, which we did; and food, which we

generally declined,—we were not hungry,—and they said very little at

first about the lost Titanic and our adventures in the night.

 

Much that is exaggerated and false has been written about the mental

condition of passengers as they came aboard: we have been described as

being too dazed to understand what was happening, as being too

overwhelmed to speak, and as looking before us with “set, staring

gaze,” “dazed with the shadow of the dread event.” That is, no doubt,

what most people would expect in the circumstances, but I know it does

not give a faithful record of how we did arrive: in fact it is simply

not true. As remarked before, the one thing that matters in describing

an event of this kind is the exact truth, as near as the fallible

human mind can state it; and my own impression of our mental condition

is that of supreme gratitude and relief at treading the firm decks of

a ship again. I am aware that experiences differed considerably

according to the boats occupied; that those who were uncertain of the

fate of their relatives and friends had much to make them anxious and

troubled; and that it is not possible to look into another person’s

consciousness and say what is written there; but dealing with mental

conditions as far as they are delineated by facial and bodily

expressions, I think joy, relief, gratitude were the dominant emotions

written on the faces of those who climbed the rope-ladders and were

hauled up in cradles.

 

It must not be forgotten that no one in any one boat knew who were

saved in other boats: few knew even how many boats there were and how

many passengers could be saved. It was at the time probable that

friends would follow them to the Carpathia, or be found on other

steamers, or even on the pier at which we landed. The hysterical

scenes that have been described are imaginative; true, one woman did

fill the saloon with hysterical cries immediately after coming aboard,

but she could not have known for a certainty that any of her friends

were lost: probably the sense of relief after some hours of journeying

about the sea was too much for her for a time.

 

One of the first things we did was to crowd round a steward with a

bundle of telegraph forms. He was the bearer of the welcome news that

passengers might send Marconigrams to their relatives free of charge,

and soon he bore away the first sheaf of hastily scribbled messages to

the operator; by the time the last boatload was aboard, the pile must

have risen high in the Marconi cabin. We learned afterwards that many

of these never reached their destination; and this is not a matter for

surprise. There was only one operator—Cottam—on board, and although

he was assisted to some extent later, when Bride from the Titanic had

recovered from his injuries sufficiently to work the apparatus, he had

so much to do that he fell asleep over this work on Tuesday night

after three days’ continuous duty without rest. But we did not know

the messages were held back, and imagined our friends were aware of

our safety; then, too, a roll-call of the rescued was held in the

Carpathia’s saloon on the Monday, and this was Marconied to land in

advance of all messages. It seemed certain, then, that friends at home

would have all anxiety removed, but there were mistakes in the

official list first telegraphed. The experience of my own friends

illustrates this: the Marconigram I wrote never got through to

England; nor was my name ever mentioned in any list of the saved (even

a week after landing in New York, I saw it in a black-edged “final”

list of the missing), and it seemed certain that I had never reached

the Carpathia; so much so that, as I write, there are before me

obituary notices from the English papers giving a short sketch of my

life in England. After landing in New York and realizing from the

lists of the saved which a reporter showed me that my friends had no

news since the Titanic sank on Monday morning until that night

(Thursday 9 P.M.), I cabled to England at once (as I had but two

shillings rescued from the Titanic, the White Star Line paid for the

cables), but the messages were not delivered until 8.20 A.M. next

morning. At 9 A.M. my friends read in the papers a short account of

the disaster which I had supplied to the press, so that they knew of

my safety and experiences in the wreck almost at the same time. I am

grateful to remember that many of my friends in London refused to

count me among the missing during the three days when I was so

reported.

 

There is another side to this record of how the news came through, and

a sad one, indeed. Again I wish it were not necessary to tell such

things, but since they all bear on the equipment of the trans-Atlantic

lines—powerful Marconi apparatus, relays of operators, etc.,—it is

best they should be told. The name of an American gentleman—the same

who sat near me in the library on Sunday afternoon and whom I

identified later from a photograph—was consistently reported in the

lists as saved and aboard the Carpathia: his son journeyed to New York

to meet him, rejoicing at his deliverance, and never found him there.

When I met his family some days later and was able to give them some

details of his life aboard ship, it seemed almost cruel to tell them

of the opposite experience that had befallen my friends at home.

 

Returning to the journey of the Carpathia—the last boatload of

passengers was taken aboard at 8.30 A.M., the lifeboats were hauled on

deck while the collapsibles were abandoned, and the Carpathia

proceeded to steam round the scene of the wreck in the hope of picking

up anyone floating on wreckage. Before doing so the captain arranged

in the saloon a service over the spot where the Titanic sank, as

nearly as could be calculated,—a service, as he said, of respect to

those who were lost and of gratitude for those who were saved.

 

She cruised round and round the scene, but found nothing to indicate

there was any hope of picking up more passengers; and as the

Californian had now arrived, followed shortly afterwards by the Birma,

a Russian tramp steamer, Captain Rostron decided to leave any further

search to them and to make all speed with the rescued to land. As we

moved round, there was surprisingly little wreckage to be seen: wooden

deck-chairs and small pieces of other wood, but nothing of any size.

But covering the sea in huge patches was a mass of reddish-yellow

“seaweed,” as we called it for want of a name. It was said to be cork,

but I never heard definitely its correct description.

 

The problem of where to land us had next to be decided. The Carpathia

was bound for Gibraltar, and the captain might continue his journey

there, landing us at the Azores on the way; but he would require more

linen and provisions, the passengers were mostly women and children,

ill-clad, dishevelled, and in need of many attentions he could not

give them. Then, too, he would soon be out of the range of wireless

communication, with the weak apparatus his ship had, and he soon

decided against that course. Halifax was the nearest in point of

distance, but this meant steaming north through the ice, and he

thought his passengers did not want to see more ice. He headed back

therefore to New York, which he had left the previous Thursday,

working all afternoon along the edge of the ice-field which stretched

away north as far as the unaided eye could reach. I have wondered

since if we could possibly have landed our passengers on this ice-floe

from the lifeboats and gone back to pick up those swimming, had we

known it was there; I should think it quite feasible to have done so.

It was certainly an extraordinary sight to stand on deck and see the

sea covered with solid ice, white and dazzling in the sun and dotted

here and there with icebergs. We ran close up, only two or three

hundred yards away, and steamed parallel to the floe, until it ended

towards night and we saw to our infinite satisfaction the last of the

icebergs and the field fading away astern. Many of the rescued have no

wish ever to see an iceberg again. We learnt afterwards the field was

nearly seventy miles long and twelve miles wide, and had lain between

us and the Birma on her way to the rescue. Mr. Boxhall testified that

he had crossed the Grand Banks many times, but had never seen

field-ice before. The testimony of the captains and officers of other

steamers in the neighbourhood is of the same kind: they had “never

seen so many icebergs this time of the year,” or “never seen such

dangerous ice floes and threatening bergs.” Undoubtedly the Titanic

was faced that night with unusual and unexpected conditions of ice:

the captain knew not the extent of these conditions, but he knew

somewhat of their existence. Alas, that he heeded not their warning!

 

During the day, the bodies of eight of the crew were committed to the

deep: four of them had been taken out of the boats dead and four died

during the day. The engines were stopped and all passengers on deck

bared their heads while a short service was read; when it was over the

ship steamed on again to carry the living back to land.

 

The passengers on the Carpathia were by now hard at work finding

clothing for the survivors: the barber’s shop was raided for ties,

collars, hair-pins, combs, etc., of which it happened there was a

large stock in hand; one good Samaritan went round the ship with a box

of tooth-brushes offering them indiscriminately to all. In some cases,

clothing could not be found for the ladies and they spent the rest of

the time on board in their dressing-gowns and cloaks in which they

came away from the Titanic. They even slept in them, for, in the

absence of berths, women had to sleep on the floor of the saloons and

in the library each night on straw paillasses, and here it was

not possible to undress properly. The men were given the smoking-room

floor and a supply of blankets, but the room was small, and some

elected to sleep out on deck. I found a pile of towels on the bathroom

floor ready for next morning’s baths, and made up a very comfortable

bed on these. Later I was waked in the middle of the night by a man

offering me a berth in his four-berth cabin: another occupant was

unable to leave his berth for physical reasons, and so the cabin could

not be given up to ladies.

 

On Tuesday the survivors met in the saloon and formed a committee

among themselves to collect subscriptions for a general fund, out of

which it was resolved by vote to provide as far as possible