Titanic, Filson Young [books to read for self improvement .TXT] 📗

from the startled engine-room; but before anything else could happen there was a slight shock, and a splintering sound from the bows of the ship as she crashed into yielding ice. That was followed by a rubbing, jarring, grinding sensation along her starboard bilge, and a peak of dark-coloured ice glided past close alongside.

As the engines stopped in obedience to the telegraph Mr. Murdoch turned the switches that closed the water-tight doors. Captain Smith came running out of the chart room. “What is it?” he asked. “We have struck ice, Sir.” “Close the water-tight doors.” “It is already done, Sir.” Then the Captain took command. He at once sent a message to the carpenter to sound the ship and come and report; the quartermaster went away with the message, and set the carpenter to work. Captain Smith now gave a glance at the commutator, a dial which shows to what extent the ship is off the perpendicular, and noticed that she carried a 5° list to starboard. Coolly following a routine as exact as that which he would have observed had he been conning the ship into dock, he gave a number of orders in rapid succession, after first consulting with the Chief Engineer. Then, having given instructions that the whole of the available engine-power was to be turned to pumping the ship, he hurried aft along the boat-deck to the Marconi room. Phillips was sitting at his key, toiling through routine business; Bride, who had just got up to relieve him, was sleepily making preparations to take his place. The Captain put his head in at the door.

“We have struck an iceberg,” he said, “and I am having an inspection made to tell what it has done for us. Better get ready to send out a call for assistance, but don’t send it until I tell you.”

He hurried away again; in a few minutes he put his head in at the door again; “Send that call for assistance,” he said.

“What call shall I send?” asked Phillips.

“The regulation international call for help, just that,” said the Captain, and was gone again.

But in five minutes he came back into the wireless room, this time apparently not in such a hurry. “What call are you sending?” he asked; and when Phillips told him “C.Q.D.,” the highly technical and efficient Bride suggested, laughingly, that he should send “S.O.S.,” the new international call for assistance which has superseded the C.Q.D. “It is the new call,” said Bride, “and it may be your last chance to send it!” And they all three laughed, and then for a moment chatted about what had happened, while Phillips tapped out the three longs, three shorts, and three longs which instantaneously sent a message of appeal flashing out far and wide into the dark night. The Captain, who did not seem seriously worried or concerned, told them that the ship had been struck amidships or a little aft of that.

Whatever may have been happening down below, everything up here was quiet and matter-of-fact. It was a disaster, of course, but everything was working well, everything had been done; the electric switches for operating the bulkhead doors had been used promptly, and had worked beautifully; the powerful wireless plant was talking to the ocean, and in a few hours there would be some other ship alongside of them. It was rough luck, to be sure; they had not thought they would so soon have a chance of proving that the Titanic was unsinkable.

IX

We must now visit in imagination some other parts of the ship, parts isolated from the bridge and the spacious temple of luxury amidships, and try to understand how the events of this half hour appeared to the denizens of the lower quarters of the ship. The impact that had been scarcely noticed in the first-class quarters had had much more effect down below, and especially forward, where some of the third-class passengers and some of the crew were berthed. A ripping, grinding crash startled all but the heaviest sleepers here into wakefulness; but it was over so soon and was succeeded by so peaceful a silence that no doubt any momentary panic it might have caused was soon allayed. One of the firemen describing it said: “I was awakened by a noise, and between sleeping and waking I thought I was dreaming that I was on a train that had run off the lines, and that I was being jolted about.” He jumped out and went on deck, where he saw the scattered ice lying about. “Oh, we have struck an iceberg,” he said, “that’s nothing; I shall go back and turn in,” and he actually went back to bed and slept for half an hour, until he was turned out to take his station at the boats.

The steerage passengers, who were berthed right aft, heard nothing and knew nothing until the news that an accident had happened began slowly to filter down to them. But there was no one in authority to give them any official news, and for a time they were left to wonder and speculate as they chose. Forward, however, it became almost immediately apparent to certain people that there was something grievously wrong; firemen on their way through the passage along the ship’s bottom leading between their quarters and No. 1 stokehold found water coming in, and rapidly turned back. They were met on their way up the staircase by an officer who asked them what they were doing. They told him. “There’s water coming into our place, Sir,” they said; and as he thought they were off duty he did not turn them back.

Mr. Andrews, a partner in Harland and Wolff’s, and one of the Titanic’s designers, had gone quietly down by himself to investigate the damage, and, great as was his belief in the giant he had helped to create, it must have been shaken when he found the water pouring into her at the rate of hundreds of tons a minute. Even his confidence in those mighty steel walls that stretched one behind the other in succession along the whole length of the ship could not have been proof against the knowledge that three or four of them had been pierced by the long rip of the ice-tooth. There was just a chance that she would hold up long enough to allow of relief to arrive in time; but it is certain that from that moment Mr. Andrews devoted himself to warning people, and helping to get them away, so far as he could do so without creating a panic.

Most of the passengers, remember, were still asleep during this half hour. One of the most terrible things possible at sea is a panic, and Captain Smith was particularly anxious that no alarm should be given before or unless it was absolutely necessary. He heard what Mr. Andrews had to say, and consulted with the engineer, and soon found that the whole of the ship’s bottom was being flooded. There were other circumstances calculated to make the most sanguine ship-master uneasy. Already, within half an hour, the Titanic was perceptibly down by the head. She would remain stationary for five minutes and then drop six inches or a foot; remain stationary again, and drop another foot—a circumstance ominous to experienced minds, suggesting that some of the smaller compartments forward were one by one being flooded, and letting the water farther and farther into her hull.

Therefore at about twenty-five minutes past midnight the Captain gave orders for the passengers to be called and mustered on the boat deck. All the ship’s crew had by this time been summoned to their various stations; and now through all the carpeted corridors, through the companion-ways and up and down staircases, leading to the steerage cabins, an army of three hundred stewards was hurrying, knocking loudly on doors, and shouting up and down the passages, “All passengers on deck with life-belts on!” The summons came to many in their sleep; and to some in the curtained firelight luxury of their deck state-rooms it seemed an order so absurd that they scorned it, and actually went back to bed again. These, however, were rare exceptions; for most people there was no mistaking the urgency of the command, even though they were slow to understand the necessity for it. And hurry is a thing easily communicated; seeing some passengers hastening out with nothing over their night clothes but a blanket or a wrapper, others caught the infection, and hurried too; and struggling with life-belts, clumsily attempting to adjust them over and under a curious assortment of garments, the passengers of the Titanic came crowding up on deck, for the first time fully alarmed.

X

When the people came on deck it was half-past twelve. The first-class passengers came pouring up the two main staircases and out on to the boat deck—some of them indignant, many of them curious, some few of them alarmed. They found there everything as usual except that the long deck was not quite level; it tilted downwards a little towards the bow, and there was a slight list towards the starboard side. The stars were shining in the sky and the sea was perfectly smooth, although dotted about it here and there were lumps of dark-coloured ice, almost invisible against the background of smooth water. A long line of stewards was forming up beside the boats on either side—those solid white boats, stretching far aft in two long lines, that became suddenly invested with practical interest. Officers were shouting orders, seamen were busy clearing up the coils of rope attached to the davit tackles, fitting the iron handles to the winches by which the davits themselves were canted over from the inward position over the deck to the outward position over the ship’s side. Almost at the same time a rush of people began from the steerage quarters, swarming up stairways and ladders to reach this high deck hitherto sacred to the first-class passengers. At first they were held back by a cordon of stewards, but some broke through and others were allowed through, so that presently a large proportion of the ship’s company was crowding about the boat deck and the one immediately below it.

Then the business of clearing, filling, and lowering the boats was begun—a business quickly described, but occupying a good deal of time in the transaction. Mr. Murdoch, the Chief Officer, ordered the crews to the boats; and with some confusion different parties of stewards and sailors disentangled themselves from the throng and stood in their positions by each of the sixteen boats. Every member of the crew, when he signs on for a voyage in a big passenger ship, is given a number denoting which boat’s crew he belongs to. If there has been boat drill, every man knows and remembers his number; if, as in the case of the Titanic, there has been no boat drill, some of the men remember their numbers and some do not, the result being a certain amount of confusion. But at last a certain number of men were allotted to each boat, and began the business of hoisting them out.

First of all the covers had to be taken off and the heavy masts and sails lifted out of them. Ship’s boats appear very small things when one sees a line of them swinging high up on deck; but, as a matter of fact, they are extremely heavy, each of them the size of a small sailing yacht. Everything on the Titanic having been newly painted, everything was stiff and difficult to move. The lashings of the heavy canvas covers were like