How to Survive the Titanic

‘How far past Mr Ismay?’

‘I walked past him within a couple of feet of him.’

‘And he said nothing to you and you said nothing to him?’

‘I might have said “Good evening”. Beyond that I said nothing. I had work on; something else to do.’

‘Did he say anything else to you?’

‘Not that I know of. He may have said “Good evening”. Perhaps I said that, perhaps I did not. I do not remember.’

‘In a great peril like that, passing the managing director of the company that owned the ship, you passed him on the ship and you said “Good evening”?’

‘I would, as I would to any passenger I knew.’

‘And he passed you and said “Good evening”?’

‘I could not say. I say I may have said “Good evening” and may not, and he may have said it and he may not.’

‘I only want to know as well as you can recollect.’

‘I cannot say for certain.’

‘My recollection is that you said you did not speak to him.’

‘I am not certain. If I did speak, it was purely to say “Good evening” and nothing more and nothing less.’

‘How long was that after the collision?’

‘I think,’ said Lightoller, ‘you will find that in the testimony.’

‘I know I will find it there,’ said Smith, ‘but I want it again. Your recollection is just a little better today than it was the other day, and I would like to test it out a little.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Lightoller. ‘My mind was fresher on it then, perhaps, than it is now.’

According to Lightoller’s granddaughter, Louise Patten, the officer confided to his wife a very different version of events. What he told her was kept a ‘family secret’ for nearly a century. Following the collision, when he had gone to the bridge to ask if the blow was serious, Ismay had told the Captain to continue moving ‘Slow Ahead’.[4] The ship, which had stopped following the collision, now started up again and continued at a speed of around 5 or 6 knots until 12.15 a.m., when the Captain sent down the order to once more stop the engines. In pushing her forward, Lightoller believed, Captain Smith had allowed water to pour through the damaged hull at hundreds of tons a minute and to burst through six watertight compartments, one after another. Had the Titanic stood still, ‘the whole ship would have assumed a fairly acute and mighty uncomfortable angle, yet, even so, she would, in all probability have floated — at least for some considerable time, perhaps all day. Certainly sufficient time for everyone to be rescued.’¹⁵

We cannot know whether or not Ismay gave the Captain this order, but had he done so it would not have been an unreasonable suggestion, and nor would it have been out of character. He was confident that the Titanic was unsinkable and he wanted to avoid the adverse publicity of a damaged liner being needlessly towed to port. In his testimony, Lightoller described Ismay as silent and motionless on the Titanic and as incapable of action on the Carpathia. Ismay, too, presented himself as a man who said nothing, saw nothing and did nothing. But the reason for Ismay’s conflicts with his father, Wilton Oldham believed, was that Bruce was ‘quick thinking’, that he acted independently and made decisions without due consideration. In a crisis, when given a choice between action and inaction, Ismay was the sort of man who would always opt for action, but on a sinking ship standing still is a mark of heroism. As Kipling put it: ‘But to stand an’ be still to the Birken’ead drill is a damn tough bullet to chew… So they stood an’ was still to the Birken’ead drill, soldier an’ sailor too.’

‘An Ismay’, as journalists had noted of the family tendency, ‘never goes back’. For Bruce Ismay, keeping going was better than standing still;[5] advancing straight at the iceberg was better than trying to swerve around it; jumping into a lifeboat was better than remaining on the ship; pushing the wrong way on an oar was better than not rowing; returning to England was better than waiting around in New York; looking forward at the horizon was better than looking back at the sinking ship. Ismay, who never again rode a horse and rarely wore an overcoat after his father’s humiliations, can always be found shutting the cupboard door which contains the sea before continuing down the corridor. Jack Thayer described him in the doctor’s cabin on the Carpathia as ‘looking ahead with his fixed stare’, and when he was deciding whether or not to become president of the IMM, Ismay had told Sanderson: ‘I intend going slow, and giving the matter the most earnest and careful consideration.’ Was Ismay’s flaw that he acted too quickly, or too slowly?

It is easy to hear him give the order to Captain Smith to go ‘Slow Ahead’. Ismay’s refusal to believe that either the Olympic or the Titanic could sink as a result of a collision is apparent in a letter he sent on 7 March to the head of the Hamburg-America Packet Company. ‘The fact there is no graving dock in America which would accommodate the Olympic and the Titanic has given me much food for thought as to what would happen in the event of one of these vessels meeting with a serious accident in American waters.’¹⁶ It is also easy to hear the Captain — who lost control of the situation almost immediately — agreeing that to continue slowly was the right thing to do. ‘I cannot imagine’, Captain Smith had said of the Titanic, ‘any condition that would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.’ Why panic the passengers, most of whom were asleep, by stopping the ship? Because she had been running under a full head of steam, all eight exhausts would, Lightoller later said, start ‘kicking up a row that would have dwarfed the row of a thousand railway engines thundering through a culvert’.¹⁷ A few months earlier, had the Olympic not stayed afloat when he rammed her into the HMS Hawke? And here was the Titanic, also built like a battleship, but a thousand tons heavier.

Later, according to Lightoller’s granddaughter, ‘while they were still on the Carpathia, the chairman of the White Star Line had shown my grandfather where his duty lay. Due to certain exceptions in White Star Line’s limited liability insurance policy, Bruce Ismay had told him, if the company were found to be negligent it would be bankrupted and every job would be lost. Rightly or wrongly, my grandfather decided that it was his first duty to protect his employer and his fellow employees, and in his autobiography he made it clear that this was exactly what he had done.’¹⁸

But if Lightoller was keeping a secret it was because he needed also to protect himself. He had been at sea for twenty-five years; he was now thirty-eight — only three years younger than Captain Rostron — with a young family to feed and he wanted his own command. How would Lightoller, who was in bed at the time, have known that the Captain was going ‘Slow Ahead’ under Ismay’s orders? Perhaps Officer Boxhall had told him, in which case Ismay would have had to coerce Boxhall as well, but there is no suggestion that Ismay and Boxhall had any private contact whatever. And how possible is it that Ismay, dosed as he was with opiates and unable to think of anything beyond the need to delay the Cedric and replace his shoes, would have set in motion a full-scale operation of silencing the ship’s crew? The Titanic would have sunk in a matter of hours whether or not the Captain had gone Slow Ahead; it was wishful thinking on Lightoller’s part that had she stopped completely the ship might have remained afloat long enough for her passengers to be rescued.

But still, the suggestion remains. As Lawrence Beesley put it in an article for the New York Times on 29 April, in which he considered the evidence for and against Ismay’s control over the speed of the ship, ‘I admit the possibility, and there it must be left.’

Lightoller was followed to the stand by Quartermaster Robert Hichens, who had been at the wheel when the collision took place. Senator Smith knew that the White Star Line wanted Hichens out of the country; he had been one of the five subpoenaed men to be brought back from the Lapland in a US Navy pilot boat. Ismay and Lightoller listened closely as Hichens gave his evidence. He had gone to the wheel at 10 p.m. At 11.40 three gongs sounded from the lookout, followed by a telephone call ‘iceberg right ahead’. Murdoch rushed to the bridge and gave the order ‘hard-a-starboard’. Five minutes later the Captain entered the wheelhouse and saw, from the commutator on the front of the compass, that the ship had already listed five degrees. Why, asked Senator Smith, did you ‘put the ship to starboard, which I believe you said you did, just before the collision with the iceberg?’

‘I do not quite understand you, sir,’ replied Hichens.