A Night to Remember

shower of bright white stars floated down towards the sea. In the blue-white light Fifth Officer Lowe remembered catching a glimpse of Bruce Ismay’s startled face.

Ten miles away, apprentice James Gibson stood on the bridge of the Californian. The strange ship that came up from the east had not moved for an hour, and Gibson studied her with interest. With glasses he could make out her side lights and a glare of lights on her afterdeck. At one point he thought she was trying to signal the Californian with her Morse lamp. He tried to answer with his own lamp, but soon gave up. He decided the stranger’s masthead light was merely flickering.

Second Officer Herbert Stone, pacing the Californian’s bridge, also kept his eye on this strange steamer. At 12.45 he saw a sudden flash of white light burst over her. Strange, he thought, that a ship would fire rockets at night.

4. ‘You Go and I’ll Stay a While’

Second-class passenger Lawrence Beesley considered himself the rankest landlubber, but even he knew what rockets meant. The Titanic needed help—needed it so badly she was calling on any ship near enough to see.

The others on the boat deck understood too. There was no more joking or lingering. In fact, there was hardly time to say good-bye.

‘It’s all right, little girl,’ called Dan Marvin to his new bride; ‘you go and I’ll stay a while.’ He blew her a kiss as she entered the boat.

‘I’ll see you later,’ Adolf Dyker smiled as he helped Mrs Dyker across the gunwale.

‘Be brave; no matter what happens, be brave,’ Dr W. T. Minahan told Mrs Minahan as he stepped back with the other men.

Mr Turrell Cavendish said nothing to Mrs Cavendish. Just a kiss… a long look… another kiss… and he disappeared into the crowd.

Mark Fortune took his wife’s valuables, as he and his son Charles saw off Mrs Fortune and their three daughters. ‘I’ll take care of them; we’re going in the next boat,’ he explained.

‘Charles, take care of Father,’ one of the girls called back to her brother.

‘Walter, you must come with me,’ begged Mrs Walter D. Douglas.

‘No,’ Mr Douglas replied, turning away, ‘I must be a gentleman.’

‘Try and get off with Major Butt and Mr Moore,’ came a final bit of wifely advice. ‘They are big, strong fellows and will surely make it.’

On the fringe of the crowd stood a young Spanish honeymoon couple. Senor Victor de Satode Penasco was just eighteen years old and his bride only seventeen. Neither could understand English. As they watched in bewilderment, the Countess of Rothes spied them and hurried over. A few hurried words in French… then Senor Penasco delivered his bride to the countess’s care and stepped back into the shadows.

Some of the wives still refused to go. Mr and Mrs Edgar Meyer of New York felt so self-conscious arguing about it in public that they went down to their cabin. There, they decided to part on account of their baby.

Arthur Ryerson had to lay down the law to Mrs Ryerson: ‘You must obey orders. When they say “Women and children to the boats,” you must go when your turn comes. I’ll stay here with Jack Thayer. We’ll be all right.’

Alexander T. Compton Jr was just as firm when his mother announced she would stay rather than leave him behind: ‘Don’t be foolish, Mother. You and Sister go in the boat—I’ll look out for myself.’

Mr and Mrs Lucien Smith were having the same kind of argument. Seeing Captain Smith standing near with a megaphone, Mrs Smith had an inspiration. She went up to him, explained she was all alone in the world, and asked if her husband could go along with her. The old captain ignored her, lifted his megaphone and shouted, ‘Women and children first!’

At this point Mr Smith broke in: ‘Never mind, Captain, about that; I’ll see she gets in the boat.’ Turning to his wife, he spoke very slowly: ‘I never expected to ask you to obey, but this is one time you must. It is only a matter of form to have women and children first. The ship is thoroughly equipped and everyone on her will be saved.’

Mrs Smith asked him if he was being completely truthful. Mr Smith gave a firm, decisive ‘Yes’. So they kissed good-bye, and as the boat dropped to the sea, he called from the deck, ‘Keep your hands in your pockets; it is very cold weather.’

Sometimes it took more than gentle deception. Mrs Emil Taussig was clinging to her husband when No. 8 started down with her daughter. Mrs Taussig turned and cried, ‘Ruth!’ The brief distraction proved enough: two men tore her from Mr Taussig and dropped her into the lowering boat.

A seaman yanked Mrs Charlotte Collyer by the arm, another by her waist, and they dragged her from her husband Harvey. As she kicked to get free, she heard him call, ‘Go, Lottie! For God’s sake, be brave and go! I’ll get a seat in another boat!’

When Celiney Yasbeck saw she had to go alone, she began yelling and crying to rejoin Mr Yasbeck, but the boat dropped to the sea while she tried in vain to get out.

No amount of persuasion or force could move Mrs Hudson J. Allison of Montreal. A little apart from the rest, she huddled close to Mr Allison. Their baby Trevor had gone in a boat with the nurse, but Lorraine, their three- year-old daughter, still tugged at her mother’s skirt.

Mrs Isidor Straus also refused to go: ‘I’ve always stayed with my husband; so why should I leave him now?’

They had indeed come a long way together: the ashes of the Confederacy… the small china business in Philadelphia… building Macy’s into a national institution… Congress… and now the happy twilight that crowned successful life—advisory boards, charities, hobbies, travel. This winter they had been to Cap Martin, and the Titanic’s maiden voyage had seemed a pleasant way to finish the trip.

Tonight the Strauses came on deck with the others, and at first Mrs Straus seemed uncertain what to do. At one point she handed some small jewellery to her maid Ellen Bird, then took it back again. Later she crossed the boat deck and almost entered No. 8—then turned around and rejoined Mr Straus. Now her mind was made up: ‘We have been living together for many years. Where you go, I go.’

Archibald Gracie, Hugh Woolner, other friends tried in vain to make her go. Then Woolner turned to Mr Straus: ‘I’m sure nobody would object to an old gentleman like you getting in …’

‘I will not go before the other men,’ he said, and that was that. Mrs Straus tightened her grasp on his arm, patted it, smiled up at him, and smiled at the group hovering around them. Then they sat down together on a pair of deck chairs.

But most of the women entered the boats—wives escorted by their husbands, single ladies by the men who had volunteered to look after them. This was the era when gentlemen formally offered their services to ‘unprotected ladies’ at the start of an Atlantic voyage. Tonight the courtesy came in handy.

Mrs William T. Graham, nineteen-year-old Margaret and her governess Miss Shutes were helped into boat 8 by Howard Case, London manager of Vacuum Oil, and young Washington Augustus Roebling, the steel heir who was striking out on his own as manager of the Mercer Automobile Works in Trenton, New Jersey. As No. 8 dropped to the sea, Mrs Graham watched Case, leaning against the rail, light a cigarette and wave good-bye.

Mrs E. D. Appleton, Mrs R. C. Cornell, Mrs J. Murray Brown and Miss Edith Evans, returning from a family funeral in Britain, were under Colonel Gracie’s wing, but somehow in the crowd he lost them, and it wasn’t until much later that he found them again.

Perhaps the colonel was distracted by his simultaneous efforts to look after Mrs Churchill Candee, his table companion in the dining-saloon. Mrs Candee was returning from Paris to see her son, who had suffered the novelty of an aeroplane accident, and she must have been attractive indeed. Just about everybody wanted to protect her.

When Edward A. Kent, another table companion, found her after the crash, she gave him an ivory miniature of her mother for safekeeping. Then Hugh Woolner and Bjornstrom Steffanson arrived and helped her into boat 6. Woolner waved good-bye, assuring her that they would help her on board again when the