A Night to Remember

George Q. Clifford of Boston had the rueful satisfaction of remembering that he took out 50,000 dollars’ extra life insurance just before the trip.

For Isidor Straus there was the irony of his will. A special paragraph urged Mrs Straus to ‘be a little selfish; don’t always think only of others.’ Through the years she had been so self-sacrificing that he especially wanted her to enjoy life after he was gone. Now the very qualities he admired so much meant he could never have his wish.

Little things too could return to haunt a person at a time like this. Edith Evans remembered a fortune-teller who once told her to ‘beware of the water’. William T. Stead was nagged by a dream about somebody throwing cats out of a top-storey window. Charles Hays had prophesied just a few hours earlier that the time would soon come for ‘the greatest and most appalling of all disasters at sea’.

Two men perhaps wondered why they were there at all. Archie Butt hadn’t wanted to go abroad, but he needed a rest; and Frank Millet had badgered President Taft into sending Butt with a message to the Pope—official business but spring in Rome, too. Chief Officer Wilde didn’t plan to be on board either. He was regularly on the Olympic, but the White Star Line transferred him at the last minute for this one voyage. They thought his experience would be useful in breaking in the new ship. Wilde had considered it a lucky development.

In the wireless shack Phillips struggled to keep the set going. At 2.10 he sounded two V’s—heard faintly by the Virginian—as he tried to adjust the spark for better results. Bride made a last inspection tour. He returned to find that a fainting lady had been carried into the shack. Bride got her a chair and a glass of water, and she sat gasping while her husband fanned her. She came to, and the man took her away.

Bride went behind the curtain where he and Phillips slept. He gathered up all the loose money, took a last look at his rumpled bunk, pushed through the curtain again. Phillips still sat hunched over the set, completely absorbed. But a stoker was now in the room, gently unfastening Phillips’ life jacket.

Bride leaped at the stoker, Phillips jumped up and the three men wrestled around the shack. Finally Bride wrapped his arms about the stoker’s waist, and Phillips swung again and again until the man slumped unconscious in Bride’s arms.

A minute later they heard the sea gurgling up the A deck companionway and washing over the bridge. Phillips cried, ‘Come on, let’s clear out!’ Bride dropped the stoker, and the two men ran out on to the boat deck. The stoker lay still where he fell.

Phillips disappeared aft. Bride walked forward and joined the men on the roof of the officers’ quarters who were trying to free collapsibles A and B. It was a ridiculous place to stow boats—especially when there were only twenty for 2,207 people. With the deck slanting like this, it had been hard enough launching C and D, the two collapsibles stowed right beside the forward davits. It was impossible to do much with A and B.

But the crew weren’t discouraged. If the boats couldn’t be launched, they could perhaps be floated off. So they toiled on—Lightoller, Murdoch, trimmer Hemming, steward Brown, greaser Hurst, a dozen others.

On the port side Hemming struggled with the block and tackle for boat B. If he could only iron out a kink in the fall, he was sure it could still be launched. He finally got the lines working, passed the block up to Sixth Officer Moody on the roof, but Moody shouted back, ‘We don’t want the block; we’ll leave the boat on the deck.’

Hemming saw no chance of clearing boat B this way; so he jumped and swam for it. Meanwhile the boat was pushed to the edge of the roof and slid down on some oars to the deck. It landed upside down.

On the starboard side they were having just as much trouble with boat A. Somebody propped planks against the wall of the officers’ quarters, and they eased the boat down bow first. But they were still a long way from home, for the Titanic was now listing heavily to port, and they couldn’t push the boat ‘uphill’ to the edge of the deck.

The men were tugging at both collapsibles when the bridge dipped under at 2.15 and the sea rolled aft along the boat deck. Colonel Gracie and Clinch Smith turned and headed for the stern. A few steps, and they were blocked by a sudden crowd of men and women pouring up from below. They all seemed to be steerage passengers.

At this moment bandmaster Hartley tapped his violin. The ragtime ended, and the strains of the Episcopal hymn ‘Autumn’ flowed across the deck and drifted in the still night far out over the water.

In the boats women listened with wonder. From a distance there was an agonizing stateliness about the moment. Close up, it was different. Men could hear the music, but they paid little attention. Too much was happening.

‘Oh, save me! Save me!’ cried a woman to Peter Daly, Lima representative of the London firm Haes and Sons, as he watched the water roll on to the deck where he stood.

‘Good lady,’ he answered, ‘save yourself. Only God can save you now.’

But she begged him to help her make the jump, and on second thoughts he realized he couldn’t shed the problem so easily. Quickly he took her by the arm and helped her overboard. As he jumped himself, a big wave came sweeping along the boat deck, washing him clear of the ship.

The sea foamed and swirled around steward Brown’s feet as he sweated to get boat A to the edge of the deck. Then he realized he needn’t try any longer—the boat was floating off. He jumped in… cut the stern lines… yelled for someone to free the bow… and in the next instant was washed out by the same wave that swept off Peter Daly.

Down, down dipped the Titanic’s bow, and her stern swung slowly up. She seemed to be moving forward too. It was this motion which generated the wave that hit Daly, Brown and dozens of others as it rolled aft.

Lightoller watched the wave from the roof of the officers’ quarters. He saw the crowds retreating up the deck ahead of it. He saw the nimbler ones keep clear, the slower ones overtaken and engulfed. He knew that this kind of retreat just prolonged the agony. He turned and, facing the bow, dived in. As he reached the surface, he saw just ahead of him the crow’s-nest, now level with the water. Blind instinct seized him, and for a moment he swam towards it as a place of safety.

Then he snapped to and tried to swim clear of the ship. But the sea was pouring down the ventilators just in front of the forward funnel, and he was sucked back and held against the wire grating of an air shaft. He prayed it would hold. And he wondered how long he could last, pinned this way to the grating.

He never learned the answer. A blast of hot air from somewhere deep below came rushing up the ventilator and blew him to the surface. Gasping and spluttering, he finally paddled clear.

Harold Bride kept his head too. As the wave swept by, he grabbed an oarlock of collapsible B, which was still lying upside down on the boat deck near the first funnel. The boat, Bride and a dozen others were washed off together. The collapsible was still upside down, and Bride found himself struggling underneath it.

Colonel Gracie was not as sea-wise. He stayed in the crowd and jumped with the wave—it was almost like Newport. Rising on the crest, he caught the bottom rung of the iron railing on the roof of the officers’ quarters. He hauled himself up and lay on his stomach right at the base of the second funnel.

Before he could rise, the roof too had dipped under. Gracie found himself spinning round and round in a whirlpool of water. He tried to cling to the railing, then realized this was pulling him down deeper. With a mighty kick he pushed himself free and swam clear of the ship, far below the surface.

Chef John Collins couldn’t do much of anything about the wave. He had a baby in his arms. For five minutes he and a deck steward had been trying to help a steerage woman with two children. First they heard there was a boat on the port side. They ran there and heard it was on the starboard side. When they got there, somebody said their best chance was to head for the stern. Bewildered, they were standing undecided—Collins holding one of the babies—when they were all swept overboard by the wave. He never saw the others again, and the child was washed out of his arms.

Jack Thayer and Milton Long saw the wave coming too. They were standing by the starboard rail opposite the second funnel, trying to keep clear of the crowds swarming towards the stern. Instead of making for a higher point, they felt the time had come to jump and swim for it. They shook hands and wished each other luck. Long put his legs over the rail, while Thayer straddled it and began unbuttoning his overcoat. Long, hanging over the side and holding the rail with his hands, looked up at Thayer and asked, ‘You’re coming, boy?’

‘Go ahead, I’ll be right with you,’ Thayer reassured him.

Long slid down, facing the ship. Ten seconds later Thayer swung his other leg over the rail and sat facing out. He was about 10 feet above the water. Then with a push he jumped out as far as he could.