A Night to Remember

Of these two techniques for abandoning ship, Thayer’s was the one that worked.

The wave never reached Olaus Abelseth. Standing by the fourth funnel, he was too far back. Instead of plunging under, this part of the ship was swinging higher and higher.

As she swung up, Abelseth heard a popping and cracking… a series of muffled thuds… the crash of glassware… the clatter of deck chairs sliding down.

The slant of the deck grew so steep that people could no longer stand. So they fell, and Abelseth watched them slide down into the water right on the deck. Abelseth and his relatives hung on by clinging to a rope in one of the davits.

‘We’d better jump or the suction will take us down,’ his brother-in-law urged.

‘No,’ said Abelseth. ‘We won’t jump yet. We ain’t got much show anyhow, so we might as well stay as long as we can.’

‘We must jump off!’ the cry came again, but Abelseth held firm: ‘No, not yet.’

Minutes later, when the water was only 5 feet away, the three men finally jumped, holding each other’s hands. They came spluttering to the surface, Abelseth hopelessly snarled in some rope from somewhere. He had to free his hands to untangle the line, and his cousin and brother-in-law were washed away. Somehow he got loose, but he said to himself, ‘I’m a goner.’

In the maelstrom of ropes, deck chairs, planking and wildly swirling water, nobody knew what happened to most of the people. From the boats they could be seen clinging like little swarms of bees to deck houses, winches and ventilators as the stern rose higher. Close in, it was hard to see what was happening, even though— incredibly—the lights still burned, casting a sort of murky glow.

In the stories told later, Archie Butt had a dozen different endings—all gallant, none verified. According to one newspaper, Miss Marie Young, music teacher to Teddy Roosevelt’s children, remembered him calling, ‘Good- bye, Miss Young, remember me to the folks back home.’ Yet the papers also reported Miss Young as saying she saw the iceberg an hour before the crash.

In an interview attributed to Mrs Henry B. Harris, Archie Butt was described as a pillar of strength, using his fists here—a big brother approach there—to handle the weaklings. Yet Lightoller, Gracie and the others working on the boats never saw him at all. When Mrs Walter Douglas recalled him near boat 2 around 1.45, he was standing quietly off to one side.

It was the same with John Jacob Astor. Barber August H. Weikman described his last moments with the great millionaire. It was a conversation full of the kind of small talk that normally takes place only in the barber’s chair. And even more trite: ‘I asked him if he minded shaking hands with me. He said, “With pleasure” …’ Yet, barber Weikman also said he left the ship at 1.50, a good half-hour earlier.

Butt’s and Astor’s endings were described in a single story attributed to Washington Dodge, the San Francisco assessor : ‘They went down standing on the bridge, side by side. I could not mistake them,’ the papers had him saying. Yet Dr Dodge was in boat 13, a good half-mile away.

Nor did anyone really know what happened to Captain Smith. People later said he shot himself, but there’s not a shred of evidence. Just before the end steward Edward Brown saw him walk on to the bridge, still holding his megaphone. A minute later trimmer Hemmings wandered on to the bridge and found it empty. After the Titanic sank, fireman Harry Senior saw him in the water holding a child. Pieced together, this picture, far more than suicide, fits the kind of fighter who once said: ‘In a way, a certain amount of wonder never leaves me, especially as I observe from the bridge a vessel plunging up and down in the trough of the sea, fighting her way through and over great waves. A man never outgrows that.’

Seen and unseen, the great and the unknown tumbled together in a writhing heap as the bow plunged deeper and the stern rose higher. The strains of ‘Autumn’ were buried in a jumble of falling musicians and instruments. The lights went out, flashed on again, went out for good. A single kerosene lantern still flickered high in the after mast.

The muffled thuds and tinkle of breaking glass grew louder. A steady roar thundered across the water as everything movable broke loose.

There has never been a mixture like it—twenty-nine boilers… the jewelled copy of The Rubaiyat… 800 cases of shelled walnuts… 15,000 bottles of ale and stout… huge anchor chains (each link weighed 175 pounds)… thirty cases of golf clubs and tennis rackets for A. G. Spalding… Eleanor Widener’s trousseau… tons of coal… Major Peuchen’s tin box… 30,000 fresh eggs… dozens of potted palms… five grand pianos… a little mantel clock in B-38… the massive silver duck press.

And still it grew—tumbling trellises, ivy pots and wicker chairs in the Cafe Parisien… shuffleboard sticks… the fifty-phone switchboard… two reciprocating engines and the revolutional low-pressure turbine… eight dozen tennis balls for R. F. Downey & Co., a cask of china for Tiffany’s, a case of gloves for Marshall Field… the remarkable ice-making machine on G deck… Billy Carter’s new French Renault… the Ryersons’ sixteen trunks, beautifully packed by Victorine.

As the tilt grew steeper, the forward funnel toppled over. It struck the water on the starboard side with a shower of sparks and a crash heard above the general uproar. Greaser Walter Hurst, struggling in the swirling sea, was half blinded by soot. He got off lucky—other swimmers were crushed under tons of steel But the falling funnel was a blessing to Lightoller, Bride and others now clinging to overturned collapsible B. It just missed the boat, washing it thirty yards clear of the plunging, twisting hull.

The Titanic was now absolutely perpendicular. From the third funnel after, she stuck straight up in the air, her three dripping propellers glistening even in the darkness. To Lady Duff Gordon she seemed a black finger pointing at the sky. To Harold Bride she looked like a duck that goes down for a dive.

Out in the boats, they could hardly believe their eyes. For over two hours they had watched, hoping against hope, as the Titanic sank lower and lower. When the water reached her red and green running lights, they knew the end was near… but nobody dreamed it would be like this—the unearthly din, the black hull hanging at ninety degrees, the Christmas card backdrop of brilliant stars.

Some didn’t watch. In collapsible C, President Bruce Ismay bent low over his oar—he couldn’t bear to see her go down. In boat 1, C. E. Henry Stengel turned his back: ‘I cannot look any longer.’ In No. 4, Elizabeth Eustis buried her face.

Two minutes passed, the noise finally stopped, and the Titanic settled back slightly at the stern. Then slowly she began sliding under, moving at a steep slant. As she glided down, she seemed to pick up speed. When the sea closed over the flagstaff on her stern, she was moving fast enough to cause a slight gulp.

‘She’s gone; that’s the last of her,’ someone sighed to lookout Lee in boat 13. ‘It’s gone,’ Mrs Ada Clark vaguely heard somebody say in No. 4. But she was so cold she didn’t pay much attention. Most of the other women were the same—they just sat dazed, dumbfounded, without showing any emotion. In No. 5, Third Officer Pitman looked at his watch and announced, ‘It is 2.20.’

Ten miles away on the Californian, Second Officer Stone and apprentice Gibson watched the strange ship slowly disappear. She had fascinated them almost the whole watch—the way she kept firing rockets, the odd way she floated in the water. Gibson remarked that he certainly didn’t think the rockets were being sent up for fun. Stone agreed: ‘A ship is not going to fire rockets at sea for nothing.’

By two o’clock the stranger’s light seemed very low on the horizon, and the two men felt she must be steaming away. ‘Call the captain,’ Stone ordered, ‘and tell him that the ship is disappearing in the south-west and that she has fired altogether eight rockets.’

Gibson marched into the chart room and gave the message. Captain Lord looked up sleepily from his couch: ‘Were they all white rockets?’

Gibson said yes, and Lord asked the time. Gibson replied it was 2.05 by the wheelhouse clock. Lord rolled over, and Gibson went back to the bridge.

At 2.20 Stone decided that the other ship was definitely gone, and at 2.40 he felt he ought to tell the captain himself. He called the news down the speaking tube and resumed studying the empty night.

7. ‘There is Your Beautiful Nightdress Gone’