A Night to Remember

need suffer the embarrassment of striking up a conversation with some handsome stranger, only to find he was Henry Sleeper Harper’s dragoman.

Or take the survivors’ arrival in New York. Mrs Astor was met by two automobiles, carrying two doctors, a trained nurse, a secretary and Vincent Astor. Mrs George Widener was met not by automobile but by a special train—consisting of a private Pullman, another car for ballast, and a locomotive. Mrs Charles Hays was met by a special train too, including two private cars and two coaches.

It was a reception in keeping with people who could afford as much as 4,350 dollars—and these were 1912 dollars—for a de luxe suite. A suite like this had even a private promenade deck, which figured out at something like forty dollars a front foot for six days.

This kind of life, of course, wasn’t open to everybody—in fact it would take Harold Bride, who made twenty dollars a month, eighteen years to earn enough to cross in style—so those who enjoyed it gradually became part of a remarkably tightly knit little group, which also seemed to vanish with the Titanic.

There was a wonderful intimacy about this little world of Edwardian rich. There was no flicker of surprise when they bumped into each other, whether at the Pyramids (a great favourite), the Cowes Regatta, or the springs at Baden-Baden. They seemed to get the same ideas at the same time, and one of these ideas was to make the maiden voyage of the largest ship in the world.

So the Titanic’s trip was more like a reunion than an ocean passage. It fascinated Mrs Henry B. Harris, wife of the theatrical producer, who certainly wasn’t part of this world. Twenty years later she still recalled with awe, ‘There was a spirit of camaraderie unlike any I had experienced on previous trips. No one consulted the passenger list, to judge from the air of good fellowship that prevailed among the cabin passengers. They met on deck as one big party.’

This group knew the crew almost as well as each other. It was the custom to cross with certain captains rather than on particular ships, and Captain Smith had a personal following which made him invaluable to the White Star Line. The captain repaid the patronage with little favours and privileges which kept them coming. On the last night John Jacob Astor got the bad news direct from Captain Smith before the general alarm, and others learned too.

But the other end of the bargain was to respect the privilege. Nobody took advantage of the captain’s confidence—hardly a man in the group was saved.

The stewards and waiters were on equally close terms with the group. They had often looked after the same passengers. They knew just what they wanted and how they liked things done. Every evening steward Samuel Etches would enter A-36 and lay out Thomas Andrews’ dress clothes just the way Mr Andrews liked. Then at 6.45 he would return and help Andrews dress. It happened all over the ship.

And when the Titanic was going down, it was with genuine affection that steward Etches made Mr Guggenheim wear his sweater… that steward Crawford laced Mr Stewart’s shoes… that second steward Dodd tipped off John B. Thayer that his wife was still on board, long after Thayer thought she had left. In the same spirit of devotion, dining-room steward Ray pushed Washington Dodge into boat 13—he had persuaded the Dodges to take the Titanic and now felt he had to see them through.

The group repaid this loyalty with an intimacy and affection they gave few of their less-known fellow passengers. In the Titanic’s last hours men like Ben Guggenheim and Martin Rothschild seemed to see more of their stewards than the other passengers.

The Titanic somehow lowered the curtain on this way of living. It never was the same again. First the war, then income tax, made sure of that.

With this lost world went some of its prejudices—especially a firm and loudly voiced opinion of the superiority of Anglo-Saxon courage. To the survivors all stowaways in the lifeboats were ‘Chinese’ or ‘Japanese’; all who jumped from the deck were ‘Armenians’, ‘Frenchmen’ or ‘Italians’.

‘There were various men passengers,’ declared steward Crowe at the US inquiry, ‘probably Italians, or some foreign nationality other than English or American, who attempted to rush the boats.’ Steward Crowe, of course, never heard the culprits speak and had no way of knowing who they were. At the inquiry things finally grew so bad that the Italian ambassador demanded and got an apology from Fifth Officer Lowe for using ‘Italian’ as a sort of synonym for ‘coward’.

In contrast, Anglo-Saxon blood could do no wrong. When Bride described the stoker’s attack on Phillips, some newspapers made the stoker a Negro for better effect. And in a story headlined, ‘Desirable Immigrants Lost’, the New York Sun pointed out that, along with the others, seventy-eight Finns were lost who might have done the country some good.

But along with the prejudices, some nobler instincts also were lost. Men would go on being brave, but never again would they be brave in quite the same way. These men on the Titanic had a touch—there was something about Ben Guggenheim changing to evening dress… about Howard Case flicking his cigarette as he waved to Mrs Graham… or even about Colonel Gracie panting along the decks, gallantly if ineffectually searching for Mrs Candee. Today nobody could carry off these little gestures of chivalry, but they did that night.

An air of noblesse oblige has vanished too. During the agonizing days of uncertainty in New York, the Astors, the Guggenheims and others like them were not content to sit by their phones or to send friends and retainers to the White Star Line offices. They went themselves. Not because it was the best way to get information, but because they felt they ought to be there in person.

Today families are as loyal as ever, but the phone would probably do. Few would insist on going themselves and braving the bedlam of the steamship office. Yet the others didn’t hesitate a minute. True, Vincent Astor did get better information than the rest—and some even spoke to General Manager Franklin himself—but the point is that these people didn’t merely keep in touch—they were there.

Overriding everything else, the Titanic also marked the end of a general feeling of confidence. Until then men felt they had found the answer to a steady, orderly, civilized life. For 100 years the Western world had been at peace. For 100 years technology had steadily improved. For 100 years the benefits of peace and industry seemed to be filtering satisfactorily through society. In retrospect, there may seem fewer grounds for confidence, but at the time most articulate people felt life was all right.

The Titanic woke them up. Never again would they be quite so sure of themselves. In technology especially, the disaster was a terrible blow. Here was the ‘unsinkable ship’—perhaps man’s greatest engineering achievement—going down the first time it sailed.

But it went beyond that. If this supreme achievement was so terribly fragile, what about everything else? If wealth meant so little on this cold April night, did it mean so much the rest of the year? Scores of ministers preached that the Titanic was a heaven-sent lesson to awaken people from their complacency, to punish them for top-heavy faith in material progress. If it was a lesson, it worked—people have never been sure of anything since.

The unending sequence of disillusionment that has followed can’t be blamed on the Titanic, but she was the first jar. Before the Titanic, all was quiet. Afterwards, all was tumult. That is why, to anybody who lived at the time, the Titanic more than any other single event marks the end of the old days, and the beginning of a new, uneasy era.

There was no time for such thoughts at 2.20 a.m., Monday 15 April 1912. Over the Titanic’s grave hung a thin, smoky vapour, soiling the clear night. The glassy sea was littered with crates, deck chairs, planking, pilasters and cork-like rubbish that kept bobbing to the surface from somewhere now far below.

Hundreds of swimmers thrashed the water, clinging to the wreckage and each other. Steward Edward Brown, gasping for breath, dimly noticed a man tearing at his clothes. Third-class passenger Olaus Abelseth felt a man’s arm clamp around his neck. Somehow he wriggled loose, spluttering, ‘Let go!’ But the man grabbed him again, and it took a vigorous kick to free himself for good.

If it wasn’t the people, it was the sea itself that broke a man’s resistance. The temperature of the water was twenty-eight degrees—well below freezing. To Second Officer Lightoller it felt like ‘a thousand knives’ driven into his body. In water like this, lifebelts did no good.

Yet a few dozen managed to keep both their wits and their stamina. For these, two hopes of safety loomed