A Night to Remember

Nobody answered. Lookout George Symons, in charge of the boat, made no move. Then, when the suggestion came again, Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon announced he didn’t think they should try; it would be dangerous; the boat would be swamped. With that, the subject was dropped. No. 1—twelve people in a boat made for forty— rowed on aimlessly in the dark.

In boat after boat the story was the same: a timid suggestion, a stronger refusal, nothing done. Of 1,600 people who went down on the Titanic, only thirteen were picked up by the eighteen boats that hovered nearby. Boat D hauled in Mr Frederick Hoyt because he planned it that way. Boat 4 rescued eight—not because it rowed back but because it was within reach. Only No. 14 returned to the scene. Why the others didn’t is part of the mystery of why trained men in identical situations should react so differently.

As the cries died away, the night became strangely peaceful. The Titanic, the agonizing suspense, was gone. The shock of what had happened, the confusion and excitement ahead, the realization that close friends were lost for ever had not yet sunk in. A curiously tranquil feeling came over many of those in the boats.

With the feeling of calm came loneliness. Lawrence Beesley wondered why the Titanic, even when mortally wounded, gave everyone a feeling of companionship and security that no lifeboat could replace. In No. 3, Elizabeth Shutes watched the shooting stars and thought to herself how insignificant the Titanic’s rockets must have looked, competing against nature. She tried to bury her loneliness by pretending she was back in Japan. Twice she had left there at night too, lonely and afraid, but everything came out all right in the end.

In boat 4, Miss Jean Gertrude Hippach also watched the shooting stars—she had never seen so many. She recalled a legend that every time there’s a shooting star, somebody dies.

Slowly—very slowly—life in the boats picked up again. Fourth Officer Boxhall started firing off green flares from boat 2. Somehow this brought people out of their trance, cheered them up too. It was hard to judge distance, and some thought the green flares were being fired by rescue ships on the horizon.

Oars squealed and splashed in the water, voices sang out as the boats hailed one another in the dark. Nos. 5 and 7 tied up together; so did Nos. 6 and 16. Boat 6 borrowed a stoker for extra rowing power. Other boats were drifting apart. Over a radius of four or five miles, eighteen little boats wandered about through the night or drifted together on a sea flat as a reservoir. A stoker in No. 13 thought of times he had spent on the Regent’s Park lake and blurted out, ‘It reminds me of a bloomin’ picnic!’

At times it did seem like a picnic—the small talk, the children under foot. Lawrence Beesley tried to tuck a blanket under the toes of a crying baby, and discovered that he and the lady holding the baby had close mutual friends in Clonmel, Ireland. Edith Russell amused another baby with her toy pig that played the ‘Maxixe’ whenever its tail was twisted. Hugh Woolner found himself feeding cookies to four-year-old Louis Navatril. Mrs John Jacob Astor lent a steerage woman a shawl to comfort her little daughter whimpering from the cold. The woman thanked Mrs Astor in Swedish, and wrapped the shawl around her little girl.

About this time Marguerite Frolicher was introduced to an important piece of picnic equipment. Still deathly seasick, she was noticed by a kindly gentleman sitting nearby. He pulled out a silver flask with a cup top and suggested a drink of brandy might help. She took the suggestion and was instantly cured. Perhaps it was the brandy, perhaps the novel experience—in all her twenty-two years, she had never seen a flask before, and she was fascinated.

But no picnic was ever so cold. Mrs Crosby shivered so hard in No. 5 that Third Officer Pitman wrapped a sail around her. A stoker in No. 6 sat beside Mrs Brown, his teeth chattering with the cold. Finally she wrapped her sable stole about his legs, tying the tails around his ankles. In No. 16 a man in white pyjamas looked so cold he reminded the other passengers of a snowman. Mrs Charlotte Collyer was so numb she toppled over in No. 14; her hair caught in an oarlock and a big tuft came out by the roots.

The crew did their best to make the women more comfortable. In No. 5 a sailor took off his stockings and gave them to Mrs Washington Dodge. When she looked up in startled gratitude, he explained, ‘I assure you, ma’am, they are perfectly clean, I just put them on this morning.’

In No. 13, fireman Beauchamp shivered in his thin jumpers, but he refused to take an extra coat offered him by an elderly lady, insisting it go to a young Irish girl instead. For the people in this boat there was additional relief from an unexpected quarter. When steward Ray left his cabin for the last time, he picked up six handkerchiefs lying in his trunk. Now he gave them out, telling people to tie a knot in each corner and turn them into caps. As a result, he recalls with pride, ‘six heads were crowned’.

Besides the cold, the number of lady oarsmen dispelled the picnic illusion. In No. 4, Mrs John B. Thayer rowed for five hours in water up to her shins. In No. 6 the irrepressible Mrs Brown organized the women, two to an oar. One held the oar in place, while the second did the pulling. In this way Mrs Brown, Mrs Meyer, Mrs Candee and others propelled the boat some three or four miles, in a hopeless effort to overtake the light that twinkled on the horizon most of the night.

Mrs Walter Douglas handled the tiller of boat 2. Boxhall, who was in charge, pulled an oar and helped to fire the green flares. Mrs J. Stuart White didn’t help to row No. 8, but she appointed herself a sort of signalman. She had a cane with a built-in electric light, and during most of the night she waved it fiercely about, alternately helping and confusing everyone.

In No. 8, Marie Young, Gladys Cherry, Mrs F. Joel Swift and others pulled at the oars. Mrs William R. Bucknell noted with pride that as she rowed next to the Countess of Rothes, further down the boat her maid was rowing next to the countess’s maid. Most of the night the countess handled the tiller. Seaman Jones, in charge, later explained to the Sphere why he put her there: ‘There was a woman in my boat as was a woman… When I saw the way she was carrying herself and heard the quiet determined way she spoke to the others, I knew she was more of a man than any we had on board.’ At the American investigation, perhaps lacking the guidance of the Press, Jones phrased it a little less elegantly: ‘She had a lot to say, so I put her to steering the boat.’

But there was no doubt how he felt. After the rescue Jones removed the numeral ‘8’ from the lifeboat, had it framed, and sent it to the countess to show his admiration.

As the night wore on, the early composure began to give way. In No. 3, Mrs Charles Hays hailed the boats that came near, searching for her husband. ‘Charles Hays, are you there?’ she would call over and over again. In No. 8 Senora de Satode Penasco screamed for her husband Victor, until the Countess of Rothes couldn’t stand it any longer. Turning the tiller over to her cousin Gladys Cherry, she slipped down beside the senora and spent the rest of the night rowing beside her, trying to cheer her up. In No. 6, Madame de Villiers constantly called for her son, who wasn’t even on the Titanic.

Gradually a good deal of squabbling broke out. The women in No. 3 bickered about trifles, while their husbands sat in embarrassed silence. Mrs Washington Dodge—who wanted to row back against the wishes of nearly everyone else in No. 5—grew so bitter that when No. 7 came by, she switched boats in mid-ocean. Maud Slocombe, the Titanic’s irrepressible masseuse, helped to bawl out a woman who kept setting off, of all things, an alarm clock in No. 11. Seaman Diamond, a tough ex-boxer in charge of No. 15, swore oaths that turned the night air even bluer.

Many of the arguments revolved around smoking. In 1912 tobacco was not yet the American cure-all for easing strain and tension, and the women in the boats were shocked. Miss Elizabeth Shutes begged two men sitting near her in No. 3 to stop smoking, but they kept on. To Mrs J. Stuart White it was a matter that still rankled at the investigation. When Senator Smith asked if she wished to mention anything bearing on the crew’s discipline, she exploded, ‘As we cut loose from the ship these stewards took out cigarettes and lighted them. On an occasion like that!’

In the more casual intimacy of boat 1, smoking was no problem. When Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon gave fireman Hendrickson a good cigar, neither of the women in the boat could very well object. Miss Francatelli was employed by Sir Cosmo’s wife, and Lady Duff Gordon was too sick to care. With her head down upon the oars and tackle, she vomited away the night.

But No. 1 had its squabbles too. Sir Cosmo and Mr C. E. Henry Stengel of Newark, New Jersey, didn’t get along very well. This might not have mattered in a crowded boat, but with only twelve people it was rather grating. According to Sir Cosmo, Mr Stengel kept shouting, ‘Boat ahoy!’ He also gave lookout Symons conflicting advice on where to steer. Nobody paid any attention, but he irritated Sir Cosmo so much that he finally asked Mr Stengel to keep quiet. Sir Cosmo was doubly annoyed when Mr Stengel later testified that ‘between Sir Cosmo and