A Night to Remember

About 1.45 he saw, of all people, gentle old Dr O’Loughlin poking around. It never occurred to Joughin to wonder what the old gentleman was doing way down here, but the proximity of the pantry suggests that Joughin and the doctor were thinking along similar lines.

In any case, Joughin greeted him briefly, then went back up to the boat deck. None too soon, for the Titanic was listing heavily now, and the slant was much steeper. Any longer, and the stairs might have been impossible.

Though all the boats were gone, Joughin was anything but discouraged. He went down to B deck and began throwing deck chairs through the windows of the enclosed promenade. Others watched him, but they didn’t help. Altogether he pitched about fifty chairs overboard.

It was tiring work; so after he lugged the last chair to the edge and squeezed it through the window (it was a little like threading a needle), Joughin retired to the pantry on the starboard side of A deck. It was 2.10.

As he quenched his thirst—this time it was water—he heard a kind of crash, as though something had buckled. The pantry cups and saucers flew about him, the lights glowed red, and overhead he heard the pounding of feet running aft.

He bolted out of the pantry towards the stern end of A deck, just behind a swarm of people, running the same way and clambering down from the boat deck above. He kept out of the crush as much as possible and ran along in the rear of the crowd. He vaulted down the steps to B deck, then to the well deck. Just as he got there, the Titanic gave a sickening twist to port, throwing most of the people into a huge heap along the port rail.

Only Joughin kept his balance. Alert but relaxed, his equilibrium was marvellous, as the stern rose higher and corkscrewed to port. The deck was now listing too steeply to stand on, and Joughin slipped over the starboard rail and stood on the actual side of the ship. He worked his way up the side, still holding on to the rail—but from the outside—until he reached the white-painted steel plates of the poop deck. He now stood on the rounded stern end of the ship, which had swung high in the air some 150 feet above the water.

Joughin casually tightened his lifebelt. Then he glanced at his watch—it said 2.15. As an afterthought, he took it off and stuck it into his hip pocket. He was beginning to puzzle over his position when he felt the stern beginning to drop under his feet—it was like taking an elevator. As the sea closed over the stern, Joughin stepped off into the water. He didn’t even get his head wet.

He paddled off into the night, little bothered by the freezing water. For over an hour he bobbed about, moving his arms and legs just enough to keep upright. ‘No trick at all,’ he explains cheerfully today.

It was four o’clock when he saw what he thought was wreckage in the first grey light of day. He swam over and discovered it was the upturned collapsible B.

The keel was crowded and he couldn’t climb on, so he hung around for a while until he spied an old friend from the kitchen—entree chef John Maynard. Blood proved thicker than water; Maynard held out his hand and Joughin hung on, treading water, still thoroughly insulated.

The others didn’t notice him… partly because they were too numb to care, partly because all eyes now scanned the south-east horizon. It was just after 3.30 when they first saw it—a distant flash followed by a far-off boom. In boat 6, Miss Norton cried, ‘There’s a flash of lightning!’ while Hitchens growled, ‘It’s a falling star!’ In No. 13 a stoker lying in the bottom, almost unconscious from the cold, bolted up, shouting, ‘That was cannon!’

In No. 8, seaman Jones hardly dared believe his eyes. Turning to the Countess of Rothes, rowing next to him, he whispered, ‘Can you see any lights? Look on the next wave we top, but don’t say anything in case I am wrong.’

As the boat heaved up on the next swell, the countess scanned the horizon. Far off, she saw a dim light. A few moments later there was no doubt about it, and they told the others.

The single light grew brighter; then another appeared; then row after row. A big steamer was pounding up, firing rockets to reassure the Titanic’s people that help was on the way. In No. 9, deck hand Paddy McGough suddenly thundered, ‘Let us all pray to God, for there is a ship on the horizon and it’s making for us!’

The men in boat B let out a yelp of joy and started babbling again. Someone lit a newspaper in No. 3 and waved it wildly, then Mrs Davidson’s straw hat—it would burn longer. In Mrs A. S. Jerwan’s boat they dipped handkerchiefs in kerosene and lit them as signals. In No. 13 they twisted a paper torch out of letters. Boxhall burned a last green flare in boat 2. In No. 8, Mrs White swung her electric cane as never before.

Over the water floated cheers and yells of relief. Even nature seemed pleased, as the dreary night gave way to the mauve and coral of a beautiful dawn.

Not everyone saw it. In half-swamped boat A, Olaus Abelseth tried to kindle the will to live in a half-frozen man lying beside him. As day broke, he took the man’s shoulder and raised him up, so that he was sitting on the floorboards. ‘Look!’ pleaded Abelseth, ‘we can see a ship now; brace up!’

He took one of the man’s hands and raised it. Then he shook the man’s shoulder. But the man only said, ‘Who are you?’ And a minute later, ‘Let me be… who are you?’

Abelseth held him up for a while; but it was such a strain, he finally had to use a board as a prop. Half an hour later the sky blazed with thrilling, warm shades of pink and gold, but now it was too late for the man to know.

9. ‘We’re Going North Like Hell’

Mrs Anne Crain puzzled over the cheerful smell of coffee brewing as she lay in her cabin on the Cunarder Carpathia, bound from New York to the Mediterranean. It was nearly 1.00 a.m. on the fourth night out, and by now Mrs Crain knew the quiet little liner well enough to feel that any sign of activity after midnight was unusual, let alone coffee brewing.

Down the corridor Miss Ann Peterson lay awake in her bunk too. She wondered why the lights were turned on all over the ship—normally the poky Carpathia was shut down by now.

Mr Howard M. Chapin was more worried than puzzled. He lay in the upper berth of his cabin on A deck—his face just a few inches below the boat deck above. Some time after midnight a strange sound suddenly woke him up. It was a man kneeling down on the deck, directly over his head. The day before, he had noticed a lifeboat fall tied to a cleat just about there; now he felt sure the man was unfastening the boat and something was wrong.

Nearby, Mrs Louis M. Ogden awoke to a cold cabin and a speeding ship. Hearing loud noises overhead, she too decided something must be wrong. She shook her sleeping husband. His diagnosis didn’t reassure her—the noise was the crew breaking out the chocks from the lifeboats overhead. He opened the stateroom door and saw a line of stewards carrying blankets and mattresses. Not very reassuring either.

Here and there, all over the ship, the light sleepers listened restlessly to muffled commands, tramping feet, creaking davits. Some wondered about the engines—they were pounding so much harder, so much faster than usual. The mattress jiggled wildly… the washstand tumblers rattled loudly in the brackets… the woodwork groaned with the strain. A turn of the tap produced only cold water—a twist on the heater knob brought no results—the engines seemed to be feeding on every ounce of steam.

Strangest of all was the bitter cold. The Carpathia had left New York on 11 April, bound for Gibraltar, Genoa, Naples, Trieste and Fiume. Her 150 first-class passengers were mostly elderly Americans following the sun in this pre-Florida era; her 575 steerage passengers were mostly Italians and Slavs returning to their sunny Mediterranean. All of them welcomed the balmy breeze of the Gulf Stream that Sunday afternoon. Towards five o’clock it grew so warm that Mr Chapin shifted his deck chair to the shade. Now there was an amazing change—the frigid blast that swept through every crack and seam felt like the Arctic.

On the bridge, Captain Arthur H. Rostron wondered whether he had overlooked anything. He had been at sea for twenty-seven years—with Cunard for seventeen—but this was only his second year as a Cunard skipper and only his third month on the Carpathia. The Titanic’s call for help was his first real test.

When the CQD arrived, Rostron had already turned in for the night. Harold Cottam, the Carpathia’s operator, rushed the message to First Officer Dean on the bridge. They both