Titanic called CQD, reported striking an iceberg, and asked for help immediately. Then another message that the liner was down at the head and putting the women off in boats. Then silence.
The news was in time for the first morning editions—but barely. No leeway for double-checking: only time to decide how to handle it. The story seemed fantastic. Yet there it was. The editors nibbled gingerly; the Herald’s headline was typical:
THE NEW TITANIC STRIKES ICE AND CALLS FOR AID. VESSELS RUSH TO HER SIDE Only The Times went out on a limb. The long silence after the first few messages convinced managing editor Carr Van Anda that she was gone. So he took a flyer—early editions reported the Titanic sinking and the women off in lifeboats; the last edition said she had sunk.
By 8.00 a.m. newsmen were storming the White Star Line offices at 9 Broadway. Vice-President Philip A. S. Franklin made light of the reports: even if the Titanic had hit ice, she could float indefinitely. ‘We place absolute confidence in the Titanic. We believe that the boat is unsinkable.’
But at the same time he was frantically wiring Captain Smith: ‘Anxiously await information and probable disposition of passengers.’
By mid-morning friends and relatives of the Titanic’s passengers were pouring in: Mrs Benjamin Guggenheim and her brother De Witt Seligman… Mrs Astor’s father W. H. Force… J. P. Morgan Jr… hundreds of people nobody recognized. Rich and poor, they all got the same reassuring smiles—no need to worry… the Titanic was unsinkable; well, anyhow, she could float two or three days… certainly there were enough boats for everybody.
And the Press joined in. The Evening Sun ran a banner headline:
ALL SAVED FROM TITANIC AFTER COLLISION The story reported all passengers transferred to the Parisian and the Carpathia, with the Titanic being towed by the Virginian to Halifax.
Even business seemed confident. At the first news the reinsurance rate on the Titanic’s cargo soared to fifty per cent, then to sixty per cent. But as optimism grew, London rates dropped back to fifty per cent, then to forty-five… thirty… and finally twenty-five per cent.
Meanwhile Marconi stock skyrocketed. In two days it soared fifty-five points to 225. Not bad for a stock that brought only two dollars just a year ago. And IMM—the great combine that controlled the White Star Line—was now recovering after a shaky start in the morning.
Yet rumours were beginning to spread. No official word, but wireless men listening in on the Atlantic traffic picked up disturbing messages not meant for their ears, and relayed the contents anyhow. During the afternoon a Cunard official heard from a friend downtown that the Titanic was definitely gone. A New York businessman wired a friend in Montreal the same thing. Franklin heard too, but the source seemed unreliable; so he decided to keep quiet.
At 6.15 the roof fell in. Word finally arrived from the Olympic: the Titanic went down at 2.20 a.m.; the Carpathia picked up all the boats and was returning to New York with the 675 survivors. The message had been delayed in transit several hours. Nobody knows why, but there has never been any evidence supporting the World’s suggestion that it was the work of Wall Street bears and shippers reinsuring their cargoes.
Franklin was still steeling himself to tell the public when the clock in the White Star office struck seven. An alert reporter smelled the gloom in the air, took a chance, and barged into the manager’s office. Others followed. ‘Gentlemen,’ Mr Franklin stammered, ‘I regret to say that the Titanic sank at 2.20 this morning.’
At first that was all he would say, but bit by bit the reporters chipped out admissions. At 8.00: the Olympic’s message ‘neglected to say that all the crew had been saved’. At 8.15: ‘Probably a number of lives had been lost.’ At 8.45: ‘We very much fear there has been a great loss of life.’ By 9.00 he couldn’t keep up the front any longer: it was a ‘horrible loss of life’… they could replace the ship but ‘never the human lives’.
At 10.30 Vincent Astor arrived and disappeared into Franklin’s office. In a little while he left weeping. On a hunch a reporter phoned Mrs John Jacob Astor’s father, W. H. Force. ‘Oh, my God,’ cried the old gentleman, ‘don’t tell me that! Where did you get that report from? It isn’t true! It can’t be true!’
No one could reach the Strauses’ daughter, Mrs Alfred Hess. Early that afternoon she had taken the special train chartered by the White Star Line to meet the supposedly crippled Titanic at Halifax. By 8.00 the train was lumbering through the Maine countryside, as Mrs Hess sat in the diner chatting with reporters. She was the only woman on board, and it was rather fun.
She was just starting some grapefruit when the train slowed, stopped, and then began moving backwards. It never stopped until Boston. There she learned, ‘Plans have changed; the Titanic’s people are going straight to New York.’ So she took the sleeper back and was met at the gate by her brother early the next morning: ‘Things look pretty bad.’
By now the first survivor list was up, and crowds again stormed the White Star office. Mrs Frank Farquharson and Mrs W. H. Marvin came together to learn about their children, who were coming back from their honeymoon. The bride’s mother, Mrs Farquharson, gave a happy little yelp when she spied the name ‘Mrs Daniel Marvin’; then managed to stifle it when she saw no ‘Mr’ beside it.
Mrs Ben Guggenheim clung to the hope that some lifeboat was missing. ‘He may be drifting about!’ she sobbed.
And he might have been, for all anyone knew. Nobody could get any information out of the Carpathia—Rostron was saving his wireless for official traffic and private messages from the survivors—so the newspapers made up their stories. The Evening World told of a fog, the Titanic’s booming siren, a crash like an earthquake. The Herald described how the ship was torn asunder, plunged into darkness, almost capsized at the moment of impact.
When imagination ran low, the papers took it out on the silent rescue ship. The Evening Mail thundered:
WATCHERS ANGERED BY CARPATHIA’S SILENCE The World pouted:
CARPATHIA LETS NO SECRETS OF THE TITANIC’S LOSS ESCAPE BY WIRELESS So Tuesday turned to Wednesday… and Wednesday to Thursday… and still there was no news. The weeklies were caught now. Harper’s Weekly described the prominent people aboard, featuring Henry Sleeper Harper, a member of the family who owned the magazine. It conjured a fog and a frightful shock; then remarked a little lamely, ‘As to what happened, all is still surmise.’ But Harper’s assured its readers that the rule was women and children first, ‘the order long enforced among all decent men who use the sea’. Next issue, the magazine turned a possible embarrassment into a journalistic scoop when Henry Sleeper Harper turned up complete with Pekingese and personal Egyptian dragoman. Harper’s happily announced an exclusive interview.
Thursday night the wait ended. As the Carpathia steamed by the Statue of Liberty, 10,000 people watched from the Battery. As she edged towards pier 54, 30,000 more stood in the waterfront rain. To the end Rostron had no truck with newsmen. He wouldn’t let them on the ship at quarantine, and as the Carpathia steamed up the North River, tugs chugged beside her, full of reporters shouting questions through megaphones.
At 8.37 she reached the pier and began unloading the Titanic’s lifeboats so she could be warped in. They were rowed off to the White Star pier, where souvenir hunters picked them clean during the night. (The next day men were put to work removing the Titanic’s nameplate from each boat.)
At 9.35 the Carpathia was moored, the gangplank lowered, and the first survivors tumbled off. Later a brown canvas carry-all, its two-by-three-inch sides bulging, was taken off and placed under Customs letter G. Customs officials said it was the only luggage saved from the Titanic.
